Synesthesia Test Variations
Synesthesia is a condition of the mind in which our brain’s processing of the senses is intertwined. While some who experience the condition may consider it a nuisance (at times), those on the outside (looking in) often regard the condition as nothing less than phenomenal. People who experience synesthesia are nominally labeled as synesthetes. Synesthetes experience the world around us in a different way. Have you ever tasted the richness of the color blue, or seen the brilliant orange streaks of a high C note? Do you perceive sensations with a sense that doesn’t seem to belong? Probably not. If you have had a similar experience, though, there’s a good chance that you’re the one synesthete in every 2000 people. Still curious? Good! There are a variety of synesthesia tests that can help you verify or nullify your personal relationship with the condition.
Visual Tests
A common test for grapheme-color synesthesia is having the subject in question look at a picture with several black letters or numbers. A person without synesthesia will look at this picture and see it as it is: a picture with black letter and numbers. He or she will not see anything atypical. However, a synesthete (who associates specific colors with specific letters and/or numbers) may look at the same picture and perceive something quite different. As he or she begins to scan through the letters and numbers, each has its own respective color – a bijection of sorts between grapheme and color. While this is a rather simple synesthesia test, it does its job, providing quick, most-often definitive results.
The above picture depicts an example of how a synesthete experiencing grapheme-color synesthesia might perceive the numbers (right) compared to normal perception (left). The test, in this case, is how fast the subject is able to find all of the number 2s in the picture. While a person with normal perception tends to have trouble hastily distinguishing between the 5s and the 2s, a grapheme-color synesthete may perceive 5s as one color and 2s as another, making the task a much easier one. You get the idea. Simple, yet effective.
Auditory Tests
Since there are numerous types of synesthesia, a visual test is not the only kind of synesthesia test you will find on the internet. For example, there also exists auditory synesthesia, which occurs when a sound activates an additional sense (to hearing) for a synesthete. To be able to test for auditory synesthesia, one will be asked to listen to a collection of sounds to see if he or she experiences a sensory perception that is not mundane (e.g. seeing colorful shapes or tasting a certain flavor).
Test-Retest
This is a type of test where a person is given a set of objects (e.g. numbers) and is asked to assign colors, tastes, personalities, or more. After a certain amount of time, they are given the same objects again and asked to do the same task. A synesthete will be able to assign the same characteristics very easily, as they’ve already made neural associations which are automatic and consistent.
Stroop Effect
Also known as the Stroop test, this pertains to a kind of psychology test that researchers use to demonstrate the subject’s reaction time for a task. It is widely used in clinical practice. Because Stroop tests are used to measure reaction time (and due to the fact that synesthesia is automatically evoked), researchers use them to see if the reactions within a person’s brain are consistent with those standard in a brain altered by synesthesia.
It always bugs me when I see the number test you mentioned. I can easily spot the “2”s of course, but they are all black. Maybe this is just me, but I don’t SEE the colors (wouldn’t that be a hallucination??), I merely “feel like” those things are those colors (and they are unchanging colors, the letters and numbers and words are ALWAYS those colors, they never change). Maybe my synesthesia is mild? I don’t know. The colors are only being perceived in my head, like a feeling. I “feel like” a letter or word or number is a certain hue, but I don’t LOOK AT IT and SEE those colors.
Another thing is, it doesn’t bother me very much to see a letter or word in colors that are not the same as what I feel they are. I mean, I think it doesn’t look as “comfortable” as my colors, but it doesn’t bother me to see them in other colors. Which I suppose is good, because I’m a graphic designer and web developer. LOL… but also it’s part of my personality to separate my own emotions from that which is logical, so perhaps that is also a reason why it doesn’t bother me if someone else doesn’t use the “right” colors, because I know it’s illogical.
I’m very rational and logical (not very emotional about most things), but also highly visual and artistic (and can feel emotional about those things which doesn’t require logic, such as art). I feel fortunate to be both of those things. 🙂
Thanks for the comment! I’m certainly no expert, but it sounds as if your synesthesia is mild, yet present nonetheless. The way you described your interpretation of letters in different colors than yours as being “not comfortable” seems to indicate that your senses are at least a little intertwined. Also, it must be very nice having that duality of logic and abstract – being able to approach some things logically and other things whimsically. Bravo!
I just found out I have this condition and I am im my early 20’s.
I see letters with color and personality in my minds eye, along with the sex of the letter. Some letters get along better together than others.
I also have the same perception with numbers. 9 is a tall dark man that is aggressive and rude. Where as 7 is a kind and lean man that is a light blue with a little bit of darker texture.
When I hear music I see large amount of colors and shapes. I can even draw these sequence of shapes and then remember the song later from them.
I also have a strong feeling towards color and what colors go together and what ones don’t just be “feeling” it. This is all interesting because I am a graphic designer and also an illustrator.
I also see colors when I feel something like pain or a good felling. Sometimes I get a weird texture in my mouth that is smooth when I’m happy and more prickly when I am angry oe upset. When I am happy I see bright colors but when I am upset I see blakc and reds.
This is a whole new world to me! I also associate people with color. If I meet someone that Is blue I know I’ll get along with them. But if they are black or purple I know that there probably isn’t much chemistry there.
Do you think I haeve a strong sense of Synesthesia? I feel like my whole life is color, shapes, sounds and is associaited with everything I do. It’s shocked me that so many people dont see what I see! Great website and thanks for sharing!
Hey Hillary,
Wow! Although I’m no professional, it seems like you have quite a few types of synesthesia! Everything that you mentioned sounds right on par with some of the cases that have come up in the research that I’ve done. Pretty amazing!
Also, I checked out your site and noticed that you’re quite artsy and also a musician. Honestly, this is no surprise, as many synesthetes are very creative and involved with the arts and music. We’d love it if you’d share your experiences with some of your viewers on your site and perhaps point them in our direction to learn some more basic information about synesthesia!
Thanks for the support! Great comment!
Thanks for the reply Travis!
I am working on several things for my blog regarding Synesthesia, and I will certainly direct readers to your site as a reference. 🙂
I think i might have a mild form of synesthesia. I sometimes feel that a letter og number has i colour, but sometimes,I fint it hard to find colours on every number and every letter. I remember when i was little, I always imagined a square to be purple, and a triangle to be yellow.
I just wached a show on TV where Maria Mena told about her form of synesthesia. The woman who interviewed her didn’t seem to understand when she told about imagining sounds in colours. But I felt like I understood her way of thinking. After that I started thinking, if i might have the same thing.
Sometimes I say strange things like that a thing tastes like a key, and it smells like a snail, or it smells like a remote control. Do you think i might have a mild form of synesthesia ?
Hey, Bex! Thanks for the comment! While we can’t be sure that you have any form of synesthesia (however mild it may be), your symptoms certainly seem consistent with some of those that we often see in grapheme-color synesthetes. (Read more about synesthesia types.) Personally, I’m very familiar with your “that thing tastes like that other thing smells” proclivities. I’m not so sure it’s outright synesthesia, but I’m sure that it’s indicative of some of the underlying neurological aspects of the condition. So, yeah, I’m right there with you.
Again, thanks for the comment! Follow us on Twitter @synesthesiatest for updates on new content!
Hi, I found out I have Synesthesia back in October. I see letters as black, like normal, but whenever they immediatly pop up to me, then sometimes a random color pops up for a half a second then goes away from the letter or number. I also can percieve month names or words/letters even without the ‘flash’. I can see and taste voices, music, the letters and numbers and anything I see. Sometimes even pictures turn on a piece I’ve heard before. I also noticed that whever someone speaks in a certain tone, a familiar piece in my head starts playing.
How bad is my Synesthesia? Just wondering.
Hey, Catherine. Thanks for the comment! Wow; it seems as if you have plenty of experiences that are indicative of various types of synesthesia. Again, I’m not qualified to diagnose the severity of your condition, but it would seem to me that many of those perceptions are synesthetic. Thanks for visiting! Follow us on Twitter @SynesthesiaTest.
So, I’m still in very early stages of researching this, because, as it seems to be for many, I just found out that there is a name for this…
The ones that seem to be the strongest to me are seeing years, months, and days in specific places in space when I imagine them, or “time/space” I think it’s called. I also personify everything, even beyond just numbers and letters, but most objects, for example, spoons are female and forks are male. I see so many colors and shapes in sound, especially music. I am a dancer and have always used that visualization of music to interpret music through dance, just didn’t know it was anything out of the ordinary.
As far numbers and letters having color, they definitely do, but I don’t actually see them, more like they just “are” that color, more of a feeling than a visualization. Sometimes it’s even like they are they’re own color, not actually any color on the spectrum at all.. So even though the colors on a page appear all black, the e’s all pop out together, as do the a’s and o’s and p’s, etc.
I am fascinated to learn more about this and maybe find other similarities among people with this condition. I am an artist and dancer, I always had imaginary friends as a kid, I’m left handed…all things that I’ve always seemed to be the only person around me to experience, so could any of those things be linked to synesthesia? Thanks for the helpful info!
Hey Ilea,
It certainly sounds like you have some synesthetic tendencies! I think you’ll definitely benefit in doing more research and learning about the experiences of others like you. Soon, we hope to publish a post that shares some of the experiences of willing readers. Let us know if you’d like to contribute!
Thanks for the comment.
I would love to! I’m even now designing my dance classes based on interpreting the colors and shapes of the music with movements and positions of the body. I would love hopefully spread the word about this phenomenon, as I am certain I will find others who experience if as well.
Awesome! If you’d like to type up a short blog post that highlights some of your experiences, we’d be happy to post it! The majority of the inquiries that we get are related to hearing about others’ experiences, so we’re positive our viewers would appreciate it. No pressure, either way. If you’d like to discuss it further, feel free to send us a message via our contact form. 🙂
Thanks!
Hi! I just found out this year that I had synesthesia. Ever since I can remember I have seen all letters and numbers (except for L) in color and I had no idea that it wasn’t what everyone saw. It’s definitely more interesting now to read because I actually notice things in color.
I also think I have other kinds of synesthesia, but I’m not sure. For example, I was walking in my school hallway when I suddenly tasted Quaker Oats apple cinnamon oatmeal, which I hadn’t eaten in years. There was also another time when I suddenly tasted cold salsa, the kind you eat with Tostitos chips. It was all very specific to me as to what it was, but I have no idea what triggered it if it had to do with synesthesia.
One other experience that stood out to me; I was looking at a cloud that was very defined against a darkish-blue sky, and I suddenly felt as though I were holding a round, hard, wooden surface.
Do you think I have other forms of synesthesia? The information I read on this website is very interesting. 🙂
Hey Liz,
Thanks for the comment! Your experiences certainly sound interesting! As for your letter-color association, if it’s truly involuntary, it sounds like grapheme-color synesthesia. A good way to test some of your other experiences is to try to pinpoint the triggers. If you’re able to do so, you can get a better idea of whether or not your experiences associated with a given trigger are consistent. Check out our post on involuntary and consistent synesthetic experiences. A good trigger to start with might be the cloud. I guess you’ll have to wait for a darkish-blue sky, but hey, it’s a start! Let us know if any of the experiences are recurring!
