Tell me about your synesthetic experience!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(Thanks, Wonko The Sane, for leading me to my revelation!)
I just found out today that I probably am a synesthete - that is, I experience the world in a synesthetic fashion. Music has both colours and textures for me (I apparently have the “coloured hearing” version of synesthesia), and until this morning, I thought it did for everyone. It turns out that no, actually, it doesn’t, and I may be a member of a fairly rare group (about one in 2000 to 100 000) who cross-associate different colours, shapes, and/or textures with words, letters, numbers, or music.

And also, astonishingly, numbers don’t have gender for most people. Come on, you’re telling me that in your world an eight isn’t female, and a seven isn’t male? Really?

Oh, I thought of another one - I repeat words after people say them sometimes, just because the feel of them is so pleasing to me. Other people do this, right?

How about it? Any other synesthetes want to share their experiences?

2

It’s a fascinating phenomenon, isn’t it? Two of my boyfriends were synesthetes, and I’ve always thought it must be cool to be one. Did you know are easy tests that can tell you if you’re a synesthete or not? My boyfriend really saw the hidden two’s much faster then I did !

I don’t have much to add, as you’ve probably done some research yourself by now. For those who walk curiously into this thread, here is a good starting website on the phenomenon, and here are the few threads on SD about synethesia.

3

Hunh! I didn’t know there was a word for that.

So I guess I am one. I can taste colors and hear shapes and textures, and yes, numbers have a gender to me - although not ALL numbers. 3 seems to be genderless, as does 9, but 4, 5 and 8 are female.

Now I gotta figure out how to pronounce this so I can impress my friend Beth, who is the only other person I know who does this.

4

Twos are female and ultra-feminine. Threes are female but tomboyish. Fives are nerdy and male.

When I read, I find that the shape of the words has symbolic value, and that’s how I recognize them. Colour and feeling, instead of just letters. I memorise poetry by the way it feels when spoken, instead of by meaning.

5

Another one here. My letters are the colored ones but it’s my numbers that have the really rich identities. Not only do they have genders but actual personalities and don’t even get me started on the scenarios I developed when I was learning times tables. Until I was an adult, I thought everyone did this in varying degrees. I have one sister who has synesthesia but my children think I’m smoking crack when the subject comes up. :rolleyes: Oh, and I’m also left-handed and wonder if there’s any connection?

6

Interesting test, Maastricht. I’m not a visual colour synesthete so the twos didn’t stand out in colour for me, but I saw them instantly.

From my little bit of reading, Tupug, a lot of synesthetes are left-handed. I’m right-handed, but I do a lot of things with my left, and have no problem doing different things with each hand at the same time.

Do other synesthetes find that they think differently than other people in general? It’s taken me years to realize what the expected responses to everyday things are, because my natural responses are rarely the expected ones. Writing exams was difficult because if there was a wrong way to interpret a question, I always answered it from that perspective.

7

I noticed a long time ago that every musical key signature had a different “feel,” some of which I now ascribe colors and visual adjectives to. D-flat major (the favorite or “important” key of many composers when it comes to ballads) is yellow. G minor is like polished brown church pews. D minor is “woody” in the same way, but more “clear” than G minor. More of a maroon. A minor is blue-green. E major is bright royal blue. F major is green. G major is reddish-brown.

And so on. :slight_smile:

8

Heh…I was recently told I was a metro-sexual. And 3 happenes to be my favorite number :slight_smile:

As for the OP - When I cover Synesthetic tendencies in my intro to Psych Class, I can always tell the synesthete who just learned the word. They usually come up to me after class and want to know more about the condition.
Also, to all those who think they are synesthetic, there is no guarantee you are. Just because you smell shapes, and feel a 6 is feminine does not make you a synesthete. The condition is a complex one, and one I personally like to study. For some very nice further reading on the subject check out Synaesthesia and Synaesthetic Metaphors. It is fairly academic, but a good look at the condition. For some lighter reading check out you will certainly like Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens. Feel free to email me or post more pointed Q’s if you’d like. :slight_smile:

9

When I was younger, I had an electric organ that had numbered keys. You could play the music by folowing either the music notation OR the number sequence. “Silent Night”, to me, will always be about the love affair between 10, 12, and 13. 10 and 12 were the “true loves”, but 12 was stuck with 13 due only to being next to each other on the keyboard - kinda like an arranged marriage. (Strangely, for me even/odd does NOT correspond to female/male.)

Like Tupug Anachi, learning math tables was like all out narratives!

Sound (“pitch” in particular) is very much related to physical sensations for me. Headaches can have pitch. Itchiness can have pitch. Fall down? Scrape your knee? Is the sting of it a high-pitched sting or a more bassy sting?

