Anyone know about synaesthesia?

[FrannyandZooey]

I know there are a few synaesthetes on here - I wondered if anyone could point me in the direction of a good book or other materials to learn more about the subject. I was told yesterday that our brains all work synaesthetically up to the age of about 4 months, but I need a reference for this piece of information, and am interested in learning more about it in general.

Thanks in advance if you can help.

Ooh am very jealous.
Franny,Andrew lloyd Webber (no,bear with me) was writing in Telegraph last week,saying that someone had told him never to listen to music on acid as thereafter it would never sound as good.
He was talking about Kandinsky and synaesthesia too.

I want to take acid but am too scared.
Sort my pleasures elsewhere instead.

Ah,croosed posts Perce.

I see tham in my mind, i. e. if they are written down on paper, I don't see colours on the paper, but in my mind. I am very "verbally" orientated. I had a discussion once with some friends about what you think of if someone says "apple" for example. Most friends said they would see a picture of an apple in their minds. My other, non-synaesthetic sister said she would think of the taste of an apple or the crunching as you bit into it. I would see the letters a p p l e in my mind, in their colours, which for me are dark blue (a), yellow(p), light green (l), and light pink(e).

I learned to read quite early in life, my Mum taught me before I went to school, so I can't really ever remember not being able to read or not seeing letters and numbers as colours.

When I was very young I just assumed everyone saw them as colours, then when I found out they didn't, I assumed I was just a bit odd! Then I heard a programme on the radio about synaesthesia, and thought Oh yes, that's me. It wasn't until then, when I talked to my sister I found she had it too.

Moondog re listening to music on acid maybe he could have just put an old vynil record on the turntable and then wondered whether it was playing or not

I see every word I say as written as I say it (so that it really freaks me if I find out someone's name is spelt differently to how I thought,as with our neighbour/builder who after years,discovered was a Bryan not a Brian which really threw me!)

It's all boring black and white though.

psml zippi

When I was a child I definitely was synaesthetic - though of course I didn't realise it at the time. All the digits had colours, as did some letters when they weren't embedded in words. Line drawings had texture and smells often had colour. But it gradually faded as I got older. I can't help wondering, though, whether this sensory crossover wasn't a wonderful benefit, as I had an amazing visual memory which served me exceedignly well. A few years ago I found some of my O-level exercise books and tried drawing some of the line-diagrams from memory, and as I was doing it the memory of the texture-sensations associated with the diagrams returned and the drawings became more and more accurate.

I really miss it.

The colour of a particular word will depend on the letters in it. The letters that determine the colour the most seem to be the initial letter, and the vowels, for me. Although sometimes a word (particularly names) seems to have a colour which it shouldn't have if you look at its constituent letters. e.g. Thursday is for some reason dark pink, although it doesn't contain any pink or red letters.

With numbers, they are different for me depending on whether they are a digit, or a word, e.g. 4 is dark red, but four is brown.

Somuch,does it just happen with individual words that yuo stop and think aboutor does it also happen when you or someone else speaks at conversation pace?

I know what you mean Moondog, except for me, changing the spelling also often changes the colour of the word.

So, Ann is a dark blue, but Anne is a slightly lighter more airforce blue colour.And Catherine is dark pink, but Katherine is yellowy orange.

It happens with any words, but when people are talking, I don't really think about it much, because I am so used to it, but I just know what colour all the letters are. It doesn't overload my brain or anything like that. I guess its just like looking at objects, you don't stop all the time to notice what colours they are,you are just generally aware.

I could see some music once when I was off my head on e...it was like water...

I sometimes see vague colours in music as well, e.g. anything by Sibelius is bluey greeny and Mahler is brown and green. But I don't see different notes or keys in different colours, unlike the composer Scriabin, who apparently had that type of synaesthesia.

I am synaesthetic for days of the week, months and also have numberlines etc.
Monday - green,
Tuesday - pale yellow,
Wednesday - bright yellow,
Thursday - grey
Friday - rusty brown
Saturday - black
Sunday - yellow.

It's interesting that everyone who has posted their week sees black on Saturday.

this is a good website.

Do those of you with synaesthesia have children with it? Ds2 (6) sees all his alphabet in colours (which I don't) and days of the week too. I wrote down the colours to see if he was making it up but it was consistent. I'm going to keep the list and see if it's the same when he's 10 .

My ds, who is 5 and knows all his letters and numbers very well, definitely doesn't have it.

There have been a couple of programmes on Radio 4 about this - the last one I heard was, I think, on Tuesday 20 June, at around seven thirty pm, possibly.

I too am quite , and I'm interested to see that Kandinsky was.

Read some stuff by Donna Williams.- She has a website I think its DonnaWiliams.net She describes veyr well how her first language isn't really verbal, for her its movement and sound (the sound of things dropping etc).

Not sure what ds1's first language is. Not words that's for sure.

It's common in autism. A growing literature on it, but obviously hard for many with it to describe. Donna Williams is a good starting point though.

an article here . Also Lucy Blackman who describes how she often can't see something until she has touched it.

It's interesting it's common in autism I was quite struck when you mentioned an autisitc sense of smell.

I started writing something about my sense of smell but then scrubbed it..but I think it is heightened and tells a story

maybe that's what hunker meant when she could taste melon someone else was eating..it's her synaesthesia

I mean you can smell something and it tells you a story

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The smell thing is very common. The olfactory bulb (the bit of the brain that decodes smell) has lots of connection with the limic system. This area of the brain is linked to memory and also emotional responses. This is why smells can be so evocative of memory and mood.

Oliver Sacks is a synaesthete as well, he say we all are to a degree. What do you think of when you see old kent road or mayfair?

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Well, to me Old Kent Road is dark brown and light pink, and Mayfair is red and blue.

The point Sacks was making was that there is learned association, and then there is synesthesia. In the latter you can show that different parts of the brain 'fire' when stimulation occures. So when they smalle something, and 'hear' a sound, the auditory centres are firing.