Synæsthesia: How to Taste Thoughts Without LSD

So I was reading an article about synæsthesia the other day and couldn’t believe my nostrils. Synæsthesia is the non-debilatating condition where your senses are switched, i.e. you can hear colors, smell sounds, and even sense emotions in numbers. As weird as it tastes, it is thought to be fairly common. It goes underdiagnosed because synæsthetes are able function normally while seeing music and feeling colors and are typcially surprised to find out that this is unique to them. Preview this free test to take after registering to see if you’re one. Also, check out this excerpt from and the site for a book written from a synæsthetes’ sensorial perception of the world.

posted by Brian Giera on 5 May 2007
| permalink | +del.icio.us | +digg | +reddit

comment

  1. One of my professors in the psychology department here at Notre Dame has done some research with synesthetes and memory. Apparently they get very agitated if you present them with a list of words where the color of the text does not match their mental representation of what the color should be. That being said, they do have better than average memory spans. I wish I had this condition.

    — Stacey Williams · May 7, 10:55 AM · #

  2. You know, one thing that didn’t really fit in my article is that after my research I think I might have (the most mildest case ever of) synaesthesia, called ordinal linguistic personification, unfortunately no colors or tasty thoughts, though. For instance, I have always thought that 2 and 8 were very mean and evil and that 4 regularly joined in on their cruelty. 6 is nice, but very shy. 3 and 9 are really good friends and trustworthy. 7 was indifferent of 2 and 4, but scared of being “near” 8. 1 is very boastful and ignorant. 0 is wise and mysterious. 5 is too serious. I really only had “personalities” for digits, which is why I say I have a “mild case,” but there are other examples of this personification that I can think of, too. Weird, huh? Thanks for your info and contribution. Enjoy duenos, spread the word!

    — Brian Giera · May 7, 11:46 AM · #

  3. I actually have a friend that has synaesthsia. She sees letters in colors, and therefore gets upset and confused when people write in the “wrong” colors for her. She also then is able to memorize crazy amounts of information (like 400 digits of pi) because she can create color as well as other patterns. It’s also rumored that George Gershwin had synaesthesia and that’s why he wrote Rhapsody in Blue.

    — Anne Sharkey · May 11, 03:38 PM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.