Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia? | Hacker News Reader

Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?

theatlantic.com

31 pointssantadays31 comments

I have synesthesia in real life. For me, I have one of the "most common" forms, between words and colors. Specifically, I have a color-word synesthesia ("association" is not the right word here) between days of the week and colors. For example, Friday for me is a "medium green", Tuesday is a "light blue" and Wednesday is a sort of "soft red"... Every day has its own color, though I must mention that Saturday and Sunday are both white, though different shades. Each of these colors also has a "brightness" to it that is kind of impossible to describe in terms of regular colors, though colors seen on a computer display get close. I also have some mild synesthesia between specific letters of the alphabet (but not all of them), as well as every single-digit number. It's worth a mention that I can't think of specific instances of this synesthesia helping me remember anything, though I am pretty good with remembering numbers, and it needs to be said that I don't know what it's like without synesthesia, so I can't offer a comparison.

Very much related to this post, I can't say whether or not learning synethesia is possible. It's so hard to describe the synesthesia between words-colors, to such a degree that I'm inclined to say that any learning would be simple association, and not the synesthesia that I experience myself. For example, when I read the word "Wednesday" it's a very specific color of red with a certain bright softness about it. I "see" that color every time I hear or see and then comprehend the idea of Wednesday. When I see "Wednesday" as a collection of letters, there's no color, but when I summon the internal idea/concept of Wednesday, then the color is there. See how retarded I sound? That's how confusing the internal "association" is, and why I am inclined to believe that "one does not simply learn synesthesia"...

Whoa! I think I may be having a weaker version of the same type of synesthesia that you have described. I tend to "imagine" colours when I think of certain letters, numbers, days or months. I don't feel this way for each one of them though.. for eg. 2 = red, 4 = green, 5 = pink, 6 = blue, 7 = purple whereas nothing for 0, 1, 3, 8 and 9 (may be black?). Similarly, E = yellow, F = pink, saturday = green, march = yellow etc. Also, I don't "see" colours while reading text, just when I happen to think more about a letter, number or word.

All this while I was thinking this is common and normal in all people like photographic memory or something. Learnt something new today :-)

Yes, that's exactly it! Some letters are not there (actually most letters), and I know that some numbers are "weaker" than others. I also know that some of these color synesthetics have changed over time. For example, I know that the number 2 for me didn't always trigger darkish pink, but I can't remember what it used to be. Also, I have lost synesthesia for G, H, and J, which used to be yellowish, yellowish, and green, but now don't "do" anything.

If you are experiencing more of a one-to-one idea/color analogue instead of a simple kind of "association" between an idea and a color, then what you are describing is highly likely to be similar to what I have, which is word-color synesthesia, the most common form of the "condition". For example, it's much more intrinsic than the simple association we normally feel between, say, the word "money" and the color green. That's a simple word-color association. When I see the word "March", I "feel/see/experience" the color blue (and vice versa, though this vice versa is a bit weird because I'm not so good at distinguishing individual colors).

Yes, it's different from the money-green association. I wonder what made me think it was normal and everyone else thought this way too!

Yup, I have this as well. 1 is black, 2 is yellow, 3 is green, 4 is orange, and so on. It has a side-effect: it's easier to remember phone numbers because I visualize sequences of colors (239 is yellow-green-brown, etc).

I can understand something like a phone number, where each digit is singular and stands apart from the others. If you're saying that about composite numbers (like 'two hundred and thirty nine'), you're the first person I've met claiming that word/number-color synesthesia helps them remember composites/sums.

Do you experience this while reading foreing languages, once you know the meaning of the words?

Yes, I know Swedish and German, and this is the case for those words, as well. The "input" is irrelevant as long as it ends up with my thinking of the concept of "Friday" or whatever. In the case of foreign languages, foreign word goes in, "Friday" idea/color comes to mind. It's also the same if I look at a date on a calendar and see that a certain date is on a Friday, but not with the specific word "Friday". Of course, this is the same case for all the other days of the week, numbers, and the few letters. What is also interesting is if the "input" is a color very similar to the synesthetic "color/idea" for "Friday", I will also immediately think of the word/idea for "Friday" (in English). So it sort of can go back and forth.

Also, I will say that as individual letters or numbers "disappear" into a word, I do not get the synesthesia associated. So like "fourteen thousand" does not trigger the synesthesia I get for those individual digits, nor does "Amnesia" trigger my "strong" synesthesia for A, M and N. I hope this makes sense. I'm really trying to describe it as best I can.

You used the words 'mindset' and 'undercurrent' to describe these sensations. Do the sensations occur visually taking space and having orientations? If you think of trigger concepts sequentially do the colors align to form a spacial sequence. Is there any way a normal person can understand what you 'see'? Anyone here who can add something on this because its a fascinating aspect of our consciousness.

I'll try my best. Okay, imagine a bicycle. Question: 'Where' in your mind did that happen? How was it 'oriented'?

Next, imagine a bicycle. Now imagine an orange. Now imagine a vest. Now imagine a bicycle. Question: Was there any sort of "spatial sequence" or alignment thereupon? Try that sequence again, but imagine them along some "orientation" or "position".

