Synesthesia- if you've never heard of it, then check this out

[camillachick]

This is my thread on synesthesia (sin-ess-thee-zha) The zh sound in my pronunciation guide is that of the g in mirage or the z in azure. I only recently heard of this condition and wanted to know if others have heard of it. “Synesthesia” is the condition. A “synesthete” is the person having the condition.

It occurs in about 1 out of 2,000 people or 1 out of 10,000 depending on whose statistics you are reading. It is a condition that I would liken to color-blindness except the effect is almost opposite to being color-blind. (I don’t have this condition so I am not speaking firsthand here.)
What happens is this: a synesthete gets extra senses when seeing something or feeling or smelling something (or any of the 5).

They may be able to see a color when music plays, or taste something when they see a certain shape. Many synesthetes see letters and numbers in colors other than the color they are printed in. These phenomena are always the same for them. If the letter K is blue, it will always be blue. It is also individual. Someone else may see K as orange all the time. And every synesthete will get different perceptions in different amounts for one or many senses.

Like color blindness it is not a disease and cannot be caught or transmitted as such. It can run in families though the mechanism isn’t as clear cut as color-blindness. These senses are NOT delusions or an overactive imagination or a mental disorder. It is just an extra function of the person’s brain similar to the way color blindness is one less function.
Sometimes a person will not realize they are a synesthete for many years because they assume everyone gets the same extra senses they get. After all, I never question the way I sense things.

I am interested to hear who else knows of this or maybe has met that one out of 7000 who has synethesia. I got some of my information from a textbook and some from online sources. Here is a website with information and links:

http://www.bu.edu/neuropsychology/synvc.html

Hopefully I have explained it well enough for being a non-synesthete. I feel like a person blind since birth trying to explain seeing. I am fascinated that this happens and hope you are too, unless of course you already knew all this.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Doesn't seem to necessarily be a bad thing; but, suppose you first saw the number 13 in your garage while the car was started. You'd smell exhaust everytime you saw the number 13, which makes me wonder if you'd then exfixiate yourself if over-indulged in that particular number??

 

[Don'tLiveonMoon]

Wow, that sounds really cool. I never heard of it before.
Erin

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

They did a fascinating report on this recently (a year or so ago) on 60 Minutes or 48 Hours. There was a man who gets particular taste sensations when he hears different words. There was a blind man whose sees things when he hears music--brain scans have confirmed that the visual areas of his brain are being activated. I think it's really interesting.

 

[camillachick]

Fozzie, I can't quite tell if your joking...
But it doesn't work that way. It's not a response to one sense because of a memory of those two senses together. It happens of its own accord that is unrelated to what is really going on. So if they really did smell exhaust when they saw the number 13, it would have been like that since they born (or since memory anyway), no matter if they were around a car or not.


AndyWan, that is really neat about the blind guy. I was kind of wondering if blind synesthetics could see things. Looks like I got my answer.

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

AndyWan, that is really neat about the blind guy. I was kind of wondering if blind synesthetics could see things. Looks like I got my answer.

Yeah, I thought that was really neat too. I can't remember if this guy was blind from birth--I suspect not, because he could describe the things he was seeing. I just find it really interesting that the vision parts of his brain could see things even when his eyes could not. I suppose that's true about all of us, though, when we dream. Dreams always seem to activate our real senses in the brain, even though we are unconscious.

 

[Beauregard]

Hey, my Gran has this. She sees shades of colour when she hears words. I think my name is muddy-brown....

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Fozzie, I can't quite tell if your joking....

Only partially joking. It just seemed logical. Thanks for the better understanding, though.

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

Hey, my Gran has this. She sees shades of colour when she hears words. I think my name is muddy-brown....

That's cool. My wife has a certain level of this with letters. They all seem to have certain colors.

 

[dmx10101]

I'm have never heard of this before, it sounds interesting.