![]() ![]() ![]() I hope to be able to witness the day that science discovers how some brains can naturally link senses to each other, and how they assign each stimuli the extra attributes they receive. This can also cause issues, however – in A Mango-Shaped Space, Mia’s family finally begins to take her seriously when she begins having severe problems with math in school (because each number and letter has its own color, she can’t work out more complicated math problems). This comes naturally to synthetics, and many say they can’t imagine trying to keep things straight with just one sense. Pairing of two stimuli to strengthen mental imagery is something the rest of us have to work at, and many studies have been done to document the huge memory boost we can enjoy when we use the techniques successfully. Physiological studies have found proof of synthesia – brain activation in the areas that people claim to have the extra sensory input are backing up their claims.Īlthough it can’t yet be pinpointed how and why the perception processing of some people works in this way, it should be easy to spot, now that we are almost through our first cognitive psychology course, the evolutionary benefits to such a skill. They are not mentally ill, and in fact can have greater creative skills, better memories, and higher intelligence. Although they can occasionally feel overwhelmed by a stimulus causing strong reactions from multiple senses (such as a screech of a chalkboard causing one to see seering red slashes), most people with the condition feel special due to their ‘heightened ability’, and are not at all interested in having their senses separated. ![]() In the past, scientists have brushed off people talking about ‘the color of that sound’ as attention-seekers, or possibly suffering from other mental illnesses, a conclusion that synthetics strongly disagree with. Sensations of taste, emotion, or touch may also be elicited in some (although this is not as common).Īnother factor in the limited amount of knowledge we have of this condition is that the recognition of synthesia is a relatively new concept. People may experience multiple forms of synthesia or just one. There is a wide scale of how strong this reaction is. Another common form is color-auditory where sounds, voices, or music will produce colors. ![]() In this, stimuli (letters, numbers, shapes) will produce colors, in different shades and/or patterns. The most common form of synthesia is what I described above, color-graphemic synthesia. Synthesia is a unique example of mental imagery and perception – people’s bottom-up processing reaches across their senses, and they often have problems separating the two when it comes to memory.ĭue to the wide variety of sense combinations (some estimates have as many as 35 combinations), only a fraction of types of synthesia that has been self-reported has been scientifically studied. The book is a fictional but well-researched (and highly acclaimed by synthetics) account of a teenage girl and her family’s journey as she is diagnosed with the condition. Later, a friend of mine who also works in education and counseling recommended the book A Mango-Shaped Space, by Wendy Mass. I first heard about synthesia, a condition where people’s sense perceptions can blend together (ie, they may perceive things like smells, numbers, letters, words, or sounds as colors), on Allie Brosh’s blog Hyperbole and a Half. ![]()
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