Now, imagine a bicycle three meters behind you.

See what I mean? This is exactly how synesthesia happens for me. Most of the time, the "sensation" is just there. Formless, positionless, orientationless, in the "cyberspace" of my consciousness. It's possible to give the synesthesia "orientation" or "position", but most of the time it occurs to me wherever its synesthetic counterpart occurs, usually with the same "position" in my internal operating "cyberspace". This is what I meant earlier when I said something like "when it's there, it's just there, but if it were on my left hand, it would be on my left hand"...

I hope this makes sense for you. If it does not, feel free to ask me whatever will help you understand, or give me directions for how to explain it like I did.

I have the same thing with weekdays, different colors though.

You could argue everyone who is literate has synesthesia - I can not look at symbols representing the alphabet and not hear the associated phonemes in my head. Makes me wonder what you see if you scan the brains of people who are born-deaf when reading, actually - which parts of the brain light up? Oh, and when reading logographic alphabets like Chinese of course.

Subvocalization [1] -- "hearing the words" -- actually varies between people. Anecdotally: I myself don't "hear" anything while reading. There is apparently some evidence that all, or almost all, people subvocalize, but that for many people it happens subconsciously and involuntarily, and that you can detect it only by monitoring the vocal chords. There was an HN thread discussing it recently [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5278039

I never heard of subvocalizatin before, fascinating! Any (non-historical) reasons it is considered separate from synesthesia?

Because it's a separate phenomenon? Synesthesia is explicitly about different senses crossing paths, and does not apply only to reading. For example, synesthetes might see colours in conjunction with smells.

So how is "hearing a visual pattern" not two senses crossing paths?

It's not so much hearing a visual pattern as it is to speak it. Subvocalization engages the voice apparatus in a way that is very close to actually speaking.

If that is true, then why does this work?

http://xkcd.com/462/ http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/22402009.jpg

Well, syntax highlighting has been around for some time. So if present, shouldn't an effect of induced synesthesia be well known by now?

This is an interesting observation. I've been writing code for about twenty years, and using some form of syntax highlighting for a little over ten of those years. I change the colors in vim (and geany, my other IDE-du-jour) to match function names with a bold blue and variables with a bold, dark red. These colors are the ones I definitely change every time on a new install/machine/whatever. I can see exactly what we would think with the color-syntax association, but it's not quite the same as my synesthesia. Like, when I type out a function definition, I don't have a bold blue "mindset" while doing it. However, when I type the word Wednesday in that context, there's a thick undercurrent consisting of the "softish bright red". It's really, really hard to explain, but there is a difference for me.

Oh well, it's no surprise, really. Visual cortex is vast and depending on which areas/levels take part very different effects may be present.

Yes certainly, synesthesia has many different forms. From what I understand -- and I could be completely off, but this is just information I've tried to collect since I finally had a word for the condition -- the word-color synesthesia thing is pretty common. Sound-color exists, but it's pretty uncommon. Among many, many different combinations. One of my friends has confided in me that she feels different temperatures with different words. I hadn't heard of that before, but I don't doubt it. There were some scientists who did MRI work on synesthetes and found that it basically amounts to functional crossovers in the brain between the affected areas.

I have always wanted a firefox add-on that would make each letter a different colour consistently to test this theory. I know "If you want it, then make it"... Maybe this summer.

At first I thought that was a great idea and thought about how it might be done. Then I realized reading a word where every letter was a different color would be incredibly annoying (for a while).

I imagined bright colors like this: http://img3.etsystatic.com/006/0/5982325/il_fullxfull.367326...

To me that is very distracting.

in the study they only printed four letters in colour, not the entire alphabet

Does anyone know if a comparative study has been done comparing the word/colours that people with synesthesia see to determine if there is any pattern? I'm wondering the same thing for auditory/colour patterns, it could have interesting applications for lighting at live music shows.

From what I can tell, there's no pattern in any synesthesia. It's due ("they" think) to essentially a hardware crossover in the regions of the brain responsible for these "cognitions"... You have the same idea I did for some time when I was much younger. A really good friend of mine organized raves back around the first time they were popular and I knew if people could experience what I experience for only a while, it would have a result similar to the consciousness-altering properties of drugs. It's always been normal to me, but I also know what it's like to think of words/colors that have no meaning together, so I can imagine how empty my vocabulary would be without this extra layer of interconnectedness. I'm terribly sorry if this comment meets your disapproval. I'm really just trying to help extend my experience to fellow HNers.

> … recent research has shown that there are underlying similarities that can be observed when large numbers of synesthetes are examined together.[1]

For example, “A” is frequently red. But I don't think that is to the point where it could have practical applications. When I read associations that other people have (as in sibling threads), my spontaneous (stupid) reaction is often: “Oh no, they have it all wrong”.

Many people have used synæsthesia in art, but it should be considered a source of inspiration at best, and not a “secret key” to universal æsthetics (compare with the golden ratio fallacy[2]). From my own experience, non-synæsthetes can easily become fascinated with synæsthesia, while actually, it's not that big a deal.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

http://xkcd.com/1213/

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1213:_Combin...

Chrome plugin, please.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com