Synesthesia--anyone else have it?

[Nerys Ghemor]

Sorry for starting two threads here in one day, but I didn't see a dedicated thread when I did a search.

I was wondering if anyone else has synesthesia. If so, what types do you experience? What do you feel about it, and can you use it in any way that you find useful?

 

[RJDiogenes]

Two Threads are not too many.

I don't have Synesthesia, but I find it an interesting phenomenon (well, I may have a subtle version, as sensory comparisons come easily to me in writing). Can you share some of your own experiences?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

There are many different types of synesthesia that one can experience (and in many cases people do not literally project these experiences--that is, experience them as though they were external sensory stimuli), but as far as I have ever been able to tell, there are only two that I do have.

First is what's called grapheme to color synesthesia. Letters of the alphabet, for instance, have colors that are intrinsic properties according to my perception. I do not literally SEE the colors on the page as I write, but I can get a sort of mind's-eye superimposed image as I look at them. I do not will this...it just happens. This type of synesthesia is one that can be experimentally proven online, BTW, without having to do a scan for anomalous neurological activity. The way the test is done is to give the subject a color palette like the one you see in Photoshop (the very detailed one with the slider you can move on both the X and Y axis) and put up letters and numbers in random order and ask the person taking the test to select the color they see with that letter, and to run through this two or three times. A non-synesthete is not going to have the response time or accuracy that a synesthete will. A synesthete's response to the test is going to be WAY on the far end of the Bell curve, and when I did it I most definitely hit it beyond the 99% range. (Can't remember the exact number, but it was high enough that there was no statistically significant doubt of the result.)

This can make doing things like picking out typos or picking numbers and other data out of long lists very easy for me to do--if I focus on the colors rather than the meanings of what I'm seeing, I can make what I want to see stand out very brightly indeed.

My other form of synesthetic perception is sound-to-sight. Now for most synesthetes this manifests itself as pitch-to-color, or even entire songs having a "color." For me, it's all in greyscale with absolutely no color information (which actually allows me to understand what a person without the ability to perceive color might find interesting or beautiful...and I also suspect it gives me a very odd perspective on what music does and doesn't sound good). I perceive the individual sounds that make up a song...I can pick out each instrument and see information about its timbre and pitch (though NOT with the precision of those who get color information). I can even visually perceive the use of certain effects like high/lowpass filter, phasing, flanging, clipping, and other uses of sound, as well as look at the acoustics where a sound was made (reverb, frequency range, and so forth all become very obvious to my eyes). It's also easy for me to isolate parts of a harmony because I can visually track each instrument.

MOST of the time I do not actually see this information in front of me, but certain loud sounds that startle me have occasionally caused me to see a white flash. (At night with my eyes closed I can see it more easily, but on very rare occasions it's been bright enough during the day to see it. MUCH more frequently, though, sounds give me the physical feeling in my eyes that they are reacting to light, but there is no external perception of light.) That said, my listening process works differently than most people's in that if I REALLY want all the detail, to truly immerse myself, I hear through my ears but listen with my eyes. When I really want to listen to music or any other sound the most fully, I close my eyes so that I can track the images and actually let my eyes go towards what I want to listen to. They move so fast that external visual input can make me lose a lot of the detail.

I experience the images as an intrinsic property of the sounds...which has made me give up every single time I try to learn how to read music, because no matter how much I try to get it through my head, it is not RIGHT as a visual representation of music. Unlike the more common synesthete with sound-to-sight, I don't think my abilities would ever help me to master an instrument...while I am reasonably sensitive to pitch, I don't think I'm quite enough so to reach really high levels without being able to read music. That said, I think I COULD learn to mix and produce music that others composed very well, because I can see what is and isn't good composition from that perspective, and once I learned what control did what, I can easily picture myself closing my eyes and "feeling" my way around the controls as I listened, to bring it into balance.

 

[backstept]

save for the colorful alphabet, you've just described how I perceive the world to some extent
I've totally had the loud noise/white flash thing! but I think it could be related to pressure phosphenes caused by the blink reflex compressing the eye slightly, instead of synesthesia . . .

I visualize music as a rainbow of colors and textures . . . for instance a blazing guitar solo would evoke 'red' . . . a sonata on piano would feel 'green'
can't think of any more examples because it happens in the moment for the most part and I'm not listening to anything now

I run sound at church and I've done many concerts as well (been a sound guy for a little over 10 years) and I feel that I'm quite good at mixing because it just doesn't sound right unless I can distinctly hear each instrument and put it at a level that mixes well with the other musicians and doesn't overpower or disappear etc
It just doesn't feel right unless each strand makes a smooth weave. I've listened to other people's mixes that just sound like they set a level and didn't bother to tweak it at all . . . it drives me nuts!


for some reason looped gifs always have a sound . . . it's hard to describe . . .

