Interesting Synesthesia

[Wyntonian]

So, I've started noticing other people's little synesthetic quirks more and more.

Personally, I associate ideas and concepts with certain places I've been. Faster-than-light communication is the playstructure at my old middle school. So is certain D&D classes, oddly enough. Non-metallic weaponry is a cul-de-sac near my house. A certain girl is the trails I ran cross-country on by my high-school. There's a bunch of others but I can't think of them at the moment.

I also see numbers as shapes, with 3-based numbers as pyramids (3, 9, 27, 33, etc), prime numbers as tall and skinny and perfect squares as....well, perfect squares.

One of my friends associates literary characters with smells. In the Lord of the Rings, hobbits smell like bacon and tobacco smoke, the Shire smells like cut grass, Aragorn smells like dirt and manliness (apparently it's a smell. Who knew.), and Gandalf smells like old books.

I find this fascinating. What are some of your little synesthetic quirks?


Note: I'm not a psychologist, so if I got the subtleties of synesthesia mixed up with ideasthesia or some such, please forgive me.

[Morcleon]

Filling in those little bubbles on test forms/surveys brings up the feeling of eating a juicy steak. Pressing TV remote control buttons is like drinking smoothies. Peeling off plastic packaging is chicken flavor ramen noodles. And folding origami is whole milk.

I see colors when I hear music too. :smallbiggrin:

[Jib]

I don't now if it counts, but I convert everything to words in my head. If I am riding and think about it, I see riding. If I am watching TV, I see the word Watching.

[Temotei]

I think of classes as colors. For example, Culture and Human Development is red, while Themes in World History is blue with a little diagonal cut in the corner. Gender Troubles in African Cinema is silver.

This is indeed ideasthesia, though.


I don't now if it counts, but I convert everything to words in my head. If I am riding and think about it, I see riding. If I am watching TV, I see the word Watching.

This is pretty normal, I think. Can you imagine thinking without some sort of language? It's pretty hard to imagine when you've had language ingrained in your being since before you were born.

[SiuiS]

This is pretty normal, I think. Can you imagine thinking without some sort of language? It's pretty hard to imagine when you've had language ingrained in your being since before you were born.

I think they mean they literally do not have mental images of the act, but instead see the word, in a blank space, with identifiable font and everything.

Also, since before you were born? I find that dubious, and think you may be crossing communication with languages.


I mix connotations. Color, temperature, scent, sound. I find colors have emotive qualities, emotions have colors an textures, and words have favors, texture, impact, weight. I choose the words I do based on their feel in my mouth.

[Temotei]

Also, since before you were born? I find that dubious, and think you may be crossing communication with languages.

Your mom didn't talk for nine months? I find that dubious. :smalltongue:

We are exposed to and start to learn language from that time, is what I mean. Ingrained wasn't the right word, I reckon.


I think they mean they literally do not have mental images of the act, but instead see the word, in a blank space, with identifiable font and everything.

That...that's interesting. Beyond interesting. That's incredible, if so. The research. THE RESEARCH. Gawd. That'd be super exciting to study. :smallbiggrin:

[grimbold]

i see colors when i hear music
i usually have a color for each bands but individual songs can have their own colors too

ex led zeppelin is orange/red for me but Stairway to heaven is green and blue

also
individual notes and scales have colors for me

[ForzaFiori]

I see colors when I hear music too. :smallbiggrin:

I have ALWAYS wanted to find out what that was like. Synesthesia has always interested me, and being able to see music sounds really awesome.

[Das Platyvark]

When the Levee breaks looks like rusty spiders.

[Temotei]

I have ALWAYS wanted to find out what that was like. Synesthesia has always interested me, and being able to see music sounds really awesome.

Ho ho ho. :smallamused:

It'd be interesting to take a cultural look at synesthesia...

[sktarq]

Tactile sensation has colour to it. With the texture, force, angle, etc determining hue.
Scents have a kind of colour as well. But at 90 degrees to the tactile colours. Scent colours are more interesting as they can have albedo, tone, and blending that's not reallly found in the first.
Sounds can be tactile-usually tempreture basedbut sometimes precussive.
Kinesthetics (sp-how you feel your body being possitioned and moving) can take a auditory cue....

All of it is minor and just on the edge of my experience. Ghostly....well most of the time.

Also just about any time I'm not totally in control of my mind (especialy on benzo's which doc's have repeatedly prescribed) I get full blown overriding synesthesia (instead of adding to it replaces the original expereince). Tacile as colured scents (which makes walking wierd-and a morning ritual very disorientating), Hearing as tactile-which looses almost all directionality as sounds all sem to come from various places on my skin.

Finally I generally "think" in chemistry. Any idea being a ball like structure with a cloud of everything I know about a subject and all of its known connections swirling around it-bumping into other concept atoms/molecules on various sides until ideas happen-----Thing is the information in the clouds is very much put through the kinds of synethetic filters described above. So my thought process has to be tranlated from purple, clove smell, nettles on back of knee to something more able to be reconstructed in someone else's head.

[Wyntonian]

Kinesthetics (sp-how you feel your body being possitioned and moving) can take a auditory cue....

Pretty sure that's proprioception (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception).

That's really neat, though!

[grimbold]

Ho ho ho. :smallamused:

It'd be interesting to take a cultural look at synesthesia...

that would be...
wow...
YES this must be done!