Thanks!
Ok. So first I don’t want this to be true or untrue but is this normal?
Sounds taste like things and can be overwhelming and even painful. They can also be glorious and cause my hands to go into fits causing me to bend and crunch them if I don’t dance or move to release the sensation. Like the music is inside my joints. Sounds all have a texture even if they sometimes don’t make sense to other people. Sounds sometimes have a sex or a power to them or a color. I don’t have to think on this it just is.
When I was younger there were certain words you could not say to me because they actually hurt me even if whispered.
Just recently My mother was teasing me about one of these words: the title of a children’s book that combines the word turkey chicken and goose…. she kept saying “You know the word” and I would say “Which word?” really not remembering and then finally she said it and I reacted by shoving my hands over my ears. It actually hurt like a spike in my brain… As soon as she said it I remembered how much I hated how that word sounds and then I though how weird they stopped saying it when I was maybe 5 and I am 38 now, it felt just as intense. I was actually mad at her for a moment for saying that word. She laughed and told me I reacted like that as a kid, a fact she had not reminded me of in years and years and that I as only told after the response to the sound.
I can’t even write the word cause to write it I would have to sound it out in my head and that might cause me a weird pain sensation (like the sensation when you stick your finger in your belly button only in the base of my skull. sounds crazy I know but it feels crazy when I hear that word so I avoid it at all costs. like my nervous system is under attack. Anyway I had forgotten that this word existed and until she asked about it and I freaked.
What’s also interesting is that the sound of the word was made less intense because after that I made her say it over and over to see if i could control it… it worked to lessen the pain but it never went away.
Also my name is a factor in my weird sound associations I never liked any of the various names my relatives gave me and became very overloaded and finally refused to answer to anything but Meggy. To this day its the only variation of my name that I like the sound of… its a happy name on a rainy day. It is a green name in feel not look. Words also have texture and sensation. Words like submarine have impressed me for days because of the way they sound but more because of the way they feel or taste. Submarine tastes tangy like citrus or metal. I even salivate.
I thought everyone felt this way about sound. I love music but I rarely play it in real life cause I am constantly listening to music in my head but rarely put it on unless traveling because I cannot stand still when it is on literally it will cause me pain if I fight it. I am not trying to dance, although I do everywhere I go, I am trying to relieve the swollen feeling from my joints. I can easily get lost in the sound of music and then i am lost. I often close my eyes because although I do not see color suspended in front of me I can see it when my eyes are closed. I feel taken away by the sound but i feel it as it move though me.
I am currently attracted to a man based on his ability to make a variety of sounds. Sounds represent everything to me. it is the most important part of living. and Yet funny enough I am a visual artist/filmmaker/painter.
I am almost swept away by sound and understand it is a physical way. is that part of this disorder??
I also have severe visual migraines, suffer from really bad spelling, feel trapped when too many people talk but when not enough do to make it white noise. i can only handle certain voices and I am highly visual. is this not the way we all are?? Is this why people react strangely to my interpretation of sound? I feel sound I don’t just hear it. It causes me great joy and discomfort. piano and sitar have been fascinating to me since age 3.
I didn’t even know this was a type of brain structure and stumbled upon this site…
Im not sure if I have Synesthesia…..But heres what happens. Usually, when I wake up in the morning, flashes of blue sparkles appear infront of me, then disappear after about 5 Seconds. And whenever I imagine a letter, or number, or month, or day of the week, or even a persons name in my head, it always has to have a color associated to it. Like my name, Soph, is yellow. Number 4 is a light green color, the month May, is a very light brown color. I also am really creative and love to draw and write. And sometimes whenever I hear something, a color always appears in my vision. ^-^ Can you tell me if this is Synesthesia?
Hey Soph,
Thanks for the comment! If your associations are involuntary, then it’s quite possible that you are having synesthetic experiences. Ask yourself this: Am I voluntarily associating these colors with various entities, or is it just inherent? Your creativity and color perceptions indicate that you could certainly be a synesthete. Feel free to ask any more questions!
Is there a name for people who simply perceive a sex (and/or gender) when they see or think about numbers and letters, days of the week and months of the year? The way I perceive letters and numbers isn’t quite like the personification type of synesthesia that I read about here. I cannot give a detailed description of the personality type of each letter, though some do exhibit certain characteristics more so than others. The letters seem to interact with each other while they are lined up in the typical alphabetic formation in my mind. I mean that to me, certain letters seem to have a closer relationship with some letters more so than with others.
I also read about people who see some sort of a number chart when thinking about numbers. I only have this with numbers 1-9 and only when I need to multiply those numbers by 3. This number line seems to have a very specific spatial location in my mind. It is also very three-dimensional and can move around. I perceive the same type of chart when dealing with months of the year…in addition to perceiving each month as having a sex (and/or gender).
It would take too long for me to go into detail about all this, so I’ll just leave it at what I’ve explained thus far. But is there a name for what I have? Most of the people I’ve been reading about have the type of synesthesia that deals a lot with color…so I’m not really sure if I am a synesthete or not.
Hm, good questions, Jaime. I would head over to synesthete.org and try their battery of tests. It may give you a better idea of exactly what you’re experiencing, and whether you’re a synesthete or not.
I get a lot of the same sensations described by Jamie in the last comment, I see numbers, letters and word as having genders and interacting with eachother.
I also get this a lot with sheet music, the notes and phrases interact with eachother and sometimes have different genders.
I don’t really see all of the colours described by other synesthetes or anything but there is a definite way I see things like the layout of the months and days of the week.
Can you tell me if this is a mild form of synesthesia or not??
Hey Grace – thanks for the comment! It certainly sound like your experiences are synesthetic. You may want to check out our post on spatial sequence synesthesia if you’re curious about the day/week/month layout perceptions.
i sense that letters, numbers, weeks and months have colours in my head but does this make me synesthetic? i also sense that words altogether have different colours from just the letters. is this normal ?
Hi! I’m thirteen. I just found out that other people don’t think and see like I do. I see colors and shapes when I hear loud sounds or music, and letters, numbers, months, and days of the week all have different colors and personalities. I was trying to explain something to my friend and said something like “It sounds too yellow”, and she looked at me like I was crazy. I had assumed that everyone saw these colors and felt these things, and it shocked me when she told me she couldn’t. I think I also have a tiny bit of mirror-touch synesthesia.
When letters or numbers or words are in a different color than I see them, it doesn’t always bother me. It really depends on what color it’s printed in. For example, the letter a is red to me. If it’s printed in, say, purple, it sends a jarring sensation through me. However, if it’s printed in orange, it similar enough that I don’t really react. Is this normal? I’ve been going crazy with research, but I can’t find anything about this. I was also wondering if anyone else had a “sixth sense” reaction to smells, sights, sounds, tastes, or textures. When something is freezer burned, I get this sensation of a white powdery substance, but I don’t really see it in front me, and I don’t completely smell, feel, or hear it, but almost. It’s really weird and I’m not good at describing things, but I couldn’t find any information on that either.
Recently, my colors and sensations have been fading for a bit, then coming back really strongly later. For instance, I was in band class, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t see any colors. The next period, they came back with full force and I saw colors even when the sound was really soft. I wasn’t sure why this was happening, but I thought it might be because I’m growing and stuff like that. Did anyone else experience these kind of things?
Again, I’ve just found out about this, and I would like to know as much about it as possible. Thanks!
I just want to talk to other people with synesthesia
Ugh! It bugs me a lot when I see that 2s and 5s test. Synesthetes stills have to KNOW that the letters are 2s and 5s to associate color with them. And in response to Hillary, I have that too! Only 9 is the bratty older sister of 10 (I know, ironic). 9 is also kind of pink and girly.
I have to hear music to see a color, but sometimes random things also have color; the static of TV or clapping. Sometimes song colors change over time, especially in the beginning. I heard a song that was dark grey. Over some time, I heard it again and it was still dark grey, and on the third time I heard it it was black. Is this normal? I remember in preschool I heard a recording of a woman saying “FuzzyWuzzy wuz a bear” and it was brown, but I don’t have colors for people talking anymore.
I think I might have grapheme synesthesia, but I’m not sure. I get h and 5, 4 and f mixed up and h and 5 and f and 4 are the same colors. I never noticed that the numbers & letters had colors until I sat down and thought about them, and from that day on, I have never forgotten what colors they are. However, I couldn’t figure out that visual of the triangle 2’s you had. Is this synesthesia?
I have something I wanna ask you guys; I’m not sure of “seeing” music with my inner eye (inside my head) is synesthesia or just ordinary. When I listen to music or most everyday sounds they immediately infer a shape and richness to that gives it a characteristic visual appearance. For instance a high-pitched note from let’s say a flute, piano or electronic sound is always a bright pulse, with relatively clear edges. Wood-wind sounds have a round shape to them whereas piano and electronic sounds are fairly square-shaped. Lower notes tend to be more translucent or black, with indistinct edges but well-defined body-centers, and the timbre can give some colours: Violins and cellos tend to be brown; harpsichords are red; organs are always turqouise or bright green. Vocals, brass and string chords are harder to define but I would describe them as a thin transparent ether layer that strips across my inner frame of vision. I associate colours with pitch class (A: red; B: turquoise; C: yellow; D; green or blue; E: black; F: purple; G: dark yellow; sharps/flats; black or nothing) but hearing pitches does little or nothing in the way of colour; it’s more of a timbre thing.
These images immediately pop into my mind when and as I listen to music and I cant really imagine sound without them. I got led to this site, and numerous others, by googling what people “see” when they hear music, though it kept referring me to the topic of synesthesia. I am a bit skeptical but as most people don’t seem to know what i’m talking about I cant help but wonder. What would you say?
Hello , I am 38 yrs old and throughout my life i have hidden and buried my symptoms for the fear that i was crazy. When i was little and first started trying to explain or share what goes on in my mind I quickly picked up that i was not understood , there was no sense of connection with anyone i tried to talk to about it, this being my parents , my teachers , and my friends.Recently my wife and i were talking about how i see sounds and music,I have always excelled in music and am capable of playing 13 different instruments, those being the only 13 i ever tried, but i feel confident i could play any others if i tried. I have always seen colors and shapes with almost all sounds i hear.In music I have always see each note as a certain color and specific shape tree or sometimes the leaves of a tree. I very quickly picked up that there were only so many of these colors and trees/and or leaves. Therefore it gave me an advantage as I see it in learning and playing music.I have always been complimented by other musicians I have played with about the speed and efficiency I can pick up and play along on any instrument with whatever is being played.I also get feelings with this colors, some are comforting feelings some are not so comforting, and some can ruin my day.Anyway she started to google things like seeing trees or colors in place of music and found Synesthesia. Needless to say alot about my life, my uncomfortableness, and my lack of some social skills , and a withdrawn feeling I have always had since the first time i tried to connect with another person about my mind, were explained , I’ve been shocked and amazed to find out how long i made it thru my life without ever hearing about synesthesia.
