white the anomaly

It’s just occurred to me that ‘white’ is the only basic, everyday colour with a colour that doesn’t match its name. E.g ‘red’ is red, there’s no changing that, but white is, well, mostly grey/black in my mind’s eye. How bizarre.

colours reflecting meaning

Although there are a lot of variations between synaesthetes, there are often similarities in certain things like letters of the alphabet – there are trends like ‘a’ is often red (mine’s black), ‘y’ is often yellow (mine’s yellow) and ‘z’ is often black (mine’s black).

I’d like to know if other synaesthetes see certain words the same too. Now with most words, it’s not the meaning of the the word that produces colour (e.g. the colour for ‘wall’ is grey for me but I’ve never seen a wall painted grey – it’s the letters in the word that are producing the colour).

But for certain words, words with very strong and vivid meanings and connotations, I’d like to know whether other synaesthetes see the colour of the meaning rather than the colour of the letters. Words I am thinking of specifically are things like this:

DEATH – SUNSHINE – FIRE – GRASS – BLOOD (blood is also shiny and rounded like a blob of hot red wax before it has set)

And what about non-synaesthetes? Do they see colours when they think of these words?

useless or useful?

I think that most synaesthetes would see what they have as a good thing, and I’d agree. Up until now though I’d thought it was pretty useless, because although I see things differently to a lot of people, it doesn’t really help or aid me in any way.

Studies have found that in general, synaesthetes have good memories because they are able to use the colour perception to jog their memory. As I have mentioned before, the colours usually either confuse me or I just remember the colour of the word and not the word itself.

In fact, quite often when I am speaking, I can’t get my words out, I can’t seem to locate the word I’m looking for even if it’s a fairly common word. I think it’s partly down to the fact that the colours and sensory information in the outside world are interfering and distracting me from what’s going on in my head.

I’ve always been good at spelling though and that could possible be due to synaesthesia. Have I just got a good eye for spotting mistakes, or have I always been seeing the colours as well, and noticing when the colours look wrong? I’m not sure really. It’s hard to say when I don’t actually see the colours, I just kind of know they’re there in my mind’s eye.

But ever since I realised I had something different to a lot of people, I’ve started to notice it more and more. This makes me think that maybe I can try and use it to improve my memory. If I’m noticing the colours more then surely I can focus more on them when it comes to remembering things? I wish that was the case but I’m dubious.

see how it feels

I saw a BMW advert last night with the strapline ’see how it feels’, and wondered if the whole advert had been inspired by music-colour synaesthesia.

You’ll see what I mean…

a quick thought on dyslexia

While copying some text and numbers from a printed page into a Word document (and getting a few of the words and numbers mixed up along the way), it made me think about dyslexia in relation to synesthesia.

I don’t have dyslexia myself (I think my brain was just refusing to work today) but I wonder if there are any synaesthetes – I’m talking about grapheme-colour synaesthetes mainly – who are also dyslexic. There must be some out there, and if so, how do they experience colours in response to letters and words? Is there a difference compared to how a non-dyslexic synaesthesia would see them?

According to Dyslexia Action, Dyslexic people usually find it difficult to analyse and work with the sounds of spoken words, and many have difficulties with short-term memory, sequencing and organisation. This means that it is more difficult for them to learn how spoken sounds map onto letters, which affects the ability to spell and the ability to decode or ‘sound out’ words.

If synaesthesia is combined with dyslexia, does it make it even harder to process language? Do the colours conflict with the letters in the words? Or alternatively, can the synaesthesia help with spelling?

These are questions I’ll never find the answers to unless I can find a dyslexic synaesthete, but I thought I’d write down my thoughts on it anyway.

conceptual responses

Further to my earlier post about the number-colour test, I have found some clarification in the most recent issue of New Scientist (19 May 07) which I purchased yesterday.

The test (or one very similar, it doesn’t specify) was carried out by a leading synaesthesia researcher called Vilayanur Ramachandran, and he found that there were two different types of grapheme-colour synaesthetes: those who actually see the colours on the page and those who see the colours in their mind’s eye. I am of the latter group (the ones who can’t pick the 2s from the 5s) which according to this article means that the concept of the letter, not just the sensory data, causes the synaesthetic response.

That sounds about right to me. It fits with my previous thoughts that the colour responses stem from learnt associations or connections in the brain.

synaesthesia Q&A (part 2)

Do you ever confuse your synesthetic perceptions with the external world, or are they in completely separate dimensions?

I do not confuse them; they are in separate dimensions.

What makes these dimensions different?

The colours are never so overwhelming I can’t distinguish what’s what

Some synesthetes have the experience of color when they look at (or think about) digits or letters of the alphabet. This is called Grapheme-Color synesthesia.

What feature(s) of the stimulus determine which color you see?

The concept of the letter (e.g., just thinking about ‘M’ induces a color)

Is the same synesthetic color associated with a particular letter whether you are thinking about the letter versus seeing the letter on a page?

The colors are different.

The colour is a lot more vivid when I am thinking about it, because when it’s written on a page it’s probably written in black or blue, and then when I focus on it I get the synaesthetic perception, but when I just think about it, I see the letter in my mind, and it is written in the colour it should be rather than just black on a page

How does your synesthesia change when you see letters or numbers in combination? Is there a simple set of rules that would explain what you see (e.g. the color for 12 would be some combination of the colors for 1 and 2, or the word ‘fax’ has the colors of both F and X)?

