Category: Let's talk
Synesthesia is basically when you experience certain sensations that don't match up with the actual sensation that you're experiencing, such as "seeing a colour when seeing a number". Well, obviously most of you won't be experiencing anything like that. Does anyone here though experience other forms? I actually don't experience much Synesthesia from looking at things (if I see a pattern it will fire off a noise applicable to the pattern and is usually negative), but hearing things triggers very vivid experiences, and sometimes when I smell things too.
Does anyone experience something like this? I wonder how it would show itself to the blind.
Smells can trigger this. The scents are not related or even of the thing they cause me to think about or the feeling they cause in me, so yes.
Music can do this as well, so that be hearing.
Sometimes touching something, but not as well as the first 2.
I grew up with partial vision, so I actually do have vivid synesthesia, particularly with numbers, days of the week, or months of the year. I think of the number 4, and in my mind's eye I see a soft yellow. Number 2 is a navy colour, etc.b
Kate
I see sound. Difficult to explain ...
Naw, I actually understand seeing sound. Smile. It also has color to me.
I've heard of it occurring because of hallucinogenic drugs, but that's all. Like, the guy who discovered LSD said every sound would trigger a new visual experience, even with his eyes closed.
I can picture a color to go along with every word or even the various sylables within words. I used to have decent vision so do know a lot of colors. I don't see the colors unless I am concentrating on them. In other words, if I am in a quiet place and thinking about something, I can "see" the colors of the words I am thinking. But, thankfully, I do not experience this when busy or talking to people.
That would be distracting I would imagine. Usually when I hear music I see images of things and stuff. But it's not like hallucinating. It's usually vivid enough to draw from and is relatively consistent. Sometimes seeing something produces a smell too, but it's pretty mild.
Certain very detailed patterns can be extremely overwhelming to me and make me sick due to a cross of both the intricacy of the visual stimulus as well as the sounds that I hear, which sounds chaotic. It's... not pretty. (Some may not know this on this forum but apparently people without these issues seem to loooove patterns like this since they wear them a lot and design buildings with them, much to my dismay).
I have so many forms of synesthesia. I see music. When it's an actual band, I can see all of the instruments being played. The different sound trigger different images of them, such as the sise and colour of a guitar, even how bright or dark the recording studio is. With electronic music, everything appart from the drums is psychodelic images. Different shaped lines and walls of colour, with varying thicknesses.
Days of the week, months, and a load of other things have personalities, numbers and letters have colours, but one of the greatest ones is this constant perception of myself.
This is probably one of the most fascinating conditions I've ever heard of. I actually have a lady friend up in Canada who hears textures. So some words would conjure up a sensation like wood and others cloth. Words with a Th sound to them trigger a sort of feathery sensation. Then the word fur, one of my favorite words, triggers the sensation of fur on her skin. I actually knew a girl back whenI was in High School in Oregon who reacted the same way to the sound of the word Fur or any word that sounded like it, but I didn't put two and two together until I met my Canadian friend and then looked back at all my memories of my friend from Oregon.
I know someone who tastes color. This condition fascinates me. Did it have an evolutionary purpose at some point, or did it come about alongside some other adaptation? A lot of questions for the curious.
I heard about this in psychology class and it is pretty interesting. They specifically said it happens in the case that Imprecator mentioned when people take hallucinogens and I figured some people might just have it without doing some crazy crap like that. I wonder if those who have skitzophrenia have this too, or if that is totally different. I mean I know they halucinate and have dilusions but maybe it's possible they experience this too.
I use to experience this, and the older I get, the weaker it seems to be.
When I was little, I use to hear sounds (including people's voices) and have a shape come to mind. Eg, I always use to tell my Nan her voice reminded me of those flat sticks docs put in your mouth on your tongue to look at your throat. it is weird as!
Not only that, but sounds would remind me of vowell sounds, like chordless phones usually has a I in the ring, whereas the chorded phone i have, when it rings, has an A sound to it.
