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hecate10 Trainee Goddess Joined: 03 Sep 2004 Total posts: 233 Location: In the lap of the Gods, where else? Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 21-09-2004 23:13 Post subject: what colour is wednesday... |
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How's this for an amazing coincidence???!
I had never, until reading this thread, realised that synaesthesia was an actual documented fact, and I had been utterly fascinated to read all the other poster's opinions and experiences on the subject. This in itself was amazing enough, (and worth the price of my computer!!)
I bought the Radio Times today (which seems to have figured large in this discussion - and - no - I never read it as a child - we didn't have a tv until I had grown up and left home anyway, and even had my parents read it, at the time it would have been printed in black and white...but I digress..) What do I see on Thursday 30th September at 9pm but an 'Horizon' documentary about....Synaesthesia!!!
Spooky or what!!! |
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| lindseyinstereo1 Yeti Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Total posts: 30 Location: philadelphia Age: 31 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 22-09-2004 21:12 Post subject: MY sister and I always think in color |
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| I am so excited to see this thread- my sister and I always think in color and if we are trying to describe something or we forget a word for something we say it "reminds me of dark green" and can usually guess what the other is talking about. We have color for all of the numbers (although hers are different from mine, I see 1 as yellow, 2 as green, 3 as brown, 4 as green, 5 as brown, six as orange, 8 as purple, 9 as brown-orange and ten as navy blue, etc.) I think of the months of the year as colors and days as well. Wednesday DEFINITELY makes me think of BROWN. |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 23-09-2004 14:02 Post subject: |
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Now this is odd.
I'm synaesthetic. KNown that for ages. But I'm not a word/colour or sound/colour synaesthetic.
I'm a colour/taste & texture sound/taste & texture synaesthetic. I can't have bright yellow in the house because it tastes really nasty.
But I immediately thought that Wednesday was green as well.
So what's the trick?
Sam |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 29-09-2004 17:48 Post subject: |
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Wednesday is YELLOW for me. And is my favourite day.
Have never seen a Radio Times. |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 29-09-2004 18:14 Post subject: |
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| This is probably not quite synaesthesia, more like sensory memory, but for me, flavors have times and seasons. For instance, green tea is a winter afternoon. Watermelon, is obviously summertime. But chocolate is late late at night. And red wine is too. Plain fresh water is a fall flavor, and dried apricots are cloudy fall afternoons.... Some things are obvious associations that are memory driven, but some are not so obvious. For instance, I am NOT a night person, so I never ever eat anything caffinated late, so why is chocolate a late night taste? And I would have said "spring" for fresh water, but it evokes fall, every time. |
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| TheQuixote Joined: 25 Sep 2003 Total posts: 4085 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 30-09-2004 21:47 Post subject: |
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I'm watching the BBC2 Horizon programme about synaesthesia and I've just took part in an online test here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/index_surveys.shtml
Click on "Do you see what I see?" for a quick test.
I apparently scored quite highly 18 out of I think 23 or 24* for the associating colours with words, numbers and weekdays and on the number spatial test. At the end of the test is a number of useful links such as this:
Synaesthesia Research Group
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/jamie.ward/synaesthesia.htm
*luckily it wasn't a memory test else I would have failed miserably  |
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| beakboo1 Latex RealBird Joined: 20 Sep 2001 Total posts: 5143 Location: Home for bewildered gentlebeaks, St Peter's Close. Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 01-10-2004 23:08 Post subject: |
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| My husband's boss was watching Horizon last night. Turns out he has syneasthesia, and a "number line" and had spent the last 35 years thinking everyone had this. |
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| glamour_dust Torn Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Total posts: 246 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 21-10-2004 02:31 Post subject: |
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| white, i thought white somehow. like a cloudy white. bear in min i've just taken a klonopin so i may be seeing colours of my own in my mind. whooo look at all the psychedelic swirls. |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-01-2005 04:48 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Mon 17 Jan 2005
The colour of music
MARGARET COOK
I’VE JUST discovered I have a mild form of synaesthesia. Is it romantic or fatal? More the former, I would say. It is where the brain does not have a clear division between the reception of different sensations. For instance, the Finnish composer Sibelius saw notes as colours and smelled them too. Most commonly linked sensations are visual and auditory, taste and touch, olfactory and auditory. Most synaesthetes are women; assessments vary, but it may be eight times more common in females.
