Translator: Emma Dovlatyan Reviewer: Kristine Sargsyan
How many of you have heard about
about the phenomenon called Synesthesia?
Oh, according to the raised up hands not many people know.
Have you ever thought that you might be able to see something,
others can’t see?
Or have you ever had a feeling that seemed to be strange
or even artificial?
Congratulations! You have been just diagnosed with Synesthesia.
Don't be afraid, though it’s incurable,
it’s not contagious and is quite harmless.
Now let's discuss what this rare phenomenon is about.
Translated from Greek it means “a union of senses”.
This is a neurological phenomenon during which
the stimulation of an emotional or cognitive activity causes
another emotional or cognitive activity.
Let me explain it with an example.
People who have Syntesthesia may feel the gender of fruit
while eating it, or feel the taste of notes while playing the piano.
Monday and Tuesday have different colors for such people
and street names sound differently.
Well, I know it may sound crazy.
Synesthesia started to be explored by scientists since 19th century
though scientific commemorations about it
were made in ancient Greece.
Aristotle thought that people can have emotional perceptions
without the presence of that very object.
Simply, you feel what doesn’t exist.
Let me tell you an interesting story, which is real.
There was a girl who was arguing with her classmate
for a math problem, when she was ten and the boy says
“It sounds like if I say that three is blue”.
The girls was surprised and she answered that, in fact,
three was orange.
Seeing the boy’s astonished face the girl started to explain
enthusiastically that three is orange
and it’s the little brother of six.
Six is red and is the girlfriend of five which is yellow.
Well, you may have already guessed that this girl is me.
I am synesthetic, a person who has Synesthesia.
After this incident, as Icouldn't find people like me in the class
I started to look for synesthetic kids among my friends in our yard.
After getting some strange glances
and realizing I have bright imagination, I was afraid
and thought that something was wrong.
So I thought this is not an advantage but a defect.
I didn't tell my mom about this
thinking it could be a psychological disorder.
Many years have passed and once
I was watching a video on YouTube.
It was about people, who can feel the taste of numbers,
see the color of words and can hear colors.
I really like the word Synesthesia and I heard it for the first time
in that video and I repeated it for several times no to forget.
I started to explore this phenomenon and realized
that people know very little about Synesthesia,
and people who have it think of it as a defect
and avoid talking about it.
Though different types of Synesthesias are named
and expressed differently, it doesn't mean
that five is yellow and Fa is green for all the Synesthets.
Yes, I mean Fa, which is a note, and not that good smelling soap.
This kind of association can be caused by voices, sounds etc,
so we can have as many combinations
as many senses we have.
And it shouldn’t combine only two senses.
There’s a story about Solomon Shereshevsky,
who had an unknown type of Synesthesia
which combined five senses.
There are some well-known musicians, artists and actors
among Synesthets such as Kanye West, Pharel Willimas, Lady Gaga,
Merlyn Monroe, Vincent Van Gogh and many others.
During my little research I found a big list of celebrities
who are being tested to know if they’re Synesthets or not.
They are: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Victor Hugo,
Friedrich Nietzsche etc.
You may ask how is it possible to test it.
A number of scientists create standardized tests,
that are incomprehensible for non-synesthets
and are very simple for synesthets.
Synesthets see the world quite differently and to understand
Synesthets' world I found an interesting test.
Now please repeat loudly «Buba».
Public: Buba
Now say «Kiki».
Public: Kiki
I think you remembered them, Buba and Kiki.
Now I am going to show you two images
and would ask you to say which of these two words
you associate with them.
Public: Kiki
Public: Buba
98% of people associate Buba with the roundish image
and Kiki with the sharp angled image.
This kind of tests help people to understand what is association,
how powerful it can be and see the world the way Synestheths do.
And you can understand Synesthets as in 98% of cases
you find people who think like you.
It's impossible to persuade a Synesthet against his/her beliefs
just the way that I can't persuade most of you
that this is Kiki and this is Buba.
Such tests prove that people
don't combine sounds and visual images randomly.
This is a process and a number of bright minds and scientists
have been working for decades or even centuries
to decode its secret.
This test shows that each of us is a little bit Synesthet
and this disease is incurable.