I had only come to one conclusion long ago about my mind and it was that I was crazy , that i had a mental illness , and a bad one . I never told anyone else about it except my wife since i was about 17 and as a final resort to find a connection of understanding with another person, I confided in my band mates and best friends at that era of my life, I thought surely they see it to they feel it to , we seem to connect so well musically, surely they won’t think I’m crazy and maybe we can even figure this out together. But, they couldn’t understand and it just made me seem stranger to them and feel more alienated within myself and the world I lived in. So my wife is the only person after that i ever tried to explain it to, and thankful to her I now know what I am.I now want to mold and craft my synesthesia and try to hone it . I have always been ashamed and fearful of my own mind for lack of explanation before this, I just wanted to be normal and not crazy. Except for the effects it has on my perception of music I have tried to pretend it just didn’t exist, and i never , never , never ever tried to explain to anyone but my wife that something was apparently different , or as i thought before a few weeks ago , wrong. We found some many things falling into place about my behavior, my habits , the way I talked or the way I described something, even the way i handled things through the course of my life. I wonder how many other children and adults out there have suffered from lack of information about this condition , I have certainly gone thru my share of depression and confusion over it.
My numbers, letters, months, days of the week, countries and states have always had genders and personalities. I was just at lunch today with some friends and this became a topic of conversation and some major laughter from them. Of course, in this day and age they were curious if anyone else “thought” this way and googled it. And sure enough, there are others like me. Now, I don’t feel crazy, not that I ever did. But, finding out information about this condition has been a lot of fun!
Hello,
Since I was a little girl, I used to tell me my parents, siblings and cousins that their names have colors. My first language is Arabic so maybe it’s a little bit different than English, but to me the sound (J ج) is a mix of two colors beige and white but when put with other letters like the name (Wijdan وجدان) thy color change to purple. Each letter has a color but when they’re formed they make different ones. people didn’t take me seriously at that time, and maybe thought I was weird.
I stopped thinking about this and thought it was my imagination, until today when I read something about this subject. I remember that I used to see people with colors based on the letters of their names. I haven’t thought about it but now I am interested to know more. sometimes I think we all people have some type of synesthesia. how do you know you have it and not just imagine you do?
Hi,
My twin brother and I both think we may have synesthesia. We are 12. We took your tests and could relate to all of the examples. Our symptoms are that we perceive color when we hear words and numbers. My brother and I both think we have mirror touch, mine less pronounced than his.
I am very creative. I am into theatre arts, painting, drawing, reading, and writing. I am also into sports, which is less common in synesthetes. Can you please tell us whether we may be synesthetes, or direct us to a site that could help us figure it out?
Thanks.
This page is very helpful! I have I only a mild case tho. For example:
Numbers have colours and personalities, but not letters. Example:
6 is a teenage moody girl and is Violet AND black. 3 is a blue, child like boy.
However I have a case I have never heard about. I think it’s a
Sight-hearing-feeling mix. Small or big sizes are throbbing and loud.
Any one heard of this?
Since I was a child I have always subconciously associated colours with letters, numbers, months, days of the week- and even assigned colours to people! I never thought any different of it until recently. I was telling my friend how things just “feel” like colours inside my head- and she thought it was cool I could do that! The next day she said she looked online and said I have something called synesthesia. I am 15- and I now express it through my abstract art.
I haven’t told my parents because they wouldn’t have a clue and its not an easy thing to explain… But It’s good to know there are people like me out there!
– Ruby
I was wondering…
I have synesthesia and I taste words, numbers, letters Etc. and I also have colors for my numbers and letters, but theres where my problem starts. My colors/tastes will change dramatically if I am in a certain mood (Happy: 6=blue Sad/angry: 6=red) I know that people’s colors just don’t change that easily, that it is usually because of something traumatic. I also have ADHD and was wondering if that might have something to do with the color taste changing.
I need some help because it is really bothering me.
I’m 14 and only recently figured out that I have synesthesia. All of my letters, numbers, words, shapes, and even months and days of the week have colors and genders. Also, my colors have genders, and it is extremely annoying when the gender of a color does not match the gender of its’ letter (ex. the letter M is a girl and indigo-purple, but the color indigo-purple is a boy).
I also picture the calendar year, number line, and alphabet as three-dimensional lines (sort of like roller coasters) in specific locations in the space around me. Is this synesthesia? I have been told that it is, but I don’t see how this is a “mingling of the senses.”
Whenever I listen to music, I instantaneously visualize the guitar riff/chord(s) needed, and i feel the fretwires and strings against my fingertips, and my arms feel like there’s a guitar in them even though I’m not holding anything. does that count?
Hi, always match colours with letters, numbers and day weeks (monday – red; tuesday – orange; wednesday – purple; thursday – white; friday – blue; saturday – pink and sunday it’s green), and for me numbers have sex (1 – it’s a boy, 7 – it’s a girl …). I thought it was normal until my sister, that is also synestete talk to me about this.
I really like to know more about it.
In the other day I realize that baked was a darke-blue circle, fried was a yellow rectangle, stewed was a grey square and “estufado” was an orange triangle
I have only a mild form of synesthesia: i see colors for all the numbers, all the vowels, and for some consonants. Also, colors have relationships with eachother (yellow is the wife of green, red the wife of blue, …) And I think I feel a tingling everytime somebody writes somthing on a whiteboard with a marker.
Some forms of synesthesia really are extraordinary. Nonetheless, for the mild forms, I find it very difficult to draw the line, for what is synesthesia and what not. For the mild cases, synesthesia is merely not more than associations. Everyone had associations: everyone knows blue is cold, red is hot, yellow is a happy color. People paint their rooms because some colors bring out determined feeling (red = anger, blue = comfort, …). The buba-kiki test, …. Examples are endless too I think. Is everyone a synesthesist? And if not, where to draw the line?
The color test is not accurate considering that colors pop up when I sort the number out individually.
When I see buildings, I hear music for them. When I played piano as a child, I would remember entire songs just from picturing them. numbers and letters do have age, sex, and color. Like 8 is purplish blue, is a boy, and is middle aged and a child at the same time. As for months, march is green, april is red, may is pink. october is black. november is orange, december is light blue.
Another thing I noticed is perceptions of touch. I can spontaneously taste certain things that are mentioned (So i tend to not have an appetite for them. Especially blue raspberry). With touch, I my hands used to get damp from hearing certain things. But that is from my inability to ever not think. Maybe other people have this: Where you are always daydreaming. Like always. And when certain items associated with your childhood show up, you become nostalgic or simply perceive them the way you did when you were too young to know things had a difference. For example: Numbers that I could not count to before five fade in as black, and certain genres of music blank my mind (like metal or rap).
Also, When I was younger, it was a bit more severe, I did create alter egos and unfathomable(like starships the length of the USA or towers billions of floors tall or cities the size of planets) existences out of stories that I told my sister at night as well as isolated myself into these instances of a broken psyche (which eventually gave me an Aspergers(which I disagree with considering I never was logical at a young age) diagnosis haha).
Nevertheless, I did get the label as a synesthete at a young age after my parents became concerned about me coloring white paper into different colors and then tasting them, or me getting excited about trains passing my house. Colors were a serious part of my childhood for they unlocked gateways to existences if looked at the right way.
Also, it’s blue, red, green yellow, purple, orange in that order. Not any other.
I have never been diagnosed, but I am sure I have spatial sequence synesthesia. I also have an uncanny knack remembering numbers of all kinds, and I can recall words, songs, and images from my whole life.
Can you define auditory-tactile synesthesia? Music affects me in many ways, I’m guessing this is what I have.
Also, I don’t really talk about this condition, I am already overwhelming to most people. I have had to force myself to be quiet and mellow, and because I am a woman I have to cover up my IQ. Many people, especially women, are threatened by people like me.
Im still trying to figure out of this is what I have. I remember when I first noticed I had this . A fire alarm went off in school and it was themost frightening Hot pink… To this day it os an overwhelming color. Whenever I am in School every subject had a color. Red was math and a man . Reading was Purple and a sweet lady. Green was science and made me feel strange. Physics was a Royal blue old man . The list goes on . It was extremely helpful in school because I had everything in those colors. I also when I read anything now . The letters and numbers epecially equations go from black to red to purple. Any ideas?
So recently, my sister brought up synesthesia because she sees the colour of peoples moods, and apparently for her, it is very strong. My dad also brought up seeing the colours of sick people, and I mean people who are terminal with diseases.
I never really thought about this until they brought it up but when I hear certain sounds, it is like an explosion in my brain. If the sound is louder and sharper, I feel it piercing my skull and sometimes it will appear and bombard my head. Some sounds I can associate with symbols, or shapes, or textures. Like ‘oh that dog barking is a soft circle the colour pink’. I can only sometimes SEE these colours and shapes, especially in waves, but it is more of a second nature. The things just pop into my head when they happen. And sometimes they create emotions and I can feel the emotions that the sound is making, even if the sound is something like glass breaking.
I had really never thought any different about this, and everyone in my family is very artistic and not your average people. I hadn’t really focused in on the sound things until my sister brought it up, but now, the colours and shapes are starting to come up all the time, even if they don’t always visualize, I feel them like I feel a song or a shape, or even food.
I don’t know, it kind of confuses me, but is this a form of synesthesia?
I discovered last year that I have synesthesia. I discovered it through asking somebody what sound my notebook made(it was grey and pink and made a creaking sound) and they replied by picking it up and dropping it…they just didn’t get what I meant and I didn’t get what they didn’t get! It was very confusing. I then hit google and discovered that it isn’t normal to hear colours. I then found out it wasn’t normal to hear certain tastes either…it was a very confusing day.
I can also taste pain. It was always very confusing when my parents you to ask me to describe the kind of pain I was feeling and I would respond with “milky” or “lemony”. I’ve now learnt to stop describing pain like that because people just don’t get it. (The other day I had a pain in my neck that tasted just like chicken.)
