March 21, 2005
Test Your Synaesthesia:
Dear Kathryn
I've been thinking about the way you see colours that go with each number, and also colours for each day of the week. It's called synaesthesia- but you probably know that- and you seem like the have number-colour synaesthesia (which is common). There are other kinds like sound-colour synaesthesia or even sound-taste synaesthesia (people who get a taste whenever they hear certain sounds!). Anyway we were talking about it at Burning Man, maybe, or at Christmas, and I seemed to be able to guess the same associations between numbers and colours as you actually see, even though I know I'm definitely not synaesthetic (did you know that synaesthesia is much more common in women than men?). So I thought what I was probably doing was remembering a synaesthetic association from childhood (did you know that synaesthesia is far more common in children?), and that was how I was getting a colour for each number- from memory .
So, next thought, is there a way to distinguish between someone who just has a memory of an association- or is just imaging an association- from someone who really is seeing actual colours when they are shown numbers? Is there, in other words, a test we can do to check if you are really synaesthetic? And of course there is, so I thought I'd write to you and tell you about it and you can have a go.
* * *
We'll get to the test in a sec, but first here's how it works. It works because colours are obvious. They jump out at you, they're a kind of visual building block (there's an early part of the visual system devoted to colours, and neural specialisation is always a good indicator of importance). So, say if you look at a collection of black things and some of them are red you don't need to search - the red things just jump out at you. Something we (I mean psychologists) sometimes call 'pop-out' (technical, eh?). You can demonstrate this to yourself like this. Your job will be to look at a collection of black symbols, and spot the red coloured ones. Click on this link to open the image in a new window. What you should find is that you don't have to look at them one by one ("what colour is that one? black. Move on. What colour is that on? black. Move on" etc etc), insteaad you just instantly spot the ones which are coloured red. They pop-out at you. No effort required, the answer is just delivered direct to your conscious awareness.
So here's the test of synaesthesia (well, it's a test of number-colour synaesthesia at least, which is one kind you have. Do you have any others?). If numbers really do create an actual experience of colour for you, then different numbers should pop out at you in the same way that different colours should. The trick is to control for the different shapes that numbers normally have. So what some very clever people did [2] was use two numbers that have the same shape, 5 and 2, but are each the reverse of each other upsidedown. Anyway, yes, the test. Your job is similar to last time: look at the image here and try and spot the numbers which are different from all the others. If you can do it as automatically and easily as with the first image then you are really synaesthetic and when you see numbers you really do get an honest-to-goodness perceptual experience of colour. If you can't, well then it's not a perceptual phenomenon, but more of a memory and imagination phenomenon (which doesn't make it not real, it just makes it less unusual).
So this is one way you can confirm to yourself, or test someone else to see if they are properly synaesthetic. Another way is to put them in a brain scanner, and you can see that, for example, numbers really do activate the visual cortex [1].
I've put some links and references at the end here, in case you want to read more about it all. It's really gripping stuff - I'm convinced this is going to be one of the areas of psychology where loads of progress is made in the next few years. The first Ramachandran paper [2] is a great place to start and the second one [3] gives some interesting thoughts on why synaesthesia occurs - perhaps because of excessive 'cross-wiring' between different bits of the brain, or, more accurately, a failure to remove cross wiring which everyone has in infancy (brain development after birth actually involves killing off brain cells that aren't used- 'neural pruning'- rather than growing new ones). This would also explain why synaesthesia is more common in the young. There's all sorts of interesting things discussed in the paper, including the higher incidence of creativity reported in synaesthetes and the idea that synaesthesia helped humans develop language (because by connecting different senses it gives a kind of natural symbolism. Me and Matt talked about this more in the book [Hack #50]). The other paper I've put in the references is one by a guy called Benny Sannon, who discusses synaesthesia created by taking psychoactives, and his own "extensive, firsthand, experience" with Ayahuasca - a powerful kind of loopy juice which has traditional uses in the indigenous tribal cultures of the upper Amazonian. [4]
Anyway, hope this has been fun for you. I'll give you a call soon
Love
tom
Links:
the taste of music (mindhacks.com)
Fantastic bibliography of different researchers and their theories of synaesthesia (and links to many PDFs) here
This guy has done out the numbers and the alphabet so you can see if you get how they look for him
Matt Webb's notes on the 'phenomenology of synaesthesia' paper
References:
- Elias, L. J., Saucier, D. M., Hardie, C., & Sarty, G. E. (2003). Dissociating semantic and perceptual components of synaesthesia: behavioural and functional neuroanatomical investigations. Cognitive Brain Research, 16(2), 232-237. PDF of draft here
- Ramachandran, V.S. and Hubbard, E.M. (2001), Synaesthesia: Awindow into perception, thought and
language, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(12), pp. 3–34. PDF here
- Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. and Edward M. Hubbard. (2003). The phenomenology of synaesthesia. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(8): 49–57. PDF here
- Shanon, B. (2003). Three stories concerning synaesthesia - A commentary on Ramachandran and Hubbard. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, 69-74. PDF here
—tom.
