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Comment by _wbux | Hacker News Reader

As someone that sees smells (synesthesia), the answer is yes. The reason I presume is simple, hormone levels change as you age and thus you smell different.

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It really isn't simple. Humans are host to multiple microbial biomes. Why is not understood, but younger people are more biologically active. Hormones are certainly involved, but with smells the bacteria and yeasts living on the skin and in the lungs contribute the most to odor.

How did you notice you were seeing smells (and not everybody is)?

Synesthesia is very hard to explain. It's like explaining color to the blind.

I have mild synesthesia myself - I hear flavors. I can say "I hear flavors", but that doesn't help to tell you what different flavors sound like, because sounds themselves are very hard to describe in words.

The best way to experience something like synesthesia is under the influence of LSD or similar drugs. Not that I recommend it, but it does work. "When colors taste like music" is my favorite description ever.

Do noises prevent you from fully tasting food? (sorry if these questions are boring to you)

I asked this question in my previous comment because I've read about people having synesthesia discovering quite late that no, to most people, smells or figures don't have any specific color or character (depending on the involved senses), during a conversation in which they take for granted that their interlocutor experiences it too.

My father himself kind of realized that contrary to many people, he sees months of the year as a ring, when I spoke about synesthesia, and said that some people having synesthesia may see numbers or years in a specific shape, that does not change across their whole life (and, indeed, he confirmed this point about him).

My wife has fairly classic synesthesia, with letters and numbers having colours and "character" etc. I don't have that, but I do have exactly what you described with numbers, months of the year, and years having an unchanging position in a mental 3-d model. The model for each of these is a bit different, but each could be described as a kind of winding road.

So I wouldn't say I'm synesthetic, but at the same time I can't really point to a clear difference between how my mind associates numbers with locations in a spatial structure, and how my wife's mind associates them with colours.

I also can't really say how those associations are different from the kinds of associations that the mind seems to make to anchor new experiences and information into memory. I'm not explaining that very well, but overall I half think synesthesia seems more like just an atypical manifestation of a probably universal human trait, and less like a rare oddity.

I also have some representation for numbers and for the days of the week, but it would not be 3D, more like 2D, and kind of dynamic, too: the view is relative to the “focused” number / day. Same thing as you, the representations are different for numbers, days of the week and months. The days are horizontal, and months too. Numbers, not so much. Kind of horizontal up to ten, and then vertical up to twenty, and then I would not know how to describe it. There is a kind of break for each tens up to one hundred, with numbers being mostly horizontal but not quiet, and each teen somewhat higher than the previous one. Negatives have the exact same place as there opposite. Days of the months are the same as numbers. Anyway, describing this is kind of pointless. This representation does not feel very precise.

These representations are the same since as far as I can remember. I know that some people I discussed with don't think they have such a representation for numbers or dates. It seems to correspond to the description given in [1].

I think it may have an impact on my memory, at least for dates (but nothing extraordinary). It's usually easy to remember meetings and events in the year, because they somewhat appear in the representation, I don't really need a calendar if there are not too much things scheduled (but I note in a log, just in case, and it's not completely reliable too).

You might have calendar synesthesia [2,3], and maybe me too, but maybe weaker than yours or my father's.

And yeah, it's not something we really see, its a representation that automatically comes into the mind without us trying to at all. Right?

Maybe many people actually have some form of synesthesia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Number_form

[2] https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/the-form-of-synesthesia-where...

[3] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesth%C3%A9sie#Synesth%C3%A9...

Translation of [3]:

> Like “numerical synesthesia”, spatio-temporal synesthesia is a mental map of the days of the week and/or months of the year. People having this kind of synesthesia state that they can “see the time” as a ribbon, a ring or a circle for instance. According to some studies, these people would have particular synaptic connections in their brain, allowing them to live time like a spatial construction.

> Like all the forms of synesthesia, “spatio-temporal” also shows a permanent feature: tested months later, someone having synesthesia will report the same experiences they had previously reported.

Calendar synesthesia sounds like a good match with mine, although for me it's very much a "mind's eye" thing, not like an image projected into my visual field. In article 2, the researchers are said to have asked their subject to recite every third month going backwards, apparently to test that it's not just a mind's eye visualization. I get similar speeds as their test subject, and do go through the months in my mental image to help with the task. However, since for me it is a mind's eye visualization, I'm not sure the test as described is very useful.

The Wikipedia article points out that in theory, all logical synesthetic combinations are possible. I suspect that if you tested broadly for any kind of synesthetic experiences, you'd find a significant portion of the population had them, maybe even the majority.

> for me it's very much a "mind's eye" thing, not like an image projected into my visual field

Same for me.

> In article 2, the researchers are said to have asked their subject to recite every third month going backwards, apparently to test that it's not just a mind's eye visualization

I would be terrible at this task. I don't see the whole year (week) at once. This representation would not be of any help for that. It's here when I am scheduling / planning, or when someone is saying / I'm reading a date.

No, sounds don't prevent me from tasting food. But certain types of sounds are severe migraine triggers for me, and my migraines are definitely related to synesthesia and sensory issues. Over the past 20 years or so, my migraines evolved to mostly go after my sense of smell. It's bizarre, trying to explain that a smell can hurt as much as a burn - worse, it happens with smells I normally like.

Sounds that trigger migraines are mostly certain kinds of echoes - the kind from sharp sounds in large, hard rooms like gymnasiums. I can't really be in a gym with people applauding.

For a friend of mine, different music has different colors. Some music has frightening colors. She can't listen to that music.

Which other similar drugs? I haven't ever had that happen under LSD.

Fascinating. Could you describe what some different smells look like to you?

Smells for me are sphere like with usually one color, but occasionally a gradient between two or three. But the big difference is the texture or peaks and valleys on the shape.

Is it overlaid on your visual field, or more of a parallel mental construct?

Also, are there any particularly noteworthy smells in terms of representation?

I have to admit, the idea of a visual artifact for smells is amazing!

It isn't overlaid in my visual field, more like how you imaging or remember things in your head, very hard to describe. I usually don't pay attention but it is just there.

noteworthy? If I concentrate I can follow the trail of someone with a strong sent that had walked by in the last say 10 minutes like a blood hound. I _know_ when fish is labeled incorrectly when I do my weekly grocery shopping. I know when that person from work says they are quitting smoking, but have had a smoke and are lying. Just walking around outside, the amount of death from animals would surprise you.

Very specifically on the visually side I come across a food item that looks slightly different. No one else notices this change in smell but it is a fun game realizing that maybe the recipe changed ever so slightly or something.

Mostly I learned long ago to not talk about it in person because then people get very curious and then get extremely self conscious.

I don't have this in general, but when you were talking about someone who is quitting smoking I just realised that I have a distinct visual impression of the smell when a smoker really needs to have a smoke. It's kind of yellowish and it falls off them and gathers at their feet like a kind of fog.

I'm a super taster for a few things and I suspect that whatever odor that is, I can detect it better than most. Anyway, thanks for your description!

>>It isn't overlaid in my visual field, more like how you imaging or remember things in your head

So to be more exact you can "see" smells with your mind's eye but you do not actually see anything with your physical eyes when smelling something.

haha yeah it isn't like I "see" a purple haze floating over the grass and moving in the wind or anything.

More when I smell the grass I "see" in my mind what that smell looks like (purplish).

I have synesthesia and I 'see' sounds, but see is a misnomer. There is a visual component to audio but it's not a hallucination in my visual field. It's definitely in my mind's eye, but it is consistent which leads me to believe it's more than just imagination. Some sounds are definitely 'purple'.

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