Hello, I’m wondering if I have some sort of mild synesthesia, or if I’m just kind of crazy (either of which I’m fine with lol). I don’t really see physical colors and shapes in front of me when I hear certain words, and nobody in my family that I know of has had this. However, relating to many people who DO have it, I am very detail-oriented, I love lots of types of music, have tried out playing a few different instruments, have been able to carry a tune singing since I was old enough to talk, and, although I don’t think of myself as particularly good at it, I enjoy many types of art. Also, when I see different pictures and such, like a map, and all the different areas are in different colors, it simply makes me feel kind of uncomfortable and fidgety, like they should be different colors. Also, select letters and numbers have strong colors and/or personalities, like the number 4 I pretty much always think of as very shy and very purple. But then again, it isn’t like synesthesia, because it isn’t COMPLETLY involuntary- I sort of just realize that, for example, a flat letter e (“eh”) sounds like what dew-covered grass looks like, but not every word has it’s own color that I immediately associate with it (although it does seem a bit more straightforward with names and voices and personalities). But I still have to sort of think about it, usually. Another thing is that certain inanimate objects seem to me that they have personalities, kind of. So looking over what I’ve typed and thinking about all the other weird experiences I didn’t type (like how I think of the year), I kind of think I somehow have really mild cases of a lot of types of synesthesia. However, only a few of these happenings are truly unconscious, which seems to be a main “symptom” (I don’t think of this as a disease, I’m just lacking a better word) of having synesthesia. So what do you think? Do I have mild cases of many types of synesthesia? Or am I merely crazy?
I have the “color synesthesia” and I dont actually see the colors, i just sort of, i guess, see them in my mind…uh, its very confusing for peeps who dont have it, but every letter has a color. Like for me, in my mind when I see the letter e, for example, it is white. Right now when I’m looking at it, the e on the screen is this blackish-grayish color that is on this site, but in my mind I actually see a white e. Like with d or x or y, their all this sparkly-like black for me (they kinda change colors sparkly-like, but remain mostly black), but i can see that the color on the screen is what it is, but i see the sparkly black. Do you guys know what I mean? I’m probably not making much sense… : )
IZZY, I have the color/taste synesthisia too, and they do change for me when im in a certain mood too! I’m not sure if ADHD is the reason for it though, but that is so cool I think!
Becky! Oh my goodness! I have never heard of anyone else besides myself that has the personalities thing! OH MY GOSH! Well, 1 to me is shy and 2 is really bossy while 3 is just depressed. Haha! I don’t know thats just how i think of them! With odd numbers, their usually the quiet ones, but the even ones are like all stuck up and everything. : ) 1 is black 2 is yellow and 3 is cyan. And yes, especially with the even numbers, the bigger it is the louder it gets! i dont really understand it that much, but it almost seems like they can almost talk when they get big like that….
Hello, my name is Amy, I am 13 years old. I think I might have a mild form of Synesthiesia. I can smell and taste colours? To me, carrots taste like a lime green and perfumes remind me of a bright yellow? I am quite artsy, and I love to read, write and draw. When I was younger, I could taste colours but now that I am 13, I have been able to smell them. Sometimes (but very rarely) songs can make me sense colours. I don’t know what this means and am very confused.
I am thirteen and I’m not sure if I have synesthesia. I really think I do, as I have a lot of symptoms described, but I haven’t told anyone. Well, my sister who’s a few years younger than me recently got diagnosed with it, and I hadn’t known anything about synesthesia before then. But I remember talking to her about colors and stuff when we were little after someone didn’t understand us, trying to reassure each other that we were sane. I also read somewhere that it runs in families.
Well, I’m really visually inclined in practically everything. I adore reading, writing, anything with arts and crafts, building and inventing and trying to make new things. I play piano and guitar, sing, and sometimes even write music. I can’t learn unless it’s visually. I do play a sport– swimming, but otherwise, I’m not to great with athletics.
Well, I always involuntarily associate numbers, letters, Months, days of the week, and even people with their own unique color, gender, and texture. Numbers and letters only appear in color for a few seconds before fading. But I always know even though they don’t appear that way for too long that these letters and numbers ARE certain colors and textures. Also, certain numbers and letters bother me. I have gone as far as having to change the radio volume to a “good number” and in third grade even yelling at a teacher because the laptop number I was assigned was mean. It ruins every experience if the numbers aren’t good.
Also, this ones kinda weird, but I have some sort of weird feeling that I’m somewhere else. I have déjà vu all the time in my dreams (it gets creepy how much I’m able to predict) and I’m always flashing back to this one image, or more like a feeling, of laying on a hard, thin, dirty baige mattress in the middle of a plain white room. I’ve also seen short images flash along the wall of me looking scared at my old house in black and white whenever I’m tired or in te dark. Sometimes, like with the mattress, I feel like I’m holding on to a wooden pole in front of me. And, when I play the piano, I always start tiling ground and can’t control myself. Once I even fell of the bench. I also hate some sensory things, like touching paper, and I really like being in small spaces, as long as I can easily get out. I don’t know if any of these sensory things have anything to do with synesthesia.
I get really upset whenever anyone says other things are different colors and/or personalities. I just get really bothered by it. Ex: my friend (who doesn’t know how I think and perceive things) used to go around saying “what’s your favorite color of the alphabet” and I’d answer all serious and she’d be weirded out. A couple years later (currently) my whole grade had found out about synesthesia from a book we had to read, and she decided to have both of us make a list of what our letters’ colors were. I got really irritated when she put down “S” as metallic instead of the grayish-greenish-bluish color it should be. She thought it was weird when I tried to add textures and genders and additional spirals of color in, and I told her she didn’t have synesthesia and therefore had no idea how these things are experienced. When she retorted back that I didn’t either, I rolled my eyes, and she gave me weird looks for a while. Good thing she’s accepted I’m just a weird, messed up person, synesthesia aside.
Is any of this linked to synesthesia? The colors, the personalities of both me and my numbers/letters? Is the sensory stuff synesthesia, or maybe something more?
Thanks!
–Maisie
Hi, I just learned about this condition but haven’t found too much information on the auditory type. Where can I found out more about this specific type? For me sounds is stronger than color or shape associations. When I hear certain pitches or tones I get strong urges like immediate dislike, anger, happiness, melancholy. When I listen to different types of music I feel sensations like I visualize and sometimes it feels like it is happening like r&b I get a slow soft sensation of a light breeze going across me. In some specific artists it almost feels like they are whispering in my ear. At times I get visible goosebumps from certain sounds. I also thought it was because I just enjoy music so much. I thought everyone felt and saw these things.
Hi! My name is Katherine, and like everyone else commenting on this site, I believe that I have synesthesia. When I say ‘believe’, this is because while I do see colors in my ‘Mind’s Eye’ whenever I see music, my twin sister does not experience the same sensations as I do. (Rather, whenever she sees certain colors, they change hues in front of her eyes. I am not sure whether that is a form of synesthesia, but I think it’s pretty cool. 🙂 )
To me, certain instruments have different colors to them. Being in my school band’s percussion group, I have a lot of experience with many instruments. For example, the timpani gives off a rich, rusty red color, and the snare drum is a little lighter than that. The glockenspiel is an icy blue color, and the quads, depending on which drum you hit, can range from turquoise to violet. Trumpets are fire hydrant red, French horns are a deep, full orange, oboes are pink, tubas are a dark grey (think of coal!), clarinets are a mixture between deep purple and colbat, saxophones are indigo, so on and so forth.
Whenever I hear other sounds, aside from instruments, I see colors as well. (It’s exceptionally hard for me to concentrate in some classes if I don’t like the color of a teachers voice, or the students’ voices in the class. Lime green is so hard to listen to 24/7, and magenta is a bit overwhelming, if you ask me.) I’ve also experienced other things when listening to or seeing colors. Whenever I see or hear different hues, I feel certain textures or touches on my body. For example, my friend has a beautiful fuzzy voice of sunrise orange. Whenever I see that color, or hear it, my chest feels full or heavy. Forest green makes my hands feel as if they’re moving through a moist and crumbly substance, and judy rose (A mixture between pink and grey) feels like tiny fingertips are running around my head in small light touches. It actually makes it hard for me to do school work whenever my teachers decide to play music, because it’s hard to concentrate when you feel like everything in existence is poking or touching every part of your body. But, outside of school work, it is really soothing and relaxing, as the different touches as colors create a three dementional setting when I listen to music, rather than a 2-D color.
I enjoy writing, drawing, painting, and as stated earlier, I enjoy playing instruments as well! I am not left handed, and I haven’t told my Ma or Pa about my colors, so I am not sure whether or not it runs in the family. (I’m scared they’ll think that I just want to gain attention or something. Uhhg. ) Does anyone else feel this kind of sensation, or is it strange for a synesthete? Uh, if anyone could respond, I would be very grateful. 🙂
Ive heard about this but never considered I might have it.
But I see the 5s and 2s as black, its just when i imagine it, like a 5 is orange and when i hear november it is dark purple, and the name John is a light blue.
I only recently considered that maybe not everyone sees things like that in colours.
Plus it does actually bother me a bit when they are in the wrong colours because they just feel off.
Hi! I can’t say my real name, so let’s say my name is Forest, okay? I can’t say my real age, so let’s say I’m in the first year of middle school RIGHT NOW, okay? Good. Now my story…
So my mom bought me this book called “A Mango Shaped Space” (It deals with number/letter color and sound-color) and I read it. I’ve read it so many times I can pick up anywhere and know what’s going on! So I read this and start thinking…Cool!
Now, although I thought it was just me imagining at the time, I’d always seen some color in my head when I listened to music. But as a year went by, it got stronger. I then went back to my book and said, “Oh my god, I think I have synesthesia!” For a while, I made up a cover up. That I thought in pictures, so if I slipped up and said something about a color, I could just say, “Oh! Sorry, thinking about that thing.” But then I stop doing it and get my courage. So I go to school, right? I tell my friends and they think I’m lying, so I tell them to TEST ME so I can prove it. They write down names on a slip of paper, as well as numbers. They can’t test me on sound or any of my other types (I’ll list at the end), so we stick with that. I pass both tests by writing down the color of the name and then they read the name and asked me for the color, and writing down the personality and color of numbers and they asked me for THAT. So, yeah. But I can tell you one thing: I WAS PARANOID TO TELL MY MOM. What if she thought I was lying? Even though I loved that book and she knew what it was about, I was worried she’d not believe me and quiz me and tell me to stop making things up and take me to a lab to chop me up into a million zillion little pieces! (GASP WHEEZE PANT) Okay, maybe I was overreacting. So I was on my bus (THE RIDE IS AN HOUR LONG) and I was paranoid the whole way home. I got home to see my mom in the living room, screwing bolts to the trampoline for my younger brother. “Mom, remember that book called a Mango Shaped Space? Well, I think…”
And none of the things I worried about happened! As I grew a little older (a year), it enhanced a bit more. Now it stays the same. I transferred to another school in March, and it’s the last day of April today. I am the eleventh kid in my class. I’ve only told my new friend about this, and she’s fine with it. Here are my types:
Sound-Color
I hate really new songs, with the exception of a few like “Train”, Owl City, and “Happy”. I’m more into the old songs, like Adele and Foster The People and the guy who wrote the song “11:59” and the guy who wrote “Ho Hey”. So my friends are all OMG YOU NEED TO FIND SOME REAL MUSIC. I love to paint my music. I take markers to school and every once in a while during art class I’ll take a big peice of paper, play a song in my head, and use my awesome power.
