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Home Articles Reviews Videos App Store Book Shop Forum What is Synaesthesia? By Hannah Bunce and Adam Sinicki     Synaesthesia is an unusual sounding Psychological phenomenon in which a person experiences two or more senses being joined together. This means that experiencing one sense will lead to experiencing another sense at the same time. It is common for those with synaesthesia (known as synaesthetes) to associate colours with letters of the alphabet or see shapes when hearing certain sounds. To many people synaesthesia can sound like a strange condition, but research has found that roughly 4% of the population will experience Synaesthesia in some form. Famous people who reported to have synaesthesia include Marina Diamandis of Marina and the Diamonds, the artist David Hockney, Franz Liszt, Stevie Wonder, and musician Billy Joel. With it being possible to experience any combination of any two or more senses, there are many different types of synaesthesia that can be experienced. 'Famous people who reported to have synaesthesia include Marina Diamandis of Marina and the Diamonds, the artist David Hockney, Franz Liszt, Stevie Wonder, and musician Billy Joel.' Some of the more commonly experienced forms include Grapheme → Colour (seeing letters of the alphabet or numbers tinged by particular colours), Sound → Colour (associating certain sounds such as voices and noises in the environment with colours that fade once the noise has ended) and Personification (associating ordered lists such as days of the week, months of the year, numbers or letters of the alphabet with particular personality traits; for example June could become a female month of the year). In other cases it's possible to 'taste' letters and numbers, and there are many other rare and unique examples. Uses of Synaesthesia Many synaesthetes feel that the condition is a hidden gift which they enjoy rather than a hindrance or a condition. As a result synaesthesia is not classified in the DSM-IV or the ICD. Those with synaesthesia also report that often they are not aware that what they experience is different from how other people perceive the world. Synaesthesia has been found to have certain benefits. Synaesthetes are likely to have better memories, have higher literacy abilities, and be better at learning new skills such as mathematics. One of the only reported disadvantages of synaesthesia is that those with the condition can feel overwhelmed by their senses sometimes. One of the most unusual forms of synaesthesia, and the most practical, is where an individual gets a visual representation of mathematical problems - often described as a 'grid' appearing in their visual field when they are attempting mathematical sums. This then helps them to perform far more difficult sums and equations than they would otherwise be capable of. Meanwhile, the assigning of colours and feelings to letters and numbers can also make it much easier for synaesthetes to store, categorise  and recall certain information making it a highly useful memory tool. Daniel Tammet is one example of an individual who uses their (paritcularly complex) synaesthesia to perform impressive cognitive tasks (such as memorising Pi to 22,514 digits). There is also anecdotal evidence that synaesthetes tend to succeed in art and music fields and enjoy an 'enhanced creativity'. If synaesthesia could be induced then, it would have a highly useful purpose and could be a form of transhumanism. Interestingly many recreational drugs are considered to cause similar effects to synaesthesia, and indeed some recreational drugs can be seen as being performance enhancing. Take for example Einstein - who claimed that he used drugs when he discovered relativity - that this enabled him to 'see' the way that particles interacted. Of course many artists and musicians have been shown to use recreational drugs to inspire their music and art. This doesn't mean that recreational drugs are necessarily nootropic, but it certainly outlines a potentially differernt area of research. What's really interesting meanwhile is that synaesthetes have been shown to be less affected by drugs presumably because their brain state was already 'unusal'.  Tapping into synaesthesia through any means would also not be a controlled process. The experiences of synaesthetes varies from person to person; even when experiences colours associated with letters and numbers, one person may see one colour and one person may see another. However, certain characteristics are found to be associated with the condition. The experiences of a synaesthete are both involuntary and consistent. They are also very memorable, partly because the experiences are also often associated with emotion. Some similarities have even been found in the way that synaesthetes perceive their senses, for example higher pitched sounds have been associated with lighter colours, and the letter A is often perceived as the colour red. Causes of Synaesthesia Research into the causes of synaesthesia is ongoing and there is still uncertainty about the precise causes of the condition. One commonly cited theory is the idea that the brains of those with synaesthesia are linked together differently to the brains of those without synaesthesia, and certain areas of the brain communicate with or activate each other when they normally would not. It is possible that the brains of synaesthetes did not remove some of the many nerve synapses created from birth like it normally would do. Another theory is that the normal process of the body to inhibit some information coming into the brain is prevented or reduced, meaning that synaesthetes experience more senses when observing the environment that they are in. This theory is supported by the finding that synaesthesia can be experienced by those who have experienced strokes, brain tumour or trauma to the head  even if they were not Synaesthetes prior to their injury. Synaesthesia is also thought to be genetic, although the way a parent experiences synaesthesia is likely to be different to how their child experiences it. Due to slightly higher numbers of women experiencing synaesthesia than men it is thought that synaesthesia is passed down on the X chromosome. Synaesthesia has been significantly associated with both epilepsy and Autism (such as the case with Daniel Tammet) leading scientists to believe that the gene is found on chromosome 2. In some cases synaesthesia is also associated with the loss of a sense - where one sense begins to develop in order to compensate for the loss of another. For instance some blind people claim to be able to 'see' or certainly 'visualise' sounds in a different way. Do We All Have Synaesthesia? Curiously it seems that all of us experience synaesthesia to one extent or another and there seems to be some evidence that we are genuinely consistent in this. For instance if you imagine a blue image made of rounded lines, and a spikey orange image, and then were asked which was a 'blauble' and which was a 'treek' - everyone would say the former. The psychologist Chomsky speculated that we can all develop and pick up language easily due to something in our brains called a 'Language Acquisition Device' or 'LAD'. It has since been proposed that this process relies on a form of synaesthesia which gives us a 'feeling' for what certain things should be called. It could be thanks to synaesthesia then that we were able at all to develop language. Perhaps this is also responsible for our ability to create and appreciate music? For what other reason is there to enjoy some sounds and not others? Maybe synaesthesia is responsible for our ability to know what music suits a particular scene in a film? Finally for one last example of synaesthesia try punching yourself in the eye. See that flash over colour? That's the nerves in your eye firing in response to touch having misinterpretted the excitement for light. IN BRAIN TRAINING Germination: Platform Puzzles Germination Review - the brain training game that's actually also fun! Go There!  Copyright 2012 The Biomatrix.Net

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