Synesthesia

[Icewalker]

Does anyone here have it? Or is particularly interested in it?

For those who don't know, synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) is a neurological connection between two senses. This can also come across between a sense and something else, like spatial perception or memory.

One of the major examples is seeing music. Some synesthetes will see colors when they hear music, always in a consistent way, with the same colors matching the same notes and the like.

Another example is perceiving the days of the week in space, such that when one thinks of the days they can feel them laid out in front of them in some consistent pattern.


I didn't know much about synesthesia until recently, except that a few of my friends have music-color synesthesia. Another friend however recently acquired very strong synesthesia after having grown up with only one slight synesthetic connection that he hadn't realized before, and this got me seriously interested in the subject. I've started doing bits of research and talking to people with it to try to learn more about it, and to see if I can replicate the effect.


I personally have only one particularly clear synesthetic connection, being colors to the months. While I don't actually see a color, I know what colors the months are. I didn't realize this was synesthesia until recently, when I learned about it in more detail.

[randman22222]

A friend of mine has letter/number -> colour synaesthesia. I think he said my name is a nice blend of reds and yellows and oranges. I can't even comprehend how, but he uses it to help him memorise random streams of letters or numbers, like pi. :smallconfused:

[Icewalker]

Yeah, a lot of synesthetes have really good memories. They can see a stream of colors instead of just numbers, and apparently it makes it a lot easier to keep track of things.

[RTGoodman]

I don't know anyone that has synesthesia, but I find it fascinating. I first read about it in a Newsweek or Time Magazine article SEVERAL years ago*, and since then I've always thought it was a very, well, unique-sounding condition.

*I think the article talked about a few different specific cases. One was a guy that saw specific colors when he heard specific instruments (bassoons were purple, for instance), and I think one dealt with colors and taste or something like that. I'll have to look it up tomorrow once I get up and see if I can find the article online somewhere.

[Seffbasilisk]

I sometimes see soundwaves in color. Was bad when I had the flu in college. Colors had a sound, and sounds had a color. Spent most of it in my dorm room, with blankets wrapped around my head, save for a tiny space to breathe through.

[Kneenibble]

I find synesthesia extremely fascinating and have been for several years now. The testimonials given so far are very interesting and I'm looking forward to hearing more.

A composer named Robert Starer wrote two books of short pieces for the piano that are generally dissonant and chromatic -- an appropriate pun in this case. Dissonant and chromatic, but very precisely so: each piece bears a colour for the title and they are composed so as to induce a synesthetic sensation of that colour. Neat, huh? I played a few of them, and I had the best experience with "maroon." Others were "salt & pepper," "tin," "pink," "red," &c.

Margaret Atwood and Virginia Woolf were both very interested in synesthesia.

[Nychta]

I think I may have heard of it before. I'm very interested. I have to find out more.

[Icewalker]

each piece bears a colour for the title and they are composed so as to induce a synesthetic sensation of that colour. Neat, huh? I played a few of them, and I had the best experience with "maroon." Others were "salt & pepper," "tin," "pink," "red," &c.

This only kind of works. Because different synesthetes see different colors for the same notes and music, these are his synesthetic impressions and wouldn't apply to others, for the most part. A friend of mine did something similar, recording what notes were what colors for another synesthetic friend's connections and composed red, blue, and yellow pieces in his eyes.

[Kaelaroth]

I recommend the book Born on a Blue Day.

[Dihan]

I first came across synaesthesia in GCSE English.

[InaVegt]

I know someone with taste-color synesthesia.

According to her, sweet 'tastes' green, sour 'tastes' red, salty 'tastes' blue, and bitter 'tastes' yellow.

It's likely very interesting.

As for myself, I have something I jokingly call thought-vision synesthesia, though I dunno if it's got an actual name.

Basically, I think of, say, a dragon, and immediately a dragon appears in my vision.

Makes books a lot more interesting, I tells ya.

[Ravens_cry]

In a way, most of us have the basic concept of synesthesia. For example, would the nonsense word 'blortum' better describe the image on the left or right?
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9933/250pxboobakikiky8.png (http://imageshack.us)
Most people say right.

[Serpentine]

Neato, Ravens.
Icewalker, how come you've got so many friends with it? I thought it was meant to be really rare.
I have a (completely unfounded) theory that a variety of synesthesia might explain "auras". Wouldn't it be interesting if some people could "see" the electrical discharge of the brain, and even apply colours to the different patterns from emotions? Or something like that...

[Starshade]

I think i might have it, in high school i read about New Age stuff and read some babble on "auras" and i decided to try look, and do as the book say, hold my hands above a white surface and look. Or close my eyes and try visualize.

Well, what i saw, after some attempts, was Cyan or Turquoise.

