Update: Glenn Reynolds has synesthesia: “I see sounds as visual analogs with shape, color, and texture. Based on my own conversations, this is quite common among people who do sound engineering, and probably helpful.”
And we have a smeller and taster! Commenter Gregg the Obscure writes: “Have had synesthesia as long as I can remember - the main attribute is that some (not all) musical sounds have associated smells and, occasionally, tastes. This happens more with either pipe organ or orchestral music than with other instruments. Also, FWIW, I have very strong senses of smell and hearing, but poor eyesight…The months of the year each bring to mind different smells, though not shapes or colors.”
Later…I don’t want to create an even longer post by excerpting more comments, so please read all of them. Good stuff, esp. one by speedwell.
Much later…And J’s comment. Too cool.
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A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.
This is a long post, but please keep reading to the end. Questions, questions! If you don’t have the time or the desire, however, skip down to Letters and Numbers in Color.
I’m interested in more than just how digital tech is changing the music industry. I’m interested in music itself; that is, what the heck is this thing we call music (organized sound?) and why does it affect us the way it does? Why does it reach to the very heart of us, manipulating our emotions?
I’m listening to the audiobook of Musicophila: Tales of Music and the Brain, a book I had on my Amazon Wishlist but decided to download from the DC library instead. Generally, the book is about music’s effect on people with brain disorders. Fascinating stuff. It’s written by Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist whose patients have had everything from seizures, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, amnesia, and a few uncommon ailments.
Music Love
Sacks opens with a man who was struck by lightning and almost died. Afterward, this orthopedic surgeon developed an intense interest in piano music. He’d taken lessons as a boy, but was no virtuoso. He started to play and got better. Then he began hearing music in his head and had a compulsion to write it down. He didn’t know how to do musical notation, so he taught himself. The man not only performed music but composed his own music for one-man piano concerts! Out of the blue, playing and composing music consumed him.
Musical therapy has helped improve the speech of stroke patients with limited speech or those who seemed to have lost the ability to speak. There’s something about listening to melody that helps these patients re-learn how to process language and express it.
Sacks talks about music’s effect on people with Tourette’s Syndrome, whose victims exhibit involuntary physical and/or verbal tics. Some report that their repetitive and incessant motor ticcing disappears or lessens when they channel the excess energy playing drums or the piano. Also fascinating are children with Williams Syndrome, similar to autism. They can’t add 2 and 2 but are quite sociable and very musical. And a man with a brain disorder (can’t remember if it was dementia or something else) had to sing what he was doing in order to do it. Patients with Parkinson’s, which impairs motor and speech skills, would become “unstuck” when playing music.
Other disorders affect patients’ ability to hear melody or harmony or process certain notes. Sacks covers common occurrences like “earworms,” tunes that get stuck in our heads. And on and on.
Letters and Numbers in Color
Sacks also discussed a condition called synesthesia, a neurological and involuntary phenomenon in which people “see” musical notes, numbers, letters, words, or other concepts in color. For some, these things have sounds, smells, or tastes associated with them. “Must be fairly rare,” I said to myself.
That prompted me to do a bit of research on the topic. (See sample articles below.) I discovered there were other forms of synesthesia like spatial and conceptual. People with spatial synesthesia see numbers, days of the weeks, or months of the year in precise locations in space. What’s this? I thought. I do that. I have a low level form of synesthesia.
Since I was a child, I visualized the 12 months as a sort of two- and sometimes three-dimensional shape in space. I wanted more information about this so-called calendar synesthesia and stumbled upon Mark Jaquith’s blog, who sees the 12-month calendar in a similar way! Incidentally, Mark is a code guru who did some work on my blog a couple years ago. He works for Michelle Malkin and a few other bloggers. I was fascinated to know that Mark is a “spatial synesthete,” too. Check out his three-sided shape below:
I need to create and upload an image for my mind’s calendar, because my chart is a little different. In my mind, the first five months stretch across the top like Mark’s, but the summer months, September, October, and part of November occupy the right side, and the summer months are slightly elongated. Part of November and all of December are at the bottom. Weird, eh?
(I attribute the elongated summer months to a childhood dread of summer, which seemed to last forever. I was bored two weeks into summer vacation and couldn’t wait to go back to school. And I hated the heat. In fact, I still hate summer.)
Sometimes I see the chart flat; sometimes it’s three-dimensional. I can visualize myself standing on January, for example, looking down and to the left at September. Standing on December, I’m looking up at January. Whenever I think of a calendar year, this is how I see it, and the months always occupy the same location in space. I didn’t think this was at all unusual or had a name, and it never occurred to me to ask others if they did this, too.
But I’m asking now! I hope you participate because I’m dying to know who else does this. Note: True synesthesia is involuntary. Without any prompting, synesthetes see colors of letters and numbers, hear their sounds, see numbers and days in precise locations, etc. These attributes are just there. Pseudo-synesthesia is when someone assigns these attributes.
If you or anyone you know has synesthesia, what kind is it? Do you or they see musical notes, letters, words, numbers, days of the week, months of the year, etc., in colors? Are there associated sounds or smells or tastes?
Do days of the week or months of the year occupy a precise space in your head?
Resources:
- Seeing Life in Colors: Crosswired Senses: Food, Music and Numbers Take Shape and Color
- The Mind’s Eye: Neuroscience, Synesthesia, and Art
For what my input is worth, I have none of the characteristics you’ve written about.
Comment by Charlie on the PA Turnpike — 05.27.08 @ 9:26 am
I never knew this had a name, so interesting! I picture the 12 months of the year 2 dimensionally with January starting on the left and February, March, & April successively to the right and then May appears below April and then June, July, & August go successively to the right of May and then September through December go down vertically below August. Honestly, I thought all people “pictured” the months in some order, I guess I was wrong?
Comment by Ashley — 05.27.08 @ 10:39 am
That’s cool, Ashley.
I now “know” at least two other people who see the calendar year as a shape in space (you and Mark Jaquith). This must be more common than I thought.
Comment by La Shawn — 05.27.08 @ 10:43 am
Funny. I always have thought the calendar was all wrong. I have mentioned this to my wife on a number of occasions. I see the calendar in three groups. December, January, February and March in one group. April through August in the second. September, October and November in the third. If I visualize it as a clock, August is 6 o’clock, but they are not all the same size (in my visualization) because I see Christmas as 12 o’clock (midnight, not noon). I think of June and July as being “fat” whereas December is “skinny” (if that makes any sense).
Comment by benm — 05.27.08 @ 10:49 am
I remember thinking that I had heard color when I smoked pot for the first time.
Comment by edh — 05.27.08 @ 12:52 pm
I have ’seen’ music all of my life and only recently realized that this is unusual. My favorite songs send images into my head that coincide with the music. Certain people’s names evoke colors or shapes and I remember the person’s name by that association, rather than their name. Certain jazz organs make me see light red. Norah Jone’s ‘Nightingale’ from her first album gives me one of the richest visual sensations I have ever experienced and it’s always exactly the same.
Comment by DeepForestGreen — 05.27.08 @ 1:07 pm
Coloring Between The Staves…
When I first started playing guitar, I remember reading a sort of dual-interview published in 1982 in the now sadly-deceased Musician magazine between Robert Fripp of King Crimson (a pretty amazing guitarist in his own right) and John McLaughlin, who,….
Trackback by Ed Driscoll.com — 05.27.08 @ 1:25 pm
I “sense” the days of the week as blocks.
Sunday is a tall block, Monday and Tuesday are short blocks, Wednesday is a tall block, Thursday and Friday are short blocks, and Saturday is a tall block.
Holidays are sensed as either gray or red blocks.
It’s just something I’ve always done and I don’t know why. If it is synesthesia then I’m wondering what other things I’m seeing this way?
Comment by FormerHostage — 05.27.08 @ 1:28 pm
The only synesthesia I experience is when I’m startled by a sudden noise: it causes me to see a flash of bright light. This is particularly likely to happen if it’s dark or if I’m on the threshold of sleep. I had a friend who saw the whole calendar as a series of visual shapes (months and the weeks within the months). Myself, I don’t visualize time, words, or numbers at all, and while I am (well, was) a musician, music is purely an auditory experience for me.
The closest I come to visualizing anything is when I’m trying to navigate–then I imagine a map of the area and place myself on it and work things out from there. But that’s a forced effort used to orient myself which I suspect would qualify as pseudo-synesthesia.
Comment by Beck — 05.27.08 @ 1:32 pm
One of the basic reasons for my success as a Luthier is the fact that I visualize timbre in an instrument in colors. Tap tuning a soundboard to a Dflat pitch, for instance produces a dark blue orientation in my visual field.
Never thought it unusual before, or thought it unusual.
Wonderful world.
Comment by Jim Ward — 05.27.08 @ 1:36 pm
Yes, absolutely! My mind sees the months as an egg-shaped loop, with summer months at the bottom. During spring, I literally see the passage of time as “sliding” toward summer, then the fall as a “climb” toward the Dec/Jan peak. Nothing related to how I feel about the seasons, because I prefer winter to summer.
It’s involuntary, for sure. To a lesser degree sounds do invoke colors. I’ve also thought that certain colors related to specific numbers, or that a color was either odd or even in nature.
I always figured I had been dropped on my head as a kid or something; did not know this was not uncommon. Have tried before to explain my mental images to my wife, who not surprisingly, could not relate.
Comment by Jal Arky — 05.27.08 @ 1:40 pm
I do not know how much what I do applies to what you are discussing, but I’ll add my $0.02 to the mix.
I do a lot of thinking about a variety of things, but most intensely about game mechanics for table top games, video games, and even live action games. I often visualize the concepts I am considering. Various ideas will have shapes and textures to them, and things which do not “feel” right together often don’t work, which I can later defend based on quantifiable qualities that I subconsciously assign the shapes and textures to.
