Autism and synesthesia?

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No, I don't think what I have is Synesthesia. Just seems similar to me. I forgot to mention that I don't see 'waves' of colour, which is what I've heard a lot of people with Synesthesia do. I just picture the number as that certain colour. For example, I picture a big orange number 8 in my mind.

I have heard others describe seeing numbers as a color (or numbers being a color in this thread). I don't recall reading descriptions of waves of color in number -> color synesthesia.

I might have to look more into it. If I were to have it, then it would only be very mild.

That was one of the first of his pieces I heard too! Right around the time when I started my pipe organ obsession. Some of the octatonic writing in that piece seriously makes my head spin with colors. Wild!

Seriously creepy, these similarities.
A friend of mine worked for the BBC as a sound engineer (he'd be the one recording the sound used for a broadcast) and one thing he did involved a visit to La Trinité.
I'm quite proud to say that my suggested choice of music for one sequence involving long views of stained glass should be something by Messiaen and came up with a couple of ideas - but I had no idea he would be recording in La Trinité itself, and while Messiaen was playing.
So they asked if he would do an improvisation for "about three minutes" - which he did, for exactly three minutes - and I have a recording of it.
When I was given the tape it was like being given the word of God.

Dieu parmi nous = intense synesthetic effects.

I am not sure if the music is to my taste, as it's bordering on overstimulation, but it's certainly very crowded visually.

Yes. Messiaen's music is er, "quite busy", isn't it?
Maybe try "Apparition de l'église éternelle" for something more solid and slow burning; a "wall of sound" effect with some great chords, and it has me rooted to the spot in a trance every time.
This one is especially good (Olivier Latry at Notre-Dame in Paris).

I have synesthesia, but it's not associated with sound, mostly with colors. Everything has a color to me, and they're not vague at all. Like if you ask me what color is March, and write it down and ask me again weeks later, you'll get the same exact answer. My sons have this same thing, too. My husband finds it unbelievable. Like how can you just say number 8 is yellow, like it's a fact. But it IS a fact to me. Number 8 is yellow all the time, as well as most thing associated with number 8. It's just like saying bananas are yellow.

Although I have to say things I don't understand at all don't seem to have colors.

I only have fake synesthesia. Real synesthesia is generally believed to be automatic and not learnt; my experience that is most like synesthesia is a clearly learned association between musical pitches and the 'names' that were told to me for those pitches when I was learning a musical instrument. It's a very strong association, so that I almost hear the 'names' in my mind's ear when I hear the note, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't qualify as real synesthesia.

(That's a somewhat oversimplified explanation of my fake synesthesia, but it covers the important points.)

8 is always yellow for me too. That is really something. I've been pretty surprised at just how many specific color associations often seem to be shared among people who have this. 4 is always red for me and 3 is always blue, and those tend to be fairly universal too from what I've heard.

I have synesthesia and I love it Each number is a different color, music is involuntarily matched with different imagery, and inanimate objects are personified. For example when of my special interests is roads. When a road ends a "stronger" road (usually interstate or a US highway) "defeats" the weaker road ( Interstate 90 ending at Interstate 5, I-5 is stronger than i-90 therefore I-5 is stronger than I-90)

That's closer to absolute pitch. Try the test here:

http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/

(I have absolute pitch as they define it, although some of my medications can alter it. Oddly enough, the people doing that study told me they'd heard of those same medications altering it, from other people who'd done the study. Which is interesting because of all the time that I spent trying to convince doctors it was a real issue, and they often said it didn't make any sense and they'd never heard of it. (To which I always replied, "Well did the people in the medication side-effect studies have perfect pitch?") It happens to me very obviously on Tegretol (carbemazepine) and less obviously but still a little on Trileptal (oxcarbazepine).)

i play classical piano and i definatly see music in colors.a major as bright red a minor as redish gold e minor as dark blue e majr as a pastel light blue.f minor as black and so on

There are many types of synesthesia. Your type sounds associative. Just like mine. Well...at concerts it becomes stronger and I can see swirling colours in front of me.


Yes you have it. Like I said before, there are many types.


Mine is completely different to that. 8 is black and bendy and rubbery. 4 is green. 2 is red. I like 7, it's like a deep pool.

In a synesthesia forum I've been to, they did a questionnaire, and there were certain trends among the numbers, but many of the numbers it was pretty random what people thought they were.

One of the interesting ones is that 1 and 0 are often white or black (either one can be white or black).

For me it's:

0 black
1 white
2 yellow
3 red
4 blue
5 yellow-brown (dark yellow, dog turd, whatever)
6 red-orange
7 purple
8 green
9 reddish brown

Note that I sometimes use different words for the colors, but the colors are always the same. Also, they are specific shades, like 7 is actually a lighter lavender-purple color than a dark purple, but I'm not so good at words for the exact shades usually.

Anyway, in addition to conceptual synesthesia (such as colored numbers, colored letters, etc.) I also have perceptual synesthesia. Both in terms of classic synesthesia (responses that are always the same), and less classic synesthesia (responses that change, for instance, with level of overload). Senses that mix for me include but are not limited to...

Sound -> Sight
Sound -> Touch
Sound -> Kinesthesia
Sight -> Kinesthesia
Sight -> Touch

Where the first one is the sense that most people would have, and the second one is the sense that synesthesia turns it into. That's not complete, because I often don't even realize how many ways that things are mixing at any given time. I really have most things mix in most directions much of the time, although only some of that is "classic synesthesia" (the rest seems to be related to having autistic perceptions and sensory bleedover -- the bleedover varies more from time to time than "classic" synesthesia does).

There is music that I literally cannot force myself to listen to. Not because of how it sounds, but because it gives me a tactile texture as if I'm being soaked in slime. And it's so unpleasant and sometimes outright nauseating that I just can't handle it.

Often the world just seems like a whole lot of sensations overlapping and swirling around me to the point where I can't tell where one leaves off and another begins. It's intense and sometimes quite disorienting. If intense enough, it can make me functionally deaf or blind, or unable to find or move body parts.

Both 0 and 1 are white for me.
O and Q are also white.

The colours change a little for me too. Sometimes the colour doesn't feel right. Like when people say what colour a letter is and to me is feels wrong.

My touch synesthesia doesn't seem to change. It's ordered from a soft/cold to a rough/dry scratchy type of sensation. And the more rough the touch the darker the colour.