People who feel, hear or taste color

Alexa · 06-04-2005, 05:30 PM

I came across on an article on space.com about people who do not see their environment like the majority of us.

Quote:

When Ingrid Carey says she feels colors, she does not mean she sees red, or feels blue, or is green with envy. She really does feel them.
She can also taste them, and hear them, and smell them.
The 20-year-old junior at the University of Maine has synesthesia, a rare neurological condition in which two or more of the senses entwine. Numbers and letters, sensations and emotions, days and months are all associated with colors for Carey.
The letter "N" is sienna brown; "J" is light green; the number "8" is orange; and July is bluish-green.
The pain from a shin split throbs in hues of orange and yellow, purple and red, Carey told LiveScience.
Colors in Carey's world have properties that most of us would never dream of: red is solid, powerful and consistent, while yellow is pliable, brilliant and intense. Chocolate is rich purple and makes Carey’s breath smell dark blue. Confusion is orange.

See more on : http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050222_synesthesia.html

You have to agree this is kinda special. The article mentions Richard Cytowic, the neuroscientist who wrote the book "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" and spent many years studying synesthesia.

As per Richard Cytowic " Synesthesia (Greek, syn = together + aisthesis = perception) is the involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association. That is, the stimulation of one sensory modality reliably causes a perception in one or more different senses. Its phenomenology clearly distinguishes it from metaphor, literary tropes, sound symbolism, and deliberate artistic contrivances that sometimes employ the term "synesthesia" to describe their multisensory joinings. An unexpected demographic and cognitive constellation co-occurs with synesthesia: females and non-right-handers predominate, the trait is familial, and memory is superior while math and spatial navigation suffer. Synesthesia appears to be a left-hemisphere function that is not cortical in the conventional sense. The hippocampus is critical for its experience. Five clinical features comprise its diagnosis. Synesthesia is "abnormal" only in being statistically rare. It is, in fact, a normal brain process that is prematurely displayed to consciousness in a minority of individuals."

Synesthesia is hereditary and affects women in particulary with a ration f 3:1 in US and 8:1 in UK. They are most of them non-right-handed, have a very good memory, artististic interest and special skills which predispose them to "unusual experiences" or paranormal: deja vu, clairvoyance, precognitive dreams and the feeling of a presence are encountered often enough. Also empatic healings. Among all the patients studied a woman claimed she was alien abducted and human males didn not satisfy her any more. Another one, a college teacher on hearing music, also see objects : falling gold balls, shooting lines, metallic waves like oscilloscope tracings that float on a "screen" six inches from her nose.

Synesthesia is emotional and has the same qulities as ecstasy : ineffability, passivity, noesis, and transience."The experience is accompanied by a sense of certitude (the "this is it" feeling) and a conviction that what synesthetes perceive is real and valid. This accompaniment brings to mind that transitory change in self-awareness that is known as ecstasy. Ecstasy is any passion by which the thoughts are absorbed and in which the mind is for a time lost."

Interesting, isn't it ? Made me think in a different way about all those known paranormal activities.

Next time you'll cross a person who pretends to be alien abducted or say something like : "I know it's 2 because it's white", you should think you do not same share the same perception of the world. I mean that person can be perfectly normal, but somewhere in his/her brain the five senses do not tell them the same thing.

see more on : http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html

Did you meet anyone with synesthesia ? What do you think about it ?

I, Brian · 06-13-2005, 02:59 PM

This is a great topic - I don't think I've ever really be synesthesic, but I still see single digital numbers as having colours - 1 is white, 2 is dark blue, 3 is orange, 4 is yellow, 5 is light blue, 6 is dark red, 7 is a sort of beige, though can be lilac, 8 is black, and 9 is a sort of brown. 0 is no colour.

Leto · 06-13-2005, 03:11 PM

Strangely, most migraine people have synesthetic moments. We call it aura when sounds become colors (bright striking yellow and blood red for me) and touch becomes sounds (like a cop whistling in your ear), that's the sign a migraine crisis is on the way.

AFAIK, one of migraine cause has to do with the way neurotransmission works, and maybe under stress our brain (and in this case it would apply to all humans) is able to make the connexion synesthetic people's brain does all the time.

Tsujigiri · 06-13-2005, 06:15 PM

It sounds hellish to have it an not be able to control it, I can feel who is near me when my eyes are closed, certainc olours seem to be associated with certain people...but that is a far cry from seeing music.

I, Brian · 06-13-2005, 10:14 PM

I wonder is some degree of cross-sense association is pretty mornal then, but that synesthetes are simply a more extreme expression of it?

Leto · 06-13-2005, 10:19 PM

Sure. Another good example is perfume. If you smell a food perfume, instantlly you remember the taste of the food and even can associate with memories.

I, Brian · 06-13-2005, 10:27 PM

That's a good point, actually - amazing how under-rated scent is.

Alexa · 06-14-2005, 01:21 AM

Synesthetes are born with crossed-sensory association and this association of senses do not change over the time. The majority of us have a good memory and associate taste and odor without being necessarely synesthetes.

Brian are you the only one in your family to connect digital numbers with colors ?

Princess Ivy · 06-14-2005, 12:03 PM

i can 'smell' music as colour. which i suppose is the same thing. people the same thing. and yes, i do suffer migranes. but numbers leave me cold. i have nightmares about numbers. i swear, they are terrifying.

Alexa · 06-14-2005, 01:47 PM

It's all right. We are not going to do maths in here. I promise. :biggrin: