Does anyone know if a comparative study has been done comparing the word/colours that people with synesthesia see to determine if there is any pattern? I'm wondering the same thing for auditory/colour patterns, it could have interesting applications for lighting at live music shows.
Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#12You could argue everyone who is literate has synesthesia - I can not look at symbols representing the alphabet and not hear the associated phonemes in my head. Makes me wonder what you see if you scan the brains of people who are born-deaf when reading, actually - which parts of the brain light up? Oh, and when reading logographic alphabets like Chinese of course.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#13sigh. retards
how could they not be reminded of bread by that sling-shot barrel. How can they not see that his trigger was an iron fetter?
These people are retards.
God says...
Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; 1:15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
1:17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.
1:18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
1:19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
----
ache
God says... endures thereto characters wooed well-spring
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#14I 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.
in the study they only printed four letters in colour, not the entire alphabet
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#15I 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 Sund…
Whoa! I think I may be having a weaker version of the same type of synesthesia that you have described. I tend to "imagine" colours when I think of certain letters, numbers, days or months. I don't feel this way for each one of them though.. for eg. 2 = red, 4 = green, 5 = pink, 6 = blue, 7 = purple whereas nothing for 0, 1, 3, 8 and 9 (may be black?). Similarly, E = yellow, F = pink, saturday = green, march = yellow etc. Also, I don't "see" colours while reading text, just when I happen to think more about a letter, number or word.
All this while I was thinking this is common and normal in all people like photographic memory or something. Learnt something new today :-)
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#16I 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 Sund…
Do you experience this while reading foreing languages, once you know the meaning of the words?
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#17I 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 Sund…
Do you experience this while reading foreing languages, once you know the meaning of the words?
Yes, I know Swedish and German, and this is the case for those words, as well. The "input" is irrelevant as long as it ends up with my thinking of the concept of "Friday" or whatever. In the case of foreign languages, foreign word goes in, "Friday" idea/color comes to mind. It's also the same if I look at a date on a calendar and see that a certain date is on a Friday, but not with the specific word "Friday". Of course, this is the same case for all the other days of the week, numbers, and the few letters. What is also interesting is if the "input" is a color very similar to the synesthetic "color/idea" for "Friday", I will also immediately think of the word/idea for "Friday" (in English). So it sort of can go back and forth.
Also, I will say that as individual letters or numbers "disappear" into a word, I do not get the synesthesia associated. So like "fourteen thousand" does not trigger the synesthesia I get for those individual digits, nor does "Amnesia" trigger my "strong" synesthesia for A, M and N. I hope this makes sense. I'm really trying to describe it as best I can.
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#18You could argue everyone who is literate has synesthesia - I can not look at symbols representing the alphabet and not hear the associated phonemes in my head. Makes me wonder what you see if you scan the brains of people who are born-deaf when reading, actually - which parts of the brain light up? Oh, and when reading logographic alphabets like Chinese of course.
Subvocalization [1] -- "hearing the words" -- actually varies between people. Anecdotally: I myself don't "hear" anything while reading. There is apparently some evidence that all, or almost all, people subvocalize, but that for many people it happens subconsciously and involuntarily, and that you can detect it only by monitoring the vocal chords. There was an HN thread discussing it recently [2].
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#19I 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 Sund…
Whoa! I think I may be having a weaker version of the same type of synesthesia that you have described. I tend to "imagine" colours when I think of certain letters, numbers, days or months. I don't feel this way for each one of them though.. for eg. 2 = red, 4 = green, 5 = pink, 6 = blue, 7 = purple whereas nothing for 0, 1, 3, 8 and 9 (may be black?). Similarly, E = yellow, F = pink, saturday = green, march = yellow…
Yes, that's exactly it! Some letters are not there (actually most letters), and I know that some numbers are "weaker" than others. I also know that some of these color synesthetics have changed over time. For example, I know that the number 2 for me didn't always trigger darkish pink, but I can't remember what it used to be. Also, I have lost synesthesia for G, H, and J, which used to be yellowish, yellowish, and green, but now don't "do" anything.
If you are experiencing more of a one-to-one idea/color analogue instead of a simple kind of "association" between an idea and a color, then what you are describing is highly likely to be similar to what I have, which is word-color synesthesia, the most common form of the "condition". For example, it's much more intrinsic than the simple association we normally feel between, say, the word "money" and the color green. That's a simple word-color association. When I see the word "March", I "feel/see/experience" the color blue (and vice versa, though this vice versa is a bit weird because I'm not so good at distinguishing individual colors).
Re: Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia?
#20Does anyone know if a comparative study has been done comparing the word/colours that people with synesthesia see to determine if there is any pattern? I'm wondering the same thing for auditory/colour patterns, it could have interesting applications for lighting at live music shows.
From what I can tell, there's no pattern in any synesthesia. It's due ("they" think) to essentially a hardware crossover in the regions of the brain responsible for these "cognitions"... You have the same idea I did for some time when I was much younger. A really good friend of mine organized raves back around the first time they were popular and I knew if people could experience what I experience for only a while, it would have a result similar to the consciousness-altering properties of drugs. It's always been normal to me, but I also know what it's like to think of words/colors that have no meaning together, so I can imagine how empty my vocabulary would be without this extra layer of interconnectedness. I'm terribly sorry if this comment meets your disapproval. I'm really just trying to help extend my experience to fellow HNers.