Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a 'neurological condition' that essentially causes people to involuntarily associate one sense with another, or more; a 'synesthete' might 'taste' a smell, or see numbers and letters as colored even when they aren't. The weirdest one for me would have to be those who associate personalities with objects, like numbers, days of the weeks, and calendar months.

And yet, the real reason why this awes me is that, for all the research I've read, this is one 'disorder' that doesn't seem to cause distress or challenges for those effected. The automatic and ineffable nature of a synesthetic experience means that the pairing may not seem out of the ordinary. This involuntary and consistent nature helps define synesthesia as a real experience. Most synesthetes report that their experiences are pleasant or neutral, many synesthetes themselves do not perceive their synesthetic experiences as a handicap. To the contrary, most report it as a gift—an additional "hidden" sense—something they would not want to miss. Most synesthetes become aware of their "hidden" and different way of perceiving in their childhood. Some have learned how to apply this gift in daily life and work. Synesthetes have used their gift in memorizing names and telephone numbers, mental arithmetic, but also in more complex creative activities like producing visual art, music, and theater,

I mean, of all the crazy crap that can go on in the mind, it makes me feel all fuzzy to know that there is at least one very incredible condition that doesn't cause distress or struggle.

\*first thing he thinks of is Canaan*

... What?

But yeah, this is probably the sweetest way for the brain to trip up.

Just finished watching Canaan yesterday actually.

I have a very slight touch of this: tastes are associated with music for me, and I tend to describe the flavor mix of a dish as if I'm describing the mix of a song; various flavors have pitches and rhythms and timbres.

Myostatin Related Muscular Hypertrophy, too.

Watch out for sour yellow notes.

I think Coca-Cola's branding has convinced me that Coke Zero somehow tastes like the number 0, is that a thing?

For me, all numbers, months, days, letters, and times of day have a color associated with them. For example, 8 is orange and 12 is dark green.

How does making a bunch of nonsensical associations make you more creative, though? I don't quite get that part.

Nettle-tea: deep, deep blue-green. Beetroot (pickled) is surprisingly very yellow for me: an almost neon-bright lemon-yellow. And, lemons are grey-green. I don't have many flavours that spark off colour perception, but the few that do are... strange, to say the least.

Forgot: valerian. Apart from just "yuck", also tastes muddy, ruddy-orange brown with black splotches. Which is just as pretty. I don't know how or why I get splotches, but I do. And, honey never helps. It just murks it up worse.

edited 13th Jun '12 3:52:59 PM by Euodiachloris

Everybody has synaesthesia to some degree. You're kinda meant to. The lack of this kind of sensory cross-over would be of far more concern.

Nice to see that yet another normal part of the human experience has been given a label and classed as a 'condition'.

No doubt they'll soon come up with some expensive bullshit drug to 'cure' it.

edited 16th Jun '12 6:25:37 AM by InverurieJones

I suspect a lot of mental conditions are things that most everyone has a little bit of, but it's only when you have too much of one that it gets a label.

I have a mild case, visual to tactile. I consider it to be like when you get a database report done on your GPU these days. Why should the tactile centers of your brain be restricted to processing tactile data?

Oh, and those videos on youtube that are supposed to show if you've got it? Yeah, they tickle.

Edit: I also once experienced it the other way, extreme pain to visual hallucinations. I don't feel that kind of pain often enough to know if it's consistent.

edited 16th Jun '12 2:40:41 PM by Michael

I agree that this is something a lot of people have to a small extent, and some people to a large one.

I see numbers as having colors. Not all numbers, just digits. 1 is white, 2 is blue, etc, up to 9 which is scarlet. That's how I remember phone numbers - it's much easier to remember colors than numbers.

It means there's numbers I like & numbers I don't, interestingly. I don't like my zip code, it's all pink, yellow and orange. Ick.

I also have other stuff with colors that's harder to quantify, like seeing emotions or people as colors - but I couldn't always tell you which ones. It's like something you can see in your head but not always put into words. Makes me wonder if we can imagine colors we can't see, etc.

It is possible to imagine colors one cannot see. It is, however, very difficult to do so.

Try to imagine a new color, right now. Hard, mm?

I have imagined three distinct homogenous original colors thus far, but it keeps getting harder. I wonder if I'm running out...

I actually have this condition. I really only notice the images (as I only see images in the back of my head) if I think about them.

Wednesday isn't purple, it's dark red. Sunday is yellow, Tuesday is yellow, Saturday is gray, Monday is bright red, Friday is ambiguous, Thursday is either yellow or dark red.

A is red, B is red, C is blue, D is red, E is yellow, F is yellowish-brown, G is green... etc.

It's really interesting, and I didn't know it was a condition until about a year ago, even though I've had it my entire life.

I have the numbers/letters/etc associated with colors version. Interestingly, it seems to be at least partly determined by shape, so for example upright lines (like 1 and lowercase L) are white, horizontal lines (like a hyphen) are yellow, and things with both of those are generally somewhere in-between (7 is a kind of ugly banana yellow... which then reminds me of the taste of bananas. Synestheception?).

I associate songs with colors. For example, this one:

sounds black to me.

I have a bit of this. I give certain numbers personalities (1 is dependable, 2 is female and very calm, 6 is an easily-led teenage boy, 7 is a prankster who picks on 6, 8 is an older man who is protective of 6 and hates 7, etc...), associate days of the week with colours, associate songs with colours and...my favourite, sounds make colours in my head. They move to the beat and do all sorts of lovely things. It's brilliant