Synesthesia is a rare and incredible condition where people see sounds, hear colors…
But what happens in someone's brain that makes them this kind of super-human?
Synesthesia is a neurological condition where a person's stimuli are crossed.
When a synesthete experiences stimuli along one cognitive pathway, another pathway activates
as well, causing an involuntary sensory experience.
Five percent of humans have some form of synesthesia, and they can come in different types.
For example, violinist Kaitlyn Hova hears music and sees corresponding colors; but a
local painter and artist Mary Syring feels that certain letters, numbers or days of the
week have specific color shades.
If you want to see a VR experience with Kaitlyn, to experience her synesthesia, we just posted
one here on DNews!
It's super cool.
To be diagnosed with synesthesia, according to Dr. Veronica Gross of Boston University,
the synesthetic reaction has to be quote "involuntary but elicited," "irrepressible," and "stable."
There are a bunch of different types of synesthesia.
The most common are color-graphemic, where letters or numbers seem to have colors or
patterns -- like Mary, or color-auditory where sounds produce "colors, textures and shapes,"
-- like Kaitlyn.
But theoretically, there could be as many types of synesthesia as there are sensory
pairings!
We could experience taste-hearing pairings (where tasting things produces a perceived
sound), or sound-touch (touching different things produces sounds), smell-color, or a
handful of other combinations -- depending how many senses you believe we have, there
could be dozens of synesthetes.
On my other show TestTubePlus, I discussed how human senses include thermoreception,
pressure, pain, magnetoreception, balance, and more and more…
Studies across a bunch of journals have attempted to figure out just what's going on the brains
of synesthetes.
Researchers conducted fMRI scans of synesthetes while
activating their specific synesthetic triggers and evidence to support the theory that their
brains are somehow cross-wired.
In one example, color-auditory synesthetes saw their superior frontal gyrus light up,
which is connected to self-awareness and the sensory system, as did what's called the COLOR
CENTER, or V4 and V8 and it's neighboring region, the fusiform gyrus (they're not sure
what that bit does).
Synesthete was seeing colors, but curiously, the primary visual cortex wasn't active, indicating
the color cortex was wired to directly interact with the fusiform gyrus and somehow… create
the experience.
Though scientists don't know much about synesthesia, people who have it say they've experienced
this extrasensory cross-talk for as long as they can remember.
Researchers have yet to understand just how people develop it, but they have identified
two types, developmental -- or inborn, and acquired.
Developmental seems to be genetically, passed on through families, and some theorized synesthesia
might be an inherited trait on the X chromosome, as its skews heavily female; but a study in
the American Journal of Human Genetics disproved that; finding instead multiple chromosomes
are implicated in the transmission of the condition.
Acquired synesthesia, on the other hand, can manifest in those who are on hallucinogenic
drugs, or, in people who've had neurological conditions like epileptic seizures which may
have altered their physical brain matter.
According to Scientific American, grapheme-synesthetes report having good memory for phone numbers,
security codes, and polysyllabic anatomical terminology, because the colors aid them in
recalling the information.
A paper in PLOS One from March 2015, attempted to explain letter-color combination synesthesia
by looking at the magnetic english alphabet some people have on their fridge.
Of the 6500 synesthetes tested, they found at least 6 percent of the participants saw
shades that matched those from the magnetic toy!
In fact, those born closer to the date it was released saw even more alignment with
the colors: up to 15 percent!
Some scientists think, perhaps children learned to associate colors with words or letters
inadvertently, to aid their memory through synesthetic adaptation!
Of course, this doesn't explain all synesthetes, only a small number, but shows some could
learn the behavior.
Most of the research I found was in English, I'd LOVE to see more in other languages, especially
ideogram-based characters like Chinese!
In the end, synesthesia is not a disorder, and the cause remains unknown.
It's an incredible mystery of the human body.
Not all auditory-visual synesthetes see the same thing, and not all grapheme-synesthetes
connect the same words, letters or numbers with the same colors; even within the same
family, two synesthetes will manifest these differently.
As of now, scientists are scanning and learning as much as they can about the condition to
learn about how our brains perceive the world and construct our individual realities.
I've been wanting to talk about synesthesia for a long time, and here on DNews, TODAY,
you might have seen we just posted a brand new Virtual Reality experience.
You can watch Kaitlyn play the violin and see her synesthesia along with her music.
It's really incredible.
On the computer you can click and drag the video around to see what Kaitlyn sees, but
it even better on a phone, because the accelerometer will follow your head as you look all around
the scene.
EVEN BETTER if you use headphones and grab a VR headset or one of these cardboard VR
kits online…
Then you can see what it's like to be a synesthete for yourself!