Talk:Synesthesia/Archive 1

Am I a Synaesthete?
I never really paid attention to whether I saw letters as colours or not, until Synaesthesia was mentioned to me by a teacher. After that I tried to see things more in colour and I did imagine letters, numbers, music, and even days of the week in various colours. Now I can imagine or "see" these things in colours, but it's not compulsive. I can see these things if I think about seeing them, and I decide what colours things should be, (and in the case of music, what shape). My point is, I don't know if this is synaesthesia, or if I'm just convincing myself that it is. Does seeing colours while you half-try to count or not? I think I always saw days as colours, but I only did so with numbers/letters/music when someone suggested it.

I think this isnt the right place to ask these questions, but I can't find any other place to ask them, except for here, where all the information is, and people who know what they're talking about. If anyone could explain that to me, or refer me to a website where I can ask about these things, I would be greatful. (AliasSkonovoski 13:10, 9 January 2006 (UTC))
 * I think an important feature of synaesthesia is its involuntary nature. It's more an accident of perception than a result of intention. It's one thing to experience sensory crosstalk caused by neural activity, and another to consciously form associations. In my opinion then, if I were to consider you a synaesthete, it would be on the basis of your seeing days of the week in colour rather than your deliberate associations. I'd be interested to hear others' opinions on the subject! Felicity Knife 23:39, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Felicity Knife. Synaesthesia is entirely involuntary. If you have to force yourself to see colours, you probably don't have synaethesia. Colours come naturally, like thinking about the numder 6, and automatically seeing it in red. Sergeant Snopake, 11:01, 28/02/06

I wonder ... If you continued to force yourself to see colour and shapes for a long time, would it eventually become involuntary? If so, would that be synaethesia, or just strongly enforced assosiation? Sergeant Snopake, 17:31, 01/03/06


 * Hmmm ... I see individual component colors comprising solid colors everywhere, ubiquitously, in text, in pictures, and in solid objects. Is this synaesthesia?  oneismany 16:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Ever since I first learned letters I have thought of letters and numbers as colors, and certain words and even numerical operations as having personalities. However, I have never directly seen or percieved colors in letters and I tune out the personalities of words while reading. I remember telling my sister stories about how numbers interacted with their personalities when I was too lazy to write, provoking her to write number stories of her own with a whole different personality system. Her creativity is also feuled by music, and she reports similar symtoms to me. Do we have synaethesia? I always thought it was just good verbal imagination. (71.116.116.40 00:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC))

Go have a look at the Nexus at this link http://www.mixsig.net/nexus It is a community of synaesthetes and VERY friendly, I'm sure you'll find some answers there. SnowLhite (30/05/06)

I was wondering about the same question actually. If I listen to music, I involuntarily start to think of how i would visualize it (instinctively, even), but sometimes I fail. I also don't have connection between visual things (i.e. don't combine letters with colors, but combine everything with sounds and music basically) Is there some kindof "test" or some way of telling it? // Gargaj 13:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it is important to mention that synaesthsia is not only characterized by the involuntary "ability" to see letters as colors but in many cases it is other senses linked together. In my case, my sense of sound is linked to colors as well as my sense of taste. For instance, a certain persons voice my be nearly unbarable for me to listen to because it is the brightest shade of red, it is almost blinding and my cause a headache and another persons voice may be the most calming shade of blue they could literally talk me to sleep. It is not so much the involuntary nature of the ability, it is the involuntary ability since childhood. Think of it this way, if you constantly force yourself to have twitching ticks and yell profanity and random nonsensical things... do you then have tourettes syndrome?


 * after reading this guys message.. i tried myself to attribute colours to a few random numbers. and then looking back onto the WP page i noticed the wikipedia 1234.. thing, and 4 out of 5 that i felt 'matched' were the same, (i'm not atall suggesting i have synaesthesia, but it seemed a little odd.. and i picked purple for 9 instead of orange..). Now, my question is; would all (text > colour) Synaesthetes see the same numbers as the same colours? Or, is it a random individual thing for each person?

Its individual for each person, though me and my family members had some letter-color combinations in common. Is it still synesthesia if you don't actually percieve the colors of the letters on the page? When I was four and five years old, I only attributed color to the mental images I had of the letters, but I grew out of that as soon as I learned to read. Was that EVER synesthesia?