Also, when pondering many variations on a theme, or when trying to sync up many diverse ideas, I often have to use my hands. I envision the ideas in space, and move my hands and fingers to the places I “put” things. My mind makes a connetion between a point in space touched by a finger and an idea. The idea can then be more readily left to the side to think of something else in the problem, and recalled more easily by touching that point in space again. So, I can associate Idea 1 with my right pinky finger somewhere off to the right, and Idea 2 to my left middle finger somewhere on the left, and so on, and if I wiggle that finger with my hand out to the side, I can remember the idea better. It’s very helpful for maintaining many ideas all at once.
I also sometimes associate mental movement with physical movement. Most clearly is when I need to take an idea that I am fond of, but doesn’t work well with the overall scope of the goal in mind, and I need to discard it or alter it. To discard, physically sweeping my hand as if to clear off a table surface helps keep me from thinking and dwelling on it, and rotating both hands in front of me like working a Rubix cube helps to mentally reorder the original idea without losing it entirely, taking some core component, but twisting it to suit.
Comment by Andrew Schenkelberg — 05.27.08 @ 1:41 pm
Daniel Paul Tammet is a savant who experiences numbers as colors and shapes. He recited Pi to 22,514 digits without error, learned to speak Icelandic in one week, etc.
There’s been several documentaries on him, and there’s a wikipedia page here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet
Comment by Harry MacDougald — 05.27.08 @ 2:00 pm
Some readings from the scientific literature on the subject are available on-line at the links below:
A case study of a man who is a savant and autistic and also a synesthete can be found here (PDF).
3 reports from a group of researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada can be found here, here (PDF), and here (PDF).
A case study of brain function in a woman who associates colors with the names of famous people can be found here (PDF).
A study of the relationship between color synesthesia and seeing numbers mentally in arrays can be found here (PDF).
I added the link (and PDF warnings) for you. I like to let people to know when they’re about to open an Adobe doc.
- Admin
Comment by Hyperpotamus — 05.27.08 @ 2:01 pm
Have had synesthesia as long as I can remember - the main attribute is that some (not all) musical sounds have associated smells and, occasionally, tastes. This happens more with either pipe organ or orchestral music than with other instruments. Also, FWIW, I have very strong senses of smell and hearing, but poor eyesight.
The months of the year each bring to mind different smells, though not shapes or colors.
Comment by Gregg the Obscure — 05.27.08 @ 2:05 pm
I see the calendar year as a clock. Jan is at the bottom. For some reason, the months are in counter clockwise format - spring to the right, summer at the top, and fall down the side.
Never thought about this before - it just seemed natural.
Comment by T Sommers — 05.27.08 @ 2:06 pm
Yep, I visualize the year in three dimensions. Can’t say I see music in colors and shapes though. IIRC, Jimi Hendrix used to see music in at least colors if not shapes.
Comment by John — 05.27.08 @ 2:08 pm
Like the first commenter, I have none of the characteristics you mention.
Comment by Joanna — 05.27.08 @ 2:12 pm
I have chromagraphemia, which is a fixed mental (and sometimes pseudo-visual) association of colors with alphanumeric characters. Letters, numbers, decadal sets, days of the week and months of the year are all assigned — and have been as long as I can remember.
Like Glenn, I too perceive sounds as colors; specifically, frequency bands (40-80Hz, ~1.8-3.5kHz, and so on). Coincidence or not, I am also a hobbyist sound engineer.
Comment by Michael Ubaldi — 05.27.08 @ 2:54 pm
Frederica Mathewes-Green (whose husband is priest at Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Linthicum, MD) wrote about this:
http://www.frederica.com/writings/synesthesia.html
Comment by Lola LB — 05.27.08 @ 3:16 pm
FWIW, I’m similar to Jal Arky (commenter 11) in how I visualize the calendar year. For as far back as I can remember, I see it as a big circle (uneven or egg-shaped maybe) with the slide toward summer, and climb toward winter beginning around September. Christmas & New Year is near the top, but sailing over Jan & Feb is like the beginning of a big down-hill roller coaster plunge. This is all counter-clockwise in my version.
Unlike La Shawn, I loved summer & dreaded the beginning of the school year, so heading toward summer was always a relief.
Don’t really think of music notes or chords in specific colors, although I’ve always recognized the analogy.
But will say: With the advent of iPod & iTunes, I have fun grouping certain songs by mood. Best example: I have a song-list called “Cool Breeze in a Forest”, and best example song from that list is “Hypnotized” by Fleetwood Mac. The chords and instruments in that song really do strike me like a cool breeze would, and it almost feels like it when I listen (especially appreciated during hot Tennessee summers!)
Interesting post, La Shawn!
Comment by Arthur — 05.27.08 @ 3:30 pm
I hear/see tones when i water ski from the waves of the boat and the ripple of the ski as they intersect and chords as they cross.
Comment by XGBC51 — 05.27.08 @ 3:56 pm
See also, Vladimir Nabokov’s description of his own synesthesia in his autobiographical “Speak Memory.”
See also, Jimi Hendrix, “Axis, Bold as Love.” This song is completely about synesthesia between color and emotions.
