According to
this fascinating article, a lot of people with synaesthesia don’t realize others don’t see things as they do. Many can do amazing things that we ordinary people can’t. Have they evolved into a better form of human? Are you, or do you know, one of them?
Dr Simner studies synaesthesia – a condition caused by an unusually high number of connections between two areas of the brain’s sensory cortex, making two senses inseparable. Synaesthetes, as they are known, have experiences that might seem extremely strange to any non-synaesthete. The extra connections might be between the brain area that processes colours and the area that processes language.
[…]
“One of the most common variants is called grapheme-colour synaesthesia,” says Dr Simner.
“People with this variant know the colour of letters of the alphabet. So they know that the letter ‘A’ may be red. But not just any red, it’s a certain shade of crimson. And B is turquoise-blue.”
[…]
“If you want to define synaesthesia in a purely neurological sense, it’s just the predisposition to have extra pathways between areas of the brain,” says Dr Simner. “And we can see those connections.”
Actor Tony Randall had this condition. At the time I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. I seem to remember reading that Eddie Van Halen also has this condition.
If I drink a lot of Tequila, fat chicks start to look good to me. Is that the same condition?
I’ve never had this experience with time, but I have several “senses” and ideas that criss-cross. Numbers make more sense to me as colourful shapes and concepts (I’d say words, but I mean the things between words in meanings) have definite shapes, envelopes, colours and textures that relate to each other based on their definitions or semantic content. Words and ideas overlap in shapes that make sense the way pieces of a 3-D puzzle do…it happens with smells and sounds too…it isn’t exactly this simple, but I can tell you that certain sounds definitely have a familiar taste to me and certain smells look like something to me…no, I don’t literally SEE things…I just know the shapes the way someone would know a familiar shape.
This article points out something that rings very true for me…I never knew this was something different from other people until I finally started hearing about this in other people…where it differs from my experience.
God invented LSD for those without synaesthesia.
They used to call this condition seeing pink elephants.
Have ever really looked at your watch man? I mean like reeaalllyyy looked at your watch? Whoa…
I’ve read somewhere that all people start out as synaesthetes, it has something to do with all neuron paths being connected in a baby brain, as we grow older the neuron paths get disconnected frm each other.
Women with PMS also have it… On a regular basis *bada-dum*
I actually have this. I totally didn’t know it was not normal until about my junior year of college.
My vision is pretty near sighted, and my other sense things all connect to vision. I see a color for names, numbers, letters and music notes. I can also feel in my finger tips if I see something with strong texture (like a tree trunk or a knife edge).
The association with colors to numbers/letters is very strong and I cannot be convinced to change a color.
It’s cool, I guess. I can play almost any stringed instrument. Not amazingly well, though.
I have this and I thought it was normal too until everyone I asked about it had no idea what I was saying.
For me I when I think of a number I see a color and that has helped me remember numbers for years. I once help my grandmother with moving stuff and she put a master lock on the cabinet and 3 years later she couldn’t remember the combo so she called me and I was just able to pull the numbers out of my head by remembering the colors. It also helps me remember addresses and other things.
I originally thought it was cause I used to do alot of those paint by numbers things when I was younger and somehow I remembered that color pattern til my mother gave me an article in the paper that explained it.
The condition is rare and I think its more common in women then men.
“Through the research team’s website, you can take part in a series of tests to find out if you are in fact a synaesthete.”
Why, thanks for the tease, BBC, now how about the link?
Did anybody find it?
Uncle Dave: “Have they evolved into a better form of human?”
This is not a genetically transmissible trait so, no, they have not evolved. They are simply freaks. Shoot ’em all.
It actually sounds pretty useful to have. Sometimes, I have trouble reading whether someone wrote an A or an E because their handwriting is sloppy, but if it’s red, then I know it’s an A.
I think these people merely suffer from an over active imagination. And believe their day dreams are real somehow. How could letters of the alphabet have colors? Spelling is purely a human invention. Not something that physically occurs in nature. You mind as well claim words have their own unique colors too. That would be a hell of a lot of colors. And the english alphabet isn’t universal anyway. What about the Greek, Russian, and Asian alphabets and syllabary? And let’s not forget the Egyptian and Pre-Colombian glyphs. There aren’t just 26 letters to account for. There are hundreds. Seems pretty ridiculous to claim there’s color for every little squiggle someone makes on paper.
But of course, if your research grant depends on supporting such claims. I’m sure Dr. Wacky believes synaesthesia is real, and not imagined. Is he one of those psychic research scientists that left the USSR, because the money ran out?