 

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, I experience stuff like this, but it's mostly peripheral to my consciousness. When I try to focus on it, it slips away. Like right now, I just tried to see what colors numbers are. I see that seven is yellow, eight is brown and nine seems to be a dark, metallic blue; the others I can't focus on. This is also the reason why I prefer some letters to others, because I'm aware in the back of my mind of their colors.

I also see music as interacting shapes that move; but that's also harder to focus on, and nearly impossible to describe even when I can focus on it. For example, an especially metallic sounding guitar riff can be visualized as a swirling cloud of little cubes.

Another thing that may be related to this is that I "see" time as a succession of shapes, lines and colors; this applies to my own life, and also when I think about History. These shapes and colors overlap and superimpose, and can represent formal demarcations like decades or centuries, or the way I group things in my head (e.g. the time living at a certain house, or a certain relationship).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

save for the colorful alphabet, you've just described how I perceive the world to some extent
I've totally had the loud noise/white flash thing! but I think it could be related to pressure phosphenes caused by the blink reflex compressing the eye slightly, instead of synesthesia . . .

That part may be, but one thing that's interesting is that in the article it also states that if the brain of a blind person is stimulated properly, it can cause a flash. In my case a signal is definitely "jumping" from the auditory to the visual cortex, so you can definitely have the feeling of something stimulating your eyes whether it's coming from the inside or the outside.

I visualize music as a rainbow of colors and textures . . . for instance a blazing guitar solo would evoke 'red' . . . a sonata on piano would feel 'green'
can't think of any more examples because it happens in the moment for the most part and I'm not listening to anything now

I run sound at church and I've done many concerts as well (been a sound guy for a little over 10 years) and I feel that I'm quite good at mixing because it just doesn't sound right unless I can distinctly hear each instrument and put it at a level that mixes well with the other musicians and doesn't overpower or disappear etc
It just doesn't feel right unless each strand makes a smooth weave. I've listened to other people's mixes that just sound like they set a level and didn't bother to tweak it at all . . . it drives me nuts!

Definitely...I know exactly what you mean--the picture of it looks completely wrong and unbalanced.

Yeah, I experience stuff like this, but it's mostly peripheral to my consciousness. When I try to focus on it, it slips away. Like right now, I just tried to see what colors numbers are. I see that seven is yellow, eight is brown and nine seems to be a dark, metallic blue; the others I can't focus on. This is also the reason why I prefer some letters to others, because I'm aware in the back of my mind of their colors.

That happens to me as well...though it's funny--I read those colors of yours and find myself completely disagreeing.

I also see music as interacting shapes that move; but that's also harder to focus on, and nearly impossible to describe even when I can focus on it. For example, an especially metallic sounding guitar riff can be visualized as a swirling cloud of little cubes.

Interesting...I think for me it's a LITTLE closer to a waveform, what I see, but it's not that either, because voiceprint images and the like don't look right either. (Though they make better sense to me than notes.)

Another thing that may be related to this is that I "see" time as a succession of shapes, lines and colors; this applies to my own life, and also when I think about History. These shapes and colors overlap and superimpose, and can represent formal demarcations like decades or centuries, or the way I group things in my head (e.g. the time living at a certain house, or a certain relationship).

I don't experience that personally, but it can be synesthesia, definitely.

 

[RJDiogenes]

That happens to me as well...though it's funny--I read those colors of yours and find myself completely disagreeing.

Well, I'd expect everyone's internal sensory language to be unique; actually, I'd be rather disappointed if they weren't.

 

[gturner]

I have an odd form of synesthesia which researchers are still trying to understand. When I watch Star Trek Voyager or Enterprise episodes I often perceive them as varying shades of suck.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Maybe it's a form of synaesthesia (or perhaps it's the thing I'm having right now, whatever it is), but I can see faces whenever I see small groups of digits together, such as on a digital clock. 0645 is particularly alluring and sexy.

 

[KimMH]

I have an odd form of synesthesia which researchers are still trying to understand. When I watch Star Trek Voyager or Enterprise episodes I often perceive them as varying shades of suck.

how very un-necessary.