See also, lyrics in Hunter/Garcia, “Attics of My Life.”
Comment by Bill — 05.27.08 @ 4:21 pm
interesting. I too have this happen to me, but never really thought about it. it was just the way it was. I see sounds as colors, especially techno music. my calendar also occupies a specific space, similar to the one above. all very interesting, makes me wonder if some of the lights and flashes I see randomly are related to this. I suffer from migraine headaches, and was told the flashes of light, while they didn’t cause pain, were also migraines. very interesting.
Comment by james — 05.27.08 @ 4:23 pm
I don’t “hear in color.” But I do “see music” in the arrangement of shapes and colors. I realized this when I was a teenager and an exhibit of the works of Kandinsky was at the city museum. My friend, who went with me to do a class project, got mad at me because I would stand in front of the paintings and zone out. She would call me and I would not hear her because “my ears were full.” Then I took my newly sharpened sense and was able to “see the music” in other abstract works. Later still, I was able to “see music” in any scene.
I found out many years later that Kandinsky was also a synesthete. Apparently music brought colors and shapes to his mind with such vividness that he could bring them to his canvas clearly enough to “awake” a fellow synesthete.
Comment by speedwell — 05.27.08 @ 4:29 pm
Being a musician/composer/guitarist for over thirty years, I’ve not only read about synesthesia and absolute pitch, but I’ve encountered several individuals who have these abilities. The most interesting cases, to me, are the rare people who see specific colors related to every note of the dodecaphonic (twelve-tone/chromatic) system. Astonishingly, they tend to agree on which notes make them see which colors.
Though I don’t have either of those abilities, I have what I have found to be similar traits to other composers whose music I really like: A terribly low score in numerical ability - below the fiftieth percentile - but top percentile scores in all of the reasoning categories. As I tried to explain to all of my math teachers over the years, I can internally generate and visualize sounds and shapes, but numbers don’t look or sound like anything to me, so I simply can’t manipulate them: I use my fingers to add and subtract, though I can do long division and multiplication with a pencil and paper. Anything beyond that, however, like algebra or trigonometry, and I’m simply totally lost.
Not surprisingly, I guess, the only math course I ever got an “A” in was geometry: I could visualize that internally because it involved manipulating shapes and objects.
And, obviously, my verbal scores are rather ho-hum as well. LOL!
Intelligence is an interesting phenomenon: It tends to be clustered around specific abilities in certain categories, and is hardly ever generally broad, which is why “the complete genius” is such a rare thing.
Comment by Hucbald — 05.27.08 @ 4:30 pm
I feel numbers as different spatial representations based on if they are even, odd, prime, squares etc. And this probably has nothing to do with synesthesia, but I have a weird preference for prime numbers.
I also have an internal visualization of the calendar. It is circular, January would be at roughly 11 o’clock. It runs couter clockwise, May is at about 7 o’clock. September is at four and December at 12. I only recently realized that this is not at all proportional to the actual time passing. But that is how it is in my head, attempts to alter it have failed parlously.
Comment by Shinobi — 05.27.08 @ 4:53 pm
Very interesting! It’s fascinating how our brains work.
I don’t have synesthesia, but I do translate abstracts into concrete images. For example, when I study a theory of behavior, I have to visualize that behavior happening and construct a 3-D mental image of the interactions before I truly understand it. That’s voluntary, though. I do get a sense of shape with vocal accents which is involuntary. With a British accent, I “see” the words as tall, thin and chilly. With a Southern accent, the words are short, soft and a bit wavy. Most English-speaking accents fall somewhere in between.
My weirdest quirk is physical, though. When I eat something really cold, I get a sudden chill about an inch below the tip of my left clavicle, right where you’d hold the butt of a rifle if you were left-handed. In the middle of my shoulder, essentially. I haven’t the foggiest why that is true.
Comment by susannac — 05.27.08 @ 4:56 pm
“The only synesthesia I experience is when I’m startled by a sudden noise: it causes me to see a flash of bright light. This is particularly likely to happen if it’s dark or if I’m on the threshold of sleep”
I have the exact same experience - the darker it is, the more pronounced it becomes. When something makes noise at night, like appliance kicking on or something that makes a sudden sharp sound, it is like someone set off a camera flash.
Comment by Gullyborg — 05.27.08 @ 5:07 pm
I sense odd and even numbers as “sharp” and “flat” (tactile, not musical). In music, I sense sharps and flats as “round” and “prickly” respectively, even though they’re technically the same notes.
Also, when I hear sounds, I often feel like certain specific sections of my upper body are being played like a drum. The tops of my arms react to Nightly News. Quiet voices get my arms, throat, and chest. Some sound the other day got my palms to react. Doesn’t matter if I’m facing toward or away from the source. However, I don’t know if this would count as synesthesia, since sound does have a percussive/tactile component to it.
Comment by Dawn — 05.27.08 @ 5:11 pm
I see musical tones as colors. Lower tones are in the blue purple range shading as we get to higher tones as yellows and even white.