Time is not something anyone can perceive as a physical phenomena. Anymore than people can perceive the motion of the planet. The Earth is both spinning and orbiting the sun. And the whole star system is moving in a spiral with the galaxy. And who knows how fast and in which direction the galaxy is moving. But as we’re all along for the ride (the earth under our feet, and the air we breathe). Nothing is perceived as “in motion” thru the universe.
Time is extrapolated from the relative motion in the other three dimension of space. But as this motion is only measured between known (or observable) frames of reference. Time is only calculated for their movement. Not accounting for the movement of points of space in the universe. Which would screw up a lot of calculations, even if somebody tried it. So what we call “time” is largely a guess estimate. Not a truly accurate measure of dimension, such as length, width, or depth. It’s only accurate in a very limited frame of reference. So how could it have a perceivable color range, based on season of the earth’s year? I say that’s just pure imagination or delusion of the mind.
Maybe this is all coming out now, to promote the new season of “Fringe”. Their writers thrive on crap like this.
#14 & #15:
You have a pretty limited imagination. Of course it’s all “in their head”, that’s the point. Nobody claims that letters actually have colors or time is actually a physical, tangible something. The point is, these people _perceive_ these things as having an associated color or place. It’s a feeling or perception they get from visual or “informational” stimuli.
For example, everybody should be able to tell whether a sound is “high” or “low”. This is a common perception among people, even though a sound isn’t one or the other. A sound is just airwaves. But when it enters your head, it not only becomes a sound, you also automatically associate something with it. There’s “scary music” and “happy music”, although nothing about the music is inherently scary or happy, yet you still perceive it that way.
These people just perceive a lot of different things with a lot of different inputs.
This is rather interesting. When I was growing up I always associated people in my life, periods of time, events, and everything else in my life as obscure shapes I imagine in my head.
The shape was determined by how I felt and thought about whatever person, or the subject it was about. If my opinion changed it would also change this shape. I don’t have color associated with these imaginary objects.
Perhaps I do have synaesthesia, but I’m sure it manifests differently from person to person.
All my life, since I was less than three years old, I have been able to both see and feel music. I tried to tell my mother, but she laughed. I took piano lessons, and told another of the students because he played so beautifully that I assumed he must also experience music the way I did. He looked at me as if I was crazy.
So I kept this to myself.
I told my therapist about a month ago. I knew she would not tell me I was crazy. Then I told a couple other people who I felt confident would accept what I said. Everyone was accepting, but no one had ever heard of anything like it before.
Then, tonight, I was watching an episode of “Heroes” and a new character was on the show – one who can see music. My heart stopped in my chest… I thought, could someone invent that having never experienced it? Whoever wrote that must know what I know, experience what I experience.
So I googled “seeing music” and I am now in a total state of shock. There is a name for what I experience, and an explanation, and
I am not alone.
My twin brother and I see time similar to this. However; the pathway’s shape is slightly different and January takes the position of July. The floating ribbon shown in this article is, nevertheless; somewhat representative of what we see, excluding the color chart. Ours is more vivid and covers more of the color spectrum. January is crimson lollipop transparent red, December is pure solid white. August is vivid bright cadmium yellow. March to April is a blended transition from crystalline bright blue to crystalline traffic light green.
This article explains a lot. We are not alone and now we know that we are not strange. Many of our peers labeled us as strange as we were growing up. Now we know that they are the unfortunate ones in lieu of us. Both of us possess extensive memories. We can remember things from infancy that amazes our parents.
We are both musicians and see tones and movements in colors and shapes. For example: Bass staccatos are maroons and gray with triangular sharp shapes and some elongated pointed edges. We began experimenting with the piano at age four. We read and write music, nevertheless, we can play by ear also. We had our own language when we were extremely young and still use many of those verbs, adjectives, and nouns to this day; when the need to be discreet is present. Others have no idea what we are talking about; however, we don’t much care what others think, they are outsiders to us….they always have been.
We consider people like Mr. #14 and #15 beyond pity. We’ve been bullied and picked on by people like this our entire lives. They can’t fathom anything outside their small tunnel vision world. They live in a book-worm reality and can’t imagine living in a room with five walls in lieu of four. They will always associate time and space as a tangent of three dimensions. They are incapable of thinking outside a text-book scenario. Some music students are like this. They are human jukeboxes. They can play music as long as they have the dots to read, but if you pull the sheet music away, it’s as if someone pulled the plug on the jukebox….the music stops. These people can’t imagine, think, nor create anything by themselves. They are incapable of creating any thought process other than what they have been taught. They are the epitome of white-bread. (Nothing left but the filler.) My twin and I call them vavoom morons. The smart people here have already figured that one out, Mr. 14 -15 won’t have a clue and will go to his grave without even coming close. Long ago we coined an adjective to described people possessing this vituperative trait which I won’t elaborate on. These people can be extremely cruel to those that don’t fit in with their minuscule thought process.