Mirror Touch audiobook

Very interesting! The author has several types of synesthesia, including the "mirror touch" that causes him to physically feel all kinds of sensations that other people are feeling. The title and cover text are a bit deceptive; they led me to think that the book would be about his mirror touch and how it affects his medical practice. It does include some of that, but mostly it's the story of his life to date, with emphasis on all the synasthesias he has, the efforts he's made to understand and live with them, and the insights he's had along the way. When the author looks at letters and numbers, he also sees the colors that his brain associates with them. When he sees a person, he also sees that person's colors (and those colors' associated numbers). Colors, numbers, and various inanimate objects are associated with personality traits. He was an odd child, with very different perceptions than other kids, but he had no idea that other people saw things differently. In fact, he was deep into medical school before he realized that the mirror touch was unusual.At the beginning of the book, I wondered it he was exaggerating. It seems not. He visited several researchers, including V. S. Ramachandran (I love his books about the brain!), and was put through various tests. He is an outlier, so far out on the end of the bell curve that he doesn't fit their usual models. He's very curious--is his synesthesia a medical condition? A disadvantage, or an odd superpower? When he feels something in his body as a result of seeing another person (a pose, pain, movement), is he feeling what they are feeling or is he feeling his imaginary version of what they might be feeling? His investigations of these and related questions come up with some very interesting lines of thinking - not outright answers, but looks at current and future research on how the brain works.And the book is about more that all that too. The author had a hard time developing social skills, and he worked hard at understanding social cues and giving appropriate responses. I can relate to that. There's a lot about how he explores his questions by interacting with other people - researchers, mentors, patients (he never neglects to consider patients his equal as people), family, and other synesthetes. It's well written, though there's a fair amount of awkward phrasing that the editors should have taken care of. He is a positive person, and his efforts at empathy and helping people are endearing and apparently successful. He's very young, and I hope he continues writing.

This highly engaging book is about the author’s rare condition of mirror touch synesthesia. That in itself yields a fascinating story. But Salinas ventures beyond a description of his unusual perceptual experiences. His book is about self-acceptance. Where is the boundary between one person’s feelings and those of another? We generally consider empathy to be a laudable quality. The ability to to put oneself in the place of another, see another’s point of view, listen and understand. But for Dr. Salinas, this ability is often exaggerated to the point that he experiences the physical sensations of his fellow human beings. He describes his struggles to rein himself in from the very edge of that emotional boundary, for his own well-being but also to be effective as a physician. Dr. Salinas openly shares this personal journey with the reader. Over the course of his training and career, he describes not only his treatment of patients with brain anomalies, but shows us how he learned from them. He is drawn to understand his patients’ reality, and their challenges in coping with a distorted sense of being.The author’s compassion (for himself and others) is clear. And herein lies his overriding message to the reader. We humans vary greatly in our neurological make-up and functioning. While we need not yield to weaknesses, we can learn to accept our idiosyncrasies, e.g., shyness, anxiety, phobias, and regard them not as pathological or sources of shame. We need to find our “tribe” and share our story with others. I highly recommend this book.

It's difficult to explain everything I got out of this book. It's beautifully written and highly informative, but at the same time some of it might go over a reader's head because there is a lot of medical writing in it as well. Since the author is a doctor this should not be a surprise, but trying to slog through the medical terminology and jargon slowed my reading a bit. That being said, I found this book crucial to my interest in synesthesia, while also learning about autism, stroke patients and schizophrenia. I can't imagine what it must be like to experience mirror touch synesthesia as Dr. Salinas does, and his stories are absolutely fascinating (while a bit horrifying if I'm being honest).Some of my favorite lines from the book: "Running my hands across the ridges of his palms conjured the image of dry river rocks under a soothing summer sun.""Seeing the dirt-caked eyes of a small emaciated child in a tiny hut next to an unpaved road, my eyes felt the rolling of pebbles and dust behind my eyelids, scraping along with every blink.""His baritone voice had the flavor and consistency of smooth, room-temperature Nutella.""It was a soft yellow sound, small and fragile. It may as well have dropped out of his mouth like a dead canary."

I truly enjoyed this book. I will advise that an interest in science or medical related things may be helpful to a reader. Dr. Salinas takes us through his life with mirror touch synesthesia and all that it entails. This book really focuses on him finding himself and accepting his reality. Because of this, we are not always reading about his experiences, but others who affected his life, and ultimately changed it. This book is both educational and captivating. It emphasizes the grace and beauty humans hold.

Do you believe in super powers? Well we just might! Dr. Joel Salinas has a rare condition called Synesthesia, a condition where the cross wiring in your brain allows your senses to overlap. The cross wiring in your brain then allows you to feel what others around you feel. We had the chance to speak with Dr. Salinas on our weekly radio show Radio Health Journal. If you would like to hear his story, please check out this link! https://radiohealthjournal.wordpress....

The first pages I read very much incredulous , but as I kept on, I found myself feeling compassion towards this person who can be so overwhelmed with different emotions and feelings.I also enjoyed how he related different colors and tones to some people he met along . Overall, it was so very interesting learning of this condition-trait.

Weekend read! This was a really interesting book - the author has mirror-touch synesthesia which means he empathizes with people to the extreme, even feeling their physical pain. Oh, and he's a doctor, treating people every day. Would highly recommend this book if only for a quick peek into someone else's reality.