Later ive noticed others do got auras. Either i didnt see it before, or, just didint realize it was odd ppl had funny colors around them. No idea which, i'm though, not CONTIOUSLY aware seeing colors around people, before that.

And, after reading about synthesia, and realizing it might explain the so called "auras", i felt more at ease with it. I did, tho, never belive it WAS supernatural, since it didnt seem anything like a "psychic" phenomena, it looked as a natural property, or just occuring, to me. Never as a catalys for gaining ESP talents. :smalltongue:

And last year, i noticed something: letters got colours, if printed on a dark surface, and letter written in a light colour. The colour changes in some cases from the "printing colour" of the text to a new one, always the same colours, and constant.

One thing ive noticed: Psychic people, think auras is a psychic phenomena. But noone, of them, ever see same aura as any other. No colour is the same for one "seer" to the next, and no system exist outside of the viewer of the aura. So i think, its a Synesthesia phenomenom. There is no "aura", just ppl who see it.
To make matters incredibly odd, persons who ARE synesthetes and clairvoyant, might of couse cross the phenomenas, but i think its no overlap whatsoever between them per se,simmiliar to how a piano prodigy with absolute pitch, can be colour blind, or how a talented composer might be good at hand eye coordination, and an expert marksman/golfer.

But, i am also not too good at writing, and i might often mis read words, or not realize how words ARE written; Synesthesia, if i got it, dont help me write/read better, a lot of people wonder if i got dyslexia, but, i enjoy reading too much to really BE dyslectic, but i still can mis read character names, fantasy names, place names, odd words, and mis read them after reading 3-4 1000 pager books. :smallredface:

Edit: LOL serp :smallbiggrin:
You posted as i wrote a post. :smallbiggrin:

[Serpentine]

CREEPY JINX I can has capitals?

[Ravens_cry]

Neato, Ravens.
Icewalker, how come you've got so many friends with it? I thought it was meant to be really rare.
I have a (completely unfounded) theory that a variety of synesthesia might explain "auras". Wouldn't it be interesting if some people could "see" the electrical discharge of the brain, and even apply colours to the different patterns from emotions? Or something like that...
An interesting theory. In fact, I rather like it. I wonder how one would go about designing an experiment to test it, however.
I don't mean to sound callous, but I find this deeply fascinating. It's like how you can find out more of how something works from a broken machine then a working one. Not to say people with synesthesia are 'broken', but it does allow some interesting plumbing of the depths of the human mind and all its mysteries.

[Serpentine]

Thanks :smallsmile:
Ummm... Lets see now... Is there any way, other than... symptoms, I suppose, to diagnose synesthesia? Genetics, maybe, or some neurological pattern? That'd probably be the easiest way to test it. Otherwise, I think you'd need a bunch of aura-seeers and a bunch of people hooked up to brain-mapping thingos and/or electricity-detectors and see whether the auras seen match the electric and brain... whatsits (you know, those maps that show what area is in use and stuff?) patterns.
That's about all I've got...
I can has speakin teh teknikal Engrish gud-liek =D

[Zeful]

An interesting theory. In fact, I rather like it. I wonder how one would go about designing an experiment to test it, however.

You really couldn't as synesthesia is a random disorder in which the sense association is largely derived from the personality.

Though synesthesia could be the reason the third eye myth showed up. Person interprets unconscious body language, or slight alterations in tone of voice or pheromones into a color/sound/smell the person associated with untruth/evil.

[randman22222]

Thanks :smallsmile:
Ummm... Lets see now... Is there any way, other than... symptoms, I suppose, to diagnose synesthesia? Genetics, maybe, or some neurological pattern? That'd probably be the easiest way to test it. Otherwise, I think you'd need a bunch of aura-seeers and a bunch of people hooked up to brain-mapping thingos and/or electricity-detectors and see whether the auras seen match the electric and brain... whatsits (you know, those maps that show what area is in use and stuff?) patterns.
That's about all I've got...

I think you're thinking of Electroencephalographs. :smallconfused:
And no, I didn't spell that right the first time.

EDIT: Or maybe magnetoencephalographs. :smallconfused:

[Serpentine]

I think you're thinking of Electroencephalographs. :smallconfused:
And no, I didn't spell that right the first time.No friggin' wonder I didn't get it right.
Zeful, the manifestation might be personality-based, but as it's a physiological (isn't it?) effect, it wouldn't be completely random and there should be some way of detecting it, even if we don't know what that is yet, and there should be some way of testing its effects.
Damn this guy on Rage has great hair...

[InaVegt]

I think you're thinking of Electroencephalographs. :smallconfused:
And no, I didn't spell that right the first time.

AKA, EEG.

I had a few of those.

And an MRI on mah brain.

Was a few years ago, had some random fainting stuff going on, never figured out where exactly it was coming from.

[Fostire]

Neato, Ravens.
Icewalker, how come you've got so many friends with it? I thought it was meant to be really rare.

really? I thought it was actually quite common, at least mild cases (see ravens_cry post with the blortum thing). Strong cases like seeing colors instead of sound are the rare ones.

[randman22222]

It's something that is present at birth, I think, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to detect. It's stronger and weaker for people, so some have to teach themselves to notice when they've got a colour association or something.

[Zeful]

No friggin' wonder I didn't get it right.
Zeful, the manifestation might be personality-based, but as it's a physiological (isn't it?) effect, it wouldn't be completely random and there should be some way of detecting it, even if we don't know what that is yet, and there should be some way of testing its effects.
Damn this guy on Rage has great hair...

Based on how it seems to be presented the fact that you have it is an on/off effect, you have it or you don't. The two (or more) senses linked seem to be pretty arbitrarily selected. I'm pretty sure you could develop some kind of test or neuron mapping deal (probably with nanites) to spot it and figure out the exact mechanics behind how it works in the future, but it does seem beyond our current tech.

[randman22222]

Based on how it seems to be presented the fact that you have it is an on/off effect, you have it or you don't. The two (or more) senses linked seem to be pretty arbitrarily selected. I'm pretty sure you could develop some kind of test or neuron mapping deal (probably with nanites) to spot it and figure out the exact mechanics behind how it works in the future, but it does seem beyond our current tech.

It is not an on/off thing. People have varying degrees.

[Serpentine]

If it was an on/off thing, that'd make it much easier to detect and figure out.

[Illiterate Scribe]

Your post tastes funny.

[randman22222]

Your post tastes funny.

I've never known anyone with a something-> taste crossover. :smalltongue:

That's cool...

[Jacklu]

I am actually mildly synesthetic. I fall under the category of seeing music, though not nearly as vividly as I have heard other people describe. I also have the personification aspect which is quite commonly found to be had by most people with other forms of synesthesia. Personification is seeing the members of sequential groups (letters, numbers, days of the week, ect...) as having distinct personalities or traits. For me this includes letters and numbers. 1, for instance, is male. Immature and self absorbed, he literally thinks he is number one. He tries to act big but comes up short most of the time.

Tests for synesthesia generally revolve around the fact that synesthesia is consistent, persistent, and involuntary. That is, the sensory crosses are always the same (is a pin prick on the finger today results in a flash of red in your field of vision, then it should get the same result a year down the road), synesthesia doesn't come and go, either you have it or you don't, and it is not something you have to mentally consider. Generally tests revolve around judging reaction times to certain stimulus involved with the form of synesthesia being determined.

[Player_Zero]

I believe I heard that one in three people has it to some extent.

Both my brother and my mother claim to associate letters with colours.

[Sneak]

I don't know much about synesthesia, but I do find it fascinating.

If you count personification of days of the week and things like that as synesthesia, then I guess I have it a little bit. But it's mostly just with days of the week. I tend to separate them into two categories, "even" days and "odd" days. Days in the same category share some characteristics with each other, but they still definitely have their own traits. I can't really explain what traits those are, though. They're more like feelings, tones, or moods than traits, anyway. :/

[Shraik]

I had a feeling Jimi Hendrix would be on the list of people with synthesia or at least the proposed list, and he was.
I think everyone here seems to find the idea of this fascinating

[Kneenibble]

This only kind of works. Because different synesthetes see different colors for the same notes and music, these are his synesthetic impressions and wouldn't apply to others, for the most part. A friend of mine did something similar, recording what notes were what colors for another synesthetic friend's connections and composed red, blue, and yellow pieces in his eyes.
You mistake my meaning, my good man -- Starer's intent is not to affect the condition of Synesthesia with a capital S, merely induce a one-shot synesthetic experience taking the word's more general meaning as substituted sensual input.

[OverdrivePrime]

I find the concept of synesthesia to be pretty amazing, but I only encounter it for one stimulus. When I donate red blood cells with what they call a 'dual red' machine which cycles a solution back into my body to replace the missing fluid, the sensation of the cold solution entering my body through my arm associates with a soft orange color. Like the color of a honeydew melon. I sometimes taste that color as well, though it does not taste like a honeydew melon - just the color. I thought it was the weirdest thing until I read about synesthetes.

[Forthork]

I see different colors for numbers 0-9, letters, and days of the week. I can vaguely sense color in sounds or people (personality wise.)

[Flame of Anor]

I have noticed a different and unusual form of synesthesia. This is a relation between specific visual patterns and temperatures. For example, bikini pictures translate to "hot".

*runs away*

[Fostire]

I have noticed a different and unusual form of synesthesia. This is a relation between specific visual patterns and temperatures. For example, bikini pictures translate to "hot".

*runs away*

Actually that's a different thing I think, but I don't remember what it's called

[Dr. Bath]

I... get this a little bit. Not nearly as much as I get involuntary memory (I get really clear memories flooding back to the extent that everything in the 'now' fades into the background), but a little bit. If I listen to music when not really concentrating on anything I see lines, (strands maybe?) that warp and oscillate with the music... it's odd, to say the least, but not always noticable.

[Spiryt]

I think I used too connect days of the week and months and similar concepts with colors very strongly.

But that's probably something else.

[sktarq]

Ok. I'm not syneshetic per se. However it seems to be a near default "altered state" for me. I get when I consume almost any form of "downer" drugs that can effect me. Many drugs don't effect either my father or I in a "typical" manner. Morphine doesn't cut off my pain for example (the whole heart/lung/bowel effects work though) and sleeping pills....well almost any benzo gives me STRONG syneshesia....Colours, sounds, smells, tactile (texture, heat, pressure etc)....the works on top of being a decent halucinogen (different benzos cause more of less of each of the two effects).
During periods when I'm very drunk I apparently was rather consistent in describing colours by smells and visa versa. I don't get that smashed anymore. I learned how to get myself to get parts of it (mostly smells again) via intense meditation-it ended up just being very disorientating so I don't it much anymore.

I'll tell you it is somewhat wierd and very frustrating to have it happen on a serious scale. The biggest problem is comunication. It all makes sense when it is happening-it is all internally consistent. But how do you get accross the idea of how it feels to be held under differnt pressures when you feel the colour spectrum going from blue to orange as you see them squeezing you.

[TRM]

I personally have only one particularly clear synesthetic connection, being colors to the months. While I don't actually see a color, I know what colors the months are. I didn't realize this was synesthesia until recently, when I learned about it in more detail.
I know this is all the way back at the beginning of the thread, but I relate colors to the months too.

January is white.
February is gray.
March is sort of green or green-yellow.
April is very green.
May is a vivid pink.
June is red.
July is a summer yellow.
August is orange.
The beginning of September is brown and it becomes grayer.
October is brown.
November is gray (but a darker, cleaner, gray than February).
December is white with a touch of brown mixed in.

[Starshade]

Um, for my part, it meant i didnt get to establish a worldview properly, partly i sat and read about transgender issues, and at same time tried "new age" spiritualist thingies to understand the clairvoyant experiences ppl i know have had, and myself have had.

Discovering people had colours, and disbeliving your sole source of info about it, since it seemed rooted in subjective talents from the seer, not any energy, kirlian field, or magnetic EM field radiating, i think crushed a bit of my confidence. Ive never told anyone in RL, terrified of ppl with prodding needles beliving me mad.

I think, you can FORGET to see colours, or associate with synesthesia, myself, have had the letter -> colour part just increase when i realized, i think a pair of years ago, i didnt just associate people with colours, but also letters; i was reading a forum when i realized the colours of the letters, was not a monitor malfunction, but my eyes who saw it differently.
I KNEW i was a synesthete, then, and still didnt discover i had a touch of the MOST COMMON form of it, since i thought it "was as it should be". :smallredface:

[Castaras]

How? :smallconfused:

How do you relate colours to completely unrelated things? I'm guessing the fact that I just can't imagine such a thing happening as proof that I don't have Synesthesia.

[The Neoclassic]

How do you relate colours to completely unrelated things? I'm guessing the fact that I just can't imagine such a thing happening as proof that I don't have Synesthesia.

While I do not have synesthesia, the idea of connecting colors to all sorts of unrelated things makes perfect sense to me. Of course, that may be because of my insanely lawful tendency to categorize everything, even in rather ridiculous ways. :smalltongue:

Synesthesia is absolutely fascinating to me, and I frankly rather wish I had it. :smallredface: Hopefully that doesn't sound rude or ignorant; it just seems like quite an interesting little quirk with which to go through life.

Only time I can recall where I experienced something close to synesthesia was while eating fruit of the forest pie with vanilla ice cream. In the first bite, it tasted like a sunset. It was seriously like I was actually tasting those colors, and that visual image. Yeah, it was probably just a mental metaphor my subconscious invented to explain the taste, but it was truly amazing. It still makes me sad on occasion that so many things, I can only experience with one sense. It feels incomplete.

[Collin152]

I once had a teacher/cousin who was synesthetic; He saw color in numbers.