Reading as Synaesthesia
I had some problems with the line near the end of the article:

"The ability to read is also considered a form of synaesthesia - the linking of shapes to sounds."

As a linguist, I know that we don't hear sounds in our brains. We hear sound with our ears. Your brain interprets the signals into mental representations, which may be similar in manifestation in the brain as sounds or images or concepts. But it only becomes *sound* if you then speak what you've read out loud, word for word.

To say that the transition from symbols on a page to mental representations in your brain is synaesthetic would be to say that EVERY input is synesthetic. As I said above, you don't see with your brain, and you don't read with your eyes. The input happens at the input organ and then gets turned into mental representations.

If reading is synaesthetic, then we're all synaesthetes (even people who can't read have learned to associate lights and shapes with meaning, ie stop lights, traffic signs), which detracts from how interesting the process is for people who are genuinely synaesthetic at the input level.


 * You're right. That was a stupid sentence, and I removed it. Next time be bold and do it yourself! —Keenan Pepper 17:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's all true, but on a (kind of) related note, I think everyone does have a little synaesthesia. After all, things are constantly are being described in a synaesthesia-like way. For instance, people often say about singers, 'He had a deep brown voice', or ' her voice was like velvet', and everybody knows what that means. Or, even, 'His/her voice was like polished wood'! That's pretty synaesthetic. Sergeant Snopake 9:07 11/04/06


 * The difference is that they are metaphors, not descriptions of literal perceptions. When people call me a beanpole they mean I'm skinny, not that they actually see a beanpole when they look at me. Hyacinth 19:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually, the majority of my examples are similes, though what you say is true. However, people refer to you as a beanpole because you physically resemble a beanpole, no one’s voice actually resembles deep brownness. I mean, what is that (because this one really is) a metaphor for? Sergeant Snopake 21:53 11/04/06


 * That's just a matter of how abstracted or subtle the metaphor/simile is, not of people really perceiving a voice as having a color. People don't refer to a certain person as a "beanpole" because he resembles a beanpole: people are not thin poles used to support bean vines. They use "beanpole" to describe people because a beanpole and a person share a certain characteristic: their thinness (though the degree of thinness is not the same, making this also an example of indirect hyperbole). So it's a matter of associating certain qualities with certain things ("beanpoles are thin, therefore beanpole = thin"), and then generalizing those qualities to apply to other things ("George = thin", therefore "George = beanpole"). The same principle applies to describing a voice as being "like polished wood" or "like velvet". Because velvet is characteristically soft and smooth, people develop the idea "velvet = soft, smooth". When they hear a voice that is pleasantly to the ear and has a low, soothing tone, they similarly describe that voice as being "soft" even though it's a purely auditory, not tactile, thing, because similarly pleasant, soothing feelings are provoked by rubbing something soft and hearing something "soft". The same applies to the concept of "smooth" being transferred from touch to hearing, originally as a comparison or metaphor, but eventually to the point where the concept of "soft" applies equally to something that feels soft and to something that sounds soft. Finally, by process of analogy, people make the last metaphorical leap by equating a certain object that is soft and smooth (like velvet) with a certain sound that is "soft" and "smooth", and, with a bit of poetic license, say, "that voice is like velvet", even though the voice isn't a fabric with a smooth, dense pile and a plain underside. Similarly, when someone says "you're such a pig!" upon seeing your disordered room, they're only referring to a single, specific characteritic commonly associated with pigs (they're supposed messiness), not to every characteristic of a pig (even ones that apply, such as its mammalian classification and largely-hairless pink skin). Therefore, to say that people really, literally perceive a certain sound as being "like velvet" is to miss the point entirely; noone actually perceives the sounds that way, they just refer to it that way as an expressive metaphorical linguistic device because "silk" has certain noteworthy characteristics (a soft smoothness) and associations (richness and luxuriousness) that are widely enough understood to be called upon directly with the word "silk" in metaphorically comparing silk with things that are entirely unlike silk. And neither situation has anything to do with synaesthesia, which is sensory, not linguistic/intellectual. -Silence 22:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, these people see colors in their head. They see images internally as a reader can hear sounds internally. I think that's what it means. However, this is supposed to be AUTOMATIC. Something you're BORN WITH. You only hear sounds with this stuff because that is EXACTLY THE WAY THEY TEACH IT to you. And because of this, I'm a slow ass reader! :(
 * A KIDS ANSWER

