What colour is today? — Synesthesia
Since my digital identity everywhere is set to syn3sthete, I get these questions: what does the word mean, how to pronounce it, why I am obsessed with it. Even if you do not seek answers to these questions, I suggest you read for the next 5 mins. You ’ll be surprised to learn about something you didn’t know before today.
What does syn3sthete mean?
It is the word synesthete written as syn3sthete.
Why did I do that?
Because I am a synesthete.
What is a synesthete?
Somebody who has synesthesia is known as a synesthete.
What is synesthesia now?
If you are someone who tried searching on internet about synesthesia and are confused now and looking for an explanation, I’ll help you understand this concept better. If you haven’t already heard or read about this then, read on.
It is a neurological condition(related to nervous system).
Some of the famous ones are: Parkinson’s disease, Epilepsy, and Autism.
Unlike the well-known conditions synesthesia is not something to fear about instead by the end of this article you might wish to get synesthesia for yourself too. For the next few minutes let’s forget all that we know about synesthesia.
Ready?
Disclaimer: I am a synesthete and not a neurologist, All that is mentioned in this post is based out my life experiences and not any scientific study on synesthesia.
Before explaining to you what happens in synesthesia and confusing you, I’ll give you a brief about how nerves are expected to work in a traditional human body.
In layman terms nerves can be understood as cables connecting the various organs in our body and making the communication happen between these organs.
We will consider only the brain, and sensory organs for this article as their miscommunication is responsible for synesthesia, haha.
The senses are passed from organs to the brain via the nerves, and it is processed in the brain, and appropriate action sent back to all the relevant organs via nerves again.
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To understand synesthesia better, we will take a natural, real-life circumstance and see how the brain reacts to it.
Situation: Everyone who is reading this article must have answered a phone in their life. The first thing we hear from the other person is a “Hello”.
Expected process: your ear(sensory organ) will hear(sense) the sound of the hello and send it to the brain. This sense/sound is processed in the brain, and it will understand there is a person on the other end. If you have their contact saved and you know who has called you’ll imagine that person in your mind. If the call is from an unknown number, your brain will first understand the gender of the person based on the sound received. Then you imagine a random person of the assumed gender (this step is significant and happens with everyone).
The sequence of actions are:
1. Answer the call and wait for the other person to speak.
2. Imagine the person based on the sound.
3. Respond with hello.
Synesthete’s process: the only difference is, to hear a sound the brain earlier needed just hearing sense but, now the vision is also used. At this point many people may get confused what eyes have to do while listening, you can listen to things keeping your eyes closed too.
Exactly! Synesthesia is not about sensory organs, it’s about senses. Going by that logic, vision along with hearing is used, and not eyes are used to hear any sound.
What and how does vision play a role in hearing a sound?
Every sound I hear is associated with a colour in my brain. I get a flash of colour inside my head for everything I hear. In the above example when I hear a “Hello”. My vision and hearing senses receive this sound and carry it to the brain, and it first responds with a colour. Hello is brown in my case. And after that, I visualise the image of the person like the normal brain, and the rest of the flow is the same.
This sound and colour synesthesia is called as “Grapheme synesthesia”.
All this happens instantly and effortlessly that it doesn’t feel unnatural. Because of this, people with synesthesia believe that every other person understands it the same way(colours in my case), hence there is a huge probability that a synesthete may die a natural death without knowing about this unique condition he/she lived with throughout their life.
Because of this very same reason, only 4.4% of the world population is estimated to have synesthesia. This article is an attempt to increase the percentage as much possible, it would be an achievement for me if people can discover synesthesia by reading this article.
There are other forms of synesthesia as well as I link sound to colours someone may understand sound as taste or even smell and reverse is also possible: taste or smell as sounds. There can be a lot of permutations and combinations.
Are there any famous people with this condition?
Check out these celebs whom you already know but didn’t know that they are synesthetes:
1. Kanye West
2. Marilyn Monroe
3. Lady Gaga
4. Hans Zimmer
5. Patricia Lynne Duffy
Wow, but if this not a natural condition it must be having some side-effects or disadvantages as well?
Sure, I’ll tell you about a few of the advantages and disadvantages of it.
Advantages:
1. Better memory power.
2. Synesthetes are more creative than other people.
3. Since multiple senses work on a single task, it becomes more efficient.
4. Quick learners.
Disadvantages:
Not saying this because I am a synesthete, but I sincerely do not know of any problem in my life because of synesthesia, visibly I’ve lived a normal life like everyone else.
But to write something here, I took help from Google to find some disadvantages but unfortunately or fortunately couldn’t discover any.
However one article mentioned that some set people with synesthesia are weak in maths, undoubtedly they are not the graphemic ones because I never faced any difficulty learning maths.
So how do you use synesthesia in everyday life?
There are a few things I’ve done taking advantage of this condition:
1. Started playing the guitar like a pro within a week.
2. Learnt to read and write the Urdu language in 3 hours.
3. I sketch and paint effortlessly without any training
4. Never forgot someone’s name from the past.
Not bragging about myself but, there is a list. I am not sure if I would have had even half the talent that I have today if my brain functioned normally. HAHA.
The main motto of this article is to spread awareness about synesthesia as much as possible. Because that’s the only way to for synesthetes to know they have something unique in them. Even if I am able to make one person realise that he/she is a synesthete, then I consider this post to be a success. If you enjoyed reading till here, then I request you to share it with your friends to discover as many synesthetes possible.
For every comment I receive, I am going to let you know what colour are you.
P.S. Not always you need drugs to see colourful things ;)