Smells all have colour. Colours all have smells. I used to get headaches at my former job because back in in the plant area they used too much blue and the smell of blue nauseated me. I kinda liked the smell of purple though. And I do mean this quite literally. It was a printing plant – even though everyone thought “ink just smells like INK”, I knew which colours were in use by the smell.

Someone in another thread (which I assume inspired this one) mentioned having a stunning memory for things. I have the Scary Memory[sup]tm[/sup]. I’m mildly bi-polar so have always attributed it to the overall odd hardwiring of my brain – this is the first time I ever thought of it having anything to do with synesthesiest predispositions. Would make a lot of sense though, because you’d be “recording” stuff with more than just one primary sense. My memory has always been really, really freaky as a result of the cross associations.

My most recent scary memory trick was yesterday. My neighbour said “check this out” and showed me something on video that was obviously from the 1970s. A bunch of squealing girls were holding signs that said “I love you, Lane!”…

I said: “Oh, this is an old episode of Wonder Woman! Leaf Garrett is the ‘Lane’ guy and he gets kidnapped and the one girl is a witness and she thinks the bad guys are going to kill him because they say they are going to take him to ‘his just reward’ which turns out to be the name of a boat - ‘Your Just Reward’.”

My neighbour’s eyes bugged out. I was remembering this from it’s original air date. I was dead on, right down the the line about “the just reward.” My neighbour was really freaked, and I kinda got embarassed and said, “oh, I guess neither Sniffs_Markers or I ever mentioned my Scary Memory[sup]tm[/sup] before…”

Never made the connection of the cross associations to the nifty memory stuff until today though.

10

To me, numbers have texture rather than personality. Odd numbers and especially prime numbers are hard and prickly. Even numbers are smooth and round. Palindromes and repeated patterns render numbers smoother. My SSN drives me nuts, being the most awful cactus-like combination of odd and prime numbers. My Canadian SIN is a soothing collection of gentle round numbers and a repeating pattern.

11

I could see the 2s in that test but IANAS.

12

Oh, I just thought of a sort of “impairment” that it causes. I absolutely, posismurfly can NOT read music. (That"2" test reminded me.")

Again and again and again, folks have tried to teach me how to read music. Nu-uh, can’t. Why? The white space between the notes is never recorded consistently. Hard to explain, the pattern or “paths” of white space between the black ink of the notes and staff relates far, far better to music than the black dots. Black dots just don’t sound ‘that way.’ So I tend to expect the white paths (which are obviously “musical” – just look at 'em!) to convey the information I need for music. Of course it does not convey that information anymore than the margins of a page add to a story. The black dots are standardized notation, the “white paths” are not. So the white paths are different for every song.

So I get stumped by sheet music.

I’ve always thought that the “white paths” ought to contain the relevent information. The black dots wearing the tuxedos just don’t.

13

I’m a self-proclaimed synesthete; the topic came up recently here on SDMB after the “Am I the Only One” thread.

Re: Number/letter genders. For whatever reason, odd numbers are male, even ones are female, consonants, male, vowels, female (and y is male, no matter how it’s used.)

As for memory, I’ve got the freaky memory thing going too. Especially things like phone numbers, etc. I had a boyfriend 13 years ago who bought a car, and because he got a kick out of my memory, told me the Vin #. To this day, I remember it. (I just doublechecked it against Carfax.com, and I do indeed remember it correctly.)

One of my oddest memory “talents” relates largely to reading. A perfect example: I am re-reading the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant for the first time in 15 years. As I was rereading yesterday, I was trying to remember the exact sequence of events for something that happened later in the book (because, unfortunately for me, I can’t remember things like that nearly as well). I knew that the information I was looking for was on a left-hand page, three quarters of the way down the page, about 4/5 of the way through the book. I constantly index information this way - it makes it extremely easy for me to remember things I’ve read - in my mind’s eye, I can “see” the page, the location, and with a little thought, can usually re-read the passage. Obviously, sometimes I can’t, but then it’s quick work for me to look it up.

I also remember words very clearly - often, I can tell you when the first time I learned a particular word was. I learned the word “lee” from The Secret of NIMH; “apoplectic” from “The Mirror of Her Dreams”; etc etc. It’s really rather odd. This might also explain my uncanny (some might say annoying) ability to remember song lyrics.

I also mentioned in that thread that I assign locations to music - if I hear a song, I almost always have a place that it makes me think of. It’s always a place where I heard the song before, but usually not the place where I heard the song for the first time. It doesn’t always happen - apparently the association doesn’t always stick, but 99% of the time it does; if I hear a song that I know well, it’s more than likely got a “place” assigned to it. These associations have no rhyme or reason to them - there’s no significant event related to them; it’s not like it’s the first time I heard “our” song with a boyfriend, or anything that major. Just somewhere along the way, I hear the song, the association is made, and I don’t know it until the next time I hear the song.

