Sensation and Perception

Our realities are designed by the stimuli that interact with us every moment of every day. Our world is made of the sensations that we feel and the perceptions that we hold. Even though these are the tools that we are given at birth to navigate life, these tools don't necessarily showcase the absolute truth to us. In this post, I will be focusing on how our brains experience our own specific types of realities through sensation and perceptions, particularly how it affects people with synesthesia.

The Senses

Our realities are clouded by how our senses perceive the world

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Human beings have five basic sensors: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching. Without
these sensations, we would be helpless to the world around us, being completely unaware of what is going on around us.

The Difference

Synesthesia is a condition where a person's senses are mixed together to create abnormal sensations. It is estimated that 4% of the general population has some form of Synesthesia. Neuroscientist David Seeing Sound, Tasting Color: Synesthesia" that Synesthesia is a blending of the senses in any way imaginable. Dr.Eagleman says that a Synesthete might not even suspect that they have Synesthesia because their reality has been shaped by this anomaly, so they accept it as an ultimate truth.
Eagleman explains in the Big Think video "


Some types of Synesthesia include:

• Grapheme-Color: To see a certain letter, number, or a different kind of character in a certain color 
• Chromesthesia: To see certain colors when certain sounds are heard
• Lexical-Gustatory: To experience certain tastes when reading/hearing certain words
• Mirror-Touch: To experience the same sensation that another person feels by looking at them
• Number-Form: To see numbers arranged in three-dimensional structures
• Ordinal-Linguistic Personification: To have certain personalities associated with certain characters
• And many more...

Stories of Synesthetes

Although I am not sure if I have synesthesia, I know that my mother is a synesthete. She has Ordinal-Linguistic Personification Synesthesia, specifically with letters of the alphabet. This explains part of the reason why my name has such an odd spelling. She believes that "A" should not be at the beginning of girl names because "A" is more masculine than feminine to her, hence why my name isn't spelled "Amelia". She also doesn't like "Y"'s personality, so she often replaces the "Y" in words with "I" or "IE". This is why my sister's name is "Marijane" instead of "Mary Jane".

Letters can be altered by Synesthesia

Another synesthete that I know about is Adam Neely, a popular music theory channel producer on YouTube. He has Grapheme-Color Synesthesia. Whenever he sees letters or numbers, they automatically are perceived in a certain color ("A" is seen in red, "B" is black/blue, "C" is a bright yellow, etc...). For Neely, the color of Arabic letters also correlates to the notes on a staff. For example, if there is a note on the staff that is called "A", he will see that note in red.

As Adam points out in his video, many musicians throughout history have coincidently had Grapheme-Color Synesthesia and Chromesthesia because of how those types of Synesthesia relate to music. To see the colors of the notes or to see the colors of sound gives songwriters a more tangible perception of the music and allows them to more quickly understand the notes that are being played.

In a stark contrast, however, Neely also proves that it is possible for everyone to have some form of Synesthesia in varying degrees of intensity. In his video | s y n e s t h e s i a | , Neely displays the "Bouba/Kiki effect", a classic game of linking shapes to sounds. In this experiment, participants are given two drastically different shapes and asked to identify one shape as "Bouba" and the other as "Kiki". One shape is distinctly sharp and jagged while the other is smooth and waved. The majority of participants in this experiment will choose the sharp shape as Kiki and the smooth one as Bouba.

Which one is "Kiki" and which one is "Bouba"?

I realize that this point may debunk my whole post, but I believe it needed to be included. There are people who have obvious signs of Synesthesia, but this doesn't mean that there's a definite YES or NO answer for everyone concerning Synesthesia.

Your Turn
On the talk show Good Mythical Morning, Link Neal and Rhett McLaughlin explore different types of Synesthesia in their episode titled "Can You Hear Colors? (TEST)". They provide some tests for Grapheme-Color, Chromesthesia, Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia, and Mirror Touch Synesthesia. Feel free to watch the video and see for yourself if you have major signs of Synesthesia!

In conclusion, Synesthesia is one of the most fascinating topics pertaining to sensation and perception. I hope that there will be more answers as to what causes this phenomenon in the future. 

Sources

Seeing Sound, Tasting Color: Synesthesia

| s y n e s t h e s i a |

Can You Hear Colors? (TEST)