BrainStuff Classics: What Is Synesthesia?

It’s true – some people hear colors, or taste words. Learn how synesthesia works in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
I'm Lauren voc Obam and today's episode is a classic
from our erst file. Host Christian Sager. The topic what
is synaesthesia and how does it work? Hey brain Stuff,
it's Christian Sager. Have you ever heard a color or

(00:24):
smelled a sound? If so, don't worry. You are not alone. Instead,
you're part of a group I consider superpowered. You have
synast asia, or you've done some crazy drugs, and maybe
that's a different episode. But when people with synastasia experience
input from one sense, it results in the experience of

(00:45):
another sense. So if you're a sinisty like author Vladimir Nabokov,
you would associate letters with colors, grapheme color synast asia,
that's what it's called. And there are different types of
synast asia. Nabakov called his color hearing this grapheme color
stuff is the most common type, but cinnast asia can

(01:05):
occur between just about any combination of senses or cognitive pathways,
and not everyone will experience the same type of cynas
asia the same way. So while the soft ah sound
always seems like fire engine red to one sinistete it
maybe cobalt blue for others. Some people with this condition

(01:26):
see music, which sounds kind of beautiful when you think
about it. There are less common types, such as lexical
gustatory synas asia. People with this condition taste certain flavors, dishes,
or entire meals based on a picture, word, or sound.
Smells could have colors and shapes to the list goes on.

(01:47):
There's mirror touch, cinnast asia, ordinal linguistic personification, and number
form where a person sees numbers as a distinct map.
So this is all fascinating, but how do people get it?
Researchers are still working on that one, but they believe
the condition tends to be somewhat inherited or genetic, as

(02:08):
about of sinistats have a close relative with cynast asia.
Most sinnistates recall having the condition for as long as
they can remember. It might sound like people have made
pneumonic connections with sounds, colors, or so on, but research
shows it is a genuine sensory phenomenon rather than a

(02:29):
memory exercise. For example, if we drew the number five
all over a piece of paper scattered with a few twos,
forming a triangle. Most people would have a hard time
seeing it. They would have to look closely to search
for the twos and then slowly construct the shape, but
a graphine color sinistete can see this triangle almost instantly.

(02:52):
Researchers think that cinnast asia is a kind of cross
wiring in the brain in graphine color cinis steats, seeing
a number stimulates your graphee region and the area of
your visual cortex that responds to color stimuli. One theory
is that there are increased neural connections in the brain

(03:13):
of cynistats that could have been the result of less
neural pruning. That's what they call it neural pruning, while
in utero. Even cooler is that there might be actual
anatomical differences in the brains of cinistats, like increased white
and gray matter in their brains. One bit of sad
news for all the non sinnistats out there. Although one

(03:36):
study did find that some exposure to color letters built
up their association, the effect didn't last, so people can't
just catch synaesthesia. But hey, it's not like all the
cynist eats have a great time. It can be uncomfortable
to see a number in the wrong color, and one
lexical gustatory synist Eats said that if a certain name

(03:58):
doesn't taste write to him, he has a hard time
liking the person it's attached to. And it's time to
talk about drugs. Don't act like you didn't know this
was coming. Hallucinogens might be one way that synaesthesia can
be manufactured. Several drugs can produce vivid cynist asia in
non sinist eats, which might be a key to understanding

(04:22):
the condition. One researcher has positive that in non sinistats,
information in a multisensory area travels back easily to its
single sense area, but in sinistats it gets a bit
mixed up along the way. Hallucinogens may temporarily alter the
user's neurochemistry, confusing those existing connections. I mean, let's face it,

(04:48):
going to a concert might be pretty amazing for people
with visually associated synesthesia. Today's episode was written by Ben
Bolan and produced by Tyler Klang. The brain Stuff is
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For
more on this and lots of other topics, visit our
home planet how stuff Works dot com and for more podcasts.
For my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

(05:10):
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.