Number-Color and Number-Personality
Sorry to all other synthestetes out there, I know we all get bugged when someone lists our numbers wrong.
1 is red and snobby, very rich. 2 is orange, and five’s best friend. Very happy.
3 is yellow and super smart. 4 is like me, shy, crazy, artistic, and it even has synesthesia. 5 is a mix between light and dark green, and is just like 2. 6 is purple and a hard worker. 7 is light blue and neglected. 8 is pink with blue spots, and is super girly but tries to pass off as a tomboy. 9 is maroon and responsible to all not snobby numbers, and she is like the big sister, the oldest. 0 is black and lonely. He likes to be in numbers like .04 because he has four for company and he LOVES her art work.
Name-Color and Name-Taste and Name-Picture
Names all have a color. I love the way my name is: dark artroom paint blue (with that texture) with the r and n sky blue. SORRY I wish I could tell my real name. Let’s just say it starts with J. Some names and voices have taste. My former teacher at my old school, Mr. Cobb, his name tasted like corn! Uh, YUM! Annika tastes like cookie dough. A few names have a picture. My mom’s name is a doe in a sunny pine forest drinking from a brook. It lifts it’s head up to look at you. BEAUTIFUL!!! O’Shea (another teacher of mine), his name is a flock of white doves on a bridge cooing. Then you hear them flap rapidly (love that sound) and they fly over the ocean.
Some Of My Weirder Kinds
My year is like a clock. 12 is January, 6 is June. We move as the year goes on. Every season is special. Summer smells like freshly baked cookies in the oven, Autumn tastes like apple pie, and winter tastes like cold ice water. Spring is like the smell of flowers. When I feel pain, fireworks spiral and swirl in my head. Mostly yellow. When I enter a freezing room or a burning room, just for a second I see a bubble burst of either red or light blue/dark blue.
My Traits
Left Handed-No, but I’m a very strong writer and might become an author/artist/animal helper. Musical-Yes, I played cello for one year, I love music (as stated above), and I currently know how to play drums.
Artistic-YES YES YES YES YES! I won first place in the art show, my art gets submitted every year to the county display show thing, and I paint music and stuff! I love art! My brother does too, but I don’t know if he has it or not yet.
Girl-UH, DUH! Girls are the cool ones 😀
Anything To Declare-I LOVE DOCTOR WHO AND ESPECIALLY APPLE PIE! (I have no idea o.O Im Crazy)
So, that sums it up on my synesthesia life. OH WAIT ONE MORE THING!
Chocolate dampens it. My friends tried to quiz me at a slumber party, imagine THAT disaster.
After my pets died, It went away until I stopped crying every night. Notice I said every.
NOW THAT SUMS IT U- OH GOD WAIT THERE’S MORE!
See, this is my REAL problem. Whenever I finish, I think of something else, and then I JUST MUST put it down. Neither of my parents nor grandparents have it. Maybe my cousin does, but she’s like 28. She does write beautiful poetry, so I don’t know… I don’t know where I got it from. My dad has serious photographic memory, like me. I remember saying something in the car 6 years ago, the response, and what everything was. We were on our way to the butterfly farm. Whenever I thought about this memory, I thought about french fries. I told my uncle, laughing on how I remember everything, and he said on that same ride before I said that we stopped at a diner to get some fries. So I was like HOLY CRUD MY MEMORY IS EPIC!
So, let me check to make sure everything is summed up.
Nope.
Because my life is so complicated that I have no idea if I’ll ever sum it up. Not in my book I’m writing in a couple composition books called “Spectrum” which is about a girl with synesthesia.
Not anywhere, except these words I type.
But to make a long story short, and not sum it up, I’m in the fifth grade.
I’m the eleventh one in my class.
I love Doctor Who (11 is my favorite).
I am a vegetarian and an animal lover.
I am shy at times but also crazy.
I get good grades.
I have synesthesia.
I have severe synesthesia, bad ADHD, traces of autism, perfect pitch and a photographic memory. I would like to describe my life through my eyes, and need some advice.
Every day i wake up bursting with energy rather than groggy, even though I didn’t fall asleep till eleven last night (I’m only thirteen) because of my ADHD. Everything around me is constantly a stimulus overload and I can never focus on anything! You can see how crazy my life is. For example, in math class, I am zoned out when I should be working, so my teacher yells at me. I get straight as, I just struggle to focus. So she yells at me, and because of my synesthesia i think of a spicy red yet delicious chile pepper. I yelp a little because it feels so real. She thinks i am being disrespectful, so she assigns me extra work and I go to the principals office, where I am staring out the window during his lecture, but I could still recall it very well afterwards because of my memory, and daydreaming about playing piano. I can hear the tones in my head because of my perfect pitch and those lead to colors. Soon enough i find myself completely zoned out experiencing all the senses at once in a fake world, leading to more lectures. HELP! What should I do??? I feel like I am trapped in two worlds at once constantly!!!
Ps: I have almost all kinds of synesthesia, besides that weird personality-object one. Thanks!
I’m 11 and a big fat liar
Hi! I can’t say my real name, so let’s say my name is Forest, okay? I can’t say my real age, so let’s say I’m in the first year of middle school RIGHT NOW, okay? Good. Now my story…
So my mom bought me this book called “A Mango Shaped Space” (It deals with number/letter color and sound-color) and I read it. I’ve read it so many times I can pick up anywhere and know what’s going on! So I read this and start thinking…Cool!
Now, although I thought it was just me imagining at the time, I’d always seen some color in my head when I listened to music. But as a year went by, it got stronger. I then went back to my book and said, “Oh my god, I think I have synesthesia!” For a while, I made up a cover up. That I thought in pictures, so if I slipped up and said something about a color, I could just say, “Oh! Sorry, thinking about that thing.” But then I stop doing it and get my courage. So I go to school, right? I tell my friends and they think I’m lying, so I tell them to TEST ME so I can prove it. They write down names on a slip of paper, as well as numbers. They can’t test me on sound or any of my other types (I’ll list at the end), so we stick with that. I pass both tests by writing down the color of the name and then they read the name and asked me for the color, and writing down the personality and color of numbers and they asked me for THAT. So, yeah. But I can tell you one thing: I WAS PARANOID TO TELL MY MOM. What if she thought I was lying? Even though I loved that book and she knew what it was about, I was worried she’d not believe me and quiz me and tell me to stop making things up and take me to a lab to chop me up into a million zillion little pieces! (GASP WHEEZE PANT) Okay, maybe I was overreacting. So I was on my bus (THE RIDE IS AN HOUR LONG) and I was paranoid the whole way home. I got home to see my mom in the living room, screwing bolts to the trampoline for my younger brother. “Mom, remember that book called a Mango Shaped Space? Well, I think…”
And none of the things I worried about happened! As I grew a little older (a year), it enhanced a bit more. Now it stays the same. I transferred to another school in March, and it’s the last day of April today. I am the eleventh kid in my class. I’ve only told my new friend about this, and she’s fine with it. Here are my types:
Sound-Color
I hate really new songs, with the exception of a few like “Train”, Owl City, and “Happy”. I’m more into the old songs, like Adele and Foster The People and the guy who wrote the song “11:59″ and the guy who wrote “Ho Hey”. So my friends are all OMG YOU NEED TO FIND SOME REAL MUSIC. I love to paint my music. I take markers to school and every once in a while during art class I’ll take a big peice of paper, play a song in my head, and use my awesome power.
Number-Color and Number-Personality
Sorry to all other synthestetes out there, I know we all get bugged when someone lists our numbers wrong.
1 is red and snobby, very rich. 2 is orange, and five’s best friend. Very happy.
3 is yellow and super smart. 4 is like me, shy, crazy, artistic, and it even has synesthesia. 5 is a mix between light and dark green, and is just like 2. 6 is purple and a hard worker. 7 is light blue and neglected. 8 is pink with blue spots, and is super girly but tries to pass off as a tomboy. 9 is maroon and responsible to all not snobby numbers, and she is like the big sister, the oldest. 0 is black and lonely. He likes to be in numbers like .04 because he has four for company and he LOVES her art work.
Name-Color and Name-Taste and Name-Picture
Names all have a color. I love the way my name is: dark artroom paint blue (with that texture) with the r and n sky blue. SORRY I wish I could tell my real name. Let’s just say it starts with J. Some names and voices have taste. My former teacher at my old school, Mr. Cobb, his name tasted like corn! Uh, YUM! Annika tastes like cookie dough. A few names have a picture. My mom’s name is a doe in a sunny pine forest drinking from a brook. It lifts it’s head up to look at you. BEAUTIFUL!!! O’Shea (another teacher of mine), his name is a flock of white doves on a bridge cooing. Then you hear them flap rapidly (love that sound) and they fly over the ocean.
Some Of My Weirder Kinds
My year is like a clock. 12 is January, 6 is June. We move as the year goes on. Every season is special. Summer smells like freshly baked cookies in the oven, Autumn tastes like apple pie, and winter tastes like cold ice water. Spring is like the smell of flowers. When I feel pain, fireworks spiral and swirl in my head. Mostly yellow. When I enter a freezing room or a burning room, just for a second I see a bubble burst of either red or light blue/dark blue.
My Traits
Left Handed-No, but I’m a very strong writer and might become an author/artist/animal helper. Musical-Yes, I played cello for one year, I love music (as stated above), and I currently know how to play drums.
Artistic-YES YES YES YES YES! I won first place in the art show, my art gets submitted every year to the county display show thing, and I paint music and stuff! I love art! My brother does too, but I don’t know if he has it or not yet.
Girl-UH, DUH! Girls are the cool ones 😀
Anything To Declare-I LOVE DOCTOR WHO AND ESPECIALLY APPLE PIE! (I have no idea o.O Im Crazy)
So, that sums it up on my synesthesia life. OH WAIT ONE MORE THING!
Chocolate dampens it. My friends tried to quiz me at a slumber party, imagine THAT disaster.
After my pets died, It went away until I stopped crying every night. Notice I said every.
NOW THAT SUMS IT U- OH GOD WAIT THERE’S MORE!
See, this is my REAL problem. Whenever I finish, I think of something else, and then I JUST MUST put it down. Neither of my parents nor grandparents have it. Maybe my cousin does, but she’s like 28. She does write beautiful poetry, so I don’t know… I don’t know where I got it from. My dad has serious photographic memory, like me. I remember saying something in the car 6 years ago, the response, and what everything was. We were on our way to the butterfly farm. Whenever I thought about this memory, I thought about french fries. I told my uncle, laughing on how I remember everything, and he said on that same ride before I said that we stopped at a diner to get some fries. So I was like HOLY CRUD MY MEMORY IS EPIC!
So, let me check to make sure everything is summed up.
Nope.
Because my life is so complicated that I have no idea if I’ll ever sum it up. Not in my book I’m writing in a couple composition books called “Spectrum” which is about a girl with synesthesia.
Not anywhere, except these words I type.
But to make a long story short, and not sum it up, I’m in the fifth grade.