In addition some sounds are fuzzy like soft fabric or velvet and other sounds are sharp and spikey or hard. So I can hear a tone and see green fuzziness or green glassy spikiness
I’m a musican (guitarist) and singer and have almost perfect pitch.
Comment by DPW — 05.27.08 @ 5:31 pm
I’m almost like 11 and almost exactly like 21! My internal calendar is a slanting eggish-oval-shaped track tilted in space from the smaller, lower Feb/March end up to December. Upcoming events have a location as well as a time. I had always assumed that I’d seen a calendar that way in a picture book and clung to the idea, but it’s persistent and absolutely solid, as are the week- shapes. I’d recently read about synesthesia and recognized it in myself, but am wowed that other people visualize their years so closely. Number 21, we know who’s got it right, right? : )
Comment by Henway — 05.27.08 @ 5:35 pm
Count me in, so to speak. Music as color movies, calendars as various weekly, monthly and annual structures, all manner of other concepts as 3D shapes. I “engineer” stuff in my head, with size, weight, and mass as testable mental entities, but I suppose that’s common.
Comment by Ten — 05.27.08 @ 5:35 pm
I usually see numbers as physical quantities, or at least in two dimensions, and often do the simpler subtraction and addition problems in my head my moving chunks of numbers around. Multiplication and division also, but to lesser degree.
Also when I was writing computer programs, I saw the program as a physical entity, with subroutines being discrete objects, and little lines running back and forth that represented pointers and subroutine calls.
I don’t know if this is a form of synesthesia or not. I really never inquired of others if they had the same visual concept of numbers I did, I just did it.
My wife has an interesting quirk. When she hears a word or phrase or sentence, she automatically alphabetizes it in her head. For example, she would see “LaShawn Barber’s Corner” as “abcehlnorsw.” (Never thought to ask her if she sees them in upper or lower case?). You can give her a phrase, and she spits it right back to you in alphabetical order - she doesn’t take time to think it out, it just happens. She says she was in her teens, I think, before she realized other people don’t do this.
I suspect that turning verbal/auditory and textual input (music, speech, text, what-have-you) into visual representations is actually pretty common, perhaps even the default, but it may be expressed in a lot of different ways. I also suspect this is true because human sight and spatial processing was probably developed more highly and much earlier than verbal skills.
Comment by Eric — 05.27.08 @ 6:26 pm
I have a slightly different form of synethesia. While do I conceptualize the calendar and other time and number related concepts as shapes, the earmark of mine is that I don’t think in words, but rather in colors, sensations, and impressions, then shapes and pictures. Speaking and writing require that I “translate” all that into words.
In-coming information produces pictures or impressions in my head. I see music as color and colors themselves make noise and have flavors. “Nice” color palettes sound like music. “Ugly” color palettes sound like a bad orchestra warming up or screeching violins. Working with numbers actually makes a pleasant humming sound accompanied by sort of a warm sensation in my face. Ideas in a conversation tend to take on unique shapes and colors, sometimes glowing a bit. (Great for synthesizing concepts and writing papers, terrible for trying to follow a rambling speaker.)
When I was five and found out my Mom didn’t know what red tasted like, I was floored. By the time I was about 17, I just thought I was crazy.
Comment by J — 05.27.08 @ 7:34 pm
I have been able to associate colors with specific words for as long as I can remember (42 yrs old). For example, when I think of the word “picture,” I see a quick light blue color, followed by a dark green color. Other words have their own color bursts.
When I first read about synesthesia ten years ago, I was amazed that there were other people who described their own color-word associations. It was exciting to read about others who have these experiences and I have read about it as much as possible since then.
I’m not at all surprised about the sound associations described in the article; it seems like a natural extension of what I experience. The calendar synesthesia is new to me, so that is another opportunity to read about how we humans process information. My calendar is different (see below).
However, I am much more visual in how I process information. I also have this wonderful timeline in my head for historical dates, which I am able to recall without effort. I “see” this enormous line of years extending throughout my mind and can instantly refer to it whenever a year is mentioned and talk about important events occurring during that time period and its nearby years. It was wonderful to have such a “cheat sheet” in my head when obtaining my history degree.
Life seems so much richer with this kind of brain. I am glad I developed this way.
–PB, Arlington, Va.
Comment by Poshboy — 05.27.08 @ 7:52 pm
Not that I have anything new to offer–just want to share my ‘excitement’ at discovering this. I’m similar to a couple of you guys.
I picture the calendar and numbers in the circle positions of the clock with Jan at 1, etc. The seasons, however, are offset a bit. Summer is the bottom quarter (like 4 1/2 to 7 1/2) fall the left quarter, etc. Does cause me some problems in thinking about what month is in what season
Actually, being in LA, summer ’seems’ to stretch the circle from May through Sept. But it all fits somehow in that bottom quarter of the pie. Spring is only April. Fall is Oct & Nov. Yet it’s all still a perfect circle with equal quarters. I can ’see’ holidays all in their positions around the clock.