[sktarq]

That's really neat, though!

Not really the word for it from a 1st person view though I understand your viewpoint. It doesn't help I am just shy of tone-deaf otherwise a have a song in my heart and would dance to my own music. But trying to get around can just be difficult. Mostly it's hard because when it happens (well it's happened thrice) I already have every other switcharoo going at the same time (but the intensity of each waxes and wanes seamingly randomly). It's alot to keep track of and the internal/external changes are BY FAR the worst to deal with.

[AttilaTheGeek]

I think of classes as colors. For example, Culture and Human Development is red, while Themes in World History is blue with a little diagonal cut in the corner. Gender Troubles in African Cinema is silver..

I do this too, but across different years. For example, for the past 7 years I've associated history with green (usually dark), the sciences as different shades of blue, math as black and white, and english as orange, but I think that's just because I've been using the same color-coding system for my binders for years.

I also associate sounds with music, but with different parts of the song and different instruments rather than by artist or album. For example, when I'm listening to a song or something, I'll see the violins as silver swirls up high, the drums as grey-blue circles near the bottom, and the guitar as yellow squiggles on the side. (As opposed to associating one image with one song)

[enderlord99]

Having a stuffy nose (tactile)
Bread being baked (olfactory)
Muffled, underwater singing (auditory)

These are somewhat similar to me, though not identical.

[PhallicWarrior]

Memories have textures for me. I can't articulate any of them, though.

[The Extinguisher]

Make-outs feel like the colours black and white.
That's the only major one I can think of right now.

[Temotei]

that would be...
wow...
YES this must be done!

Actually, I think we're going to talk about cultural neuroscience and synesthesia tomorrow or Friday, so apparently there's been research done (though probably not a lot, since cultural neuroscience is pretty new).

It was just an analogy, actually, so it looks like it would be new research.

[Chromascope3D]

I see colors when I hear music too. :smallbiggrin:

Same here. Rock always feels red, while techno feels more blueish. I then associate those colors with higher and lower temperatures, leaving me with the inability to listen to long stretches of rock music during the day. Which, of course, is something Pandora can't seem to understand...

I also associate letters with colors (e.g. 'A' is red, 'B' is yellow, etc.)

[Popertop]

I have ALWAYS wanted to find out what that was like. Synesthesia has always interested me, and being able to see music sounds really awesome.

Although that is the most often quoted example, synesthesia can also mean a "blending of the senses".

I myself don't really see colors when I hear music (I am a trained musician, vocalist), but I am keenly aware of how it feels, the vibrations in my body and around me in the room, the floor, the walls. Most of the time I think I feel music (in a tactile fashion) better than I hear it. Or maybe it is my sense of touch within my ears that gives me such a sharp ear (I can tell if something is sharp or flat in very small intervals, something called adaptive pitch.)


I have actually noticed most of my senses are connected in this way. I see better if I can hear what I am looking at, and I can feel something better by the way it sounds.

I don't like certain clothes because of the way they "sound", the same with food textures (I can't stand water chestnuts, the gray/white things they put in asian food).

Its hard for me to see if there is a lot of chatter or simultaneous things going on (weird I know, I'm the only person I know to which this happens).

Sense of smell is less obvious to me, I think its also connected to my sight, I get a mental image of something really nasty. I could never date someone that didn't smell amazing haha.


All things considered I would wager I have pretty strong synesthesia, otherwise I figure this stuff wouldn't bother me as much.

[SiuiS]

Thing is the information in the clouds is very much put through the kinds of synethetic filters described above. So my thought process has to be tranlated from purple, clove smell, nettles on back of knee to something more able to be reconstructed in someone else's head.

This sucks so much. I am in a series of arguments where I can't explain a character concept because normal people don't speak colortexturesoundscentmotion.



I don't like certain clothes because of the way they "sound", the same with food textures (I can't stand water chestnuts, the gray/white things they put in asian food).

I love water chestnuts. They taste like a very crisp sound, and enhance the food they are presented with.

[Inglenook]

I do this too, but across different years. For example, for the past 7 years I've associated history with green (usually dark), the sciences as different shades of blue, math as black and white, and english as orange, but I think that's just because I've been using the same color-coding system for my binders for years.

I also associate sounds with music, but with different parts of the song and different instruments rather than by artist or album. For example, when I'm listening to a song or something, I'll see the violins as silver swirls up high, the drums as grey-blue circles near the bottom, and the guitar as yellow squiggles on the side. (As opposed to associating one image with one song)
I always got frustrated as a kid when I didn't have the right folder color on hand to "match" the color of the class. :smallbiggrin:

Maths are red, the sciences are generally green, English is blue, history is blue or purple, Spanish is orange, art is yellow, etc. etc.

I have grapheme/word-to-color and personality-to-color synesthesia as well, and it causes me horrible problems with people's names. Like "Stacey" is a very red name, but I am acquainted with a Stacey who has a brown personality, and I always end up almost calling her the wrong name. :smalleek:

I have weaker color associations with numbers and music, I guess. Although there have been a few times (most notably when I started taking ADD medicine) that my musical colors flared up ridiculously; it was like having an internal light show, very awesome.

I've also noticed that songs with the most pronounced colors are usually the most likely to elicit frisson.