Synaesthesia and drugs
When I was younger, I experienced Synaesthesia, the first time I tried marijuana. It's not usually referred to as a hallucinagenic drug, but, being inexperienced, I smoked way too much, and got really paranoid. My friend brought me out some slices of bread, which was the only food available, and as I ate them, the taste made me think green. I didn't see green, or even picture it in my head. My brain just thought "green". It's hard to explain, and in subsequent times smoking, I didn't experience it again. Anyway, has anyone else had this experience, and should it be added to the artical? --Richy 20:02, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

No, your story should definitely not be added to the article; it is just too trivial. It is known that certain psychedelic drugs can induce synaesthesia, particularly strong psychedelic dissociatives, like LSD, or magic mushrooms for example. It does raise more important questions about synaesthesia; is it a better, more improved form of perception, another level of perception that humans are about to reach through natural evolution (which drugs can help get a glipmse of?), or just some defect, or hallucinatory property that has no purpose or reason in existing, a 'mistake', inherent in birth that cannot be 'corrected'? Why is synaethesia (its condition) the same in people that have it, but also different in the sensations that are perceived? --DragonFly31 18:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

A section on LSD should be added. My experience with it (and other's too) was a definate synaesthesiac experience. I could "taste" colors and even became hungry from bright colors. Sounds stimulated my sense of touch and smells triggered a constant sense of seeing color. I wasn't seeing flashes of color or actually hearing sounds (though they were distorted), but was experiencing the result of sensing them. -- Anon

Can we just set one thing straight, you are on drugs. You do not have synesthesia. Synesthesia is a naturally occuring coincidence. Having your brain all distorted form LSD or mushrooms or anything like that is a sad excuse for anything. ---curt1080

"ACQUIRED SYNESTHESIA is classically seen in temporal lobe epilepsy, head trauma, and mass lesions affecting the medial temporal lobe. Synesthesia may also be induced by sensory deprivation, antiserotonergic hallucinogens such as LSD and peyote, or direct electrical stimulation of subcortical limbic structures." http://wearcam.org/synesthesia/synesthesia_long.html --LEX 121.210.91.87 (talk) 15:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Artificial synaesthesia=Cognitive association
I read somewhere that there was training called cognitive association to develop super memory and photoreading.--Jondel 02:30, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, if there's no article you can research it and write it... this idea came to my mind as well. As some synethetes mention that it can help their memories (as we see) then doing this (along for general perceptional beauty) selectively would be a great developement. Tyciol 05:21, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Fitzgerald Reference
In the synaesthesia in art section it mentions the "yellow coctail music" in The Great Gatsby. Although it may seem like a synaesthesic reference, and it may well be, I think further consideration should be taken because of the very heavy color symbolism found in the novel. Colors are the most prominant symbols throughout the entire novel (ex: the green lantern, the yellow dress, yellow car, yellow coctail music, white suit(?), etc.) and the color yellow is a recurring symbol revolving around Daisy and how she makes Gatsby feel and is significant when interperating the meaning of the car scene, her dress' influence on Gatsby and, I believe, the coctail music. When viewed in context with the other references to it in the novel, I am inclined to think that, rather than a synaesthesic reference, it was simply an extention or jump to stretch the symbol even farther to make sense of the scene in which it was mentioned. I'm no expert on the novel, but I did recently study it in school. -Dave 04:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Alphabet books as source of letter colours
I have heard it said that it isn't quite true that different synaesthetes have independent colours for letters of the alphabet. Many apparently learned the colours as a young child from pictures illustrating the alphabet in books or classroom posters. This explains why many think that 'S' is yellow (= sun) and 'A' is green (=apple). (Incidentally, as a mild synaesthete, S is yellow for me too.) I don't have a source for this but haven't tried to find one. Ben Finn 14:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Much of the research I've come across on the subject does indicate large spikes in color similarities between their "research subjects" on certain letters. S was one of them, I believe. S is yellow for me too, by the way. A is yellow as well, though, not green. -Dave 02:23, 19 May 2006 (UTC)


