I believe that I´m synaesthetic. Word means that you see things in colors, music, taste...

For example, I see all the letters and numbers in different colors. Zero is white, six red, four blue etc. And this never changes, the colors relating to a special thing is constant.

Sometimes I see some sentences, words or names in color too. Musical bands, movies, they all come in different, own colors.

To extend the description of my...eh, ability (?)one level, I play drums in a band, and for me, all our songs have a specific form in my mind. Some songs are more edgy, some have a rounded form. Some are dark, some light. It all projects itself like pictures in my brain.

I heard that Kandinsky, the painter, experienced musical color-cascades when hearing Mozart or Brahms, so he painted his visions, which accord to my taste completely.

I don´t hear music or experience taste in the way I apparently experience color and in some way, form.

It would really be interesting discussing this with someone who experiences Synaesthesia.

CLICK HERE for an interesting article regarding the subject. Basically, it's pretty much lumping a certain smell or taste or action etc along with something else. Most people do experience it.
I do myself, but only with a couple things. I have ferrets, and we used to use windex to clean their litter box, which worked really well. However, the smell of the litter was awful, and because i only used windex on the litter box and rarely anywhere else, i found that when i did use windex, i could smell the litter box. Windex became just as much of an awful smell to me as the ferret poop.

Well, hm, okay. I think that your example is of a physical phenomenon. What I am experiencing (colors, shapes) is more inside my head (yeah, I´m a weirdo). No smells or music yet.

I have a friend like that. I never really asked all the details, but I know every number and letter of the alphabet has a different colour to her. We used to play games and try to make words with letter that had a similar colour or see what words came out of certain colour combination, like a rainbow. Rarely made sense


edit to add: I don't believe she called it synaesthesia... I'm not sure. I'll ask her when next I see her. But I know it was diagnose by her doctor.

That is so cool AshKatNah and Burnside that article was interesting.

I wish I could do it maybe I can I'm a believer of mind over matter, but it would not be the same I guess I would have to give everything a meaning with a different sense and try to keep it up, wonder if i could make it permanent so it feels natural.

If you mean synaesthesia, that wouldn't be possible as people with it, are born with it.
But of course, you could work on associating things together like Pavlov did with his dogs (ring a bell when you give a dog food, and with time, he will associate the sound of the bell with food and drool. So he will drool at the sound of the bell, even if the food is not presented).

But like you say you would need to keep it up. And as far as I know, It would only be permanent if the response to a stimuli is reliable (food is always presented with the sound of the bell). Take away the food, and after a while, the bell won't be associated with food, so the dog won't drool anymore. But of course, this is if your trying to make the association. But I find that associations that were accidental (could happen only once) or that weren't intentional (like BurnSide and his windex) have a tendency of being permanent.

When I was 6, my cat gave birth. She was near a piece of leather with a strong leather smell. All you could smell in the room was the leather and the smell of the cat giving birth. Now 21 years later, every time I walk by a leather shop, or smell anything made of leather, I get the image of my cat giving birth and I remember how she smelled.

thanks for the reply Netwolf111 i'm already trying if I could do it by smelling an orange and looking at the color orange and seeing if i could simulate the smell oforages in my head when i see the color orange. A simple and easy experiment if I could fake synaethesia.

Well good luck Let us know your results when you have them

Yes, I believe it is not imprinting. For example, eating apples while watching Titanic and then every time you associate Titanic with apples is not quite the same thing.

Like I said, I see all letters and numbers in distinct colors. Words, sentences, songs come in colors and shapes even though I´ve never encountered them before (meaning I could not have imprinted them from the beginning).

But try not to think of it. You can´t force it to surface. Listen to music that hits you in the soul and thenlook at the song not as a song, but a shape. And then try to figure out what this shape could look like. Or something.

thanks for the advise

I'm not sure how I can "help" you with this. It's very abstract in a manner that some of the forms I meant aren't even describable from brain to and through tongue...

