What does the nightingale’s song taste like? What color is Thursday? Where is the number 8 and how is the 40 degree angle colored? If you are able to answer these questions, then you are most likely a synesthete. Experts explain what synesthesia is and how to live with it.
Intersensory connections
When exposed to one of the senses – for example, hearing or vision – a person receives not only the expected sensation, but also an additional, “bonus” one. This phenomenon is called synesthesia. With synesthesia, music can be colored, letters can be smooth or rough to the touch, colors smell—there are many options.
This does not mean that a synesthete cannot listen to the radio and drive at the same time because colored sounds interfere. Most users of synesthetic perception do not see or hear additional effects in reality – the stimulus causes rather a sensation of color or smell, their vivid image.
Although rare “projective type” synesthetes do see color effects. Recent joint studies at the Universities of Grenada and Malaga (Spain) have shown that the aura of people or objects, which only a few see, can be precisely a manifestation of projective type synesthesia.
From pathology to normal
Recently, synesthesia as a phenomenon has greatly increased its status. At first it was “something inexplicable.” Then, in the XNUMXth century, they spoke of it as a pathology. As the number of studies increased, synesthesia has moved into the category of “phenomena”, variants of the norm, characteristic of only one percent of the population. Then the percentage was raised to four, and it was believed that among women there were six times more synesthetes than among men.
Synesthesia is an additional way to creatively process and remember information.
“A recent study by Julia Simner, Jamie Ward and their colleagues called into question both positions,” writes neurologist Oliver Sacks. “Using a random sample of nearly 700 subjects and objective tests to separate genuine from pseudo-synesthesia, they found that one in 23 people had some form of synesthesia—the most common of these being “colored” days. There are no significant gender differences among individuals with synesthesia.”
“In the mid-90s, judging by the results of studies, the synesthetic sensation of colored letters occurred in one person in 2000, and more recently, one in a hundred people,” confirms the conclusions of Dr. Sacks Chrétien van Kempen.
Figurative thinking gene
It has almost been proven that congenital synesthesia is genetic in nature. Does this dramatic increase in the number of people with special perceptions mean that synesthesia is some kind of evolutionary advantage that allowed the carriers of the gene to pass it on to a large number of descendants? Perhaps the number of synesthetes has always been quite high: the recent growing interest in the average person’s own psyche has allowed many to become aware of themselves as people with a special perception.
Recent trends in the study of the phenomenon of synesthesia allow us to speak of it not as an “intersensory connection”, but as a connection between thinking and feelings, an additional way of creative processing and memorization of information. “The mechanisms underlying synesthesia contribute to creativity, so synesthesia and creativity are intertwined. But the relationship between them is not necessarily causal,” says Professor Lawrence Marks.
It is not surprising that now, when the amount of information has increased significantly, and creative professions have become the most in demand, it is synesthetes who receive, if not an evolutionary, then a career advantage. Those who, in a different social situation, would not even think to notice and develop this property in themselves, in the modern world find it a good help in work or study.
Using the Gift
“The lines that I write line up in colorful lines. Returning to what I wrote, I correct not the style of the text, but its color scheme. It is important that any one color does not stand out too much in it. I often replace words with synonyms so that they more harmoniously decorate (in a color sense) my lines, ”writes journalist and synesthesia researcher Maureen Seeberg in her book Testing the Universe. Many grapheme-color synesthetes note that they owe their literacy precisely to a special perception. They just see that “the word looks wrong” and fix it.
“I see numbers arranged in space in a certain order, on something like a matrix,” says Aleksey (42, mathematician). — When I need to solve a problem in my mind, I choose numbers from my table. If I forget the conditions, I just need to look at the matrix to remember. It seems to stand out.”
Of course, not everyone is destined to become Kandinsky, who painted the music he saw and became famous. Not everyone, like Nabokov, will become a writer. In order to become great, synesthesia alone is clearly not enough. But a new metaphor, a different way of perceiving the world, a fresh look is exactly what modern society craves. So ask yourself: what color is Thursday?