 * S doesn't have a color for me, but A is very clearly red. I think the article should make clearer that associating colors to letters doesn't necesarilly mean syntaesthesia. Right and left are green and red to me, but I think that's because I learned about port and starboard sometime before my age had two digits. To me, the seasons all have directions: spring is right, summer is up, fall is left, and winter is down. My sister does it completely opposite. Do these mean I'm synaesthetic? Not at all. Also, a part of it is simply suggestion: after reading the above two comments, S now seems yellow to me. It'll go back to no color as soon as I forget this page. And now that I think about it, I can associate a major key to sweet flavor and a minor key to sour: major is pleasant sounding, but sometimes it can get too much and be sickeningly sweet. Minor keys aren't exactly pleasing, but they're interesting and even refreshing. Too much, though, is unpleasant. This is just something I made up on the spot, but it works. So, it comes back to the original point of this section: these associations can come from experiences (alphabet books), suggestions (my new belief that S is the color yellow), or logic (like the major/minor comparison). None of these seem to be a cause of true synthaesia, and are quite commmon. This isn't really discussed in the article. Twilight Realm 04:26, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Please sign your posts on talk pages per Sign your posts on talk pages. Thanks! Hyacinth 09:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, forgot. Twilight Realm 04:26, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I doubt it's a learned influence. My fiance is synesthesiac, and although she describes individual letters as having specific colors, she says that when they are combined in words, the coloration of the word doesn't follow simplistically.  "I" might be green, and "S" might be blue, but "IS" is not necessarily green-blue or green followed by blue.  It could be green-blue with red flecks, or blue-purple-green or so on. --El benito 02:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Fingernails on a chalkboard
Sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard, silverware screeching on a plate, and (to some people, not me) chalk squeaking on a chalkboard are not only unpleasant sounds; they can cause other effects. I myself have a similar feeling as when I see a nasty-looking cut, a feeling close to physical pain. That type of sound can cause shivers, and I also sometimes feel a pain-like sensation in my teeth. Is this another example of common synsaesthesia-like associations, such as the booba/kiki picture? Twilight Realm 03:00, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a great insight! I admit, I get the same kind of revulsion... I'm not sure they're associated in a general sensory way... probably that they are stimulations that generate the same instinctive revulsions for self defense purposes. Loud noises usually indicate an angry animal or a disaster or, even without danger, a danger to our eardrums! The cut thing is obvious, we fear our mortality, although evolutionarily speaking I'm not sure what the advantage to hemophobia would be, except for perhaps being less inclined to brutalize each other, or to encourage us to cook our meat... Tyciol 05:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely too sure if we can call such a thing a direct reaction of synaesthesia. It would represent a hypersensitivity to a certain stimulus, and having allergies would fall under the same category. We don't call people with hay-fever to have this ability do we? But, in theory, it should definitely be something to consider. I have an unusually strong sense of hearing that I believed could've developed because I am was nearly blind for a long period of my life. The sound of ice in a glass is EXCRUCIATING to me. The contact of anything to styrofoam is equally as horrendous. And I shudder to think that one day I may run into a styrofoam cup with ice in it. ciyean 3:55, 12 July 2005 (utc)

"Only We Matter" sentence fix need
The sentence beginning "Only We Matter" makes no sense to me. Whoever or whatever "Only We Matter" is needs explanation. The rest of the sentence is very vague as well. JMD 17:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Confused
--68.39.71.124 19:34, 16 July 2006 (UTC)This section, "Synesthetes often have difficulty remembering numbers, such as home phone numbers and street addresses. This can be attributed to their unfamiliarity with concrete situations," doesn't seem right to me. I'm a mild synesthete, and I've always felt that my ability to remember certain numbers was greater because of my color associations. This part of the article is also contradicted by the pages on eidetic memories, that claim some synesthetes have remembered pi to thousands of decimal places.

Article in need of rewriting
I have just added the 'expert' and 'attention' templates to this page.