Same thing for counting, for 1-12, run around the clock. Starting at #13-20 the digits stretch out to the right, rising slightly. From 20 to 100, they go nearly straight up, leaning a bit to the left. Starting at 100, they go up and out (back). I visualize this as I count, do simple adding & subtracting. I can visualize this entire shape at one time. Loop, stretch right, shoot up, back.
I saw a TV program recently on a savant (he met the real Rainman). He visualized very large numbers as shapes & colors. The researchers had him form these in colored clay. When asked to re-form them after a long delay, he did it pretty much the same way. Somehow (as I recall) he used these color shapes to quickly calculate very large mathematical problems.
Pretty cool, huh? Fascinating how much we don’t yet know about our minds.
Comment by ManlyDad — 05.27.08 @ 8:08 pm
I do think I have some form of it. I have always seen the months and alphabet as having colors. April is red of course. February is quite naturally purple and 2 is yellow.
I also see things when I hear music. I saw “videos” in my head LONG before cable television (as a kid.) I can’t listen to music without some kind of unbidden visualization.
Also, at a sordid time in my past I was pulled over by a cop who decided to put me through the paces of a sobriety test. I was actually sober but… anyway. He asked me to say my ABC’s backwards. I asked him if he wanted that in English, Spanish or sign language? He said, “Take your pick.” I chose Spanish and rattled it off in one breath. He was amazed and said that sober people can’t even do that. I was surprised and said, “well, I am sober and I just did it.” When he asked how I said that I could see the whole alphabet lined up in one big long line like a picture.
Sometimes I smell things when I look at paintings … but not all the time.
Comment by Randy — 05.27.08 @ 9:24 pm
La Shawn has a very interesting post about a condition known as Synesthesia. Basically synesthesia is the combination of two senses…
Pingback by Synesthesia — 05.27.08 @ 9:41 pm
I have “spatial synesthesia” too, according to your description. It’s fascinating to see it described; I’ve wondered for a while if that was an unusual way of thinking. I “see” time spatially arranged on all scales ranging from hours within the day, to centuries in historical periods. For instance, in months of the year the following right-to-left cycle repeats: January is at the “top left”, if you will, and then there is a very slight turnover into February, which begins to slide more steeply into March and continues down through June, moving more down than to the right. Sort of a cascading ribbon effect. July and August bottom out and head right a bit. September turns back upward, and only slightly to the right; the shape flattens out, peaks again in mid-October (at about the same altitude as June) and then cascades back down to the right. November and December then more or less head straight down, with Christmas Week being a turning point flattening out again through New Years Day. I won’t go into the various spatial relations for the other scales, but they’re just as detailed. Very cool post.
Comment by FzxGkJssFrk — 05.27.08 @ 10:46 pm
It is definitely an interesting way to see the world - I’ve always seen numbers as certain colors (I completed a painting I call “927″ - the sky, 9, is a deep, dark purple; the mountains, 2, are a deep green; and the desert foreground, 7, is a tawny yellow). I also see music as colors and “formations” of colors as well, from swells to waves to bursts of color.
Life is never dull. . .
Comment by Elaine — 05.28.08 @ 1:44 am
Hmm. No such luck for me, I would say. Although I do associate certain sounds with certain shapes. We all do. It’s called reading.
Actually, maybe this is a low grade of synesthesia. When people speak to me I can see the words as if someone had drawn a speech bubble above their head. And that’s how i spell words I’m not so sure of, either; rearranging the letters in my head until they fit right.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with languages I don’t understand - otherwise it would be real easy to learn new ones
Comment by Gregory Kong — 05.28.08 @ 6:20 am
I have always felt that I had a number of Synesthesia traits when dealing with numbers, words, and sounds.
Although not in a brilliant overwhelming way, I tend to associate a mood or color to patterns in letters and numbers. It’s just another method for memorizing, I suppose. I feel certain subtle emotions through colors and sounds create a certain flow of color which in turn invoke feeling. It’s not like someone says “horse” and BOOM a light of red flashes in my eyes… it’s much more subtle and almost a subconscious event.
In regards to viewing the calendar in a spatial way, I actually look at it sort of the way I view a clock. January is always to the left of December, and hold low-saturation colors.
January December
February November
March October
April
May September
June August
July
That’s about as close as I can get to visualizing it in text form.
Comment by MatchNL — 05.28.08 @ 10:45 am
Apparently text formatting doesn’t work in comments, so disregard the visual representation in my last comment… lol
Comment by MatchNL — 05.28.08 @ 10:46 am
In all honesty, I think everyone has SOME form of Synethesia. They just need to learn how to realize it.
It’s really just a way for your mind to help index memories.
When you learned your native language, your brain didn’t learn “A, B, C, D…etc” letter-by-letter. You learned rules and phonemes in your mental lexicon and associated sounds with patterns and combinations of symbols.
Comment by MatchNL — 05.28.08 @ 10:51 am
Tara Leigh Cobble (the musician I shared with you a month or two ago) has synesthesia. She talks about it here: http://www.radiantmag.com/article.php?ID=134 and here: http://www.imuzic.com/forum/printer_friendly_posts.asp?TID=14.