As for me? Ever since I was a kid, I somehow saw a lot more to numbers, days of the week, and a lot of other somewhat-abstract ideas then turned out to be normal.
Each number up to about 18 had a color and a personality. I diddn't see it with my eyes, mind, I just automatically associated them in my mind. So, 8 was always a female number, a sort of light bluish-purple, and had the most mothery personality of the numbers. The number part has mostly faded with time, and as I used numbers as tools more and more, with more abstract thought...
Days of the week do still have color, though. Thursday is my favorite color. It's this deep green, a sort of bluish green, rather dark...

I blame my ability to assign random personalities to things for my bizzare view of the world. It's part of why I'm such a strange person, I guess, but it does help me write stuff.

It's not quite synesthesia, but it fits here best, and I wanted to talk about it today anyways. Strangely enough.

[Starshade]

How? :smallconfused:

How do you relate colours to completely unrelated things? I'm guessing the fact that I just can't imagine such a thing happening as proof that I don't have Synesthesia.

Well, some of my mmorpg characters got colours, cartoon characters CAN have them, some people dont, while other people got brilliant colours.

It dont make much more sense for me than for you i think, just i know it exist, but no real idea about what purpose it plays, since its inheritable, and present in large population groups it must mean something, i just dont understand how.
Its constant, present, and always the same, just irregular for WHAT got colours.

Im a Grapheme -> colour synesthete, and had so big issues writing i had same help as dyslextic do in school. Ive realized i project emotions into real colours, and dont really get what it mean, or how i can have any use of it.

[Da Beast]

I might have sound color synesthesia. Sometimes when listening to music I perceive each instrument as it's own color, forming a sort of fuzzy cloud in a black spacial plane that grows and shrinks with the volume and intensity of the instrument's part. When it does occur I can't enforce any manner of control over it, just choose to either watch the show or try to ignore it. This would seem to indicate a synesthetic experience. However, it sort of comes and goes and is something I only experience very rarely. It's probably only happened somewhere between 10 and 20 times and only over the last two years, so maybe it's a little too inconsistent to be true synesthesia.

[Serpentine]

Actually that's a different thing I think, but I don't remember what it's calledMethinks someone didn't get the joke :smallamused:

I'm pretty damn sure I don't have it (although I do get into discussions with people on what colours taste like...), but is it odd that all the descriptions and categories so far make sense to me? Like that description of the number 8. It worked perfectly for me. Same with the colour-music things. Maybe I'm just easily manipulated :smallwink:

[Flame of Anor]

Methinks someone didn't get the joke :smallamused:

In sooth 'tis so, milady. :smallwink:

[Icewalker]

I blame my ability to assign random personalities to things for my bizzare view of the world. It's part of why I'm such a strange person, I guess, but it does help me write stuff.

It's not quite synesthesia, but it fits here best, and I wanted to talk about it today anyways. Strangely enough.


I think I used too connect days of the week and months and similar concepts with colors very strongly.

But that's probably something else.

Both of these are definitely synesthesia. Richard E. Cytowic (http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html) theorized that everyone is born with synesthesia and as we age we tend to prune it out of our minds, but some people keep it. This is consistent with the repeated findings that actually a lot of people have really tiny amounts in some way or another (like that name to blob picture, although the oddest thing about that experiment is the consistent results).


Synesthesia is absolutely fascinating to me, and I frankly rather wish I had it. :smallredface: Hopefully that doesn't sound rude or ignorant; it just seems like quite an interesting little quirk with which to go through life.

Well so do I, like I said, I hope to replicate my friend's results. Same reason too, very interesting thing to consider life with.


As to my number of friends with synesthesia, most of them are from the more or less LARP that I go to, which has numerous interesting people. One with extremely strong everything synesthesia, one with strong music-color, and this last friend who managed to recently gain it.

[blackfox]

Oooh! Ooh! I have synesthesia. ^_^
I have music -> color, sound -> shape, personality -> color, number -> color, and a bit of letter -> color.
The music -> color actually doesn't give me perfect pitch or anything--it has to do more with the timbre of the instrument, or, for an ensemble piece, how the instruments interact. So a clarinet will be blue in the lowest registers, moving up through greens and then yellow for the highest notes.
The sound -> shape is actually projected, whereas all the others are associated, so I'll sense the shape wherever the sound is. I can pinpoint sounds a lot better than most people this way. It's helpful for driving, etc., so I can tell which side of the road that siren is on.
The number -> color makes sudoku interesting.
0 is white.
1 is black.
2 is yellow-green.
3 is dark red.
4 is sky blue.
5 is red-orange.
6 is green.
7 is purple.
8 is purplish-red (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octarine).
9 is a very dark green.

[Icewalker]

I can pinpoint sounds a lot better than most people this way. It's helpful for driving, etc., so I can tell which side of the road that siren is on.

Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind here is diving. Ever tried it? Underwater, sound moves a lot faster, so it becomes really hard to determine what direction it's coming from. I'm curious how you would perceive that :smallbiggrin:


If anyone is interested in the specifics, the my month/color associations are as follows:
January: light blue, like sky blue
February: light red, almost pink
March: Honestly, I'm not sure about march. I feel like it might be some dark green, but I'm not really positive.
April: bright yellow, with colored shapes/shadows flickering across it, some are purple, some I can't even tell what color they are.
May: somewhat light shade of purple. A clean sheet of it.
June: Kind of a darker blue.
July: A lighter blue, somewhat close to January.
August: golden yellow/brown
September: yellow. Not a bright yellow, more like a sickly yellow, but not in a bad way.
October: orange and black...
November:Not really sure about November either. Hmm...
December: Dark blue

Some of them are kind of clear connections, like orange and black for October.

The only other things I've noticed are a few individual words. 'knowledge' (the word, not the idea) is two mixing shades of dark green and dark yellow. the letter 's' is yellow, the letter 'c' is blue. The word 'music' is dark purple.

[Starshade]

For me, its emotions who cause colours. Some written letters got it, but not many. Think its typeface based, and certain styles of writing.

for people, typical colours is red, yellow, blue, green, etc. If you start extending personality types to cartoon characters and such, i start to see stranger and stranger colours, as pink, or combinations who usually, no "real" human got. (Minnie may from gunsmith cats, as example, pink. Ranma total Red).

Being drunk tend to make the colour of a person yellow. It seem, i associate "yellow" with several things, as intelligence, and materialism, i think, and a few bad ways of living.
Red mean power, and perhaps a bit too much pushy behaviour. Ive know no totally "Red" person, since its a bit EXTREME colour, several yellow/red ones though.
Blue, is i think, girlie. Typical of emphathy and really girlie girls, and convey a lot of typical feminine traits, but full of "empathic" traits. I'm sometime a bit 'blue', but it dont really dominate me. :smalltongue:
Green mean caring, and is extrovert. Its a WERY good colour for people, and ive known as many men as women with it.
Cyan/turquoise: I'm a bit cyan at times, my primary colour. ITs the one i'm most uncertain about, since i got a bit bad definition of what i AM. Obvious is, it got traits with other colours bordering, as blue/green, i think its a bad version of blue, as in low esteem.
Black: wery bad. Think too extreme for it to occur much. Often combined, if its seen.
Pink: Extrovert quality, not really seen it for humans, since i think its a comedy colour. Like, the ficitious personas Jim Carrey make.
Purple: Ive only seen this for women, think its a bit odd colour, it must be a negative version of some trait, possibly negative feminine social traits(negative blue perhaps). As eloquent use of feminine "traits" to hurt people.
White: many people are just.. White. A plain offwhite colour. Think its a bit neutral, could be a extrovert, bright quality, certainly not bad, since some of the greatest persons ive known, is white.

some is one, some two,some can be at first glance, like, white, then show 4-5 colours.
Emotions can make colours as well, as love/a big crush, or physical sensations as when i once was exposed to CS gas: green/red filled my entire vision. Dancing and having a good time also can cause colours, or hazy shades.

Edit: i should point out, blue-yellow isnt pure a male female thing.
Its more, blue is a empathic dominated type of personality, yellow is systemizing or logical, those and a few other make up some basic colours, who combine to form some combinations, who i think is based upon a few basic personalities i knew in my childhood.

Yellow= geeky. Blue= open, empathic Green= caring type of person, parent like. White= um, dont really know what's it supposed to be. Think its perfectly ok, can mean i dont really know? :smallconfused:
Purple= A horrible person, or great. I've only known one person who's purple, and one of the few persons i'm genuinely happy i wont meet again.
Yellow/Red combo: unusual, think its a long time since ive met a new one now, could be wery great or wery bad. First person with those colours i suspected being a psychopath, later even a girl i liked. :smallamused:
Not perfect, many persons, including my parents, dont even got any clear colours at all. :smallconfused:

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

I'm really glad I have synesthesia. I think tuberculosis was my other option for poet's disease.

[eidreff]

I seem to remember reading an article or part of a book some years ago that described training to "feel" writing on a page by holding ones hand just above the paper with closed eyes and .... this is where i think I tuned out.

It wasn't braille, and there seemed to be some sort of colour and warmth connection to different letters, which the "reader" could learn to sense.

This sounded too much like a conjuring trick to strike me as real, but I have heard about people who hear music as colours, and find the idea fascinating.

[Susil]

I have a friend with sound / chromatic synesthesia. She's also got perfect pitch so it must make music interesting for her. I think middle C was yellow, not sure though.


On a more humerous note, there's a band on my local scene who do a song called synesthesia. Its about being madly in love with this girl, but he's unble to bear being round her because her name tastes like socks...!

