So synesthesia and autism, do you see days of the week as colour?
All this and more it's coming up.
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So today I am discussing synesthesia and autism.
Now synesthesia is something that I came across whilst.
Um, well, two, two things happened actually.
The first time I came across synesthesia was when I was researching Kanye West.
The first time I came across synesthesia, I was researching Kanye
West because he did an article where he was talking about synesthesia.
Then the next time I heard about synesthesia, I was actually listening
to a guy called Jeff Evans who was quite famous autism speaker.
Um, and I went to a Nazi and support group that I'm part of locally.
And Jeff was speaking of this group, which is absolutely fantastic.
Um, I'm he was talking about synesthesia now, synesthesia, I'll break it down
for you and tell you exactly what it is, but it was quite interesting when I
first found out about it, because then I was like, Oh, that's why I do this all.
That's why I do that.
So synesthesia basically is a neurological condition, um, that can
be diagnosed with autism, but also can just be diagnosed on its own.
What you hear, you hear sound.
But you see color.
So for instance, when I was into Jeff talk about the people he knew with synesthesia,
he said that he knew a young guy that when the door slammed and then rather than
hearing the door slamming, I can see a blue flash of light, which is fascinating
and it really, really achieved me.
So then this kind of got me thinking, well, if people see
color, when they hearing sound, what kind of opportunities is open up?
That's why I was so intrigued when I heard about Kenya West and yeah.
Him actually having a, um, uh, you know, being a musician
and being a music producer.
So if he's seeing color, uh, sound does color, then he's obviously painting a
picture when he's producing music, which is obviously a fascinating concept.
And it really does kind of stretch the realms of the amazing, uh, neurodiverse
kind of culture we'd have and, and all the things and the amazing things that
people who have near diversity can do.
So then, um, I thought about myself and my own experiences, right?
And so when I was little.
Um, I used to, um, uh, I used to always relate to everything as colors.
Right.
So, um, basically if I was, um, thinking about the days of the week
or the months in the year, I would think about them as colors now,
to me, it's always been that way.
Um, and I thought everybody felt like that about things, and it's almost like it's,
it's a feeling and a color relationship.
So when I hear like Monday or Tuesday, It feels a certain way
that attracts a certain color.
And the only way I can explain this to somebody from an outside
point of view is that, um, you think about warm and cold, right?
Or hot and cold they're feeling, but they also have a color touch to it.
You know, the color is kind of blue and hot is kind of red, right?
And so it's a similar kind of relationship I have with days of
the week and the months in the year, which is really interesting.
So.
It's like, I visually see them as color.
It's really weird.
It's such a bizarre thing to try and explain, but it's definitely
something that occurs now.
Um, you know, having synesthesia, isn't a bad thing.
It's just something that's really interesting.
Now, the reason it's comorbid and which means basically
co-occurring and or diagnosed with.
Autism is because autism is a communication issue.
Um, and it really impacts the senses, you know, so we have something called
sensory processing disorder, which is a macabre declaring with autism and kind
of pretty much everybody I know on the autism spectrum has a sensory issue.
And so it kind of, if you think about it from that perspective, when
you're having sensory data input from outside, be it like smells or
noises or sounds, then you have this.
A different way of digesting that, um, type of, uh, decoding that
type of sentence, and then ruling that's information in your brain.
But if you're hearing certain things, um, uh, like certain words
or certain phrases or hearing certain noises and those noises then become
colorful or they have a certain color.
Pattern set to them.
Then this is definitely the way that the brain is communicating that
information to make it relatable to you as an autistic person.
Right.
Um, it's just a fascinating concept.
Now I know that there are lots of people who definitely have
synesthesia and autism, but there are actually a bunch of people who
have synesthesia without any autism, which is just absolutely fascinating.
So in terms of does synesthesia impact your daily life?
Well, it's going to be very, very minimal because synesthesia again is just seeing
colors when you're hearing certain words or when you're hearing certain sounds.
Or if you just hear sounds in general, and you're just seeing all the flashes of
color, um, it could cause destruction, if you're driving a car and, um, you know,
you might have a flash of blue light.
If you hear a horn going or something like that.
Yeah.
And in terms of that then, yeah.
Okay.
Maybe synesthesia does have some kind of potential impact, but I find it
so fascinating that the extent that someone can go to, they could paint
you a picture with sound or vice versa, paint a picture from sound, which is
basically just a bizarre, amazing trait.
Now I am not blessed with the fact that when I hear noise, I see sound.
That's not what happens.
I do kind of when I hear noises, I feel a certain way that, um, Allows me to
write music because I'm a musician, I'm in a band called straight jacket legends.
We have like a CD out in Japan and America.
And, you know, we, we create music as you can see, I'm the bass player in
the band, but when I'm creating music, I'm thinking about patterns and I'm
thinking about ways that I can fit this together to make a nice, kind
of like a well smooth out pattern.
And when I listen to music, I can, I can feel where music should have something
in the middle layer or something changed.
And this is why I'm able to produce music also.
So it's kind of like, W I can understand that synesthesia would be like
almost painting a picture and you're seeing this picture come to life.
Now, another kind of unusual side note on synesthesia is there's a, an
autistic savant called, um, Daniel.
Um, I can't remember his last name, but he's from the UK and he's a
famous mathematician, uh, because he can speak like various languages.
He's he's on the spectrum as well.
So he's got a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome and he's also
a savant, so he has one syndrome.
Um, but he sees numbers as kind of like.
Squishy kind of, um, orbs kind of like jelly, beans, things, different
colors and patterns on them.
And then he puts them together and they fit inside each other.
And that's how he does mathematics because his brain doesn't
cognitively function mathematically.
It just knows.
It's almost like he's just pulling the data in from soil and it's like,
he just knows that it's, um, what the mathematical kind of problem solution is.
So like in his respect, I think like it's kind of like synesthesia when
he seeing objects as certain things.
Now, if you know what I'm talking about, please pop it in the comment down below.
I'd love to have that.
Conversation.
And I read every comment, but in terms of, Daniel's kind of,
um, there was a documentary, I don't know if you have seen it.
Definitely.
Um, it was amazing.
I was gonna please comment down below if you've seen this documentary about
him and he lived like landish in like seven days or something because
he learns languages very quickly.
Fascinating guy.
Super interesting.
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