Posted at March 21, 2005 08:30 AM
Youe link for the 2nd image (the one of 5's and 2's) should go to popout2.html. It currently goes to popout1.html.
Comment posted at April 20, 2005 04:57 PM
Thanks for pointing that out. It worked right if you clicked on it for a pop-up, but the actual link (ie what you were told it linked to if you hovered over it with the mouse) was to the wrong place. Which was a bit confusing for me while i tried to fix it, but it's done now...
Comment posted at April 20, 2005 05:10 PM
I'm kind of confused. It doesn't happen with the week days, or with other things, I only experience it when I look at numbers. Does that mean I have it, a small bit of it, or was it like you said, the memory one. I always get a bitter taste in my mouth, when a notes played wrong, because I play piano, clarinet and violin. I just really want to know. I'm fascinated in this stuff too. I love to research about the human mind, although I think mine is a little screwed up. I don't see things like other people, no, I don't need glasses. I mean I just kind of see things differently. When someone asks me to picture an apple in my mind, I can't actually make a picture. I can think of what I know one looks like, yellowish, with splotches of red on it, and a bruise, but I can't actually see the picture in my mind. Another time they asked me I thought of a book, because it had an apple on the cover, but I thought of the book first. What does that mean, what's wrong with me!
Comment posted at September 16, 2007 02:40 AM
Oh, do you know anything about knowing how people feel. Like say someone had lost a loved one, and they were hurt. You know they'd feel so sad. I've lost someone deer, but not anyone extremely close. The weird thing is, I can imagine how much they're going through. I can feel what they're feeling. I feel it, as though it happened to me. Sometimes when I feel it, I start to cry, even though nothings happened to me. Is that normal? For me, it's like walking down a hallway and feeling everyone's pain, happiness, love, care, friendship, and hate. I can literally feel it, and it bothers me. It's almost like knowing what they're thinking, except not in words. I could look at a person, and tell what they're thinking right away. Although, I tried to avoid as much eye contact as possible, and for some reason, I don't know why; I end up looking at their mouths. Is that abnormal? I mean I could look any where else, but I choose to look at there mouths.
Comment posted at September 16, 2007 02:46 AM
So I have this thing where sounds make me feel touch. When people write with mechanical pencils near me I get the sensation of sandpaper on my fingertips often to the point where I cannot touch anything. The sound of styrofoam makes me ultra sensitive to touch and I even sometimes get cold. There are many other sounds that trigger senses. is this synaethesia or am I just crazy?
Comment posted at November 29, 2007 04:42 PM
So I have this thing where sounds make me feel touch. When people write with mechanical pencils near me I get the sensation of sandpaper on my fingertips often to the point where I cannot touch anything. The sound of styrofoam makes me ultra sensitive to touch and I even sometimes get cold. There are many other sounds that trigger senses. is this synaethesia or am I just crazy?
Comment posted at November 29, 2007 04:43 PM
Hey everyone! Check this: www.tukan.extra.hu !! There is a great synesthesia test - you can vote for the color of each letter and number and see statistics. really interesting.
Comment posted at September 1, 2008 09:08 PM
Dear Kathryn,
My name is Mackenzie, and I’ve only recently discovered synesthesia. I came across the term when my Science teacher mentioned it vaguely during one of those, “Getting Off-Topic” lessons of his last year. It wasn’t until now that I decided I wanted to try to use it in a science fair project. Even though many of the science articles I’ve read are complex and, honestly barely comprehensible, I’ve come to a basic understanding of this, “condition”. (I’m not quite sure what category it falls under you see.)
