Not everyone can experience what synesthesia is, but it is actually a neurological condition that cannot go unnoticed by those who have it. At the end of this article you will understand why hearing colors and seeing sounds can be real for some people and what causes this to happen.
synesthesia
When we talk about synesthesia we are referring to a neurological condition in which sensory or cognitive stimulation leads to automatic and involuntary experiences in the person as a second sensory or cognitive pathway. One pathway, for example hearing, automatically activates a second pathway, for example, vision.
This means that when one sense is activated, another unrelated sense is activated at the same time. This will make a person when listening to music feel color patterns at the same time. Synesthesia can cause any combination of senses, although not all have been studied.
The most common synesthesia is grapheme color synesthesia, where letters and numbers are associated with colors. Synesthetic people can hear smells or see sounds, taste words, even touch what they see. Approximately 5% of the world's population has some type or subtype of synesthesia.
Can you listen to this video on mute?
You will be surprised when you discover that perhaps you are also able to hear the sound of this video that is totally silent. Synesthesia does not only apply to people who associate sounds with images, flavors with words and a long etcetera. Some people are able to hear sounds in videos when the video does not actually play any sounds. Does it happen to you too?
Psychologist Chris Fassnidge calls this phenomenon "visually evoked auditory response." Although it is not technically a synesthesia, Fassnidge believes it is a new form that deserves further study. Some people describe it as a ringing in their head, for other people, it is something like white noise. And then other people say it varies depending on what they look at. This condition affects 30% of the population and many people do not realize that they associate faint sounds in their mind with images.
There are people who don't realize it happens to them often and aren't aware of the mental noise until you get away from everything else. To know if you really hear the sound in this silent video, you will have to watch it in a quiet place without interruptions... only then will you realize. If you are in a place with noise or distractions, then you will be able to appreciate if you really have the ability to listen to the video silently.
Types and causes of synesthesia
Most people with this type of condition have at least two types of synesthesia. The most common is the one we mentioned above, the grapheme color. But there are also other types of synesthesia that are very common and that are worth naming to differentiate:
- Smell aromas when listening to certain sounds
- See music with patterns in the air
- savor words
- Feel textures when you feel emotions
- Feeling that time has physical characteristics
- See sign language as colors
- See abstract concepts
Although causes unknown, there are several theories on the table:
- Overabundance of neuronal connections.
- It occurs when the single-sense areas of the brain feed back to multisensory areas and the information is confused.
- We all have these connections but we don't use them.
- You have stronger mental associations.
- Children bilingual from an early age are more likely to have synesthesia.
How is it diagnosed
Although there is no exact way to diagnose synesthesia because there is still a lot to study about this condition, in order to diagnose it, several points must be taken into account. There are guidelines developed by a leading synesthesia researcher, Dr. Richard Cytowic. These guidelines are as follows:
- They involuntarily experience perceptions
- Project sensations outside the mind, such as seeing colors in the air when hearing sounds
- They have an exactly the same perception every time the same stimulus occurs
- They have a generic perception, such as seeing a shape in response to a certain smell, but not seeing anything more complex
- They remember secondary synesthetic perception better than primary perception
- They have emotional reactions such as pleasant feelings linked to perceptions.
Pros and cons
Synesthetic people feel contradiction about this condition. Some feel it as a gift and others as a punishment. For example, when a synesthetic person sees inaccurate words in the wrong color it may be strange or having some names give them a bad taste in their mouth may also be unpleasant for them. Others feel that they have had sensory overload or that they felt embarrassed as children when they described what was happening to them but no one understood them... And many tried to hide it so as not to receive criticism or ridicule, without understanding if what was happening to them was normal or not.
On the other hand, the vast majority of synesthetic people feel that their abilities are a gift and they would never want to lose them for the world. They love knowing that five is yellow, for example, or that the word moon tastes sweet. Besides they feel that it is easier to memorize concepts because of the extra information they receive in their brain and that other people can't even imagine what it is.
In 2005, Daniel Tammet set the European record for memorizing pi by memorizing 22.514 digits in five hours. He attributed the feat to his ability to see numbers with color, texture and sound. There is also evidence that synesthesia can improve creativity. A 2004 study at the University of California had a group of students take the Torrance Creative Thinking Tests. The synesthetes who took the test scored more than twice as high in all categories.
As if that were not enough, synesthetic people can have unique job opportunities. Some car manufacturers hire synesthetes to help their designers create cars that are more pleasing to users. There are synesthetes known as; Vincent Van Gogh or Marilyn Monroe.