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There’s a disorder that causes people to mix up their senses and taste colors!

omgfactsofficial:

There’s a disorder that causes people to mix up their senses and taste colors!

It’s called synesthesia, and it is the neurological condition in which sensory information is misconstrued in the brain and interpreted differently. This results in involuntary experiences of a second sensory pathway that is not supposed to be triggered. 

A common example of synesthesia is known as grapheme. This is when letters or numbers can be perceived as colors, tastes, forms, or even to have personalities! A person with this affliction experiences all five senses simultaneously when they should be separate. 

Teri Floyd described the number 5 as “blackish gray, and in his early 20’s.” Genders, textures, and ages can be attributed to different numbers also, and sufferers often describe the experience as overwhelming. 

It is the result of the brain failing to fire neurons at the correct time, so when they see something, instead of just seeing it they feel it and hear it too! 

(Source)

http://bit.ly/LxrmHg

Fun fact: I have color-grapheme synesthesia.

As if I needed another reason to be weird,

I realized yesterday that I also have synesthesia with the days of the week.

Monday is royal blue.
Tuesday is yellow.
Wednesday is blue-green.
Thursday is yellow-orange.
Friday is red.
Saturday is black.
Sunday is also yellow, but shining like the sun. I assume it has to do with it being the Lord’s day. 

I thought it might be related to the color of the letters, but then it wouldn’t make sense why Saturday and Sunday are so different…. I dunno.

You know what I just realized…

I have grapheme-color synesthesia, but this test never worked for me. I just figured out why. (I’m surprised it took me this long, actually…)

Two and five are both red to me. 

Duh.

*edit: The test is you look at the black one and figure out the shape that the twos make. To a true grapheme-color synesthete, the twos will stand out easily against the fives (like in the colored picture on the right). Except for me, both 2 and 5 are red, so it doesn’t work.

fuckyeahneuroscience:

An anonymous messenger dropped by asking for some recent papers on synaesthesia so I’ll compile a few here into one post.

This 2009 article discusses whether we are all born synaesthetes and then lose that ability, or whether synaesthesia appears due to some learning process during development….

yay, synesthesia!! 

Ninety percent of normal people will say that the shape on the left is bouba and the one on the right is kiki.

You may think, “Of course, Kayla! See how one of the shapes resembles a B and the other one resembles a K??” This is true. However, if the same question is presented to a group of people in India or China, who use completely different writing systems, the results are exactly the same. So that can’t be the reason.

What happens is, you are associating the rounded sound of boo-baa with the round shape and the sharp sound of kee-kee with the jagged shape. 

Congratulations, you’re a synesthete! :)

GET READY

If you care about my posts then you’ve probably read a couple about synesthesia. My dad, brother, and I have a very “mild” form. We associate colors with numbers. Some people actually SEE colors when they look at a number, some people hear colors or taste emotions or see sounds. So that’s exciting! And also hard to imagine for those of us who don’t have that ability.

BUT—wait for it—I can prove to you that we are all have at least a *little* bit of synesthesia. (It’s kind of part of what makes us human.) 

Synesthesia runs in families.

My dad has color-grapheme associative synesthesia, and so do my brother and I. I’ve already known this for a while. For a long time we didn’t realize this was abnormal. It’s just how we are—we associate numbers and letters with colors.

Over Easter break, however, I learned that my dad and brother also have associative synesthesia when it comes to time, like the yearly calendar. My dad says the year is like an oval and the year changes at around 4 o’clock and right now (May) we’re at like 7 o’clock. I don’t remember exactly what my brother said, but it was some other strange visualization. My mom and I just picture a calendar.

Now I wonder what other strange synesthesias we might have…

fuckyeahneuroscience:

Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind (by TEDtalksDirector)

Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between celebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples.

5 is RED, Dr. Rama! 7 is yellow though. 8 is most certainly not chartreuse, it is navy. 9 actually is indigo.

haha my dad, brother, and I sometimes argue about what color certain numbers are. The only number we agree on is 7, which is yellow. Yay, associative synesthesia!

fuckyeahneuroscience:

Synesthesia (via MediaArtProduction)

This makes me think that my dad, brother, and I have mild forms of associative synesthesia. All three of us associate a color with integers. For example, 1 is white or yellow, 2 is red, 3 is green, 4 is orange, 5 is red, 6 is royal blue, 7 is yellow, 8 is navy blue, 9 is purple.

I don’t actually see these colors. I just associate the number and color in my head. Sometimes the three of us argue about which color a number is, haha. We all agree that 7 is yellow.

(via fuckyeahneuroscience)

I don’t think it’s synesthesia, but I associate integers and letters with colors.

1 is yellow.
2 is red.
3 is green.
4 is orange.
5 is red.
6 is blue-green.
7 is yellow.
8 is like a dark indigo.
9 is purple.

It’s not like I see yellow when I see a 7. I just feel that 7 is yellow.

Edit: Turns out, this IS synesthesia. It’s the associative type. Yay.