synesthesia rocks! who here has synesthesia?

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I researched it when I first arrived here. I came to the conclusion that I don't have it, except possibly a specific type they mentioned involving numbers, distance and time. Like, a year seems far away in distance, and a large number has height... its mild, if I even have it at all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMc8naeeSS8&feature=related[/youtube]

TheSunAlsoRises

I have what I think is called colour grapheme synaesthesia. Letters and numbers have colours. It's quite interesting because in a grouping of letters the first letter will be the colour I usually see but the second or third letter will blend with the first. And sometimes the last letter if it's a strong colour will be have it's own colour and blend back into the other letters.

But then sometimes the word takes the strongest colours and just fills the whole word.

I like to colour-in my find-a-word puzzles. Something that usually takes me 3 minutes takes about 20. The colours have to be right.

Same goes for numbers but only once I reach 200.

I have taste and scent memory. Banana = taste it, smell it. Strawberry milkshake = taste it, smell it. Craving food is torture for me sometimes. I can remember bad /taste smells too from the mere mention of the word.
My bathroom after I shower always smells of sweaty jeans. You know when you sweat in them and they have that funky smell.

I have a visual memory for food too that just lingers in front of my line of sight. It's kind of like when you're about to fall asleep you start to see images.

I have the whole days of the week/ months of the year having their own place in time. I loved it when my drunk sister explained how she had this too.

The colours yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, orange, red, purple and brown show a type of warning system, like a those terrorism warnings. That's the best way I can describe it. The lighter colours are safe colours and the rest get more dangerous/ uncomfortable.

Touch can trigger colours and other textures as well. Actually the above has to do with it.

I see colours and shapes from music, feel intense emotions and some music can actually make me feel disorientated, like my head can spin and I find it hard to stand up. The songs that do it have like really fast guitars and are repetitive.

Actually I was watching a band live (on video) and could smell the smoke machine. Each note has colour too. I only wish I knew more about music to identify them correctly.

Smell and taste here.

I dont think that it means taht you donot have synesthesia, instead it just means that its not disruptive or if it is, that it is not as disruptive.

The only disruption I can think of that I ever had with it is sometimes being thrown off by letters being written in colors for like first grade and such... and them being the wrong color and that being distracting.

Otherwise I think its been helpful

Yeah, same here. But it happens only with things I see. If I hear somebody say "horse" I don't smell anything.

However, every time I hear somebody speak Cantonese I get the taste of food in my mouth. I don't know why that is and it only happens with Cantonese. I hear Mandarin practically every day and nothing happens but as soon as somebody speaks Cantonese, or even with a Cantonese accent, I taste food.

I don't know how to describe it other than 'fruity'. Black smells fruity too but kind of musky also. White doesn't smell like anything. When I was a kid I would just sit around and look at colored markers. I would also smell them; I mean with the cap on smelling the colored plastic body. I'm sure now that people thought it was pretty weird I've always liked colored markers because of that. When I was in 7th grade I bought some markers that were actually scented and they really f'ed me up because they didn't smell like they were supposed to.

For those of you... who have synesthesia and/or may simply be interested in the subject matter, here is an excellent account of synesthesia and other rare conditions by the leading expert.


http://edge.org/conversation/adventures ... _neurology



TheSunAlsoRises

I smell thick, warm fabric and the fuzz on peaches, with warm earth. Black is never actually black, but another very, very dark colour (except priests' socks, which are pure black). Black roses are actually very, very dark red or purple. Black hair is very dark red or brown, and occasionally contains blue. I think these associations help form the imagined smell.

I think synaesthesia is partly a crosswiring, that an experience of one sense is activated by stimulation of another sense, and partly memories and associations. My strongest vision-odour crossovers occur with extremely emotional memories.

To Rascal and Stuart and those smelling colours, do combos of colours have a smell? like a flag for example or a tartan (plaid) image?

It's not like sniffing a piece of fruit. I can definitely tell the difference between smelling a color and smelling something tangible. I guess one way to describe it would be like its a ghost smell; it's kind of translucent and insubstantial if that makes any sense. It's much more subtle than a real smell. The only thing I smell is what I'm focused on so I only smell one thing at a time. So no there aren't combinations

My synesthesia alters depending on my mood and how much stress i am under (like most of my aspie traits).

My most common form is to see patterns sort of overlaid on my vision that look like the visualisations on microsoft media player.

I get weird smells and sounds based on colours - shiny/reflective silver/obsidian black/blue (like skyscraper windows or water sometimes) causes smell responses most of the time.

i live in a place with snow and cloudy grey/blue days where there is little difference between the sky and the ground really mess me up. I get lots of extraneous smells, sound, and sights.

sometimes during repetitive rhythmic motion i will get weird visualisations - and yes, it can be terribly distracting during sex...

I have a question regarding another possible form of it. Since this thread is rolling along: What is this phenomenon when you see colors associated with concepts? Say, Cherubs are red, seraphs are blue, and angels are white. The spelling is colored in these.

Or the expression "pretty soon" looks like a stilll life of a bowl of fruit on a table.
The word almost is a blue snow topped mountain.

These terms and others have these associations.

Is this of the kind?

I suppose some can do. Most images do not evoke smell (life would be hard if it did), but some, like turquoise or a specific combination of pink and green, or certain hues of brown, definitely do consistently evoke the same smells. I like smelling my jars of spices, which I have very many of, and seeing the shapes of the wonderful aromas.

If you said some coloured things, like grass, or hessian, or wool, then those all have a smell. The smell from the image or memory of an object can be indistinguishable from the real thing, like the smell is really in my nostrils. Sometimes I smell something, especially when out in shops, that is confusing until I realise that I am seeing something that evokes that smell. Sometimes there is a real smell (like a specific brand of tobacco) that I see an image (like the smoker, or part of a place associated with the smoker) that is just as real as everything else until I realise that it is the smell.

Bump because I have some weird synesthesia! I have sound/tactile and sometimes sound/visual. Music has textures as well as visuals at times.

This. I wonder what causes it.