synaesthesia (or synesthesia)

[dubbleD]

heya all
it was only recently i decided to search up something about myself and found out about this.
synaesthesia is a cognitive process that involves the involuntary invoking of a different sense than the sense being experienced.
it sounds confusing but put it this way;
'if you hear something, your brain might automatically think of colours if youre a synaesthete'
it's something thats really interesting and i'd like to share it with you peoples.
read synesthesia on wiki
for me, my numbers are associated with colours and music sometimes give me a sense of colour depending on the mood.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7(i dont know how to choose teal) 8(well 8 isnt this dark) and 9(is meant to be darker than 8 but i can't get that either)

who else experiences this? the ratio of people who have this varies from 1:20 to 1:20,000, so i'd like to hear other peoples cases. there are a number of different types of synaesthesia btw. and also, its not really a choice thing, it just happens by nature. it doesnt mean that those who don't have synaesthesia wont ever experience it, so no one is left out

[empirefantasy]

As I understood,synaesthesia is imagine numbers with colors and/or shapes.If this is so I have synaesthesia.

[prince_freeza]

i dont think i got it before, when i hear a number i just imagine it in a certain cartoony shape, but not colors.

[Boop]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Synaesthesiatest.jpg

To lazy to read the entire article, but I don't experience anything similar to that.

SirFrog edited this post 03-28-2011 02:04 PM because:

Nor have I. Tested the image.

[Reaper]

How dare you say 3 is blue? It's red! 8 is the only number that's blue, and it's much darker. And 9 is obviously a dark purple. I aggree with you on 0,1,2 and 4, though. :P
So yeah... I don't see those colours, though and failed on that test.

[empirefantasy]

To describe how I imagine numbers is a few hard.
Ok: I am starting:
All negative numbers are dark yellow and black.
Numbers from 0-10 are the same with negative numbers.
Numbers from 11-19 are white and black.
Numbers from 20-29 are dark.
Numbers from 30-100 are like 11-19.(when I was a child 30-39 was red like armchairs in a cinema,theatre etc)
Numbers from 101-999 become dark and more dark.
But from 1000-10000 are light,but not so much.
Then they become dark and more dark.999.999 is so dark.
But 1.000.000 is the lightest number.It is so shiny.It is like 1.000.000 very small balls which are shiny(I can not describe well 1milion because is so hard).
From 1.000.001-99.999.999 are light numbers but lighter then 1000-10.000
Then form 100.000.000-999.999.999 become dark and darker.
Then 1.000.000.000-..... are black(means very dark.)

[Alblaka]

Numbers are numbers. Nothing behind that (for me).
Though i've started to formulate math-based problems in java-pseudocode, mentally XD

[Boop]

Though i've started to formulate math-based problems in java-pseudocode, mentally XD

You don't really understand something unless you can explain it to an 8 year old write a program to do it.

On topic: I'm to lazy to read the entire article, but from what I read, there are different degrees and types of this. When you are describing a number with a color, is that just what you associate it with? Or do you physically see the number colored(like that picture). The latter sounds bloody awesome, like being on hallucinogens constantly .

[Ramond]

I don't know if that counts but whenever I hear a melody, I usually automatically "see" a keyboard playing the melody in the C-Major (or a-minor) scale or the correct scale if I know the key the melody is playing in.

But it's probably something I just got used to in the past few years. I don't see colors with anything

[dubbleD]

oh wow awesome
@empirefantasy
yeah pretty much that. and the way you see numbers are pretty cool
what do you see with letters? i don't really see much with letters...

@Prince freeza
well it doesnt actually work that way. it just works that way and you can't help it or purposely think that everytime you see it. it's like you can't control it. its just like when a guy sees his girlfriend, he feels love for her without trying, the same for me when seeing numbers, colours kinda of showup in my 'minds eye'

@silva
lol that test wouldnt work on me well because my 2 and 5 have really similar colours,
well for the numbers...its hard to explain. sometimes when i think about numbers, its almost like the colour conjures itself in my 'minds eye' (visually in my mind/mentally). i can't control it, it just happens. its like the number and colour are one and the same.

@Reaper
, well im not gonna argue with what colours you see your numbers because everyones different. and that test is used to find out how well synaethetes perform looking at the numbers. so they record how long it takes for you to work it out.

@Alblaka
ahah well of course there are people who are non-synaesthetes. doesn't mean you can experience it. one way to experience synesthaesia is to use drugs like LSD or something...yeah not advised but possible. but it depends on the person as well.

@Ramond
i don't think its synaesthesia. i think that its really involuntary, so you just can't help it. i dont know but maybe in your case, its just when you're listening to the music. when you try to listen to it carefully or pay more attention and take it in and what your mind does to help you take it in is by picturing the piano keyboard. if it were synaesthesia, maybe everytime you hear music, a keyboard is there in your head without you even thinking.

for me, i've discovered that i have graphime synaesthesia (letters, numbers words and stuff. most common synaesthesia of all types). i've been thinking carefully about how letters and numbers show up for me and i realise that the only reason why only thinking of individual numbers for me conjures colours is because my mind gets jumbled up with combinations of numbers/letters. the letter to me have all these speckled mixes and spots of different colours, with which entire words form a particular colour but its not very strong on me. for large groups of numbers, it gets jumbled up too and becomes a mixture of the colours.
another thing i noticed about my numbers is the kind of colours they are. all of them are colours that i would see a lot when i was little. yellow lines outside, yellow lights, white light, black roads, blue sky, green grass and trees, orange bark trees, dark red bark trees.