Humans generally have 5 senses : Vision, Smell, Taste, Hearing and Touch.
(Actually, there might be more, as I have explained here)
But sometimes, these senses mix together and people see letters or hear musical sound in color or feel sounds - and more!
I have already known someone with this experience, and recently when shooting the Steemit film I got to know a new person that also told me about similar sensations.
So I thought I'd like to share this interesting topic with all of you - because many people don't even know that this is possible.
This is called Synesthesia and can happen between any combination of senses, with any number of senses involved.
Synesthesia is different for everyone, and although more than 100 different types have been reported, only very few have been researched yet.
The most common ones include:
- When certain dates or numbers are placed in different locations. Monday for example could be located closer to us than Thursday.
- When letters or numbers have a certain color attached to them
- When certain sounds or musical elements are seen in color
- When days, months or numbers each have their own character,
- When a sound has a specific taste,
- When taste is associated with shapes
Synesthesia can also be like an extreme form of empathy, where people experience physical pain when they see others hurting - often in the exact same spot.
People that experience different sensations this way are called Synesthetes.
Depending on the case, these abilities can be used to memorize certain things better or use it to improve learning in any other way.
Mozart for example could see music as shapes or color, he had a different color for all the different notes and even wrote down some of the notes in different colors.
But what are the causes of Synesthesia?
This has not been fully researched yet.
But it has been proven by recent studies that Synesthesia is genetic - then, different types of Synesthesia appear within the family.
Synesthesia can appear after seizure, stroke, deafness or blindness and could also be experienced artifically with LSD.
Scientists suggest that synesthetes' brains differ from "normal" ones in their anatomy.
When someone has Synesthesia, it seems that their connections between the sensory part of the brain are surrounded with more Myelin. This has the effect that neuron signals sent via these connections can travel much quicker.
- Instagram -
© Sirwinchester