In one of the articles I’ve read, someone mentioned something about “A steady development” in the numbers of people with synesthesia. So it got me thinking, “What if all people have it? What if all people have it, but they have different levels of intensity of it?” I sometimes have the odd sensation of seeing certain images when I hear certain music. (Though these probably don’t have anything to do with synesthesia) But isn’t synesthesia the brain working to make connections with senses, details, and other such things? I’m sorry if I seem ignorant of this topic, but all of those articles meant for scholars and scientists are really confusing for me!
My new “theory”, if I may call it that, was encouraged after I found another article about the hypothesis that all infants have this mix of senses. I actually saved the link to this article! Here it is:
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-27-baron_cohen.html
Anyway, after deciphering this new view, I wondered if synesthesia stuck with some people more than others. (Maybe another explanation, though I can’t really understand quite how this would work out with all of the neurological things…)
So, I sort of sketched out a plan for my experiment. My mother is a teacher, and she has 93 kids she teaches, (All divided into three separate blocks thank goodness!) So, I asked her if she would be willing to give copies of a certain test to her kids, and a few other classes as well. I’m looking for signs of synesthesia, no matter how small. We’d give the test sometime around October, and then the exact same quiz sometime around January, to make sure that they had the same answers etc. Altogether, this would be roughly, 270 different people taking the quiz. (I may keep 200 to keep it a round number though.)
I just need to somehow plan this test, and really, this experiment thoroughly. I’m not sure if anyone I know can help me, and I didn’t know if you could give advice, a personal account for “research”, or something of that nature. Please contact me soon!!!!!
E-mail: Funnyfiz@yahoo.com
Comment posted at September 18, 2008 01:30 AM
Dear Kathryn,
My name is Mackenzie, and I’ve only recently discovered synesthesia. I came across the term when my Science teacher mentioned it vaguely during one of those, “Getting Off-Topic” lessons of his last year. It wasn’t until now that I decided I wanted to try to use it in a science fair project. Even though many of the science articles I’ve read are complex and, honestly barely comprehensible, I’ve come to a basic understanding of this, “condition”. (I’m not quite sure what category it falls under you see.)
In one of the articles I’ve read, someone mentioned something about “A steady development” in the numbers of people with synesthesia. So it got me thinking, “What if all people have it? What if all people have it, but they have different levels of intensity of it?” I sometimes have the odd sensation of seeing certain images when I hear certain music. (Though these probably don’t have anything to do with synesthesia) But isn’t synesthesia the brain working to make connections with senses, details, and other such things? I’m sorry if I seem ignorant of this topic, but all of those articles meant for scholars and scientists are really confusing for me!
My new “theory”, if I may call it that, was encouraged after I found another article about the hypothesis that all infants have this mix of senses. I actually saved the link to this article! Here it is:
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-27-baron_cohen.html
Anyway, after deciphering this new view, I wondered if synesthesia stuck with some people more than others. (Maybe another explanation, though I can’t really understand quite how this would work out with all of the neurological things…)
So, I sort of sketched out a plan for my experiment. My mother is a teacher, and she has 93 kids she teaches, (All divided into three separate blocks thank goodness!) So, I asked her if she would be willing to give copies of a certain test to her kids, and a few other classes as well. I’m looking for signs of synesthesia, no matter how small. We’d give the test sometime around October, and then the exact same quiz sometime around January, to make sure that they had the same answers etc. Altogether, this would be roughly, 270 different people taking the quiz. (I may keep 200 to keep it a round number though.)
I just need to somehow plan this test, and really, this experiment thoroughly. I’m not sure if anyone I know can help me, and I didn’t know if you could give advice, a personal account for “research”, or something of that nature. Please contact me soon!!!!!
E-mail: Funnyfiz@yahoo.com
Comment posted at September 18, 2008 01:30 AM
Hey together, you also can test your synaesthesia with the new synaesthesia-tests available on http://www.synaesthesia.com. There are also some new features like the "out-in-space-test" where you can draw you year and your week. Recommend this test to your family and your friends. There are also workshops and informations. Have a look on it.
Greetings.
Comment posted at June 9, 2009 10:23 AM
