What is Synesthesia?

It’s true – some people hear colors, or taste words. But what produces synesthesia?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
it's Christian Saker. Have you ever heard a color or
smelled a sound? If so, don't worry. You are not alone. Instead,
you're part of a group I consider superpowered. You have synastasia,

(00:22):
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 another sense.
So if you're a synisty, like author Vladimir Nabokov, you
would associate letters with colors, grapheme color synastasia, that's what

(00:43):
it's called. And there are different types of synastasia. Napakov
called his color hearing. This grapheme color stuff is the
most common type, but cinnastasia can occur between just about
any combination of senses or cognitive pathways, and not every
everyone will experience the same type of cynist asia the
same way. So while the soft ah sound always seems

(01:07):
like fire engine red to one sinistete, it maybe cobalt
blue for others. Some people with this condition see music,
which sounds kind of beautiful when you think about it.
There are less common types, such as lexical gustatory cynast asia.
People with this condition taste certain flavors, dishes, or entire

(01:28):
meals based on a picture, word, or sound. Smells could
have colors and shapes to the list goes on. There's
mirror touch cynist 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?

(01:49):
Researchers are still working on that one, but they believe
the condition tends to be somewhat inherited or genetic, as
about of sinistets have a close relative with cynast asia.
Most sinistets recall having the condition for as long as
they can remember. It might sound like people have made
pneumonic connections with sounds, colors are so on, but research

(02:12):
shows it is a genuine sensory phenomenon rather than a
memory exercise. For example, if we drew the number five
all over a piece of paper scattered with a few
two's 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.

(02:34):
But a grapheme color sinistete can see this triangle almost instantly.
Researchers think that cinnast asia is a kind of cross
wiring in the brain. In graphine color synistets, seeing a
number stimulates your grapheme region and the area of your
visual cortex that responds to color stimuli. One theory is

(02:58):
that there are increased neural connections in the brain 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 cinistat's, like increased white and gray

(03:18):
matter in their brains. One bit of sad news for
all the non sinnistats out there. Although one 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 cynistats have a
great time. It can be uncomfortable to see a number

(03:40):
in the wrong color, and one lexical gustatory synistats said
that if a certain name doesn't taste right 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

(04:04):
produce vivid cynist asia in non sinistats, which might be
a key to understanding 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

(04:27):
may temporarily alter the user's neurochemistry, confusing those existing connections.
I mean, let's face it, going to a concert might
be pretty amazing for people with visually associated synesthesia. Check

(04:48):
out the brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com.