Mirror Touch by Dr. Joel Salinas is an autobiography explaining the obstacles he faced throughout his lifetime with the unusual condition called synesthesia. Born to a Catholic Hispanic family in southern Florida, Joel Salinas realized that he was not like his fellow family members and classmates. He would experience abnormal physical sensations as a reaction to certain visuals and would associate numbers, letters, and even objects with colors. After graduating high school, he attended Cornell University for undergraduate school where he met his first girlfriend and close companion, Cristina. He nursed his love for biological sciences by moving onto medical school at the University of Miami and completing his residency at Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital, taking several pit-stops along the way to participate in different neurology-focused research programs. Throughout his journey in high school, college, medical school, and residency, he struggled with finding his purpose, balancing work with his condition where he experienced pain when seeing others in pain, and coming out as gay to his homophobic parents. His patients helped him to realize that with the help of close relationships and empathy, he could find a better sense of purpose.Joel Salinas described the lives of his patients in great depth and did a beautiful job connecting important life lessons to the stories of his patients and the obstacles they faced. He used vivid imagery to recall many of his different patient interactions and what lessons every one of those patient experiences had taught him. With his synesthesia, he could accurately describe what many of his patients were feeling. Salinas said, “I felt minimal movement from my midabdomen down, but the tension of his trembling shoulders carried twice its share of anger” (131). This shows how vivid imagery could give readers a better idea of what Joel and his patients endured. Not only did he describe the important life lessons he learned from his patients, he also thoroughly analyzed his own life and the struggles he faced, often outside the realms of medicine, and therefore did a fantastic job relating to readers and their own struggles. He taught readers little pieces of his own advice and what almost hitting rock bottom did for his confidence inside the workplace and out.His fluent storytelling was accompanied with multiple font effects, repeated letters and exclamation points to dramatize his patients’ complications and show how strongly they often reacted to traumatizing or painful events. For example, he described one of his patients when he was on his obstetrics/gynecology rotation as hissing and wailing. She screamed, “Waiiiiii!” (Salinas 66). He also did a great job of repeating words and placing them in all caps to show extreme intensity like, on the oncology ward, he portrayed a nurse as shouting, “DNR/DNI! STOP!” (Salinas 146). Clearly, the way he crafted particular words, letters, and sentences added much more tension and drama to the story. There were very few moments in this autobiography that I would characterize as negative. The thing that stood out to me most was that Salinas did lots of jumping around between different story lines which could often get confusing or tiring. For example, he talked about his new boyfriend, Jordan, and the challenges he was having with him while quickly switching to a story about one of his autistic patients, with little transitioning (Salinas 212). Salinas could’ve done a better job connecting story lines together, like those two, instead of abruptly switching to a different scenario or plot line. Additionally, the author could have done a more thorough job of explaining some of the procedures to readers. For instance, he had explained that a patient was hemorrhaging, so he said that he and the attending surgeon had performed an emergent exploratory laparotomy, but Salinas gave little context or definition as to what the procedure was used for (Salinas 73). Not fully explaining procedures and jumping around to different story lines could get frustrating to some, but there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of this happening throughout the autobiography. I would give this book four stars because it was very well-written with few errors. I would recommend this book to other students who are fascinated by medicine and would love to understand and read more about the life of a doctor. Not only is it for those interested in medicine, this book was also intended for anyone who struggles to find a sense of purpose in their daily life and would like more advice on how to find their identity.

"Jordan was predominantly a reddish-orange 5 with some black 9, highlights of red 2 and, off in the background, a mix of turquoise 7s."Out of context, one might guess this is a sentence from a surrealist novel or poem, or perhaps a science-fiction story. But this is non-fiction.If this book wasn't written by a medical doctor, I would think the author is simply making it all up. Early on we are given robust and incredible descriptions of the author's interior mental life, and it is as interesting as it is hard to relate to. Paradoxically, because Dr. Salinas has a greater capacity for relating to others than is normal, he is isolated. And this memoir represents so many of the interesting ways Dr. Salinas reaches out to the world, to understand himself and others. At the same time, it is a detailed first-person report of a wild psychological phenomena. I believe the author has done himself, and others who either have, or are interested in mirror-touch synesthesia, a great service. An easy five stars.

I am so grateful to Joel for trusting his capacity to tell his own story. From personal to professional retellings, this book is driven by Joel's desire to understand his and his patients' internal differences (social, neurologic, cultural, mental) and the difficult yet powerful spiraling journey to self-acceptance that happens along the way. As a highly sensitive person, I've needed to learn (and consistently practice!) how to find and keep my own center rather than merging/blending in with others' energies. Reading about Joel's relationships with Cristina and Jordan mirrored for me something that I've struggled with greatly in my primary relationships. While our experiences have differences, I found it unexpectedly healing to specifically read these stories.

As a synesthete , I loved this book and the case histories. I even found out more about features of my own synesthesia that I didn't recognize everyone didn't have. What knocked it out of a 5 stars rating were his annoying tangents, and at times strange use of words. As a medical person the science was exciting, though.

This is the fascinating story of a young man with synesthesia. He is a medical doctor who can feel a patient's physical and emotional pain and discomfort mirrored in his own body. His synesthesia enables him to be a very empathetic healer, though at considerable cost to himself.

Yet another amazing book by a physician; a genre I'm starting to love. He interwove his personal experience and that of his patients so beautifully. It was almost poetic the way he writes and tells a story.

Slightly more technical with some of the vocab but it was a refreshing visit back into the realm of Neuro. Really excellent book if you're intrigued about synesthesia

Fascinating life story, and the author does an excellent job of describing his sensations and experiences. My only critique is that it would benefit from editing and organization.