Comment by Jud — 05.28.08 @ 11:56 am
Not exactly sure if it counts, but occasionally, I find the physical sensations of extreme sexually arrousal to be accompanied by lights, colors and shapes. This can sometimes also happen with music, as I “zone out” and almost seem to slip into a dream state.
Or maybe I am just falling asleep (with the music I mean, not the first situation).
Comment by submandave — 05.28.08 @ 12:10 pm
I mostly don’t have any of these effects. But a lot of music evokes emotion in me. I can’t listen to Pink Floyd (the album my now-ex-husband had when we got married), because it grabs my emotions by my shirt-front and pulls them in a swirling vortex down into depression. That one is the most visual.
Led Zeppelin (also my ex’s album) had a strong attraction with a distasteful bitter undercurrent–like tainted sex.
I avoid music like that and stick to happier or purer music.
Comment by SkyePuppy — 05.28.08 @ 1:32 pm
Fascinating post and comments!
I wanted to address the one by Hucbald (#26), which was almost like looking in a mirror in places; I too am a musician and occasional composer, and I also did badly in every math course except geometry, which I loved. I always thought it was my bad math teachers to blame, but there may have been more to it than that.
I have what one might call garden-variety perfect pitch; I can’t tell you how many cents sharp or flat you are, but I can tell you what note you played and reproduce it (range willing) on demand. It comes in very handy in things like transcribing jazz solos, and it made Aural Skills (ear-training) class a breeze in college.
The one time that it wasn’t really cool was when I found myself at college parties where both alcohol and a piano were present. Some of my friends used to like to turn my pitch skills into a parlor game of sorts, sitting down to the piano and making some sort of hideous tone cluster, and then saying, “Hey, Kev, what notes are these?” I would usually just smirk and reply, “All of them!”
Comment by Kev — 05.29.08 @ 12:30 am
This is REALLY cool. I thought everyone did this. I have several visualizations for different things. I associate some colors to certain songs (odd because I’m color blind), but these images aren’t vivid for me. What is vivid for me is how I view the calendar year, and the days of the week.
For me, January starts on the lower right and the months move to the left; at April the months turn up and move through mid-August. Mid-August through October moves to the right, November straight down. There is a u-turn at the end of November and December comes up vertically to meet January. If I were to analyze this, I would say that I always loved summer (which starts early in Florida) and Christmas, thus the vertical in those times. For the days of the week, I see a block of days that are looped in a circle.
Comment by Danny — 05.29.08 @ 5:27 pm
I absolutely do this. All letters and numbers have a color. I also picture the calendar as a sort of rectangle. I am always “seeing” it as if I am standing in the month of May. I also see the week as 7 blocks, with Sunday and Saturday on top and the other days below them.
Strange that I found this article today. I was just talking to my husband about these experiences and he thinks I’m crazy.
Comment by pageturner — 05.29.08 @ 9:20 pm
Synesthesia - I had never heard of this, but it’s interesting!
Pingback by The Marshian Chronicles — 05.30.08 @ 9:03 am
I also see time and numbers in blocks. And while I don’t actually see colors in relation to music, I do associate certain colors and visual sensations with specific pieces of music. How fascinating the way different people experience these things.
One amazing thing about music is that it exists only in the memory. It is not just the notes currently being played, but the sequence of notes, that make any work of music what it is.
The human brain is truly a miracle.
Comment by Trish — 06.02.08 @ 8:03 pm
I love reading all these comments! I tried for years to explain to my husband how I saw the months of the year, or the days of the week, and he had no idea what I was talking about. I “see” numbers in color, too. I didn’t know there was a name for this until I saw it on 20/20 some months ago. For me, the calendar is a circle, like a clock face, with twelve being the division between December and January, and all the months following the regular clock pattern, except counter-clockwise.
Wow. Cool.
Comment by Janey — 06.03.08 @ 6:21 pm
La Shawn Barber writes about a fascinating condition called “synesthesia.” Synesthesia is “a neurological and involuntary phenomenon in which people…
Pingback by Quick Takes - 6/7/2008 at Ray Fowler .org — 06.07.08 @ 12:07 am
I couldn’t read all the comments because of tiredness, so if someone else has pointed this out, ya know, sorry:
Anyway, two things I know about this.
1. The singer Tori Amos has this, hardcore. She has described in detail in her autobiography, as well as in other places, that when she begins to write a song, her first musical inspiration usually comes to her in the form of what she describes as a light filament, each distinct from any other that she’s ever encountered, and she has described the musical process of writing as sort of being an almost architectural process of entering that light filament, and learning to navigate its shapes from within.
2. In my own experience as a singer/songwriter/pianist, I’ve encountered this in different forms…I can say that when I am able to completely be free as I write, which involves sitting in front of the piano sometimes and just PLAYING and releasing everything around me, that, when I find myself crossing the boundary between pure improvisation into actual composing, when a song shape is starting to emerge, that, yes, there can be a literal visible emergence, and there can be colours, and shapes, and it’s really a strange beautiful kind of thing.