They're called the Mighty Spectacles. Look them up, they're cool! :smallcool:

[Aystra]

I think I used too connect days of the week and months and similar concepts with colors very strongly.

But that's probably something else.

I do that with the days of the week.
Monday is red.
Tuesday is yellow.
Wednesday is orange.
Thursday is a dirty yellow.
Friday is a dark green.
Saturday is a light teal.
Sunday is a lime green.

I doubt that this is synesthesia.

[Icewalker]

I do that with the days of the week.
Monday is red.
Tuesday is yellow.
Wednesday is orange.
Thursday is a dirty yellow.
Friday is a dark green.
Saturday is a light teal.
Sunday is a lime green.

I doubt that this is synesthesia.

I do believe that this is most definitely synesthesia in the very small way that many people have.

[blackfox]

I do that with the days of the week.
Monday is red.
Tuesday is yellow.
Wednesday is orange.
Thursday is a dirty yellow.
Friday is a dark green.
Saturday is a light teal.
Sunday is a lime green.

I doubt that this is synesthesia.This is actually one of the most common forms of synesthesia, along with colored letters and numbers.

[valadil]

Huh. I've been vaguely aware of the idea of synesthesia, but had no idea there was a word attached.

I experience a couple sensations that may or may not be synesthesia.

Certain smells bring me to the place or person where I first smelled them. Like, to the point where I get disoriented because I'm not really in my grandmother's kitchen even if I smell her matzah ball soup.

I also graph music in my head. Songs have a line associated with them. The line bends and curves with the music. It usually respects pitch and may not be all that far off from musical notation, except that certain constructions will make it loop back on itself or spiral around for a while.

[Spiryt]

I do that with the days of the week.
Monday is red.
Tuesday is yellow.
Wednesday is orange.
Thursday is a dirty yellow.
Friday is a dark green.
Saturday is a light teal.
Sunday is a lime green.

I doubt that this is synesthesia.

Are you mad?!

Saturday and Sunday are totally in reddish colours :smallwink:

That's what I remember at least. Whatever it is, it's fading with years, at least in me.

[Serpentine]

Certain smells bring me to the place or person where I first smelled them. Like, to the point where I get disoriented because I'm not really in my grandmother's kitchen even if I smell her matzah ball soup.The sense of smell is, if I recall correctly, the sense most closely related to memory for some reason. I suppose this is more related to that fact than synesthesia.

[Starshade]

Scratch Grapheme -> colour for me. Think its too fragmented and a bit too untrustworthy connections between the letters and colours. :smallamused:

For you, well, clicking on the picture thread, blackfox i cant get any sense of, Serp seem simple, a light light colour, white, white with faint blue perhaps, but wery light.
Most of you others ive not noticed enough on the forum to even attempt to try get a sense of from a picture, Castaras, um, exept her only pic reminds me of scifi costume (like scifi, so thats ok), its just a bit too strange pic to get any feel for. Green-Turquoise, with a lot of turquoise in it perhaps?
Others as SMEE, shows up as quite complex, yellows give room to blueish, to darker to mixed, etc. Even differ from picture to picture.

Also note imaginary characters might got their own colours, so a "persona" a person have, might colour a person.

I do fear ive "learned" so much from all sort of strange sources about people's auras, so the knowhow might colour my perception. As an example, i didnt really contiously realize i could just look at people and notice some funny colour until i found some strange receipe in a New Age book, who was as this:

1. look at person.
2. see on the base of hair.
3. notice the colour of the aura around the person.
And to learn to see, meditate a lot. :smallamused:

I gave up meditating after a few attempts, since, it just caused me to see swirling colours spiraling around. The concentration exercises, cause colour and vision effects, so i gave up most meditation.
I cant help but think this colour sense, isnt totally a typical synesthesia. It seem too learned, or systematic for me. :smallconfused:

[Another_Poet]

In a way, most of us have the basic concept of synesthesia. For example, would the nonsense word 'blortum' better describe the image on the left or right?
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9933/250pxboobakikiky8.png (http://imageshack.us)
Most people say right.

I think that's pretty cool, but I actually have to suggest that it isn't an example of synaestheisa. Rather, it's linguistics at work. "Splortum" sounds similar to the English words "splat" and "splotch" which are both used to describe shapes like the one on the right. Thus, it's a case of similar sounding words (a sound that seems like another sound) rather than synaesthesia (a sound that seems like a colour, etc.).

Still cool though.

[Z-dan]

*stupid forum not letting me post >.>*

I have very mild synaesthesia- in the sense that I can easily imagine music as colours if I want to, but don't see it all the time.
I remember a tv program about it a couple of years ago called 'My Friend Derek Tastes of Earwax' (to the UK peeps: yes it was a channel 5 'extraordinary people' program)

[Occasional Sage]

I don't know anyone that has synesthesia, but I find it fascinating. I first read about it in a Newsweek or Time Magazine article SEVERAL years ago*, and since then I've always thought it was a very, well, unique-sounding condition.