Even more oddly, there is a link with people who have odd experiences such as déjà vu, premonitions or clairvoyance. In musical synaesthetes, it is not uncommon to find the wonderful gift of perfect pitch.
I’ve always been aware that the days of the week have distinct colours, as do the names of months, numbers and letters of the alphabet, though they’ve faded with the years. As a child I discovered my sister had the same peculiarity, though her colour system was different. Since then I had assumed it was normal. My type seems to be the commonest, but mingled experiences of smell, taste and touch are much rarer.
Some descriptions are quite exotic, for instance piano tones seen as blue fog, guitar notes perceived as floating orange stripes in front of the body; phone numbers remembered as a multi-coloured string of pearls, sensing music as the aroma of hay, smelling a rose as a touch upon the skin, relishing the taste of pepper sauce as sharp, pointy triangles. The number five might be middle-aged, female, gentle and the colour of honey.
Some people even see the world in different colours according to mood.
Naturally, the psychologists have tried to claim the phenomenon for their own, but affected people have proved stubbornly mentally normal, apart from, in general, having rather good memories and unusual artistic talent.
Children who try to explain their tangled sensations are usually faced with blank incomprehension, like one little girl who announced to her teacher, "four plus four is red," to the mocking hilarity of her peers.
Synaesthesia has been recognised for about 300 years, and until recently was thought to be very rare; estimates of 1 in 2,000 at the most. But research in the last decade puts it as high as 1 in 100, including the mildest examples of mixed messages. Within an individual, the links are very consistent, so it is different from association-testing and having hallucinations. However, related phenomena are seen in LSD takers and schizophrenics. I recall one schizophrenic reporting severe pain which she felt in the curtains around the bed.
Besides Sibelius, the composers Skrjabin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Messiaen had the trait, also artists Hockney and Kandinsky and the author Nabokov.
Synaesthesia holds a particular fascination for the artistic world. It is a desirable gift, an enhancement of sensuality, a manifestation of creativity, and has inspired volumes of poetry, music, literature, folklore and analysis. Periodically it has stimulated multi-modal concerts of music and light and sometimes perfume. Meanwhile the science world has been ambivalent about researching something so wholly subjective.
Current science accepts that synaesthesia is inherited, as an X-linked trait in many cases, which explains the female predominance. It is possible that all infants are born with muddled sensory experiences, for instance, in them a sound triggers auditory, visual and tactile vibes. This state of psychedelia is due to hyper-connectivity between sensory parts of the brain, and normally about the age of four months these connections are automatically pruned to leave more specific responses. Synaesthetes have a genetic mutation that interferes with this pruning. There are probably genetic variants to explain the different sensory melanges, and extensive connections left between brain areas that deal with abstract concepts seem likely to convey a marked degree of artistic creativity as well as disabling distraction in ordinary, everyday matters.
Magnetic resonance imaging has clarified with some precision the colour vision areas involved in the visual cortex of the brain. The limbic system which controls consciousness is connected, as well as other sensory centres. Some synaesthetic experiences occur outwith the body, which implicates the angular gyrus, thought to be the seat of "out of body" experiences. Synaesthesia research may cast new light on perception, thought, consciousness and language.
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• If you think you may be a covert synaesthete and would like to contribute to pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge, there is a website where you can take a test:
www.bbc.co.uk/ science/humanbody/mind/index_surveys.shtml |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-03-2005 04:03 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Musician can 'taste music'
From correspondents in Paris
March 03, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse
A SWISS musician sees colours when she hears music, and experiences tastes ranging from sour and bitter to low-fat cream and mown grass, astounded scientists say.
Zurich University neuropsychologists were so intrigued by the case of E.S. - a 27-year-old professional musician whose full name has been withheld - that they recruited her for a year-long inquiry.
They say she is the world's most extreme known case of synaesthesia, the phenomenon whereby hearing music triggers a response in other sensory organs.
E.S. sees colours when she hears a tone, with for instance an F sharp causing her to see violet while a C makes her see red, quite literally.
