I find all of this to be extremely interesting...

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/2892/56/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R_A4tUMOtI

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16537-genetic-roots-of-synaesthesia-unearthed.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

Discuss.

How the hell? That's crazy. If it's raining, that would give you like a seizure... I don't understand how the brain can work that way. Combining senses?

And that comment made me lol really hard.


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 30 2009, 10:46 pm by blacklight28.

I've heard people with perfect pitch often associate sounds with colors.

I have perfect pitch but I don't do that..

Lol at the fart comment too

I wonder what these people will see/think/feel/taste whenever I fart around them

Oh, I've heard of this many times before. I myself am synesthetic. For the longest time I just assumed everyone associated certain things with other feelings and senses the same way I did, until about 8th grade when I learned about what this condition is. I actually learned about synesthesia during a poetry class in which we had to describe the color of things without color, the sound of things without sound, and so on. For example, I actually just now looked at my thumb and associated it with a neon green syringe. I didn't actually think of a neon green syringe, but more of the vague feeling of seeing a neon green crystallite syringe. So how on the world are those two things connected? Well I love art, and I love to draw and create art. Using my hands in fine precision, I create art. Syringes and vaccines have an extremely fine point and inject whatever substance into a precise location. My hands are similar, in that I use precise movements with a pencil to "inject" my thoughts onto paper. As for the green part, green glowing of the syringe I think signifies the seriousness of the whole thing, and how I take art very seriously, and green (in cartoons and movies) often signifies hazardous waste or radiation danger, which in real life are a very serious things that can take lives.

But I didn't actually think of that entire paragraph while looking at my thumb, I just felt the feelings and vague ideas (sort of the feeling you feel while in a dream) of precision and seriousness I associate art with as well as.. Glowing green syringes? lol

So yeah, that happens to me all the time. I just assumed everyone thought this way whenever they look at something, or smell something, or are put into a certain situation, until I realized that most people don't.

It really is a pretty fascinating topic.

[Edit]I started to read the wikipedia page and they describe what I just said in a pretty similar way, actually suprisingly similar. Is anyone else synesthetic?

[Edit2]Well this picture from wikipedia is sort of misleading. I mean, I look at certain letters and I don't actually perceive certain colors:


When I look at a certain letter, I feel more of the emotions associated with the letter. I'll take the letter B for example -completely random and off the top of my head. So for clarification, I just now looked at that capitol B, and I'll explain what I thought.

The letter B is commonly used to grade work, homework, schoolwork, and so on. To me, the grade of a B isn't good enough, A's are acceptable and B's mean for some reason or another I chose not to get an A, i.e. I was lazy. So in a way I associate the grade of a B with failure or a missed opportunity. Have you ever felt that you can see a mistake you are about to make, want to avoid making the mistake, but just make the mistake anyways, as if just ignoring the coming mistake would make it not happen? Well that's how I usually get a B instead of an A. I have homework, but actually just ignore it, and that causes my grade to drop from an A to a B. So by just looking at a capitol B I feel a sense of failure, as if I could have succeeded but chose not to. As if I won't get another chance to get another A, and will be stick with a mediocre B forever and will have to live with the repercussions of that mediocre B forever. All this could be signified by the color of dull red. Dull because I could have made it shine if I had chose to. So yeah, in a way I do see dull red when I look at the capitol B, but it's more of an unconscious feeling of dull red, and feeling of missed opportunity than actually seeing dull pinkish-red. Get it?

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Jul 31 2009, 12:19 am by CecilSunkure.

Apparently you should have been the one to make this topic. haha.

I associate sound with various images and colors, and always have. No other senses, but ever since I can remember I've been able to "picture" sounds and components of songs mentally. Every sound has a kind of link to a vague image.

I have perfect relative pitch, and completely seperate synesthesia. I perceive words as colours. Not letters though, just words. And only When it's printed out, like in books, not on computer screens.

Also, recently I've begun to perceive translucent light pink gridlines over ground when I don't focus in them. I don't know if this is related or not, but I went tiling for the first time a few months ago, and I fucking rocked at it.

@ Cecil- What if I were to say Birth, a generally happy term. Would you still see the B in dull red? Or is it now a lively color?

I have synesthesia with sound and color; it's not much of a big deal.

When's the last time that you worked in SCMD or Starforge? If it was recently, maybe you need to take a break...if it wasn't, maybe your body is trying to give you a *hint*.

As for myself, I don't mix my senses, but I do have completely random thoughts, usually ones that end up with a dead me. For instance, I was driving down state route 125 after football practice, and there was one of those big, lit signs in a lane, telling you to move to the left [away from construction/maintenance work ahead]. So as I near this sign, going 55 mph, I imagined what would happen if I didn't move over. This was a couple days ago, so obviously I moved.

It's not that I'm suicidal, it's just that I often think randomly about what would happen if I didn't do this or that. The circumstances following the failure to comply would often lead to severe injury or death. So I suppose you could say I have suicidal thoughts, but they aren't "oh, my life sucks, I'm gonna end it" in origin.

About 2 years ago.

Oh no, with entire words, the entire word looks all the same. With birth, that would be much more of a bright red color. Sort of gushy, as if full of liquid to bursting (the word birth that is). But the letter B by itself is a dullish pink color, always, like a mix of red pink and a slight smudge of grey.

Oh, and another note with the pink color of capitol B, I usually associate pink with anger and frustration. Which usually comes with the grade of a B.

And I also associate sounds with colors all the time, but I'm not sure if I have perfect pitch. I like to sing, though I don't think I'm perfect.

That is very unrelated and I'm sure plenty of people do it. I've done it before. No big deal.

As, apparently, having synesthesia is at SEN.

A couple of the things, like associating colour with feeling sounds more like conditioning than synesthesia.

I randomly smell unusual things (like buttered movie theater popcorn or penicillin) that are not around, but I don't think that is associating smells with things or smelling other stimuli. ;o I smell them strongly enough to mask other scents in the room.

I believe there's a neurological condition that causes that... I can't remember what it's called though.

Go get an MRI.

Yeah... i'm not sure that everyone here claiming to have similar symptoms necessarily has what doctors would actually consider 'synesthesia' or if it's just the way they thinking has developed.

Like, I have always associated the color green with the number 4, and the color red with the number 5, and even the color blue with the number 3, but that doesn't really mean anything...

Well, accourding to Wikipedia as many as 1 in 23 people have it, so it's not like it's that unusual to experience some form of synesthesia.

I think it's probably just some form of hallucination. I sometimes will smell people or things on TV, in pictures, across rooms, etc. The funny thing, though, is that I tend to have a poor sense of smell...

It's useful for deciding what to eat. ;o "Hm. I smell burritos. Sounds tasty. Let's get burritos."

Edit:
Quick search on wikipedia led me to phantosmia and parosmia. I don't think it is either one of those because the smells aren't usually unpleasant (except penicillin) and it isn't specific things that smell wierd, they are just totally arbitrary.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 1 2009, 3:54 am by FaRTy1billion.