Synesthesia. A Mixing of Senses (Research)

I realize that synesthesia has been discussed before on ATS, but i'm looking to compile personal experiences with some research questions. i recently discovered that music doesn't move/have positions for most people, i even knew what synesthesia was, but i thought sounds always triggered feelings of movement for everyone.

For those of you who don't know what synesthesia is, it is an involuntary cross firing of different sensory (or sometimes more abstract) parts of the brain that result in fascinating perceptions. A synesthete might taste textures, hear movement, or see sounds. There have been around 60 or 70 different kinds of synesthesia reported, though only about a third of them have been scientifically verified and researched. There are various tests online that cover most of the possibilities, if you're interested synesthete.org... is the best place to go. You have to make an account, but it's free, they don't spam you, and it is a legitimate research project.

I'm interested in personal accounts of synesthesia. Sadly the kind i have hasn't been researched much at all, and is pretty new/uncommon (i'd rather have sound-color, but i'm not complaining).

The specific questions i'm looking to find answers for are:

What are your experiences?

How does alcohol or caffeine affect your perceptions?

Have you ever taken an SSRI (examples are prozac, zoloft, paxil etc) if so, did you notice a change in your synesthesia intensity? How so?

Do your perceptions go both ways? If you hear colors, do colors also make you hear sounds?

Have you been diagnosed as autistic/asperger's syndrome, or do you have epilepsy?

I'm interested in all forms of synesthesia, but i would like to get more information on people who experience motion as sound, or sound as motion. For me, gifs on the internet have "sounds" the repetitive movements sound different ways, and as i've said, music moves in a vertical column that i feel in my head. if a guitar riff is played in a high octave, then in a lower octave, it moves in the same way/same positions just a different location.

P.S. some gifs on this sight are pretty loud/obnoxious lol

reply to post by Bob Sholtz


Maybe have a read on someone called Milton Erickson who was a hypnotherapist, MD and clinical psychologist. From birth he was color blind and was tone deaf, these limitations he said gave him great insight into how others worked and thought about the world. He might be a good starting point because he scale of senses was so different from normal.

Also have a read of Daniel Tammet's (SP) Born on a Blue Day, he has quite a few synesthesia experiences, plus Homer Simpson can hear pudding

PS edit to add, visualize a marching band, what types of sounds crop up?

reply to post by yyyyyyyyyy

a repetitive dun, dun, dun, as their feet step and a sort of rushing sound as they steadily move forward. i've read it's rare to experience it both ways, but music having movement is definitely more intense than moving objects having sounds. if you post a gif, i'll tell you what i hear.

recently for a seizure/panic disorder i was put on an ssri and an anti-convulsant. the ssri has decreased my perception of sound having movement by 30-50%. i'm wondering if others found the same to be true.

hmm. i had hoped to find more synesthetes here. this is rather frustrating. perhaps i'll attempt to mill through some other threads and find what i'm looking for.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz

What are your experiences?

How does alcohol or caffeine affect your perceptions?

Have you ever taken an SSRI (examples are prozac, zoloft, paxil etc) if so, did you notice a change in your synesthesia intensity? How so?

Do your perceptions go both ways? If you hear colors, do colors also make you hear sounds?

Have you been diagnosed as autistic/asperger's syndrome, or do you have epilepsy?

Hi, I may have a slight case of this. I see certain words in colors. When I think of the days of the week the words always appear to have color. Each day has a color and it never changes.

Sunday -- white
Monday --yellow
Tuesday -- red
Wednesday -- black
Thursday -- blue
Friday -- black
Saturday -- red

I see other words in color too.

In answering your other questions:

1. Alcohol or caffeine does not have any effect.
2. I do take an SSRI and it does not have any effect.
3. It does not go both ways. I don't see colors as words.
4. No autism or epilepsy.

I always thought I'm just weird. lol

Peter Steele from Type O Negative had this. I had never heard of it before reading it on a blog about him.

I wonder if it is common among artists?

I have a gender for numbers and letters. Sometimes also an age and colour as well. e.g. the letter S is old and fat and female, and used to be bottle green. T is male and wears a black suit and tie.