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Even more remarkable is that she also gets a taste on her tongue according to the note she hears.
A tone interval of a minor second induces sourness, while a major second leaves a bitter taste.
A minor third is salty, while a major third is sweet.
Other tastes, according to the tone, are of "pure water," cream (either full or low-fat, depending on the note), "disgust" and also of mown grass.
To provide an objective test, the scientists applied one of four different-tasting solutions (sour, bitter, salty and sweet) to her tongue and then asked her to press a button on a computer keyboard corresponding to four relevant tones.
She responded with perfect accuracy and much faster than five musicians, recruited for the same test, who do not have her synaesthesic gifts.
E.S.' "extraordinary" synaesthesia has probably been a boon in her career by attuning her to the right pitch, the researchers say.
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The study, led by Lutz Jaencke, appears in the British weekly science journal Nature. |
Source
Paper:
Beeli, G., Esslen, M. & Jäncke, L. (2005) Synaesthesia: When coloured sounds taste sweet. Nature. 434 (7029). 38.
| Quote: | | Synaesthesia is the involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal linkage — for example, hearing a tone (the inducing stimulus) evokes an additional sensation of seeing a colour (concurrent perception). Of the different types of synaesthesia, most have colour as the concurrent perception, with concurrent perceptions of smell or taste being rare. Here we describe the case of a musician who experiences different tastes in response to hearing different musical tone intervals, and who makes use of her synaesthetic sensations in the complex task of tone-interval identification. To our knowledge, this combination of inducing stimulus and concurrent perception has not been described before. |
and a report @ Nature:
www.nature.com/news/2005/050228/full/050228-9.html |
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| Renigirl Joined: 12 Nov 2001 Total posts: 265 Location: At the top of a hill, Tri-State, W.Va., USA Age: 33 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 04-03-2005 06:30 Post subject: |
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I scored a 16 out of 24 or whatever on the first section of that, but I think it's more to do with having a good memory than anything else... I chose the color initially on a feeling, but then the second go-round just remembered what my first response was.
Wednesday for me is a bright, hopeful sort of purple.
I'd be interested in knowing whether the Wednesday = green thing is uniform amongst people for whom Wednesday is the mid of their workweek; mine starts on a Wednesday, so I would assume I view it a bit differently than most -- though my answer is a bit telling about my personality. |
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| Dingo667 I'm strange...but true Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Total posts: 1977 Location: Deep in the Fens, UK Age: 46 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 04-03-2005 11:37 Post subject: |
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Oh I love this thread. First of all I think Wednesday is red.
Here are my colours for the days:
Monday: White
Tuesday: Yellow
Wednesday: Red
Thursday: Browny/Green
Friday: Black
Saturday: See through
Sunday: See through with dark bits in it
My husband and I also often discuss tastes in shapes. For example I cook and feel that there is a "pointy" taste missing and then my husband tries and says: "Could do with a bit more "round" and I know exactly what he means.
I can discribe all tastes in shapes. Chicken for example is like a greek square spiral and pasta (my favourite) is chunky squares. Tomato sauce (if pointy enough) should be wavy if cooked correctly.
Burgers are soooo round tasting, with a few of edgy rectangles...
Chocolate is flat small disks and milk is parallel lines. Maybe I should stop here, getting hungry. |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 04-03-2005 14:49 Post subject: |
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Until a few weeks ago I thought everyone had this kind of thing, for me it's mostly music and some voices- Elvis type music is particularly Slidgy green and Brown, Trumpets are scarlet & stripey, Rock music tends to be Purple. It has faded over the years and too be honest I've not given it much thought before.
Wednesday is definitley green, Forest green.
Monday is deep purple,
Tuesday-Blue ish
Wedneaday- Green
Thursday Yellow
Friday Golden yellow
Saturady-Blue
Sunday- No colour
refernce the earlier article
Perhaps it's not that either have this or not from birth, rather that we learn as children that comments like "4 + 4 is RED" invokes ridicule from our peers. We self prune in effect
annic |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 05-03-2005 17:50 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Rainbow Coalition of the Brain
By Rowan Hooper
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66770,00.html
02:00 AM Mar. 04, 2005 PT
Imagine every time you hear the telephone ring, you taste a burrito with jalapeño and guacamole. Believe it or not, some people -- synesthetes -- experience things just like that.
