what is synesthesia ?

Have you ever heard about synesthesia or synesthetes ? Let me tell you something about it if you haven’t .

Synesthesia is a neurological condition which stimulates of one sense activates another completely unrelated sense at the same time like tasting words , perceiving color while hearing music and voices , etc. The greek philosopher and mathematician pythagoras who displayed signs of synesthesia himself produced the first known description around 550 B.C.

Those people who have synesthesia is called synesthetes . Synesthetes perceive world differently then us normal people like they can taste words or numbers , they can see your color and your taste , they see different words or numbers in different color ,etc. which is unbelievable for us normal people . There are different types of synesthesia like:

1. Grapheme color synesthesia
2. Mirror touch synesthesia
3. Chromesthesia
4. Number form synesthesia
5. Ordinal linguistic personification, etc.

Do you know that many of authors and musicians you look up to have had synesthesia ? Like author Vladimir Nabokov would associate letters with color which is grapheme color synesthesia and the great musician Mary J Blige would see music in color ,etc.

So how does synesthesia occur in people? Some causes of synesthesia are:

1. Genetically inherited
2. Response to drugs
3. Sensory deprivation or brain damage
4. Born with it or generated it in early childhoods itself , etc.

Till date there is no treatment for synesthesia. Although synesthesia was long thought to be a rare condition, new research reveals that it’s not that uncommon. Around 4 percent of the population is naturally synesthetic all of the time, and many people experience synesthesia temporally when they use psychedelic drugs.

A non synesthetes would see all 5s in the above picture and it would take some time for us to notice the 2s in the triangle shape but synesthetes who have grapheme color synesthesia would differentiate the 2s and the 5s automatically when they see this picture so they would see it like this.

So, there are many pros and cons for being a synesthete . Many people have got very ahead in their jobs because of it but some have been backwards . Overall in my perception if you have synesthesia you can use all your powers for uplifting yourself and moving forward with it towards your goals. 😊👍