I’m the eleventh one in my class.
I love Doctor Who (11 is my favorite).
I am a vegetarian and an animal lover.
I am shy at times but also crazy.
I get good grades.
I have synesthesia. – See more at: http://www.synesthesiatest.org/blog/synesthesia-test-variations#sthash.ZicGRkzf.dpuf
Hi,
I came on here to learn more about auditory tactile synesthesia but I found that not much was mentioned. If you possibly know more that would really help.
I never really noticed my synesthesia until I thought about it. Like many synesthetic people my numbers and letters have colors, but mine have no personality. And my year is like a Ferris wheel but turned toward me. That might not make any sense. Try to imagine all the calendar pages laid out as a scroll then bring the two ends together to form a circle. Stand it up and move it so that one side is facing you. I can move the calendar up and down to see the months. My numbers are laid out in space too. I know this is synesthesia but I had a question about me and someone else. Me first.
When I see movement I can hear a noise in my head even if there is no noise combing from it. I can also sometimes smell movement. I’m not sure if this is synesthesia.
Also some one in my wood working class at school accidently put music out through his speakers at another table. Then someone at my table casually mentioned that the music had a good smell. The other people at my table gawked and firmly stated that music doesn’t have a smell and moved on. I’m not sure if this means he has synesthesia. He didn’t look like he was joking.
Also I’m a left-handed girl but synesthesia doesn’t run in my genes. I wonder where I got it from.
On another page of this website Deidra mentioned a form of synesthesia that she had but could find no information for. This would be sound motion. It’s hard to explain. So you know those picture that are still except for a flickering candle or something. No sound is coming out of the picture yet if you have this kind of synesthesia like me, you hear a sound with the motion. This also happens with the little bar that shows where your typing that flickers. It sounds almost like a heart beat. Or when I wave my hand I can hear it. Or even when bending my joints. There is no information on the web at all for it.
I don’t have any of the synesthesia types listed but i think i may have synesthesia, a rare type. The moods, personalities, and surroundings make me feel a certain color with a corresponding shape. Excitement has a certain purple feeling, with sort of a scribble. Another example of things like this is that i can see auras, the colorful electromagnetic fields around everything.
So, I have no clue if I’m crazy or what but I’ve never heard of my case of Synesthesia before. In my case, when I hear/see the days of the week (and only the days of the week) I see a certain figure or shape for each day. The aren’t colored shapes either. For example, saturday is an oval with sort of “legs” you can say coming out if it. (Maybe almost like a spider?) Anyway, this trait isn’t as strong any more but it used to happen automatically when I was younger because I remember seeing these shapes clear as day in my mind. Does anyone know the answer to this?
Hi Ilea,
I’m working on a really interesting project that involves both synesthesia and dance. I’d love to chat w/ you a bit more and ask what kind of dance you work with.
Hi there, a question about synesthesia. If certain sounds make me feel cold and the hairs on my arms stand up, is this a form of synesthesia? I’m quite curious to know whether I have it or not. And it’s not just sounds that commonly make people feel cold, like nails down a chalkboard, it’s other sounds too like the crunch you get when a person bites into a water ice block and people filing their nails or scratching an itch etc etc.
Thanks 🙂
Hi! So, I’m not sure if this is very mild synaesthesia or normal, but whenever I hear music I see colours in my head. For example, jazz music is always deep purple to me with a kind of smoky feeling to it, like seeing smoke in purple lighting. I only recently became actually ‘aware’ of this. I know it’s always happened to me, but I recently realised that I was thinking of part of a particular song we were singing in music class as fluorescent yellow and silver. I also have impressions of numbers- for example, all the twenty- numbers are dark and the thirties are pale yellow.
So, yeah.
Hi!
so i am in a very confused state right now. i associate colors with letters but i don’t physically “see” them. if i were to look at a letter it would like black and white, but I associate colors with them like for example: the letter “T” is green “E” is purple and “A” is red. I am not sure if you would call this mild synesthesia. I am on the more artistic side.
In class i pick my composition book color according to the subject, like the subject spanish would have a yellow composition book, or math would have a blue composition book.
I am very confused at if this is ild synesthesia or if this is just normal behavior.
Thanks again for helping me out!
Hi! I’m a very musical person and I love singing. I get the right pitches because every note has a color, and the harder it hits, the brighter it is. I “see” a jagged line, with high and low points. Kinda like one of those heart beat lines, the the beats appear before it plays It goes by my vision as the music plays, and when I sing a note, it’s color flashes at the tip of the point. So, let’s say, I’m singing a song with sudden note changes. The line will have jagged points and the colors will be close to neon. I learn a song by the colors and the shape of the line. If I haven’t learned a song yet, I accustom myself to the lines as they form, go over the notes, and the colors kinda appear. They’re always the same; a high note is spring green, while a low note is deep magenta. There’s no color scale, or gradient going through the notes, just colors. And, I don’t exactly see it, it’s in the back of my mind. Like, if you image a sphere in front of you, you can almost see it. That’s how the line appears. This only works for listening to music, or singing. Do I have some form of synesthesia?
Hello My case is something I’ve heard nothing about. I can approximate the distance between an object and myself if it so much as clicks. Also i witness tiny sparkles of blue light that seem like a combination of a flash and a sound. I realize the vibration above the infared for
Blue – 50 trillions
Indigo – 60 trillions
Violet – 75 trillions
and for some reason I’m able to play basketball knowing where the person will go as if i could see their intention. I’ve learned much of the i-ching on my own and without its help using my own tactics which seem like a second sense. When someone speaks a word i can listen in for the effect it makes on a really low scale to locate something before it gets there. Also i studied martial arts and have learned much of the art of war by application and in ways that are almost like a remix. I use all of my wisdom to create saying that apply universally and have found out that things vibrate before i knew. The bible talks about how god said let there be light. THis means he either thought it (because words are composed of a vibration in the vocal cords and a thought forms the action and even thought is matter which means [according to my studies] thought makes a sound because even an atom circulating must make an atomic-ish sound right? beyond measure i guess) or he spoke it. It talks about people saying things within their heart also i know people in china who wrote things about the martials arts and even hindu have associated color with emotion. I have aquired much wisdom out of these things and i wouldn’t say they bother me but is this applicable?
Hi, looking through the comments my experience does not seem to fit with synesthesia, so I am wondering if my perception is classified under it. I associate everything in my mind with various shades of black and white, letters, numbers, words, dates, days of the week, places, objects, memories all have a set shade that I subconsciously created. I don’t know why I do this but it can actually affect my actions, for example Tuesday is a very dark shade in my mind so I have a predisposition to avoid it. Just wondering if you would classify this as some form of synesthesia or just my mind being weird 🙂
Hi! So I’ve just discovered over the past few weeks what this is and I’ve researched all of the different types. Mine is definitely not the usual, so I’ll describe it and we’ll see what you think. So for weekdays, I see Monday on the right and Friday on the left and it goes counterclockwise, and Saturday Sunday Monday is really bright, Tues Wed Thurs gets darker, and Friday’s the darkest. There’s no actual colors; all I see in my head is this gradient of bright to dark. I don’t even see the word Monday or the word Friday as bright or dark but I just see the gradient. That’s the same exact bright vs. dark idea with the 20th century (1920’s are dark, 30-60 is light, etc), the year calendar (december’s on the bottom and bright, it goes counterclockwise with july and august bright and at the top), numbers (1-5 is bright, 6-30 is dark), age (it’s different than numbers, so the teens are bright while with numbers they’re dark), and parts of maps (for the usa map only, northeast is dark, east coast is dark, midwest and northwest is bright, lower cali is dark). So I’m not sure what this is, but it’s only bright and dark in a gradient, ease-into-eachother way, and some of them (weekdays and year calendar) are in counterclockwise positions with certain days and months “on the bottom or top.” I know there’s such thing as spacial synesthesia, but the bright and dark gradient doesn’t relate to anyone with synesthesia I know. Any ideas? 🙂
I’m 63. It’s Monday.
Last Saturday, my husband who listens faithfully to CBC radio was telling me about the call-in program he’d just heard. The topic was Synesthesia. When hubby began to explain, I interrupted and said, “Sounds like me thinking of each day of the week as a color.” He looked absolutely stunned. So I said, “I always have. Haven’t you?”
I went on to describe how I could assign a color to each number, up to 10. Or I could assign colors to peoples’ names. Not that I conjured the words themselves in color – just that I could assign them a color that never varied.
Hubby found the call-in program online so I could listen. Before he played it, he asked me what color the number 0 was. I said, “white”. Sure enough, one of the program’s interviewees said, “Zero for some reason, to many Synesthetes, seems to be white.” Again my hubby looked at me as though I were some kind of savant. I just shrugged. For 63 years I presumed the entire world was the same as I was. Never gave it a moment’s thought.
I heard one interviewee say, “I can see air.” I said, “Yeah, me too. Since I was old enough to think about such things – like 3.” Hubby lost it, at that point.
Still unsure as to whether or not I should view myself as a true Synesthete (however mild), I quizzed hubby on how he saw such things – those to which I’d assigned colors my whole life. “I don’t see them as anything”, he said. “They just are.”
So as it stands, we’ve just learned after 35 years of marriage, that we don’t understand each other. LOL!
I smell and taste drawings, and letters. I also have mirror-touch.
Hey so, I hear things, mostly names, and I get a texture that I, generally speaking, can’t name. I just don’t get the words for it until later, eg. Once it took me about three whole minutes of waving my arms and miming squeezing things before I could get the phrase ‘squishy, but like, dry’, and sometimes I sorta get a picture (if I concentrate, but it’s like trying to see without glasses, super tough) eg. Dennis is green and grassy, like breezy.
I also feel things and associate colors and/or weights to them, for instance most types of pain have different colors mostly shades red and blue and feels kinda light but like, in my head. Whereas depressive episodes feel almost inky blue purple and feel heavy like a wet comforter over my shoulders.
I also associate numbers with personalities and colors. 2 is demure and buttery yellow, she likes sundresses. Whereas nine is “slinky” kinda purple slightly more indistinct, likes suits, kinda stern, and definitely thin.
I normally don’t actually get actual sensations on my body at all, but I “know” where the “are”…
Okay, so after reading the entire comment thread I still could not see a single person with this type of synesthesia, but basically when I hear music it’s not like a single color, it’s more like a texture and multiple colors. Like when I listen to dubstep sounds have shapes and have colors, but I can never identify them quickly enough because they’re always blending and changing. It’s not like the pitch ones where everyone sound is a color, and usually if it’s just one instrument it’s just one color and I can focus more on the /music/ aspects of the piece instead of the colors. Like for example, a song starts with a drum beat, that beat would be a color and I would see like the motion of a stick hitting some surface (black) and it would make a spark. As the music adds more instruments with different pitches and timbres they would be things like sharp lines or jagged mountains springing up in like dark blacks as the sky turned into different colors. Voices look like a mist over everything, especially when its a choir. I’m not sure if I’m just creative or have a large imagination or just weird because every single song looks different, constantly, and when I told my friends they said it sounded like I was high on drugs. Its very mild if I do have any form of it, but when I listen to a song I can sort of retell a story from the song just because I see it.
