Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
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Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
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Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#2I have synesthesia in real life. For me, I have one of the "most common" forms, between words and colors. Specifically, I have a color-word synesthesia ("association" is not the right word here) between days of the week and colors. For example, Friday for me is a "medium green", Tuesday is a "light blue" and Wednesday is a sort of "soft red"... Every day has its own color, though I must mention that Saturday and Sunday are both white, though different shades. Each of these colors also has a "brightness" to it that is kind of impossible to describe in terms of regular colors, though colors seen on a computer display get close. I also have some mild synesthesia between specific letters of the alphabet (but not all of them), as well as every single-digit number. It's worth a mention that I can't think of specific instances of this synesthesia helping me remember anything, though I am pretty good with remembering numbers, and it needs to be said that I don't know what it's like without synesthesia, so I can't offer a comparison.
Very much related to this post, I can't say whether or not learning synethesia is possible. It's so hard to describe the synesthesia between words-colors, to such a degree that I'm inclined to say that any learning would be simple association, and not the synesthesia that I experience myself. For example, when I read the word "Wednesday" it's a very specific color of red with a certain bright softness about it. I "see" that color every time I hear or see and then comprehend the idea of Wednesday. When I see "Wednesday" as a collection of letters, there's no color, but when I summon the internal idea/concept of Wednesday, then the color is there. See how retarded I sound? That's how confusing the internal "association" is, and why I am inclined to believe that "one does not simply learn synesthesia"...
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#3I have always wanted a firefox add-on that would make each letter a different colour consistently to test this theory. I know "If you want it, then make it"... Maybe this summer.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#4Well, syntax highlighting has been around for some time. So if present, shouldn't an effect of induced synesthesia be well known by now?
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#5Chrome plugin, please.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#6Well, syntax highlighting has been around for some time. So if present, shouldn't an effect of induced synesthesia be well known by now?
This is an interesting observation. I've been writing code for about twenty years, and using some form of syntax highlighting for a little over ten of those years. I change the colors in vim (and geany, my other IDE-du-jour) to match function names with a bold blue and variables with a bold, dark red. These colors are the ones I definitely change every time on a new install/machine/whatever. I can see exactly what we would think with the color-syntax association, but it's not quite the same as my synesthesia. Like, when I type out a function definition, I don't have a bold blue "mindset" while doing it. However, when I type the word Wednesday in that context, there's a thick undercurrent consisting of the "softish bright red". It's really, really hard to explain, but there is a difference for me.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#7Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#8Well, syntax highlighting has been around for some time. So if present, shouldn't an effect of induced synesthesia be well known by now?
This is an interesting observation. I've been writing code for about twenty years, and using some form of syntax highlighting for a little over ten of those years. I change the colors in vim (and geany, my other IDE-du-jour) to match function names with a bold blue and variables with a bold, dark red. These colors are the ones I definitely change every time on a new install/machine/whatever. I can see exactly what we…
Oh well, it's no surprise, really. Visual cortex is vast and depending on which areas/levels take part very different effects may be present.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an interesting observation. I've been writing code for about twenty years, and using some form of syntax highlighting for a little over ten of those years. I change the colors in vim (and geany, my other IDE-du-jour) to match function names with a bold blue and variables with a bold, dark red. These colors are the ones I definitely change every time on a new install/machine/whatever. I can see exactly what we…
Oh well, it's no surprise, really. Visual cortex is vast and depending on which areas/levels take part very different effects may be present.
Yes certainly, synesthesia has many different forms. From what I understand -- and I could be completely off, but this is just information I've tried to collect since I finally had a word for the condition -- the word-color synesthesia thing is pretty common. Sound-color exists, but it's pretty uncommon. Among many, many different combinations. One of my friends has confided in me that she feels different temperatures with different words. I hadn't heard of that before, but I don't doubt it. There were some scientists who did MRI work on synesthetes and found that it basically amounts to functional crossovers in the brain between the affected areas.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#10I have always wanted a firefox add-on that would make each letter a different colour consistently to test this theory. I know "If you want it, then make it"... Maybe this summer.
At first I thought that was a great idea and thought about how it might be done. Then I realized reading a word where every letter was a different color would be incredibly annoying (for a while).
I imagined bright colors like this: http://img3.etsystatic.com/006/0/5982325/il_fullxfull.367326...
To me that is very distracting.