Humans, it seems, have a very set and specific way of viewing the world: Seeing, hearing, etc. Each of these senses is experienced through a specific body part. One does not, for example, see a brilliant light-show of colours every time they listen to music. People do not taste different flavors when they meet new people. Or do they? That would completely undermine the precise system of observation that the world has come to understand.
Synesthesia, or blurring of the senses, is a condition that is believed to affect roughly 4% of the population in the UK and has been recorded world-wide. People who have synesthesia might connect specific experiences to unrelated feelings. This may happen in numerous different ways. For example, one of the most common forms of synesthesia, Grapheme-Colour Synesthesia, causes a person to connect letters or numeral digits with colors.
I, personally, find this form of synesthesia very interesting. People with this form of synesthesia are typically much better at remembering specific names or word differences because of their sense of colour. One might be able to discern the difference between homophones because of the way they observe the words. This can be observed in the following diagram:
Plane Plain
The words evoke two very different colour experiences. Besides the aforementioned Grapheme-Colour Synesthesia, there are many other ways that synesthesia can change someone’s perception of reality. Some of these may be in seeing something while listening to something, or tasting different flavors when seeing different things. What’s interesting about synesthesia is that it is so different from person to person.
Synesthesia is a rather confusing condition on a number of different levels. The main one, however, is that scientists are, as of yet, unsure of what causes synesthesia. Are we born with the ability? Is it a mutation that is given genetically, or do all people possess the potential to experience the senses together? Is it a combination of both? So far, all theories have been proposed and supported with data, but none have been definitively proven. Synesthesia still remains an interesting, yet mysterious part of life.
I’m very interested in this condition, and I found your article easily summarized Synesthesia but also shows the incredible depth that the condition reaches. Everything that we can think of we’ve linked to a sense, but these people have them intertwined in such complex ways, and we don’t have the faintest idea of what causes it! The use of colored font to show how people with synesthesia can remember spelling better was presented so well, it’s one of those things that you have to really see it to understand, it can’t be explained, and you did exactly that with the colors. I had some prior knowledge of this and was not disappointed by the article, everything is written plainly, but without being dumbed down. If you are really interested in the topic, neuroscientist David Eagleman does great work on the subject and even has an entire book written on it called “Wednesday is Indigo Blue”.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/03/12/174132392/synesthetes-really-can-taste-the-rainbow
I found this topic very interesting, because I had read a book earlier that had a character with this condition. I learned many new things from this article, and I learned more from the hyperlink website as well, such as that there are many different types of Synesthesia. There is the association of colors, tastes, sounds, etc. when encountering specific things. For some people, this can be helpful. For example, a certain reaction could help you remember things in school when studying for tests. Why Synesthesia occurs is still not completely understood, and many people have different theories.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-21060207