Debate: Synaesthesia

There was the story of the famous composer (so famous I've forgotten his name) who thought evryone saw colours with sounds. He had to have the whole thing explaioned.

Then there is what i believe to be the more common form when colours trigger childhood tastes. In my case, the green of the Packistani flag makes me tase early 60's chewing gum because of the series of 'Flags of the World' cards.

I am currently conducting an experiment investigating the brain activities during number processing and am looking for number-form synaesthetes (individuals who "see" or visualise numbers in space) to participate. The experiment involves looking at strings of numbers and symbols and making simple key responses. During the experiment, your brain will be scanned using the functional magnetic reasonance imaging (fMRI) technique. This is a paid experiment and takes no longer than 2 hours. You will also receive a picture of your brain. The experiment will take place at the Functional Imaging Lab at 12 Queen Square (London, UK) in February.

Synaesthesia is a joining together of sensations that are normally experienced separately. Some synaesthetes experience colours when they hear or read words, whilst others may experience tastes, smells, shapes or touches in almost any combination. The sensations are automatic and cannot be turned on or off. For more information on synaesthesia, please visit http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/jamie.ward/synaesthesia.htm.

If you think you have synaesthesia or would like to find out more about the research, please contact Joey on . When emailing me, please put "visualise numbers" in the subject field.

Thank you for your attention.
[Edited by: Simon (Moderator) on 01-Feb-2006 12:03]
Please note neither the BBC nor the Open University are in any way connected with this research, and any contact forum users make is entirely at their own risk.

Hi, came across this site by Googling "synaethesia forums", and am rather fascinated by synaethesia, I am a slight synaesthete myself - most obviously with my times tables, which I was drilled on by my Nan, I remember them by the colour they are as well as the numbers, 2X being white, 3X being yellow and so on.

I don't know very much about synaethesia as yet but I do know that it's nothing to do with "being wired up wrong" what pap!!! My boyfriend was telling me the other day that humans used to be able to, in fact always did, experience things through all five senses into a composit experience to better "map" and remember things e.g. the field five miles east that smells of grass with the blue flowers but a tangy acidic taste on the air and sharp grass underfoot as distinct from the other field exactly the same except there is no acidic taste on the air which is five miles in the other direction..... you get the idea.

Humans have simply lost this ability and now rely almost entirely on sight - an evolutionary backward step in my opinion. Synaesthetes are simply those still in tune with all senses. Everyone is a synaethete in some way - it's still back there in the animal brain - remember an occasion when a strong smell has trigged a powerful memory? There you go.

As an artist (oh god the stereotype!) I'd like to explore the relationship between colour and sound but I am absolutely tone deaf - know less than nothing about music and can you believe don't even listen to any, but an orange sky illicited a reaction in sound to me - my advice to the composer would be to use tuning forks as that is what I hear and may take away any emotional element that could cloud experiments when using music that people may know well or recognise.

I have read that certain composers specify certain colours for certain pitches - I wonder if those specifications are universal?

So - I should be interested to know whether synaesthetes who see specific colours for specific pitches see the same colours as all other synaesthetes for those pitches.
- for example is c sharp always red do some people see blue at c sharp and red at some other pitch.
Even more interesting, what happens if a singer sings too sharp, say an eighth tone or a quarter tone above concert pitch c sharp. Does the colour change gradually in the direction of the colour for d natural.
And what happens when an Austrian synaesthete, with a higher concert pitch expectation listens to pitches at UK concert pitch?
Many thanks for any info in this regard
Kind regards
David W Solomons (composer)

Hi, you're not mad. I am synaesthetic and see all letters and numbers as coloured. There is coloured hearing synaethesia too which is what you are describing. Try the book "Synaesthesia the Strangest Thing" by Harrison which goes into this topic in a lot of detail. He rather bizarrely claims this is the most common form of synaesthesia whereas I thought coloured alphanumerics was, but there you go.

The texture aspect of your experince is consistent with other synaesthetics experinces too. I see the number 4 as scarlet with a hard plastic surface and sharp edges and the number 8 as soft pinky brown with a matt cloth like surface and smoky edges.

I'd be interested in knowing if there is evidence for certain personality types having more synaestheia experiences than others. I am myers-briggs INFP which is a right brain type and I have very good spatial reasoning skills. As for the arty creative bias in synasthetes, I am a scientist. Why did the Prof have to make cheap jabs at artists?

No, you're not. I see music too - though not restricted to metals. 3 dimensional shapes with surface properties of colour and texture, so a violin sounds like one of those star-shaped tubes you get in Bombay Mix, but with pointy ends. Quite a lot of bass to mid pitch synthesizer sounds approximately like a nylon covered purple gerkin. And so on.

Over time, these shapes grow/shrink - and oddly, as I listen to different bits of a track, so the relevant shapes become dominant.

It makes listening to music quite distracting!

If your percepts are consistant, i.e. the same voice always sounds like the same metal, then you may have some form of synaesthesia