I can't tell give you any info on any changes with medicines but when I tried acid in my teens things got extra colourful, (lots of letters and numbers were flying around). I didn't try to communicate with them, but I think I could have.

reply to post by Beldy

thank you for your reply, and yes, it sounds like you have grapheme>color synesthesia. there are some benefits from it, such as increased memory, though there are also slight deficits such as a slight difficulty with mathematics and directions.

reply to post by wigit

very interesting to know, thank you finding information on this topic is difficult, and the kind i have is exceedingly rare (probably less than .2% of all people with synesthesia), though as i said, i'd rather have the sound>color kind.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by Beldy

 

thank you for your reply, and yes, it sounds like you have grapheme>color synesthesia. there are some benefits from it, such as increased memory, though there are also slight deficits such as a slight difficulty with mathematics and directions.

I am VERY mathematically challenged. It's kind of like my brain doesn't want to compute numbers. I do struggle with it at times. Funny in a way because my job entails working with a lot of numbers.

I seem to be pretty good at directions though.

Interesting subject.

reply to post by Beldy

very, but it's very hard to find the information that i'm seeking. i figured ATS would have more people with synesthesia, but it seems all the other threads on it are as small as this one. go figure.

I did a quick search today becauseeeeeeeeee.....I have a 2 1/2 year old daughter - we do a lot of painting, she is CONSTANTLY asking me to paint and we just went with it. So today I was painting with her and I asked her what colour I should paint and she said "green, its making a sound".....lol? I said, what do you mean? She said - "Use green, I don't like that sound" So I used the green and asked her if the other colours made sounds and she asked me to stop the colours from making sounds.

I thought that was a little weird but thought maybe she was just having a bit of a joke with me, you know? But just now I was getting a painting done for her room by another little girl (a charity thing) and I was asking her what her favourite colour was. She said "green is making a sound. I dont like that sound. The colours are making sounds....umm....orange"

lol? anyways, i browse here often enough I thought I'd see if there were any other experiences. I'm not sure if I should pay attention to this or just go with it. Maybe it's just a phase and i'm making a big deal out of nothing? Maybe you can help me out

reply to post by natters

no, your daughter seems to have color>sound synesthesia. she will feel confused as to why you don't experience the same thing because it seems so natural to her. you should be thrilled to learn this about your daughter because it has definite cognitive benefits, such as enhanced memory and greater creativity.

i'm 21 and i just learned people don't perceive music as having directions/positions/movement. i thought it was completely normal.

She does seem to have a pretty remarkable memory and is soooo creative (though I'm sure most people say these things about their kids lol). If you have any advice about how to nurture something like this I'd be happy to hear about it

reply to post by natters

the best thing you can do is let her explore what she gets the most pleasure out of. she's young and her brain is making a lot of connetions between neurons right now, so the more she is exposed to the things she likes (art, music, literature, etc) the better she will be at those things when she's older.

if i were you, i'd first determine if she experiences it both ways. do sounds make her experience colors or shapes? if she truly does experience a form of synesthesia (which sounds highly likely), then her experiences will stay the same over time.

taking her for an evaluation by a psychiatrist might not be a bad idea either (my parents took me when i was little because i was a strange child, turns out i had asperger's syndrome). you'll learn more from them, and they will make useful suggestions about how to continue. synesthesia crops up with other neurological differences, and not everything from synesthesia is pleasant. that being said, almost everyone with synesthesia feels like they couldn't live without it. it would be like losing the ability to see in color, or going deaf. i took an ssri once, and music turned flat. all the beauty and movement i had always experienced in music was toned down considerably. i love having synesthesia.

i would highly recommend taking her in for an evaluation and you should probably do research online about synesthesia in general, and the specific kind your daughter has.

Dear Bob Sholtz,

Unfortunately, I cannot certify that I have your kind of synesthesia because I realised I might have had synesthesia that I lost during depression. I am on antidepressants and so I cannot tell whether I have synesthesia in the first place and that I have temporarily lost it due to the medication or stress or whether I don't actually have it at all. I fear the latter.

Anyway, I am a dancer and as a child I "danced the music out". I lost it over time due to dance training and always struggled with choreographing in those styles because of how differently I interpreted the music.

I do have more to say on this..

Sounds provoke tastes for me, and tastes provoke ?things?. When I was very small I would say that things taste like computers, it's really hard to explain it. Tastes still crossover with items. I have a very good smell/taste id and perfect pitch...can't carry a note to save my life though.
Also, Vladimir Nabokov had synesthesia. He wrote "Lolita". (that was the book with character Humbert Humbert...or as Sting would say, "Just like the old man in that book by Nabokov")