It seems to me that when I read up on this several years ago after reading an interesting novel by T Jefferson Parker that it can be caused by trauma (as it was for the character in the book) or due to neural tubes (question) not differentiating as the brain is developing. As in, the parts of the brain are not specializing in only what they are intended to. Wires are crossing.
It's interesting that so many of you have experienced this with the sight loss. Since there is neuroplasticity it makes sense.
When kids blind from birth have asked me to describe color, I usually try to explain it in terms of textures. Not saying that a particular color is like a particular texture, but that colors vary like textures do.
Although I think color is maybe more like taste in the sense that you have a finite set of basic colors that can be blended for an infinite number of shades just like you have a finite set of basic tastes that can be blended for an infinite number of flavors. Ha, I don't know about the finite set of basic tastes, it just seems to work here.
The novel:
DB 61998 (May be available only for download)
Brief Description:
Parker, T. Jefferson.
The fallen [sound recording] : a novel / T. Jefferson Parker.
Washington, D.C. : National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress, 2006. (American Foundation for the Blind, recording studio).
1 sound cartridge (12 hours, 8 minutes)
Narrated by: Richard Davidson.
Annotation:
Twenty-nine-year-old San Diego homicide detective Robbie Brownlaw suffers from synesthesia, a restless wife, and a new case. Former internal affairs cop Garrett Asplundh, now a city ethics investigator, is murdered after uncovering corruption in city hall that endangers the municipal bond rating. Strong language and some violence. Bestseller. 2006.
Very interesting, VH. I'll admit that as a totally blind person, the thing that frustrated me most about color was not color itself. I have known I can't really understand it. But I have always wanted to understand its context in terms of other people's well-being. I may not ever see it, but most people I know, love and care about do. And they are emotionally moved to epic proportions by it, so as a reasonably compassionate human being I have always tried to understand, not just be tolerant or understanding. The colors themselves are just memorization, or points on a spectrum, to me. But that cheapens the whole human experience for a majority of people.
Describing it like taste certainly helps. Though people are not moved by taste like they are by color combinations. Not to such a degree.
It's always been hard for me to truly understand how someone can be emotionally transfixed by a still picture. Not a video, that is like music: it moves and it is quite organic. But a still shot or a painting seems like it would lose most of the life that feeds that need for sighted people. Obviously I am wildly wrong: I've been to art museums and watched sighted people be entranced by a still piece of stained glass or a painting. I wonder if their use of colors helps to synthesize, or provide the illusion of, movement.
People's move to using animated pictures to spice up their desktops, has made a lot of sense to me. I would rather hear a whole piece of music than one beautifully played chord, suspended for all time. I'm probably sounding rather strange to anybody who has or had sight.
Very interesting, VH. I'll admit that as a totally blind person, the thing that frustrated me most about color was not color itself. I have known I can't really understand it. But I have always wanted to understand its context in terms of other people's well-being. I may not ever see it, but most people I know, love and care about do. And they are emotionally moved to epic proportions by it, so as a reasonably compassionate human being I have always tried to understand, not just be tolerant or understanding. The colors themselves are just memorization, or points on a spectrum, to me. But that cheapens the whole human experience for a majority of people.
Describing it like taste certainly helps. Though people are not moved by taste like they are by color combinations. Not to such a degree.
It's always been hard for me to truly understand how someone can be emotionally transfixed by a still picture. Not a video, that is like music: it moves and it is quite organic. But a still shot or a painting seems like it would lose most of the life that feeds that need for sighted people. Obviously I am wildly wrong: I've been to art museums and watched sighted people be entranced by a still piece of stained glass or a painting. I wonder if their use of colors helps to synthesize, or provide the illusion of, movement.
People's move to using animated pictures to spice up their desktops, has made a lot of sense to me. I would rather hear a whole piece of music than one beautifully played chord, suspended for all time. I'm probably sounding rather strange to anybody who has or had sight.