For them it's like being hooked up to a weird virtual-reality machine. The number 7 may look green, or the color red might smell of soap. G-flat on the piano might look like broken glass.
Could you even hear yourself think, with all that going on? Far from being limiting, new research suggests that synesthesia, from the Greek words for "together" and "perception," actually helps with cognitive processes.
Neuroscientists think the condition occurs because certain regions of the brain "cross-activate" at the same time. So the tone perception center, for example, may be linked with the taste perception center. And studying synesthetes is giving clues to the working of the brain, one of the most complex structures in the universe.
"Synesthesia shows how many variations in normal brain function are possible," said Michaela Esslen, of the department of neuropsychology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Synesthetes have normal IQs and may number up to one in 2,000 people. Esslen said the connections between synesthetes' brain regions may have been disconnected in other people.
"One theory as to how synesthesia originates is that neuronal connections in the brain that might exist in the newborn brain do not degrade as in normal brains, but remain in synesthetes," she said.
Peter Brugger, a professor at the Neuropsychology Unit of Zurich University Hospital, said: "In a way, the really burning question is how the normal brain succeeds so well in keeping all this information separate."
That question is yet to be answered, but this week Esslen, with colleagues Gian Beeli and Lutz Jancke, published a paper in Nature supporting the idea that synesthesia can help cognitive processes. They describe a female professional musician who "tastes" sounds.
The woman, referred to as E.S., experiences a scale of tastes depending on the tone interval of the music being played. The minor sixth tone interval, for example, produces the taste of cream in her mouth. Amazingly, the major sixth produces the taste of low-fat cream.
E.S. reports that she benefits from her synesthetic perceptions while she performs music or solves music-related tasks -- and the Zurich researchers confirmed this in tests.
Previous work, at Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada, has also shown that synesthesia can help with cognition. Subjects said linking numbers with colors helped them perform mathematical calculations.
The extraordinary potential of synesthesia to boost the memory was documented in the classic The Mind of a Mnemonist by Russian psychologist A.S. Luria.
The latest Swiss work adds to the growing evidence that synesthesia can aid cognition.
"It is now widely agreed that synesthesia involves indirect activation of regions of the brain involved in perceptual processing," said Lawrence Marks, director of the John B. Pierce Laboratory at Yale.
Marks was resident neuroscientist and discussant at last month's Synesthesia and Perception meeting held by the College Art Association in Atlanta.
"Research on the brain mechanisms of synesthesia will be terribly important to understanding brain processes and mind-brain relations more generally," he said.
In Zurich, professor Brugger is doing just that, and in the process has created a kind of synesthetic out-of-body experience. "Virtual reality is a kind of synesthesia," he said, "because you feel yourself to be at the place your vision suggests you to be."
Brugger hooks up volunteers to a VR headset so they can view themselves from behind.
"By seeing yourself walking in front of yourself for prolonged periods, you will eventually feel at a distance of some meters in front of yourself -- a simulated doppelganger, if you want," Brugger said.
Synesthesia research offers an explanation for a phenomenon that has been described by psychics.
Many self-proclaimed psychics say they can detect a person's aura, often described as a colorful energy field given off by certain people. But Jamie Ward, head of the Synesthesia Research Group at University College London, said some people can experience colors in response to people they know -- a condition called emotion-color synesthesia.
"The ability of some people to see the colored auras of others has held an important place in folklore and mysticism throughout the ages," said Ward. "Rather than assuming that people give off auras or energy fields that can only be detected by rigged cameras or trained seers, we need only assume that the phenomenon of synesthesia is taking place." |
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| Cider3 I like it
Warm, with spices Joined: 05 Nov 2002 Total posts: 1338 Location: Under the desk Age: 38 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 05-03-2005 18:15 Post subject: |
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This reminds me of the savant Daniel Tammet.
| Quote: | . Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."
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I wonder if synesthesia is a mild form of autism? or perhaps there is no connection at all- perhaps it's just the imagery that Daniel uses to explain what goes on in his mind. |
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