I’ll also say that there are certain chords, some of them nameless, honestly, that evoke the same sorts of feelings and experiences…for me, some of the chords Joni Mitchell used in her 1976 record Hejira…those sounds that, when they hit you a certain way, you’re just jolted, and hopefully not driving…”Jackie’s Strength” by Tori Amos is another one that’s full of those sounds. “Silent All These Years,” as well. Also, I find that breath plays a role, at least for me.
Anyway, I had never heard the term until I saw this book a while back, knew immediately that it’s what Tori had described, recognized it in myself, and kinda figured “Huh! Well, I guess that explains some things about how quirky we musicians are.”
I’ve done the thing with months too, but i tend to see them in lines, with their names, and sort of with terrain, but this is weird…when i envision certain months, I tend to visualize them looking in different directions, and not consistently either. As in, I’m standing in April, yet I’m looking at May, but when I’m standing in July, I’m looking at both June and August. I’m sure there are deep explanations for all of this.
Anyway. Ramble.
Also I count stairs, even in my own house, where I know it’s not going to, like, suddenly be different, yet I do it.
Comment by Break the Terror — 06.08.08 @ 12:03 am
I also see the numbers from 1 to 20 at right angles to the ones from 21-30.
The late songwriter Laura Nyro apparently experienced music in terms of colors. I remember reading that when she was recording her second album she would tell the studio musicians what color to play, and after a few sessions they understood her.
Comment by Trish — 06.08.08 @ 7:22 pm
I have timbre-colour synesthesia, which isnt as usefull as you might think. All pianos are blue and all drums are black but I cant compose a melody to save my life. It’s the basis of my visual art though.
Comment by Hex — 06.08.08 @ 9:31 pm
I’ve always pictured the year as a 3-dimensional ring in 3D space, with Jan 1 at 12 o’clock and the year running clockwise. The ring is tilted at about a 45 degree angle, with the winter months higher than the summer months. Months have their own colors, and each month has it’s own size/length along the ring. My mind’s eye views the ring from different vantage points, depending on the time of year. For instance, during December, my mind’s eye sits at about October and view’s the “current” month of December by looking up at it. In May, my mind’s eye sits above and outside of the ring, and looks “downhill” towards May and the following months of summer, farther down the ring. When I think of a future event, such as my birthday 6 months from now, I “see” that date by positioning my mind’s eye on the opposite side of the ring. Here’s a link to a 3D representation of my year that I started recently. I’ve added Jan 1 as a label at the top. Months are colored and sized according to my synesthetic view of the year.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/IXHclPeeVDFxP9TDG9Wk-g
Comment by Dana — 06.09.08 @ 6:20 pm
Very cool, Dana.
Comment by La Shawn — 06.09.08 @ 6:37 pm
I feel very FOUR LOVESish about this, because it seems we feel the same way about this truth, La Shawn. Check out my blog post on synaesthesia. I have two friends who are synaesthetes, and I’m just fascinated by them, and by the kind of God Who delights in and draws out such uniquenesses.
http://karagraphy.com/2003/05/31/synaesthesia/
Comment by joy mccarnan — 06.09.08 @ 11:28 pm
I never realized I had synesthesia until my late 30’s. I had assumed everyone saw music as I saw it until I was talking about it with my wife. I know that is the reason I love long drives (we are talking hours here) where I can simply listen to my music.
Comment by blue — 06.13.08 @ 5:11 am
I see months roughly this way: January through May start at the bottom of an ellipse of some kind, moving up and toward the right; the ellipse gets thinner and longer through Summer, heading up vertically; and then there’s a plateau starting in September that juts back sharply to the left, and around Thanksgiving, it falls back down toward January to complete the ellipse. I experience the Fall as a richer, more elongated time, while the rest of the year seems to build up to it in a very literal way. Makes sense since I love brisk air and football!
As far as days of the week, I’m always firmly planted in what day it is and where I’m supposed to be, because each day has that “vibe.” Dates (i.e. 14th of the month) do not have any vibe for me, so I’m terrible at knowing what the date is unless it’s significant, but I always know what day of the week and what month it is because they give off specific vibes.
Fascinating; I’m one of those who didn’t realize this wasn’t normal!
Comment by Henry — 06.20.08 @ 3:09 pm
I find that my spatial calendar ordering is slightly different from those aforementioned, but I’ve seen others that do it like I.
Mine is one of two ways. It is either like a tower, that stretches just about a foot about my head and goes down to my feet, where january is at the top and december is at the bottom, or it is as if that tower fell, and now january is at the left and december is at the right, both a few feet to my left and right.
Another thing I associate is music. I see light colors and white when the note is high, and darker as the notes get lower. Also I see some sort of shapes when I hear people singing, the best way I can describe it is like a ribbon whipping in the air above the person’s head that is singing.This especially happens when the singer uses vibrato.The faster the vibrato, the faster the ribbon whips. Female voices appear in reds and pinks to me too.
I don’t know if there are other things I have just overlooked or not, but this is what I’ve found so far.
Comment by Abby — 06.26.08 @ 11:34 am