Numbers generally blend like paint, but words don’t have a general rule. Sometimes there’s a dominant letter (not necessarily the first letter) that makes the whole word one colour, sometimes its association changes the colour, sometimes the letters blend like paint and sometimes a word is just blocks of colour next to each other.

How does your synesthesia change when you are reading text?

It’s not so prominent because when I read fast it’s just a lot of black text. It’s only when I read slowly or stop on a word that I notice the synaesthesia more.

How does your synesthesia change when you are writing text?

Slightly more noticeable than reading just because it’s slower and I’m thinking more about the words.

Is your synesthesia different when you are looking at other languages that share our alphabet (such as Spanish or German)?

Yes

There are certain quirks, like ‘jouer’ in french (to play) is light green when it should be dark orange if I’m going by the letters, but then there are quirks in English too so I don’t know if it’s a real difference. If it’s a language I know very little of, the whole language will be the colour of the name of the language (e.g. Spain is yellow and Spanish is mainly yellow) but once I get to know the language then more colours start to emerge.

Is your synesthesia different when you are looking at other languages that have a different alphabet or script (Chinese, Hebrew, etc)?

Yes

I tried to learn Japanese – it was all black/dark purple

If you have synesthesia with digits, is it different when you look at Roman numerals?

Yes

They are all grey/black

When most people see color, it is usually associated with some object in the world. How do you see your synesthetic color?

It exists in my mind’s eye.

It’s vivid and yet transparent

In your synesthesia, do you see many different colors or only a few?

Many different colors

How would you best describe your synesthetic colors?

Transparent

synesthesia Q&A (part 1)

I recently tried an online test called The Synaesthesia Battery and thought it might be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about synaesthesia.

Bear in mind that there are lots of different types of synaesthesia, and within each type are many variations, so it’s very probable that a lot of what I say won’t be experienced by other grapheme-colour synaesthetes, and likewise there will be similarities too – I guess that’s the point of the questionnaire. These are my answers.

When did your synesthesia begin?

Always had it

Can you think of any experiences that could have shaped your synesthetic associations, like childhood colored letter blocks?

Yes it’s possible that alphabet and number charts were the cause of some associations but I can’t remember anything specific. There are some names where I think the colour stems back to the first person I knew of that name (e.g. benjamin is orange, and the first benjamin I knew had bright ginger hair, and John is grey and the first John I knew wore a grey shirt at school when everyone else wore white)

Do you experience synesthesia all the time, or only under certain conditions?

All the time

Is your synesthesia present when you close your eyes?

Yes

Does your synesthesia interfere with other activities?

No

Does your synesthesia ever distract you?

I get distracted by everything anyway, but my synaesthesia does not distract me in a way that I can’t control

Do you feel that paying attention to your synesthetic perception requires effort?

A little. If I am being asked about my synaesthesia I find it difficult to answer the questions because I feel bombarded and get mixed up, but in a normal relaxed environment I have no trouble paying attention to it

Can you ignore your synesthesia?

It’s always there, but only very noticeable when I stop on a word or think about something

Does your synesthesia help you to remember things (by association)?

Numbers up to about 20 are easier to remember, but I think the synaesthesia either does nothing for my memory or just confuses me. Sometimes if I am trying to remember a word I can only remember its colour and not the actual word which is completely useless

Are there any properties of your synesthetic perceptions that make it easy to tell that they are internal (in your head) rather than external (in the outside world)? For instance, is the synesthetic yellow color you may see with a certain number different in any way from a real yellow color?

The colours, although vivid, are in a way transparent at the same time. So if I go into Photoshop and pick the colour for Wednesday, it will never be exact because my Wednesday will be a transparent orange rather than the block of orange I have picked in Photoshop.

music colour synaesthesia

One type of synaesthesia is music colour synaesthesia, where a note, key or certain quality in music causes the synaesthete to experience colour. Some music color synesthetes find the colours they see in music to be so distracting they can’t work while listening to music.

I find this fascinating because I don’t possess this kind of synaesthesia.

As a grapheme synaesthete, I do have colour responses to music but in a completely different way. For example, if I know the name of the song, then the song will be whichever colour I experience for the name (currently I’m listening to Sawdust and Diamonds by Joanna Newsom which is a lovely bright yellow for the whole 10 minutes of this epic song).

I am a very musical person (I play the piano, alto saxophone, surdo drum [brazilian] and a bit of clarinet, guitar and banjo) so in learning to read music I also had colour responses to keys and the letters of the notes if I knew which ones were being played, plus the instrument itself, because all instrument, like all words, have colours too.

Also, major and minor keys have an impact on the colours I perceive – minor keys generally add a black/grey/brown tinge to the letter of the key.

Although all this extra colour information is going on in my head it’s not overwhelming or distracting, it’s just there without intruding which is pretty lucky I guess.

i wonder

I’d be interested to know what percentage of grapheme-colour synaesthetes actually ‘pass’ this test…

If a grapheme-colour synaesthete (such as myself) is shown this…

…then according to research, the synaesthete should be able to identify the shape within the image…

To me, the original image is just a load of black shapes on a page that don’t even look like 5s and 2s. There’s certainly no colour that pops out at me on the page. A page of black text is a page of black text and yet every letter and number is a colour when I think about it. I just wonder which is most common amongst grapheme-colour synaesthetes – actually seeing bold colours on a page of text or just knowing the colours are there but not actually seeing them instantly.