Not sure if this enters the metaphysical realm or if it's pure physical .. or both.
Supposedly it's just physical according to experts .. but I'm wondering about that.
There is a brain component ... but is this a 'defect' or a 'gift' or 'just nothing at all important'.
I guess it depends on the person who has it and what they think about it.
4% of the population ... and 25% of artists ... are considered Synesthete.
Either way ... come talk about it ... this is interesting!
The other day I entered the ATS Writing Contest and the term SYNESTHETE came up in discussion. I had never heard the term before. OR if I had ...
I'd forgotten. (you'd think that with a degree in psychology I would have heard of it ... but looks like not!) So I decided to look it up. VERY
interesting.
The short Synesthete test battery
Requires log in to take the long one but you can get an idea from the test ...
Virtual Synesthesia - colored letters and music animation
Example of how someone with color synesthesia sees numbers
Metaphysical Spirituality - tasting the
Universe with Maureen Seaberg
Paranormal and Metaphysical Wiki - Synesthesia
Wikipedia - Synesthesia
In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as
inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities. In
spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example,
1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise). Yet another
recently identified type, visual motion → sound synesthesia, involves hearing sounds in response to visual motion and flicker. Over 60 types of
synesthesia have been reported, but only a fraction have been evaluated by scientific research. Even within one type, synesthetic perceptions vary in
intensity and people vary in awareness of their synesthetic perceptions.
While cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., "loud shirt," "bitter wind" or "prickly laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true
neurological synesthesia is involuntary. It is estimated that synesthesia could possibly be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of
variants. Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained. Synesthesia is also sometimes
reported by individuals under the influence of psychedelic drugs, after a stroke, during a temporal lobe epilepsy seizure, or as a result of blindness
or deafness. Synesthesia that arises from such non-genetic events is referred to as "adventitious synesthesia" to distinguish it from the more
common congenital forms of synesthesia. Adventitious synesthesia involving drugs or stroke (but not blindness or deafness) apparently only involves
sensory linkings such as sound → vision or touch → hearing; there are few, if any, reported cases involving culture-based, learned sets such as
graphemes, lexemes, days of the week, or months of the year.
Psychology today - Are You Synesthete
Four percent of the population, when seeing number 5, also see color red. Or hear a C-sharp when seeing blue. Or even associate orange with
Tuesdays. And among artists, the number goes to 20-25%! This neurologically-based condition is called synesthesia, in which people involuntarily link
one sensory percept to another. The colors, sounds, numbers, etc. differ among people (for example, you might see 5 in red, while someone else sees it
in orange), but the association never varies within a person (that is, if 5 for you is red, it will always be red). There is a surprising overall
agreement among synesthetes, however.
List of famous people with Synesthesia .. Hey .. Billy Joel is one!! No surprise!!
Synesthete Org Info - A standardized test battery for the study of
Synesthesia
After reading up on all this I'm thinking I may have some spacial Synesthesia. I see days of the week and the calendar in shapes. Same with numbers
in sequence. Example - the days of the week. I see them running counter clockwise in the shape of an iron ... the handle being Saturday and Sunday,
then the flat bottom being Monday through Friday. I guess that's not 'normal' ...
I thought it was. And the years of my life ... I see
them running in sequence but they twist and turn like a snake .. some stretched out more than others .. some going straight up ... that kind of thing
... even the years I haven't lived yet. I guess that's not 'normal' either.
Now that I've heard about Synesthesia, I'm wondering about that kids movie - Ratatouille.
Remember when the characters would take a bite of food, then the screen would explode
into colors and shapes ... each time different according to what food they were eating.
I'm wondering if this is a form of Synesthesia. Anyone have this experience IRL?
It has been shown that those with Synesthesia have some difference in their brain from those without. Could those with Synesthesia be what we are all
supposed to be evolving to? Or is it 'just one of those things' and it doesn't mean much of anything?
For reference to the discussion that sparked this thread -
ATS thread - Life is Chaotic
Color
