Synesthesia Encyclopedia

http://cytowic.net/Synesthesia/Synesth__Encyclo_/synesth__encyclo_.HTM

by profquail • 17 years ago

18 15 17 years ago

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

Thanks for the link. I have a couple of kinds of synesthesia myself (I wrote about my experience here: http://michaelgr.com/2007/09/14/my-experience-with-synesthes... )

profquail• 17 years ago

Cool...I posted this up because I'm pretty sure I have some kind of number-form ("spatial-sequence") synesthesia. I've always been good with math since I can look at a problem (numbers, equations, etc.) and "see" it's shape. This is actually very handy when coding as well (different sorts of coding problems have their own shapes too!)

Anyone else have experiences they can share?

aristus2• 17 years ago

Numbers and letters have consistent colors and combine and "influence" each other inside words and large numbers. At an early age I asked my mom to explain exactly why 113 was green, 114 was pink, 115 black, etc. It took a while to get the idea across, and we were both very puzzled. She dug out an article on synaesthesia and we learned together.

I also see colors and shapes in music. Complex melodies are very beautiful. I feel as though I can "move" between "curtains" of different musical voices. I have very good relative pitch because I can see the harmonies.

I sometimes mix up things in very odd ways because they have similar colors: 9->u, 5->e, and (god help me) names like linda->julia and teresa->desiree.

frig2• 17 years ago

I wouldn't have called these synaesthesia:

Colored personalities

Colored tastes

Colored pain

Colored odors

Colored temperature

but (of the list at the bottom) those five are all things I've arguably experienced; that said it's hard to know what to say of these really as the distinction between a strong+reliable association and synaesthesia proper when you're talking about more-abstract "senses"; given that they're all color<->nonvisual perception the simpler explanation is probably just strong color associations, not synaesthasia.

I was motivated to post b/c I was actually surprised that "colored personalities" were as high on the list of responses (or really on it at all); it's surprising it's (apparently) that common.

carterschonwald• 17 years ago

i have a funny variant thats a combo of :

1)ideas have textures that denote elegance, bs, too complicated, wrong

2)when i understand a topic well enough (eg some subset of math) and i'm not stressed, all i need to do is translate a problem into the way i visualize stuff, see if i can fill in the details of the shape, and then figure out how to translate that detailed shape into normal written proof notation.

the (2) bit is tricky and while on one hand it lets me come up with some simple proofs/code, on the other hand it can to be too slow for the pacing needed to get several problem sets done at a reasonable pace

edit: in fact, the idea -> texture bit is so strong that its essentially how I choose research at a certain level, though that requires sifting through enough ideas

321abc2• 17 years ago

Synethesia is a very common (temporary) effect of psychedelic drugs. This means that most everyone has the ability to sense synethetically. It's just a matter of somehow triggering this experience in one's brain.

It's a pity that research on psychedelic drugs is so difficult to do legally in the US (where the overwhelming majority of research money is spent). Otherwise, it might have already been possible to develop drugs that target just the synesthetic experience without bringing on a full psychedelic trip (not to mention the many other benefits that scientific research in to psychedelics would very likely have had).

bingaman_• 17 years ago

"Synaesthetic and psychedelic mean approximately the same thing." -Gene Youngblood in Expanded Cinema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_cinema). Good book.

321abc2• 17 years ago

This may be true, when "synethetic" and "psychedelic" are used as specialist jargon for describing films or various effects in film. But it's not true in the general, colloquial sense of these terms, which refer to either a type of sensation or to a type of drug.

Psychedelic literally means "mind-manifesting", while the etymology for synethesia comes from "sense" and "together".

The word "psychedelic" was specifically coined as a way to describe the drugs that were previously called "hallucinogens" and "psychotomimetics", and it was an attempt to remove the inaccurate and negative connotations that those other words had.

Synethesia, on the other hand, refers to a specific type of sensation, and not to a drug.

Also, psychedelic drugs have many, many other effects apart from synethesia (which isn't present in every trip or for everyone taking psychedelic drugs, anyway).

So in the usual sense of these terms (not in the sense a film critic might use them), these two words have quite different meanings.

zoba• 17 years ago

Is any one aware of how to cause synesthesia in people who don't have it, other than using drugs...or by using drugs: keeping it permanent?

a-priori• 17 years ago

As far as anyone knows, synaesthesia is a fundamental property of how some people's brains are wired, where the interconnections between two areas of sensory cortex are abnormally strong. Thus, when one area is activated (by perceiving a letter, for example), the activation spreads to the other area (for perceiving a colour). It's something that would develop very early on (probably in utero, and surely by soon after birth).

In adults, you might theoretically be able to induce permanent synaesthesia by repeated Tetanic stimulation of the two areas of cortex simultaneously. This may induce a strengthening of the connections between the two areas via Hebbian learning.

On the other hand, this might destroy your ability to perceive both letters and colour, or cause other brain damage. There would be no guarantee that the results would be of any use to you at all (remember that synaesthesics grow up experiencing the world this way). And that's assuming you could even identify the appropriate areas. Needless to say, no surgeon would do this.

Sorry, LSD is still your best bet. :)

joshu• 17 years ago

What I find massively fascinating about synesthesia is the high coappearance with creativity...

steiger• 17 years ago

A famous synesthete was the late great Richard Feynman. I think he had written it in one of his books that he felt unconfortable with that feeling, and didn't talk much about it.

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