Saturday, February 24, 2007

My Synesthesia

For anybody reading this, who doesn't already know, I thought it might be interesting to explain this condition I have, called synesthesia, since many people often ask me about it.
Synesthesia is basically a mental condition that affects one in approximately 2000 people. The word means joined sensation, and comes from the Greek syn, meaning together, and aistheis, meaning perception. Synesthetes (people with this condition) have induced perceptions that arise involuntarily, usually with one perception. It definately is a hard concept to explain, so I've included some definitions found on the internet for this condition, that might make it clearer to you:

- A condition in which a stimulus, in addition to exciting the usual and normally located sensation, gives rise to a subjective sensation of different character or localization.

- A sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color.

- A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.

Basically, it is a condition where certain sensations evoke certain other sensations which would not normally be linked. Some examples of what synesthesia does to people's minds are that numbers, letters and words evoke colour sensations, that visual sensations evoke odour sensations and that touch sensations evoke taste sensations. What each synesthete experiences differ from perosn to person.
My particular form of synesthesia is the most common form, where most types of sensory information (Letters, numbers, words, sounds, odours and shapes, and even abstract concepts like time and abstract nouns) evoke (or trigger within the mind) colours and visual imagery. I'll use letters as a simple example of how this works in my mind. The letter "A", according to my perceptions, is red, and cannot possibly be anything different. This doesn't mean taht whenever I read the letter "A", I physically see it written in red, but that "A" evokes the colour red. I do not see red, in the physical sense, but as soon as I see "A", I think red, so as it might be considered more of an asscociation response. According to the various articles on this condition I have read, synesthesia doesn't affect, or rather, hinder any other aspects of life, but adds an element to my automatic perceptions that is otherwise non-existant.
Describing this condition is very hard for me, as I do not know what it is like to not have this condition, and therefore cannot relate my position to those who do not have it. I never knew, in fact, that I even had this difference until a few years ago when I read in a Herald Sun article that people whose minds worked like this were not normal. If you want more in depth explanations as to what I'm on about, look it up on the internet or something.
Below I have included three visual images, each are the image my mind automatially composes upon the thought of the following three abstract concepts. When a word is abstract, the image that word or concept forms in my mind is stronger than that of words that already have a visual asscociation (e.g. "tree"), and hence, I am able to accurately create on photoshop the images that are evoked by these three words.

1: Popularity 2: Creation 3: Tranquility

4 comments:

some girl said...

That was a good explanation :D

I asked my school friends the other day if they saw letters amd things like that. One of my friends said what colours the letters were, but she also said that it was the first time she'd ever done that, and the next day they were different colours. So i think she was just saying the first colour that came into her head.

I think it would be cool to have synesthesia. I read about 'Number form synesthesia' and I may have that, according to wikipedia, but then again, I may not.

Those photoshop images were cooltown.

Jono said...

Yeah, there are (apparently) many levels of synesthesia. Some people say it exists in eevryone, just some people pay mroe attention to it than others, while some say it exists in less people, where some people who don't have it pretend, or subcauntiously imagine that they do. I have read in many places that, on average, psychologists agree that it occurs once in every 2000 people, although they all seem to also agree that they could be wrong about this, and it could occur anywhere from one in 200 people to one in 25,000 people.

B.C. said...

Serious blog I like. How about the alphabet, in colours. Would be interesting. Argh I hate 5 hour uni waiting period.

Digger said...

Hmm, very interesting. Have always wondered how that works, so thanks for explaining it.
Nice blog too, good stuff.