Hi there!
I am a confirmed synesthete, and also happen to be quite knowledgeable on the subject. I see that you wrote this in 2011, and some of your information is outdated.
First of all, recent research suggests that 3% of the population is synesthetic, not 1 in 2000.
Also, the test you list for grapheme-color synesthesia is not accurate in most cases; it would only identify those whose synesthesia is localized and projected. The diagnostic criteria for synesthesia are also a lot more complicated than this test tests for. In fact, the only test you list here that will be close to 100% accurate in testing for synesthesia is the test-retest method. Coupled with the synesthetic Stroop task, it’s even more accurate.
(You may also want to mention the standard Stroop task.)
Anyways, sorry if that sounds super nit-picky—I just want all your information to be correct!
Hello! I’ll just throw my questions on to the pile here.
It seems that I do not have strong Synesthesia, if any, but I am pretty certain that I have Misophonia (which, to my knowledge, is related). I am 14 as of now.
I associate particular things with colors or feelings. Such as, the state of Massachusetts has always been bright green, and the the song Fur Elise has always been coupled with the number 14, and the color lavender. Musical chords have a general color, but not always the exact same shade. All of my friends and people I know have colors, too. I associate my good friend Lara with a deep orange, and always have. Some numbers and letters have colors, but not all. Songs have colors, shapes, and patterns. School subjects have colors.
I have frequent headaches, mild depression, sleeping issues, and trouble with procrastination and focusing. Not sure if that is of any use, but hey.
I am not sure what this means, but I would love some feedback, if anyone can advise me. I have not talked to my doctor about this yet.
I am extremely curious about this. 🙂
I forgot to mention above, I am an extremely artistically oriented person. I have an immense passion for music, I love to make/view art, and I love creative writing as well. I thought this may be helpful. (?) Again, I appreciate any advice or words that would be of help.
I’m not sure if I have a formeeting of synaesthesia or it is something different. Since I was a child it tickled me to have my hair cut, or when someone would whisper in my ear and even when I go to the dentist. Sounds to my right ear only create a tickling sensation down my right side of my body-mainly in the waist area. It is quite embarrassing when I have to warn the hairdressers or dentist that I might be fidgety during the procedure. Have you got an idea of what it could be?
Hi, my case here is that I can taste noise but I can’t taste music. I can also smell music and color, taste the color , and feel the emotion of color. Is there smell to taste synaesthesia? Anyway, it feels so good to have fun with these talents although some people think I’m weird and crazy. Some are so amazed! Thank God!
I recently discovered asmr (and that other people don’t feel that response to certain sounds). But on further research I’m not sure if what I feel is asmr or synesthesia. I’ve always felt physical responses to sounds, like squeaky sounds hurt my teeth, cats purrs are warm, some music makes me feel full. Does this sound like synesthesia?
There are two forms of synesthesia: projective and associative. Those with projective synesthesia physically see whatever colors/shapes that are triggered by whatever sensation of theirs that correlates with their vision. This form is very rare among synesthetes, however. The more common type is the associative form. This is where it is very real for a person to see words and letters and whatnot in color, but it is not physically displayed in front of them.
Don’t worry, man. It’s not some “mild” case of synesthesia. It’s just a different form. It is still very much real.
Okay, I realize this is probably a really old thread and I don’t know if you’ll see this, but to the commenter named Bunny: omg I have synesthesia that is kind of similar to what you’re describing you have. For me dubstep is a bunch of changing shapes as well, almost like I can see their vibrations. Autotune is like a bunch of straight lines in the shape of steps. It’s really hard to describe. And voices and songs often have texture for me too. Like a rough, gritty rock style voice literally looks rough and scratchy. And choirs DO sound like mist! For me choirs can be very white and fuzzy/misty/indistinct. It’s like the many voices are layered on top of each other until they look misty. Unlike you, I don’t see multiple colors (I usually just have one color for each song) but I experience music – especially different beats – as textures as well. My synesthesia is pretty mild too, even though it sounds crazy. Like the visuals are just in my mind, associated with the sound instead being super present.
I think I have little weird synesthesia. I always see some room in names of days, months, and year. for days, when I tried to remember specific day, it will appear 7 rooms exactly same room every time, and those “day” I tried to remember will place in one of the room exactly the same. like Monday is the first room. for months and passed years will be the same but it is randomly sometimes. and be more complicated for dates, and you know when I tried to remember for example: sun, 1 Feb 2016. it is hurt my brain sometimes. haha,
Hello guys. Not sure if i have a synesthesia or not but i see sounds and smells as a different shapes and lines. For an example, i listen Cia singing and i picture her voice like a straight, thin,line. very clear with soft spots.
also in some other songs i hear specific music instrument and i can picture it like a group of circles going in cirlces, starting from smaller to bigger, making shape of tor tornedo but from above.
When i smell my boyfriend i can see his perfume as a bubbles coming towards me. They do not have any taste, just round shape.
I am not sure about the colours, it is not very clear to me. what i do know is that i see wednessday orange and friday blue. it is not clear picture, more like a feeling.
Does it sound familiar to anyone?
Hi! I have a thing that I’m not quite sure is synesthesia or not. I can taste words, names, and basically anything anyone says. For example; if someone says the word ” square, ” then I taste cheese. If someone says ” orange, ” I taste an orange. Some words have a taste or flavor that I don’t even have a name for, like the words ” secret,” ” water,” or ” ocean.” Can someone help me find out if this is synesthesia?
Hello! I can’t say my real name, but I think I may have synesthesia. Like Suki, I can taste sounds, but I can also mentally assign colors to words, letters, and names. For example, A is red, S is a sky blue, and J is a jade green. Also, the month November is a mix of orange, yellow, and red, January is a light periwinkle, and July is a bright, vivid red. Friday is midnight blue dotted with yellow, Wednesday is a light yellow, and Tuesday is a pale green. I don’t know if this, combined with Suki’s conditions is synesthesia or not, but I think it is. I am also very interested in art and photography, which I’ve heard are common hobbies for synesthetes. Can someone help me with finding this out? – Anonymous Contributer
I “taste” books. When I read something the author, the genre, and the themes of the story “flavor” the book. It’s a little addicting sometimes, because some books are like fast-food. They might not be very good for me, but I want to “eat” them all the time! Sometimes for fourteen or fifteen hours straight… Unfortunately.
Fanfiction is a lot of fun to read because oftentimes the works carry over the flavor, and each one is a little varied. It’s like having the same dish, or ingredients, used by a ton of different people.
Does that makes sense…?
Even back when I was a kid, I always assigned specific colors in numbers and label them with attitude like the others have said I have also strongly felt that number 9 is way too bad and 7 way of a kind. Even in the months and days whenever I think about them they appeared in my mind to have colors, the years and months. Also there are words when spoken by others instantly it pops into my mind with a specific picture. I wondered if all the people see the same things as I did. Am I having a bit of synesthesia? thanks….
Synesthesia. I have it severely. Math class has become a curse. You know? Sometimes I see the letter 9 as like red… maybe blue or violet it depends on the day. I think it is absurd that science hasnt come up with a cure yet. Like seriously wtf.
Hi! I think I might have synesthesia, but I’m not 100% sure. I am very artistic and play several instruments. When I read any word, sentence, letter, or number, I associate a color with each one. It’s nothing like Mattison Smith’s, which is pretty gosh darn incredible, but it might be something… I’m not sure. Also, I picture the yearly calendar as a circle, with january on the top (january is purple, by the way, with a bit of red), and june/july on the bottom (june is purple, light blue, orange, and yellow because of j u n and e, and july is purple with vertical stripes of blue). The clock-calendar-thing goes counter-clockwise and is 3D. I don’t taste anything, but when I hear a word, I involuntarily think of the colors in my head. Also, time is on like a double clock, like where 2 am/pm would be on a regular clock is like 6:30. Half of the clock is morning till 12, and the other half is from 12 am to 12 pm, with nighttime being at the top of the clock. Can someone tell me what I have?
PS: Also, I have done a LOT of research on this, and Mattison (Smith), you have INSANE synesthesia. Try reading the book “A Mango Shaped Space.” I wonder what it will taste like… 😉
Hi, I’m not sure if I have a mild form of Synesthesia or not, but I kind of think in feelings. Most words make me feel a strong feeling, sometimes with colours too. I guess its kind of like seeing emotions instead of colours. Words that I like tend to pair with colours that I like, and they even sometimes come with sensations. For example the word forest is deep green and brown, with soft wind flowing through the damp leaves, and the feeling of dappled sunlight on your back. The word winter is all silver and white and ice cold wind thick with snowflakes. When i think of the word the feelings often follow for a few seconds after, and then gradually fade. Remembering how the word feels is hard unless it is a word that i love or a word that i dislike. Some numbers and letters have colours, A is red like maths and F is a rich purple.
I mainly listen to musicals, and the songs that i like flow with colours when i listen to them, if its a good song with nice colours then I can get really stressed if i don’t listen to them for a while. When i do it feels amazing.
If i ignore the colours and feelings then they gradually fade away, but as soon as i notice them they come back.
Peoples names have colours and feeling too, especially people i am close to. They often look like rocks in my mind. The name Jasper is reddish-brown, with veins of stronger versions of the colours through it, but it feels green and tastes metalic like key. Jemma has the same feeling as the word forest, but slight more dark green because of the J. It also has rusted spots of darkish purple in it.
It feels amazing to explore all the emotions and shades and sensations that are in words, it makes everything feel connected together and right, the perfect combination.
I’m not really sure what this is, but reading others post has helped me to realise that it might be synesthesia.
Hello, I am in need of information about types of synesthesia concerning taste and smell. I have a very sensitive sense of smell, and some odors that are very faint/unidentifiable to others are very strong to me, same with taste. Smells sometimes give me certain feelings, like if I smell jasmine it makes me feel peaceful and smooth and kinda green and if I smell honey it makes me feel playful and full and kind of crusty? Also sometimes when I see things I sort of am forced to visualize its flavor. Like if I see somebody eating a banana, I taste banana, and it’s like I can actually feel the food in my mouth. It’s a little bit like I taste their textures and what I imagine their flavors would be (like a door would be very smooth and hard and taste sort of bland but also clean and woody). I don’t know if this is synesthesia but I would love to find out! Also according to the Synesthesia Battery I have grapheme-color synesthesia, if that makes a difference. Objects, letters, numbers, and some words also have personalities to me. Also, for some reason pencils really smell like taco spice to me? Please reply!