Rationale:
 * The article rambles too much, containing a lot of unsystematic information and very little structure.
 * There are several documented types of synaesthesia. Some are mentioned, but where is a comprehensive list?
 * There either need to be sections dealing separately with 'synaesthesia' in art and technical, neurological synaesthesia (or perhaps a separate article entirely). Specifically, the current section in the article, "synaesthesia in art" is ambiguous. It lists artists who are synaesthetes, but also briefly discusses 'synaesthesia' as an artistic device (i.e. metaphor). Technically, when used to refer to the artistic/poetic device, the word refers to something different than the physical condition (although they are obviously closely related). This needs to be disambiguated (i.e. 2 different sections) and clearly stated in the article.
 * As per some talk above, it's unclear to me whether random exclamations on one's synaesthetic experience, cited from "a slashdot discussion," are appropriate to include in an encyclopedia article.
 * Also, lists of historical/famous synaesthetes ought to be very brief, and in a separate section, unless they are part of a discussion, from a clinical perspective, on the effects/types of synaesthesia.

In general, this article is awkward to read, because of organizational problems. It also isn't very informative from a clinical perspective.

Because of these two overarching problems, I have added two templates to the article. I will try to spend some time myself in the near future doing what I can for the article in terms of organization, but it's going to be difficult to build it into a good article without an expertise in the subject matter. Discuss? Torgo 23:32, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Note to Torgo, thanks for reopening the discussion about the rewriting of the article. Since many years 'Synesthesia Associations' are doing the real Synesthesia field work in society. They play an important role by exploring the multi sensory interactions of Synesthesia in theory and in practise. To connect synesthetes and their synesthetic experience with interested non-synesthetes worldwide. To promote study, research and understanding of Synesthesia in educational, social, cultural and artistic contexts. So my advice (as an expert in the relationship between 'Synesthesia & Art' and as founder of the 'Belgian Synesthesia Association') is that the article must also contain a list of references to the 'Synesthesia Associations'. For this reason, I added a brief list to the article. Dr. Hugo 10:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it might be appropriate to add a section to contain the numerous loose connections and references to synaesthesia in popular culture: e.g. titles of music albums and songs, lists of names, video games, and such things that are not really descriptive of the topic. A lot of these are haphazardly placed under "Synaesthesia as a neurological condition" but the effect they have is to suggest that synaesthesia is some kind of fad. I might try to rearrange those elements of the article but i have no real qualifications or expertise. Bog 16:46, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm registered with a synaesthesia forum, mixsig.net, and I'm sure some of the users there would be happy to help rewrite this article. Most of the people there are quite knowledgeable about synaesthesia-almost everyone (including me)-experiences it. A few others sign on because they are interested, they have relatives or friends with the condition, or they need to research synaesthesia. They could probably greatly clean up the article. (This is the first article I've ever even thought about editing, so I'm somewhat timid). --Vogon Poet 01:53, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Myself, Richard Cytowic, and Sean Day, have begun to edit the synesthesia entry. Each of us is an expert in synesthesia, and have numerous scientific publications on the topic. We may base a fairly comprehensive re-write on Dr. Cytowic's entry in the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience.  For now, I have begun to eliminate some of the major errors, and have spent some time responding to postings on this dicussion page, to prepare for a more complete overhaul of the entry.  However, for the moment, I have not removed the expert and cleanup tags.  edhubbard

I have taken the liberty of removing the expert, cleanup and citation tags, although this is not meant to imply that I think the article is completely cleaned up. However, we are making good progress with a small team of experts (myself, Dr. Cytowic and Dr. Day) and valuable feedback from other users of this page. One thing that I would like to do is to change the references so that they are all in numbered format, and so that clicking on them takes the reader to the bottom of the page. Another thing that I would like to do is to remove some of the extensive links to secondary sources, like news reports and the like, in favor of a fewer number of larger sites. I have seen the discussion of "link farms" above, relating to Dr. Hugo's site, so I am a little concerned, but feel that this might be more effective than having tons of somewhat redundant links.

Other examples
I'm not sure about the 'Other examples' section. Although in principle its a good idea to include a first hand account, I'm not convinced that quotes from slashdot discussions are a the best place to go for one. We really ought to use a quote from a more reliable source. This borders on no original research. -- Solipsist 08:27, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Synaesthesia in art
Another plausible synaesthete composer is Arthur Bliss and his Colour Symphony of 1922. However at the moment, I can only find circumstantial references on the web. -- Solipsist 16:39, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)