do you have synethesia?

[Temis the Vorta]

What the phlox is synethesia?

This is the world of synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon in which one sense kindles sensation in another. The condition, which is harmless, is caused by increased connectivity between areas of the brain that are normally separated.

...

Other synesthetes see colors when they hear music, taste words before they say them or feel textures on their fingertips when they discern the flavors of particular foods. Virtually any combination between the senses is possible in the 1% to 4% of people who have inherited the condition.

I have color-number synethesia (which I've heard is the most common kind). I'd love to be able to see music or taste textures, like having a brain that manufactures its own LSD. I'm not that lucky but color-number is useful, because it makes it easier for me to memorize strings of numbers by recalling the color pattern they create. I can judge phone numbers by how pretty they look.

PS, the woman in the article is all wrong. Five is not red, it's purple! Obviously. She's right about two, tho...

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I do...both grapheme to color and sound to shape/light. Unlike a lot of people with synesthesia, sounds have no color--only light and dark, but it's still beautiful to me; just a different aesthetic. I don't actually see any of this (it's not the "projected" form of synesthesia), but it is still there. It's very good for memorizing spellings and catching typos.

 

[RoJoHen]

Nope.

 

[MHT1138]

I have never heard of this, but it sounds like it would be cool to have. Is it distracting at all?

 

[T'Girl]

When my mother taught her children the alphabet, she would play a musical scale on a casio keyboard. So when I type things out on the computer (like now), instead of hearing words in my head as I type, I hear music.

I've been told I overuse the word "actually," it just that it sounds so lovely when I type it.

Smooth surfaces under my fingertips smell like soap, rough surfaces smell like sawdust. And slippery surfaces, no matter what they are, smell like (no kidding) sex.

"Young Urban" music makes colors vibrant, like the contrast was somehow turned up. Classical turns things pastel. Jazz results in shadowy areas and pools of light. All of those with no actual (there's that sound) changes in real light levels.

Or maybe I'm crazy.

")

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I do...both grapheme to color and sound to shape/light. Unlike a lot of people with synesthesia, sounds have no color--only light and dark, but it's still beautiful to me; just a different aesthetic. I don't actually see any of this (it's not the "projected" form of synesthesia), but it is still there. It's very good for memorizing spellings and catching typos.

I hope I'm not being rude by asking (please disregard if I'm prying), but what's it like if you read something while someone else is reading it aloud? If I understand correctly, you'd have colour associations and light/dark associations simultaneously, just as you hear and see simultaneously. Is there then any connection made between the two inner "visual" experiences? Do they have an effect on each other, an interference or symbiosis? Does the light-dark association cast perception of the colour in a different way than it's usually experienced? If one grapheme has less associated phonemes than others, are the connotations of that grapheme's colour then more "stable" for you due to the lighting and shapes being less varied? Or am I asking nonsense?

 

[Trekker4747]

Technically everyone has it in one way or another but, yeah, some people can have it more severely than others.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

DN--The two experiences don't "interact" and I can focus on one over the other. It's like a black and white movie with technicolor subtitles, if that makes sense.

Because I don't see color, I think that makes my tastes in music go towards things with a lot of interesting sound effects and rapid-fire patterns. This song, "Mainu Tere Jeya (DSB remix)" is the kind of thing that is really fascinating to me, but I like a lot of genres with complexity and interesting sounds, all the way from classical to metal even to a few types of rap (the kind with Christian lyrics).

http://truemuziklover.wordpress.com/tag/dsb/

 

[think]

I like to control my synethesia it is very very fun and interesting when used appropriately, just the idea into reality situations is always messy to clean up.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

DN--The two experiences don't "interact" and I can focus on one over the other. It's like a black and white movie with technicolor subtitles, if that makes sense.

Because I don't see color, I think that makes my tastes in music go towards things with a lot of interesting sound effects and rapid-fire patterns. This song, "Mainu Tere Jeya (DSB remix)" is the kind of thing that is really fascinating to me, but I like a lot of genres with complexity and interesting sounds, all the way from classical to metal even to a few types of rap (the kind with Christian lyrics).

http://truemuziklover.wordpress.com/tag/dsb/

Thanks. As ever, I appreciate the insight.

The link had the song removed, but I found it elsewhere. While I listened, I imagined having a sense of lighting and shape along with sound and while natuarally I can't actually experience it, I like to think I got an inkling - even if just an inkling - of what that might be like, and why it's so appealing. I imagine that music must produce quite a show.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I have never heard of this, but it sounds like it would be cool to have. Is it distracting at all?

Nope. For most of my life, I wasn't even aware of it. I thought I associated colors with numbers because of some chart of numbers I saw in kindergarten, something like that.

But since I associate "0" with "clear" (like it's made of glass), I should have known that couldn't be the case - no kindergarten is going to have something weird and confusing for kids like that.

I don't actually see any of this (it's not the "projected" form of synesthesia), but it is still there.

Me too. I can read a "9" which is printed on a page in, say, red, but still think it as black (since 9=black to me). There's no conflict, since I'm thinking black, not really visualizing it, which is weird when you think about it - what is black, other than its visual aspect?

 

[Niorah]

I associate numbers with colours, and certain words as well, like the days of the week or the names of the months for example. Even the single letters have a colour to me. So E is green and O is blue and U is black and A is white. Which is always a bit strange to me since the number 4, which is very similar in shape to A, is instead red. Go figure.

I did not have any books or educational toys as a child that depicted said things in said colours, so I know it doesn't stem from that. I guess it's one of those things that just "are".

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Nope. For most of my life, I wasn't even aware of it. I thought I associated colors with numbers because of some chart of numbers I saw in kindergarten, something like that.

But since I associate "0" with "clear" (like it's made of glass), I should have known that couldn't be the case - no kindergarten is going to have something weird and confusing for kids like that.

I always assumed it was something like that too, until I got older. One of the things that made me realize what was going on for me was that while A, B, C, D, E, and F could be seen as creating a partial rainbow, which could've come from a chart, everything else after that absolutely did not. (A, B, and C are also all variants on yellow, which also kept me from figuring it out, because it would be logical for those to be in the same color in material for kindergarteners.)

There's no conflict, since I'm thinking black, not really visualizing it, which is weird when you think about it - what is black, other than its visual aspect?

I don't literally see the color in front of my face--but it's like there's a mental overlay and I know where it should be and what it should look like.


One thing I hate, though, is the association with hallucinogenics. It makes normal people unable to speak openly about being synesthetes without being suspected of drug use or a disorder.

 

[ALF]

"What the Phlox..."

Heeheehee... it never gets old!

 

[Danoz]

Friend of mine with perfect pitch has this, and every pitch has a color. He actually can't drive and listen to music at the same time...

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I can see how having colors with sound would help give one perfect pitch.

I don't think I could do that--but I suspect that with the right training, with the way I perceive sounds, I could be a mean DJ or sound engineer. There are few things worse than a great band with a poorly-mixed album that sounds like it's coming out of a mailbox.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

20% of people here have synethesia, that's way above the average, which should be less than 5%. Then again, this poll probably skews towards those who would answer yes, and TrekBBS denizens are a special group in any case.

 

[Balrog]

The alphabet tastes delicious.

 

[Hound of UIster]

It's an interesting phenomenon, the overabundance of internet users on bbs and forums claiming they have synesthesia.

IMO it's probably is due to participants with minimal medical training engaging in erroneous self-diagnosis.

 

[trekkiedane]

/.../ this poll probably skews towards those who would answer yes, and TrekBBS denizens are a special group in any case.

All true, but you didn't take into account that almost three hundred members have been in the thread and not ALL of them have 'voted'.