music-colour synaesthesia revisited

My post on music-colour synaesthesia has been the most visited item on my blog, and has also become the most interesting area of synaesthesia to me recently.

I have been, for a while, fairly convinced that I have grapheme-colour synaesthesia (I see words, numbers, names as colours) and nothing else. But since taking a synesthesia quiz which involved a section on music, where I scored quite highly for syn in some of the musical areas, I have started to think more and more about music-colour synaesthesia.

I have come to believe that in certain circumstances I DO actually experience synaesthetic perceptions in music, but that I had never really noticed before. But since I only see colours in my mind’s eye rather than actually SEEING them in front of my eyes, it is difficult to determine what causes the occasional synaesthesia responses.

A lot of the time, it is just the name of the song or artist that provides the overall colour of the song, which would still make it grapheme-colour synaesthesia. For example, the song ‘Peach, Plum, Pear’ by Joanna Newsom is a deep purply colour and I can only assume I am seeing a plum colour (although I am still unaware as to why plum would stand out more than peach or pear). But while listening to Anxiety Attack by Jeffrey Lewis I started to see flashing black and pink spots in the intro to the song.

I thought it was quite interesting, but I am still not sure what to make of it. It just seems, as usual, to be a useless quirk that doesn’t really mean anything. I still like it though.

mirror-touch synaesthesia

I recently read an intriguing article about a type of synaesthesia I had never heard of before.

The article comes from Live Science and here is an extract:

‘A brain anomaly can make the saying “I know how you feel” literally true in hyper-empathetic people who actually sense that they are being touched when they witness others being touched.

The condition, known as mirror-touch synesthesia, is related to the activity of mirror neurons, cells recently discovered to fire not only when some animals perform some behavior, such as climbing a tree, but also when they watch another animal do the behavior. For “synesthetes,” it’s as if their mirror neurons are on overdrive.

“We often flinch when we see someone knock their arm, and this may be a weaker version of what these synesthetes experience,” University College London cognitive neuroscientist Jamie Ward said.

Now scientists find these synesthetes possess an unusually strong ability to empathize with others. Further research into this condition might shed light on the roots of empathy, which could help better understand autism, schizophrenia, psychopathy and other disorders linked with empathy.’

…read the rest of the article here.

hiding synaesthesia

The most recent conversation on the synaesthesia mailing list has been to do with hiding synaesthesia. A lot of people have reported how they have felt like they had to hide their synaesthesia from everyone including sometimes their families, for fear of ridicule, bullying or reactions from others like ‘you’re lying’.

I didn’t know that my coloured words were different, let alone had a name, until I was 19, so before that I didn’t really talk about it (thinking it was normal) so never felt like I had to hide it.

Until this conversation came up this week I thought that for the last few years I had been open about my synaesthesia. I was lucky enough to find a couple of people like me at university so it was fun to compare colours, so spoke about it occasionally then.

Now I tell people I know and trust, just because sometimes I have to explain why I get their name wrong or why I get certain words and things mixed up, but generally I keep it to myself. I suppose people assume that synaesthetes are just attention-seeking which is why I don’t mention it much.

It’s quite frustrating having to keep quiet though. If something is the ‘wrong’ colour, like for example if a graphic on a webpage doesn’t match the colour I see for the word on it, it bothers me constantly like a mosquito that just won’t fuck off. Or if a person’s name doesn’t match the colour I feel for them that can be really irritating too. And then I have to keep all this stupid annoyance to myself and it’s really distracting!

It’s a shame that some people really have to hide it because I think it’s really interesting, but I understand why. No-one wants to be laughed at (apart from comedians). I guess it’s such a difficult thing to explain that it’s easier to stay quiet.