I'll have to think on this more, Leo, but it is not just color. There was a very famous photographer named Ansel Adams who used black and white and his photos of plants are some of the most vivid intense prints I've ever seen. He used a layering (or something like that) technique that made them almost more colorful than color even though it was bolack and white. Which probably makes no sense at all.
But consider sculpture when you are pondering-that is probably a better comparison.
The difference between taste and a color or still life picture is that taste is transitory and a picture or color can be stared at for an infinite amount of time.
When I describe color I add temputure. Cold, hot, warm.
The black and white makes sense to me too.
Until this board, I've never thought about this as a condition, or anything odd.
nice descriptions. It all goes in as points of reference, so, thanks.
I have a form of this and have described it before on these boards.
I see sound. Simple example: listen to the song Riders on the Storm by the Doors. Near the beginning you will hear a rapid sequence of notes which are decreasing overall. To me that is a zig zag line going from way up toward the ground. A sighted person once told me that based on the context of the song I was describing a lightning bolt. Being blind from birth I had never seen one, of course. Could the song writer have done it deliberately?
Most of my synesthetic experiences are complex and I don't remember them long enough to describe very well. I have avsolute pitch also. How many of you have this?
I also have absolute pitch; do you think it's linked?
I used to think so but not sure anymore. Mine deals with relationships between the notes which cause me to experience shapes, lines, etc. Last year I was struggling in a calculus course trying to visualize all kinds of functions and rotating things and the synesthesia almost disappeared. I thought my gift was gone! The perfect pitch did not change however.
If by linked you meant people who have one are more likely to have the other I don't have any clue.
I am synesthetically challenged, I don't think I've ever experienced anything like it, and I have relative pitch, and I took halucinates during the sixties (a little).
I'd love to experience it.
Bob
I never really told anyone about my synesthesia. It hasn't been intrusive or anything, and I always thought it was weird... now that I know it's not as uncommon as I first thought, it's great to know I'm not a weirdo!
Kate
I was in the same boat as you a few months ago, Kate, I know the feeling. How does yours manifest itself?
Dwight
And here I thought I was just crazy! When I was a child, I experienced things like this all the time, though it is decreasing the older I get. I would hear a person's voice and think of a completely random object. A cousin of mine sounds like bananas to me, another chocolate, a third whipped cream, and a fourth, handbags. None of it made any logical sense but it was persistent, and it never ever changed. Days of the week still have colours for me, and because I am bilingual, the English language is yellow for me and French is a sort of grey-brown colour. Hard to explain. I also think of shapes when it comes to music; piano notes, when high, sound round (like a circle), and as they lower in pitch they sound more like squares. The lowest notes sound like rectangles or maybe even cylinders. I feel so odd finally discussing this publicly. I had no idea it was so common.
Oh wow! I thought I was the only person who experienced music as shapes.
I have perfect pitch, so I always just figured that this was my odd way of trying to mentally organize music prior to learning music theory.
I guess this explains things though. :-)
I like that this has come out, so that people who formerly thought themselves an oddity are now seeing others are like them.
I wonder if there are any social networks out there for synesthetes.
The nut group? hahaha.
Now, why is the smell of real leather soothing? Ahh!
I love the smell of my leather jacket, even when it gets wet.
The smell of leather jackets is great, but there's a certain smell to leather sofas that always makes me gag a little bit because it reminds me of hospitals.
Odd, leather always makes me comfortable.
Riding in a care with real leather and some music on the box, and I'll relax totally. Feels and mentally is good.
Car leather is wonderful. You're making me want to order a taxi just for the ride now. lol.
Your taxi's have leather seats? Ares are material, or plastic.
The ones round here vary a lot. Sometimes you get the really nice fabric ones, fo leather, or sometimes you do get the real leather seets if you're lucky. I guess I should probably keep the conversation vaigly synesthetic. The taxi I was in on thursday evening had wonderful leather that felt like a royl blue to me, even though I knew they weren't.