Seeing and feeling

That pain awareness that emerges after an operation whilst you are still on the painkillers

One of the most interesting things about our senses is that how they are configured is not necessarily fixed in terms of how we sense the world outside us. For instance if we look at how our bodies make themselves aware of changes in their experience of the electromagnetic spectrum, there is the strange case of infra-red. We use our eyes to detect visible light, which spans wavelengths between 380 and 700 nanometers and includes the colours we were told to remember when children as, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. However we use heat sensors in our skin to detect the infra-red wavelengths, those in the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths longer than red light, extending from 780 nanometers to 1 millimeter. This region is further divided into near-infrared (NIR), mid-infrared (MIR), and far-infrared (FIR). Infra-red is also known as thermal radiation or heat radiation and although invisible to the human eye, it can be felt as heat. We sense heat through specialised sensory receptors in the skin called thermoreceptors, which detect changes in temperature. These receptors convert temperature information into nerve impulses, which are then transmitted to the brain for processing, in a similar way that visual receptors, our rods and cones, except that they convert light energy into electrical signals that trigger nerve impulses that our brain can interpret. Both systems are converting electro-magnetic energy waves into nerve impulses, that we then process and understand as certain types of information. But visual information seems very different to how we understand heat, these information sources seem to belong to totally different worlds of sensation.
However, we now know that several non-human animal species have evolved the ability to perceive infrared radiation."Infrared vision" allows them to detect heat from a great distance. Certain species of snakes, fish, insects and mammals have developed this type of perceptual ability, so in evolutionary terms it is a possibility open to most animals. Recent developments also mean that us humans can now see infrared light, researchers having made the first contact lenses for infrared vision. I have not used them and can only speculate as to what you see, but the elephant in the room is of course, that sight and heat receptor types are collecting the same data but understanding it very differently. My feeling tone in relation to sensing the sun's heat coming from touching a warmed up rock on a hot day, is totally different to seeing it. Vision tends to distance me from things, but touch is the opposite, I have to be in direct contact with the world to experience it. A snake with infrared vision, would see a mouse as a warm thing, that it could then separate out from a cold environment, such as a sandstone rock. We would on the other hand have to catch the mouse and hold it to get any heat information from it.
The point being that the brain invents stuff in relation to what comes in as nerve impulses, or as 'qualia'. Qualia are not objective facts, they are the way things feel to a conscious being. They are personal and subjective and are the fundamental units of subjective consciousness, such as the taste of a lemon, the colour of an orange or the feeling of being tickled. This subjectivity is vital to my understanding of what I'm trying to do in visualising interoceptual experiences. If an experience such as that of heat, can be either something that feels like 'touch' or something that looks like 'colour', depending on how receptors work in a particular species, then I can be at liberty to attempt a further translation. I can translate an emotional feeling into a shape or colour, just as a snake may translate an awareness of heat into a visual image. 

We use emotions to coordinate our behaviour and physiological states during fright or flight, as well as pleasurable experiences. There has now been developed a tool to visually monitor the topography of emotion-triggered bodily sensations and this has further reinforced my belief that there could be a use for the research I'm undertaking. Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari and Hietanen, (2014) developed a way to visualise where emotion resides in the body, using the setup below to collect information from people about their feelings.

Nummenmaa, Glerean, Hari and Hietanen, (2014) 

The results of their research were then made public using the body images as set out below. At first sight they look somewhat like superhero figures from DC or Marvel comic books, but they clearly give visual form to a usually invisible set of feelings, which is something I have been trying to do for a while. 

In a later article this research team assessed the representational similarity between the measured features of subjective experience. 

Nummenmaa, Hari, Hietanen and Glerean (2018) Maps of subjective feelings

My subjective visual response to these issues is to try to break out from the standard human body form. I am attempting to visualise a complexity of feelings that are constantly in motion and at the same time, are mixed in with memories and reflections. Therefore I try to use a much wider range of visual language in order to communicate my ideas, including differences in material handling, colour saturation, texture, shape and tonality. My images being more like a stirred broth of feelings, than a symmetrically balanced person in a superhero costume. I do though feel as if there is a very close relationship between what Nummenmaa, Hari, Hietanen and Glerean were doing and what I'm attempting to do.

Somatic portrait of pain caused by earache

In order to do the work I am doing with other people I had to come up with a more complex pain measurement tool, which simply by its existence points to limitations in the Nummenmaa, Hari, Hietanen and Glerean images. 

Chart designed for pain measurement

My recent work with patients in a spinal injuries unit has been about trying to visualise pain, anxiety, and trauma, things that I have been trying to communicate through coloured drawings, as part of a process of learning how to feel or be more aware of interoceptual experiences.

Recent discoveries in neuroscience suggest that a greater awareness of and ability to feel or sense the events happening inside us, help us to learn how to manage intense feelings. It has also been argued that att the same time, as people develop this skill, they begin feeling less pain and anxiety. Being more sensitive to interoceptual experiences, may therefore be a key to becoming less sensitive to pain. However I think this awareness needs to be coupled with a state of awe or wonder at the amazing thing that our bodies are. I attempt to build into the process of conversation that the drawings develop from,  narratives that help to achieve this, then hopefully, if someone becomes drawn into a more uplifting story about the body, an awareness of the mythic possibilities of the engagement, might lead to their body's release of some feel good hormones.  

I have also developed some images that are being designed to be coloured in, as a type of mindfulness exercise. These images are yet to be finalised in conjunction with patients and are just simplified examples of the coloured images already produced. My earlier experience with the history of painting by numbers, has made me very aware that these things take some careful designing if they are to work. Once finished and printed off, people can use them to create their own ideas as to which colours express their feelings. Hopefully this provides more agency over the process and at the same time the action of colouring, should develop a focused attention that can help reduce stress, improve concentration and help to regulate emotions.  Well that is the idea anyway. 

Draft versions of pain awareness colouring in images

References

Gibney, E. (2025) These contact lenses give people infrared vision — even with their eyes shut: Sci-fi-style technology uses nanoparticles to convert infrared light into visible light that humans can see. Nature: News 22 May Accessed from: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01630-x

Holt, N.J. (2024). Colouring for Well-Being: Evidence and Applications. In: Crawford, P., Kadetz, P. (eds) Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26825-1_17-1

Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R. and Hietanen, J.K., 2014. Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), pp.646-651.

Nummenmaa, L., Hari, R., Hietanen, J.K. and Glerean, E., 2018. Maps of subjective feelings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), pp.9198-9203.

Schuman-Olivier Z, Trombka M, Lovas DA, Brewer JA, Vago DR, Gawande R, Dunne JP, Lazar SW, Loucks EB, Fulwiler C. Mindfulness and Behavior Change. Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2020 Nov/Dec;28(6):371-394. doi: 10.1097/HRP.0000000000000277. PMID: 33156156; PMCID: PMC7647439.

See also:

Maps made by our nervous systems

Minjeong An: Drawing with a computer

Drawing and healing traditions

Ibrahim el Salahi: Pain relief drawings

Drawings as aesthetic transducers

Painting by numbers

Drawing and mindfulness