That's really fascinating. I wonder if it's a mental condition or a type of psychic development. Either way, it sounds like perhaps things in your life are a little less boring.

I've heard about it, yes. Saw something about it on tv a few months ago. And I think I do know what you mean.
I can find a low, rumbling sound and anyone will agree it's 'dark', but if I'm correct, that doesn't have to be.

When i am out in the astral, music comes in colours too. And little stars. And stuff.

That's interesting! I've heard of people associating things like this before, but I didn't know there was a word for it.

Several of my friends associate letters with colors. (I think we discussed it once on a writers' list I'm on.) One thought perhaps she did that because of learning the alphabet with those little colored magnetic letters (if you know what I'm talking about?). However, one day she happened to find her old set of letters put away in a box, and none of the colors matched her associations.

I heard about this too. It was on some T.v program about sences.

They said that all of us are born this way (see a color once you smell, hear, feel teast something/ hear, feel, see smells/ or like something can "smell" hard,pointte or "feel" red,blue etc.)and that there are many, MANY differant combanations in which these can acar. When you are a new born your brain has not deviliped enought to saperate your sences. Mostly all (if I can remember correctly) grow out of this in about 6-8 ms after birth.

But some peoples brains dont completly grow out of this in some way(ways) and end up in cases like yours.

Oh, great, so I'm still at best under development? At the age 23?

Its more like your brain missed its chance to completely saperate the sences when it had the chance so your brain just kept on going like that.

Hmmm, njaaee. I don't think it is that way...you see, I associate the same colors every time. Shapes as well, even shapes that I haven't been in contact with as a child. So I don't think it's any childhood mind-leftover or anything....

Synesthesia is still a very new concept. Why it happens is suspected to be linked to a mix up of messages in the brain.
Great article BS.

O.K. maybe some of you still remembered I was trying to experiment with pseudo Synesthesia.

I tried two experiments

1. I tried to associate the color orange with yellow and orange. What I was trying to do was every time I saw the color maybe I would somehow taste oranges. I associated the colors and the fruit every time I had lunch or ate a snake. It worked slightly every time I concentrated on the color yellow and orange or something similar I would taste it in my mouth for a while then it would go away. Also when I saw the color yellow, orange or similar colors and not aware of looking at them I would get this sour taste in my mouth. It got annoying quickly, I never knew I was exposed to such colors on a daily basis, but when I got aware of the unexpected taste it would go away. Anyway it was interesting I stop associating the fruit and the color to see how long it could last. I hope it does not last long I really hate looking at the emoticons .

2. With the suggestion of AshKatNah I associated some music genres I like with colors, this was a bit harder. Anyway I associated blue with hip-hop and red with rock by listening to the genre of various songs and looking at the colors I wanted to see by wearing tinted glasses. I managed to do it when I was aware of the song after 2 weeks of trying it 2 hrs a day, it was kind of strange I thought I was on drugs. But unconsciously I could not really see the colors but feel the colors, because the hip-hop I listen to usually make me feel cool (blue), and rock makes me feel angry (red). I stop this experiment because it was taking to much of my time.

It was fun hobby while it lasted! My sister she was interested in it also but she did not do my experiment she did her own, when she is done I will post what she experienced.

i understand one of the ways to test for synaesthesia, (if you claim to see coloured letters), is to have someone prepare you a grid of 3 letters like a wordsearch. the letters must be random, but somewhere in the grid there should be one of the letters arranged in a group to form an easily recognised symbol like a square.

if the grid is shown to a subject for a few seconds, a synaesthesiac will find the symbol very quickly as the grouped letters will appear as the same colour, but a non-synaesthesiac will find it harder to find the symbol as the grid will appear to be a collection of three random letters.

I was wondering the same thing, this is so weird but i do not believe it is impossible, i have this thing with the color purple, so i kinda understand what you are saying ,