#it's not too uncommon though especially grapheme-color synesthesia

[guillemelgat]

What is synesthesia and do you have it ?

Hi anon, thanks for asking lol (I'm guessing this is about this post, I definitely didn't explain anything there so good catch)

Here's the Wikipedia definition, to start:

Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

Basically, what that means is that when you see, hear, smell, etc. a certain thing, it brings up another feeling/sound/sight in your head. That's a very vague definition because it's a very broad-reaching phenomenon, but here are some examples of different kinds of synesthesia:

Grapheme-color synesthesia, where when you see different written characters (letters, numbers, etc), you get the sensation of a specific color as well (usually each character has a color)

Chromesthesia, where when you hear a certain sound, you get the sensation of a color (often with people with perfect pitch, they see different keys as different colors)

Spatial sequence synesthesia, where you visualize numbers as points in space/as a map (I'd never heard of this one before so I have less of an idea of how it works)

Auditory-tactile synesthesia, where hearing a certain sound might give your skin the sensation of being touched by something

Ordinal linguistic personification, where different numbers and letters give the sensation of different personalities, similar to grapheme-color synesthesia

Mirror-touch synesthesia, where if you sees someone else be touched somewhere, you feel the same sensation in their body

Lexical-gustatory synesthesia, where different words give you the sensation of different tastes

Basically, synesthesia is just your brain making random but consistent connections between two sensations, and it's pretty much only a useful thing, not usually a problematic one. For example, I have grapheme-color synesthesia and ordinal linguistic personification, both for letters and numbers but it's much stronger for numbers. It makes it kind of fun to do things like sudoku because I can look at a box and pretty quickly figure out what number is missing if there's no green, or to remember dates and years because I have the very strong color association. The reason why I brought up the question is because I'm not sure how it transfers over to learning other alphabets, and from the one person who replied to that post it seems like the only way forward is just frustration and tears, but if anyone else has opinions lmk! Maybe over time it'll reform for a new alphabet and I can go back to reading normally.

#don't think that you were looking for such a long answer but i love synesthesia and i'm always excited to talk about it #i think i first learned about it from an essay in an oliver sacks book and was like omg other people don't have this :00 #it's not too uncommon though especially grapheme-color synesthesia #actually til that there's a name for the numbers having personalities lol so that's cool #elisabet casanovas from merlí (tània) also has it but i think hers is auditory?? but for different letters #idk though i'm not sure #anyways if anyone has anymore questions i'd be happy to answer them ^-^ #this is very much not on the topic of this blog but w/e #parlem de tonteries #asks

[synesthetecafe]

hey! I have a question. And if it's too much to explain or you've already answered it before, no big. I was just wondering what the different types of synesthesia are? I know Google is free but I'm starting to think I may be a synesthete and I'd rather get the info from someone with first hand experience than some nt with a bootleg psych degree 💖 thanks for reading! I hope you have a great day 😊

Thanks! I’m always happy to answer questions in excruciating detail, that’s why I started doing this :) 

There are over eighty types of synesthesia, though not all are well-documented. It’s a difficult thing to study, because most synesthetes either think their associations are normal and everyone has them and so don’t talk about it, or else know that it’s weird and so learn to keep it to themselves. This is especially true of the less common types of synesthesia, because the synesthete who has that uncommon type might not realize that what they have is a type of synesthesia because they never see it listed. Which brings me to the list. 

This chart (sorry it’s so blurry tumblr is ruining it. here it is unblurry) shows seventy-three of the known types of synesthesia. The left side is the inducing experience, and the top row is the perceived secondary experience. White spaces are observed types of synesthesia and red have not been observed.  Pretty much all the categories in this chart are self-explanatory, except for a couple: prop., stands for proprioception, which is perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body; spatial loc is more an awareness of a thing in the space around you, like the months of the year being in a circle around you; and graphemes are figures that we use to write things, so mostly letters, numbers, and symbols.

The different types of synesthesia are not all equally common, as I mentioned. The most common type is grapheme->color, which I have, and it accounts for over half of synesthetes. Basically whenever I see a word or letter or number, it has a color as part of its inherent characteristic, and it always has had that color for me as long as I can remember.  Sound -> color is also pretty common–and is the only type of synesthete I’ve met irl–some people have all their sounds colored, and others only have musical sounds colored. Some people have multiple kinds of synesthesia, and some kinds of synesthesia can be overwhelming or distracting to have–there is evidence that synesthesia is more common in people with autism, which can contribute to their feelings of sensory overload.

We think there are probably more types out there that haven’t been noticed, but synesthesia only became a topic of interest for scientists in the 80s, and that combined with the fact that it’s hard to get people to talk about their synesthesia means there’s still a LOT we don’t know. If you’re interested in synesthesia there’s a lot of cool books and interesting studies on it you can check out! Definitely read The Man Who Tasted Shapes, I actually have a whole huge post in my drafts summarizing that book but I won’t put it here this post is long enough.

#synesthesia #asks #long post