6 Intriguing Types of Synesthesia: Tasting Words,
Seeing Sounds, Hearing Colours And More
http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/05/6-intriguing-types-of-synesthesiatasting-words-seeing-sounds-hearing-colours-and-more.php
One fantastic reminder of the varieties of consciousness is the phenomena of synesthesia: the cross-wiring of
the brain’s senses in a small proportion of the population.
Until recently, when experts explained that around 4% of people have the involuntary experience of, say, certain
numbers evoking particular colours, they were met by disbelief.
Surely ‘synesthetes’ were making it up to feel special or perhaps unconsciously responding to the demands of
the tests?
Now, of course, we know better: this cross-wiring of the brain’s senses is real and it’s experienced in all kinds of
different ways. Estimates place the number of varieties of synesthesia at between 50 and 150 but here are some
of the most intriguing (that we know about).
1. Lexical-gustatory synesthesia- one of the rarest forms of synesthesia, in which people have associations
between words and tastes.
Experienced by less than 0.2% of the population, people with this may find conversations cause a flow of tastes
across their tongue. Not only can taste be involved, but so can temperature, texture and even the location on
the tongue. One synesthete who has been tested finds the word ‘jail’, for example, tastes of cold, hard bacon.
2. Mirror-touch synesthesia
Imagine you watch me reach up and touch my own chin, but that you experience a touch on your own chin. This
is mirror-touch synesthesia: when you feel the same sensation another person feels.
The prevalence for this type of synesthesia is relatively high at around 1.6%. Even amongst non-synesthetes,
around 30% of people have a sort of mild form of this in that they experience pain when they see someone else
being hurt. This may be a heightened version of at least part of the process involved in how we empathise with
others.
3. Misophonia
While many forms of synesthesia are harmless and some consider it enhances their life, not all forms are
beneficial. Misophonia — literally “hatred of sound” — is a condition in which sounds trigger strong negative
emotions like disgust and anger.
It’s extremely rare and may be caused by problematic connections between the auditory cortex and the limbic
system. Commonly reported amongst misophones are strong adverse feelings in response to the sounds of
other people eating and breathing.
4. Personification
This is where ordered sequences, like numbers, days of the week or letters all have particular personalities, and
even appearances. Monday might be an angry kind of depressed young guy wearing a red shirt, while Tuesday
might be an outgoing older woman who talks too much, and so on…
5. Number-form synesthesia
First documented by the polymath Sir Francis Galton
more than a century ago, this is where numbers
automatically appear in the mind as mental maps.
Here’s a representation of how it might be experienced:
Usually these maps are individual to the particular synesthete.
This type of synesthesia may result partly from the fact that the areas of the brain for processing numbers and
that for spatial representations are relatively close to each other.
It’s thought that as much as 20% of the population may have number-form synesthesia or related experiences
which mean that days, months or the alphabet takes on a spatial form in the mind.
6. Chromesthesia
Chromesthesia is sound-to-colour synesthesia, the kind
which most intrigued the artist Wassily Kandinsky, and which
many of his paintings attempt to evoke.
Here is one of his paintings, called “Yellow, Red and Blue”:
People with chromesthesia hear sounds and these
automatically and unintentionally make them experience
colours. To someone who doesn’t experience this, it sounds
weird or distracting, that you’d suddenly start seeing colours while listening to music, but to synesthetes who
have grown up with this, it’s just their normal, everyday, experience. It’s no more unsettling than having a
particular song remind you of a place you used to live, perhaps less so.
The variety that’s been found even within this one type of synesthesia is mind-boggling.
Some of those with chromesthesia find the colours are projected into space in front of them; others see it in
their ‘mind’s eye’. Some only get the chromesthesia for spoken words, which are influenced by the voice’s
accent, pitch and intonation; others just for music.