Hello!! I am not sure if I am synesthesic or not. I associate my friends with colours as well as some letters, some numbers, some words, days of the week and months. I also sometimes see colours and textures when I listen to music and sometimes when I don’t see the colours I still feel them kind of. But I only realised not everyone does this stuff a few weeks ago when I was watching a lorde interview. (SHE IS MY FAVOURITE MUSICIAN EVER I HAVE LISTENED TO HER LITERALLY EVERYDAY SINCE 2014 WHEN I GOT IBTO GER MUSIC) Her music is also gorgeous cisually especially melodrama. For pure heroine the first time I heard it I didn’t know where it was written but I was actually visualising the exact location which I don’t think is normal…?
Thanks!!
I don’t think I have synesthesia, but I think someone in my family might. What are the most common and/or noticeable symptoms (because I can’t read minds)?
I am not sure if I have synesthesia. I play the piano, but I never hear colors with the songs. But when I am doing math, I always see the numbers with personalities and colors. Eight is light blue and a bully. 5 likes 8, but is a lot nicer. 7 is kind and caring, and 4 is special needs. It really bugs me, exspecialy when I a, taking tests. When I write, I can see the letters with personalities. I don’t see color when they are written down, but when I imagine them, I can see color. Do I have synesthesia?
I don’t know if I have synesthesia. For me, Different letters have different textures. A is smooth and r is hairy. Also i think my name is hard and I imagine a line. I think names like sage and hazel are curly lines and I associate the words with a vibrant summer orange mixed with an icy winter. The words feel crisp. I love to write and I always write in colors. My teacher tells me that she feels like I write my poems like I’m creating art because of the colors I use to describe different scenes and feelings. do I have synesthesia?
Hi! I never realized that hardly anyone thought the same as I did until I started asking people if they associated numbers, letters, days of the week, sounds, the tecture of objects, with shapes, sounds, colors and textures. Everyone I have asked has given me a very confused look and talks to me like I’m crazy. For me it’s not just a few things. It’s literally everyone and everything has a sound, shape, texture and color. Is anyone else like this?
uh….i’m only twelve, but i read a book about synesthesia and i thought that it sounded like what i see, i didn’t actually think that what i saw wasn’t normal. And it was a bit of a shock when i found out it wasn’t.
i see letters as having sexes, ages, feelings, colors, likes and dislikes.
i see numbers as colors, well i don’t really SEE the colors but it’s still there, like 2, isn’t completely black it’s black, and a purple red color at the same time.
also, TV colors….don’t really look REAL, they look….fake, in a way.
When i get hurt i see bright flashes of vermilion and orange, and when i’m sad i see fades of blue, when i’m angry, red, and when i’m happy, yellow.
when i hear music i see all sorts of colors, and…well…i see a color sometimes, usually at night, that’s not really a color…that’s the only way i can explain it. it’s just…not a color. it scares me, a LOT.
is this normal? please help
yours sincerely,
worried and waiting
I’ve known about synesthesia ever since I was eight and read a book called ‘a mango shaped space’. I always thought I might have grapheme/color, but I was never fully sure, because I didn’t actually SEE letters and numbers in color, they simply felt that way. Almost exactly a year ago, I found out that I actually do have a type of synesthesia: ticker-tape (I see subtitles when I hear, speak or think words). Shortly after that, my grapheme synesthesia got really intense and I started actually seeing the colors, and having a very good sense of exactly what shade each letter/number was. I wonder if this happened because I was really interested in synesthesia and started paying more attention to the colors? I’ve read both articles that say synesthesia never changes, and that it’s quite natural for it to get stronger and weaker throughout a lifetime. What do you think?
I am 13 and I have known I think and see and smell etc different from others since I was around 6. My older sister was showing our younger brother his numbers using different colours for each one. kept telling her she was using the wrong colours and it soon was a full out fight. When I hear certain instruments, I see colours and smell certain things. Numbers and letter have personalities, like 3 is a light bluish and is a fat friendly character while 4 is a stickler and very skinny and nerdy. Letters and numbers alsp have different textures, and words have different shapes. V is very cold and hard, like marble, while S is smooth and warm.
In times of intense emotion, My mind gets flooded with colour and sometimes I taste a certain flavour…
When listening to music, I see all sorts of figures and things like lines that correspond to the music and 3d shapes that correspond to sound effects
Ha!!!!!!!!!!!! so this is it…. wow.
I have this friend who says I’m slow to comprehend words. I always defend myself with the fact that I just see the world differently… not to mention the fact that I use both hands. I’m right handed but I use my left hand more and it’s the strongest of the two… thanks a bunch…I appreciate this.
hi!
i remember doing math when was younger and always thinking “ugh, 8 is bulling the 4 again.” All of my numbers have colors, genders, personalities, and relationships with each other ( and so do my letters but it’s not as easily noticeable for me) but when i actually think about it, i cant tell you what i see for every number. Like 8 is a bully, a boy and is very full of himself but i cant tell you his color, but he has one. 3 is orange and M is fuchsia. When they’re in words it’s harder to tell you the color but it’s still there. Music also has genders, personalities and colors. Also when i play the piano, the different phrases in the music are interacting with each other, but i still wouldn’t be able to tell you what all them are. Sometimes i also associate sounds and words with textures inside my mouth, but that happens rarely. most of this is self conscious so i don’t necessarily notice it when it happens but i still know it’s there. I don’t know if i have synesthesia or not. i am a dancer and i love music. i also have a very big imagination so i don’t know if this is all in my head. this has been happening to me all my life. thank you so much for helping me!
I have recently read David Grant’s book – That’s the way I think’ – and came across ticker tape synthesis.
This I seem to recall , is to do with number.
Just to contextualise I work with entrepreneurs and students who have to boil down their work, offer, into a succinct pitch or time limit.
My oddity and actually really useful skill is turning auditory information into a visual text in chunks like paragraphs.
I can listen to really complicated information being told to me , close my eyes and visualise it as blocks of text . I then transpose these blocks onto the wall in front of me and then rearrange in what I see as the correct order. I expect all my clients students who are invariable designers and artists to do the same and I am now realising that I am on my own here.
My recall of colour is match perfect I can hold the memory of colour from childhood to day, remember colours and and I have photographic recall of where things are. I close my eyes and take a mental snap shot and then direct the rest of the family to where that object is ‘ hiding”.
However, the results are great and it has been a really useful tool for me to work at speed to cut through the swathe of process and unnecessary complexities. I have my work experience was as a journalist and I have an ADHD diagnosis to boot. I do the same with spread sheets. I don’t look at them I listen to the explanation and visualise through words what I need to know.
is this auditory synthesis?
Wendy
Hi there. I have been reading the comments on your site with interest and just today I have found out the name of this ‘phenomenon’. Since being a child (57 now) I have always seen the days of the week in colours and when I think about the ‘week’ I see it stretching out before me and veering off to the left. Similarly, when I think about the ‘year’ I see the months of the year stretching out ahead of me and veering off to the right. I have also always seen the months as colours, but through the years, I have ignored it and I can’t seem to see all of them as clearly as before. Regarding numbers etc as having genders, sometimes I have got a feeling that a specific number is a gender or has a particular feel about it but having ignored it for years, i can’t quite remember them all now, however, I feel as though I should be embracing this and just letting it flow. I am a medical secretary and type up reports daily and when reading and typing them, colours and taste/smell sensations are flying out at me depending on the words I am typing. It’s interesting to now give this a name and I am interested to learn more about it.
I’m not sure if I have synesthesia. I don’t have it in any obvious way, I can’t associate colors with letters or music with taste or anything like that. I just see letters and numbers differently. Like the Bouba-Kiki Effect. I see some characters as ‘softer’ than others, so to speak. For instance, the letter B is softer than the letter K, or C is softer than S, and so on and so forth. I’m not sure if that constitutes as synesthesia, though, because that’s all I experience.
Hey so I don’t know if I have synesthesia or not, because mine didn’t really start until this spring. At first I was only able to perceive one color per song, but now when I hear songs I hear several different colors. As I get older I think my synesthesia will continue to develop. I’ve never heard of anyone developing my type of synesthesia before, so I really need some answers. Sometimes the colors in a song get so bright that I have to take my head in my hands. Also, with some songs the colors are so vivid that I actually see a landscape. I’m an athlete, which is rare for synesthesia, but I play two instruments and I’m in the band.
If anyone knows anything about developing synesthesia, I could really use some help.
Hey I’m just gonna keep myself anonymous but I didn’t know about this Synesthesia. I have been diagnosed Dyslexic so I’ve always had difficulties there. But I have always had very deep sensory experiences when I listen to music. Not mainly seeing the music as one thing but as a plethora. For example: When I listen to New Order’s song Chosen Time I perceive entire textures and sonic landscapes, I tend to feel the pulsing rhythms all through me colors blend it’s just so intense!! But then there are other songs like The Fly by U2 it’s an entire movie! And it never changes, it becomes so rich and vibrant! There are many sounds and things that trigger smells or tastes/textures in my mouth that may attributed to childhood? I don’t know. All I know is specifically music. I’ll hear music in everything. I’ll taste it smell it, I become so immersed that everything around me I now tune into. Classes at school often get distracted by the teacher saying something in a way that triggers a familiar or new melody in my head. Certain sounds I’ll attribute to certain textures, like the sound of expensive shoes tapping concrete looks very smooth to me. And even certain numbers. Like 15 I have always attributed that to silky black and wine cellars. Don’t ask me why. I honestly love experiencing things like this, I just wish my friends understood me. When I criticize music they usually shut me down and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just glad I’m not alone I always thought I was. 🙂
Hi! So, I was curious about synesthesia because I read about how Lorde experiences it, and I was curious as to whether or not you could have a much more mild form of the kind she has. I took one of those tests online (yeah, not very verifiable, I know) and it did rank me as on the lower end. I specifically associate months with colors; August is neon yellow, January is dark blue, May is dark green, March is orange, etc. and I associate sounds with colors. Deep tones are dark blue (not like January, a different kind of dark blue) or depending on the instrument, a different dark shade.
medium tones are bright colors and light tones are pastels. It feels like it fits me, but being a psych major in her second year, I don’t like not having solid evidence that I am. How would I go about getting tested? Could my college provide that service for me?
hi again!
i know I’ve already commented but that was almost a year ago. Just so ya know my synesthesia has gotten stronger. But i was just searching and searching for someplace to talk to other synesthetes and i couldnt find anything that wasnt super old. Does anyone have any idea where i can talk to someone? No one in my family has it and i just feel alone. Any responses would be more than greatly appreciated.
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So, at age 5, I clearly remember numbers and letters having genders. 1,4 and 7 are males, while 3,5 and 8 are females. Also when I think of years, I imagine them in a row running infinitely to the left. And months are arranged like a ladder. I never really told anyone because I just chalked it up to random association. But hearing about synesthesia now, (I’m 20) has really opened my eyes. It’s like I’m a complete stranger to my self. I’m glad I’m not the only out there. And I’m also glad I’m not crazy. Just unique.