*I think the article talked about a few different specific cases. One was a guy that saw specific colors when he heard specific instruments (bassoons were purple, for instance), and I think one dealt with colors and taste or something like that. I'll have to look it up tomorrow once I get up and see if I can find the article online somewhere.

rtg, are you sure you and I aren't the same person? I found out about synesthesia in a Scientific American Mind article a few years ago. I've been fascinated since.

EDIT:

I recommend the book Born on a Blue Day.

Oooo, thanks!



Maybe I'm just easily manipulated :smallwink:


So Serp, let's talk about you sending me money... :smallwink:

[TheBST]

I wonder if it's possible to have 'Bad Synesthesia' where everything sounds, tastes and feels like grey or beige...

[Zeful]

I wonder if it's possible to have 'Bad Synesthesia' where everything sounds, tastes and feels like grey or beige...

I don't think that's actually possible. There could be pleasing sounds/tastes that cross over badly in someone with synesthesia, but I don't think it's possible for one to associate everything with one color.

[SilentNight]

Huh, I'm a little sad I just found this thread now. Now that I read it, I guess I've got a small degree of synesthesia. I tend to identify songs titles, mostly jazz, with colors, with styles being generally consistent. Swing ranges from light blue to yellow and white. Latin is almost always orange or red. Funk is purple/pink/green, bossa is blue, it goes on. I also did the color to month thing but I think that's due to the calendars we had back in elementary school.

[Allysian]

Ooo, I asked my dad about this and apparently he felt music....o.0 Is that weird? I went to the website you linked in the first post and it has no records of feel sound synesthesia. Weird.

[Zeful]

Ooo, I asked my dad about this and apparently he felt music....o.0 Is that weird? I went to the website you linked in the first post and it has no records of feel sound synesthesia. Weird.

I feel music to, but I know it's not cause of synesthesia. Music with a loud bass beat will cause a "second heartbeat" kind of effect as the sound wave will vibrate in the empty areas of your abdominal region.

[blackfox]

You can feel the actual, physical soundwaves that music makes, as Zeful said. But there is also music-touch or just about anything-touch synesthesia, for that matter. Not sure exactly how it would manifest, but I imagine you'd feel different types of pressure on your body, in different places, with different textures, depending on the music.

[Helanna]

If I listen to music when not really concentrating on anything I see lines, (strands maybe?) that warp and oscillate with the music... it's odd, to say the least, but not always noticable.

You really freaked me out as I was reading through this thread, because I do the SAME THING. In fact I was just about to post about it, so I'll just pretend that several other people haven't just said the same thing.

You see, the other day on the bus ride home, I was listening to Blind Guardian's album Nightfall in Middle Earth. Most of the songs on that album involve a lot of instruments, and as usual I was seeing the strands of music weaving in and out of each other much like Celtic knots (which I draw all the time.)

It gets interesting because I was thinking about how I could maybe make a movie with the computer like that, with all the different-colored strands for all the instruments that, as has been said, weave and oscillate with the music. But I'm not good enough with the computer to do that . . . well, no better time for learning I guess! I will definitely have to try that now.

On another note, drums are green. And they're not really lines, they're just bursts of color.

[Starshade]

I think what i see, is people oriented Emotion -> Colour and Personality -> Colour. Specific things as dancing with a girl i love, or when i was doused with CS gas (just a plain irritating particle effect) provoke greater or lesser colour.

But its something who puzzle me:

When i relaxes, sit down and feel at ease, specially if its a semi warm day, and i relax the tension in my muscles, it feel as if something uncoils, snaps out into straight along my back.

I also experienced something, many years ago now, who's always been a DEEP mystery, i had no way to explain it:
It was at a high school with a dormitory, i was playing Pool with a girl i was having a crush on. What happened was this:

- Music, someone put on music, alternating between rock in my native language and english music, and i remember several Lion King tracks, among them the Timon and Pumba tunes(who triggered the thing who happened).

1. I drank coffe, for some reason i was in a wery good mood, and drank a few too many.

2. it felt as my back 'uncoiled', then coiled, uncoiled, and my mood raised, and it felt as if my entire head fogged over.

3. for the next 1-2h i was a giggling as a moron, and having a great time. My entire vision was foggy, my head felt *boom*, i regained coherency after sitting and relaxing for some time after leaving the place.

I can see a swirling cloud of colour when i lie down and relax sometime, so i might not have been drugged, as others believed. My stomach felt bad after *WAY* too much coffe the day after though.