 

[Kestra]

Isn't synesthesia pretty rare and the kind of thing that should get checked out?

 

[gturner]

But potentially funny!

I like Voyager and Enterprise but used them for the joke because TOS, TNG, or DS-9 wouldn't make as much sense.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Isn't synesthesia pretty rare and the kind of thing that should get checked out?

Synesthesia is fairly uncommon, but except in cases where it causes people really massive sensory overload (or if it occurs due to injury rather than simply growing up with it as a reality), is not harmful and can have many very beneficial effects.

I know that I do not see myself as having a neurological disorder, by any means--merely a sensory and neurological difference. The only "trouble" I have is remembering what information I should and should not share with people who don't have similarly configured senses. (I find, for instance, that I have to REALLY watch myself to avoid substituting the verb "see" for "listen," for instance, given that most people don't use their eyes to listen and would wonder what the hell I was talking about or what I was on.)

 

[think]

I always thought that was the result of hallucinogens causing signals to cross in the temporal lobe? making smells seem louder then sounds or bugs that bite when I taste shrimp right? *(don't mind me I live in this hallucinatory world of mixed messages woot)*

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Hallucinogens can cause synesthesia-like effects, but they do not have the reliability or the systematic qualities of true synesthesia. A person on drugs will make random connections. A person on synesthesia has a particular set of connections that are lifelong and pretty much unchangeable, and no medication causes it. They are, within one's brain, immutable properties of that sound or letter. I know that I don't put any mind-altering substances in my body, and I have always had this--I was born with it, it seems (or my brain settled into that configuration so early in my life that I can't remember it being any other way). Nor does synesthesia come with cognitive disruptions as drugs would. I think and reason with ordinary clarity.

 

[Kestra]

Isn't synesthesia pretty rare and the kind of thing that should get checked out?

Synesthesia is fairly uncommon, but except in cases where it causes people really massive sensory overload (or if it occurs due to injury rather than simply growing up with it as a reality), is not harmful and can have many very beneficial effects.

I know that I do not see myself as having a neurological disorder, by any means--merely a sensory and neurological difference.

Couldn't it be a symptom of something significant, though?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Acquired synesthesia can be...the type that occurs after the onset of disease or injury.

The sort that you are born with...while it is true that there are a disproportionate number of people with epilepsy or autism/Asperger's who have synesthesia, the synesthesia in itself is absolutely NOT a disorder or symptom, simply a curious phenomenon.

I myself do not have epilepsy. I have ADHD, but do not find it disabling and take no medicine. (And that's pretty garden-variety.) While at times I have Asperger's-like traits I don't believe I fit the criteria for diagnosis. So I am not "neurotypical" but also not what I think society typically recognizes as unusual unless you count a major, major case of geek-ism.

 

[Trekker4747]

 

[gturner]

Actually everyone has synesthesia, but the types that everyone has aren't considered abnormal. For example, social ostracism causes sensations that are processed the same as physical pain. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, evolution just crosswired an old response mechanism to handle new circumstances, one that wouldn't seem to be a bit related to the original wiring (loss of social status versus getting kicked in the stomach). This proved so incredibly beneficial that the genes spread to everyone.

Similarly, Steven Pinker (linguist at MIT) suggests we developed the ability to process syntax by co-opting circuits we were using to process visual imagery. Our visual perception isn't continuous, it comes in scenes gathered between blinks, eye movements, and head turns. We automatically stitch the sequence of scenes together into a storyline about what's going on around us. Changing the order of the scenes would change or destroy the meaning of the events, just as changing the order of words would change or destroy the meaning of a sentence. In ordinary animal signaling, even among primates, auditory sequence doesn't seem to matter. An alarm call is an alarm call, a challenge is a challenge. They can't be strung together like words to provide new meanings. But visually we can act out a story, mimic sequential behaviors, and it makes sense. Pinker thinks this visual scene processing was cross-linked into our audible signalling system to create a language center. When that first occured it probably would've been likened to synesthesia, since in essence we would've been "scene playing" audible calls. Until the incredible power and utility of the new language ability manifested itself, it would've seemed a pretty crazy error in mental processing, just like seeing letters and numbers with colors.

It could be that such cross-wirings helped form much of our enhanced cognitive abilities, and the genes (or genetic flaws) that make such cross-linking more likely have been passed down to all of us, occassionally producing new patterns of synesthesia, some of which may turn out to be incredibly useful, like Wesley Crusher's ability to manipulate space and time.

 

[KimMH]

^was that necessary either?