I don’t know if these quirks are related to synesthesia or not, as I said, I’m only self-diagnosed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.

14

Oo! But you might be!

Synesthesia is actually a normal brain process. It’s only really worthy of a fancy name because the sensory blendings become “obvious” (or rather involuntary) in a minority of individuals. Simply, one sense conjures up another and synesthetes notice it more.

The smell of grapes might make you think of purple, right?

Like that, just with more stuff.

Most synthesetes just figure that they have an idiosyncratic way of looking at the world. Or a vivid imagination that they project with silly notions. It’s no big deal. It’s not abnormal or a disorder or anything.

And make no mistake, it’s not like a sensory hallucination. You could show a synthesete the letter K printed in black ink on a white background. Ask, “what colour is K?” They know the K is black, they can see that it’s black ink on a white background… But the K is also green, because, conceptually K is green.

Purple smells like grapes. The number 8 is female. April is pointy.

It’s synthesising information in a way that’s more interesting to remember, that’s for sure.

I friend of mine did a study on it in school as part of, of all things, a project on mapping (geography). The project was exploring a hypothesis that related the notion that women navigate more intuitively using landmarks to the fact that synthesetes are predominately female (great memory but spatial navigation suffers just a touch). That’s not quite what the hypothesis was, but it was sort of along those lines. Something to do with the relationship of perception and navigation.

I don’t remember anything about the project other than the fact that she found that the the volunteer test subjects in the art and artchitecture faculties scored way, way better on the “synesthesia test” than the engineering students.

15

TellMeI’mNotCrazy , are you me? :slight_smile: I got really weirded out reading your post, because although I don’t associate numbers / letters with either gender or colour etc, every other thing you mentioned I do too!

I remember phone numbers and licence plates mainly, and can remember friends and family’s respective numbers right back to when I was 11 years old; however I am absolutely useless at maths.

I do the visualising whereabouts in books certain parts are too - you just see in your head which section its in and know instantly where to go don’t you?

I also have an annoying ability to remember lyrics to most songs that I’ve heard more than a couple of times, and I almost always associate songs with the place I heard it first.

Do you have the ability to remember useless pieces of trivia too? I’m always in demand when theres a game of Trivial Pursuit going on - I seem to retain the most unimportant information, but cannot seem to remember what I’m doing day by day. :slight_smile:

16

Oh, yeah, how did I forget the trivia part? And I’ll sit there and read Trivial Pursuit cards when I’m bored because it gives me a great edge the next time I play :smiley:

And your last sentence probably strikes the strongest chord with me. A dear friend of mine once said, “I’ve never known anyone so amazingly intelligent who was such an amazing mess.” I am the most disorganized, unfocused, scatterbrained person I know; I’m almost physically incapable of keeping things neat, yet I never actually seem to lose anything. (There’s another good example, I never forget where my keys are. If they’re under my bed, inside a sock, behind a book, I know that that’s where I left them. Ok, clumsy example, but you get the idea). Coworkers used to call me the Hurricane, because I need only look at something for it to become an utter shambles. And yet, I need something to be an utter shambles in order for it to make any sense to me. I try to claim the whole fine line between Genius and Insanity deal but… not so sure I pull that off :wink:

17

There was a lengthy thread on this once before. Absolutely fascinating, and really funny. I’m not much of a searcher in these here parts…maybe someone who’s good at it can dig it up.

18

And, incidently…The number 6 is yellow – and female. Twos are red and male. One is asexual. Five is male and usually purple.

19

I’ve always thought of 2s as black, wearing hats, and are always very serious and no-nonsense in nature.

Back when my friend did her mapping project she showed me a website put together by a major synethete, that demonstrated what a typical website looked like to her. It was really cluttered and distracting. Didn’t like that at all.

I find I tend to know that Ks really are green, but it doesn’t irk me to see them black on a white page. I know that K is really inherently green, by nature, but I don’t see it on the page as green any more than I would see color in a black and white photo. My brain adjusts and says “oh, yeah, black ink, so the green Ks look black on the page.”

This woman’s page made it seem more like the Ks look green all the time.

Too much technicolor for me, it would make me bonkers.

20

I do all of these things, some words have shapes for me, and some letters/numbers have a bit of personality, but not like what is being described here. I noticed those 2’s right away on that website. My book club has started teasing me for my ability to look up almost any passage in a book within seconds.

But I really don’t think I qualify for this. I suppose it exists on a continuum, like (extreme example) autism and so on? Perhaps I’m at the very low end of the spectrum. It sounds neat, I wish I had this.