Synesthesia: see sounds, hear colors and taste objects

Synesthesia: see sounds, hear colors and taste objects

Imagine that you caress a cat and, meanwhile, perceive the taste of caramel in your mouth. Or that you hear a symphony of Beethoven and start seeing everything in blue. Or well, it's not that you imagine it: it's that it really tastes like caramel and you're seeing the color blue. That is the amazing world of those who have what we know as synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a combination of the senses. It consists of experiencing sensations coming from different senses at the same time before a single perceptual act. For example, synesthetic can see sounds, touch a soft surface and feel a sweet taste, or smell a color.

Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which different sensory planes meet or mix

It is not a mere association or that "seems" to see, hear or savor something: they really feel it. Even when a person loses one of the senses, the synesthesia can continue to occur. A person who hears colors, for example, can still see them even if they are completely blind.

Synesthesia is not voluntary, but involuntary

All these perceptions are involuntary, just like when we look at a white wall, we still see it white whether we want it or not. It is something totally spontaneous, that cannot be controlled, and that has fascinated scientists and artists for years.

As for art, this amalgam of the senses has mixed the palettes of painters, the sonnets of poets and the staves of musicians. For example, the impressionist painter Kandinsky saw colors when listening to music and painted symphonies, or the symbolist poet Rimbaud wrote poetry with correspondence between vowels and colors. This is, by the way, the most common kind of synesthesia: associating letters or numbers with a specific color.

To those who experience this phenomenon, one can say that, literally, "the cables are crossed." According to scientific studies, synesthesia originates when there is a cross activity between the parts of the brain that are responsible for processing the senses.

«The letters A and E are bright red; the number eight is brown and Thursday is green, turning yellowish rather than bluish »

-Sachs, a medical student in 2012 with synesthesia-

This condition can be genetic, present during fetal development, or occur as a result of the use of drugs such as LSD, fungi or other psychedelic substances. It also occurs in autistic and in people suffering from some type of epilepsy. During the depression, synesthetic experience these sensations with greater intensity.

Your confusion with other diseases

It is estimated that one in two thousand people present this condition acutely, and one in twenty in a mild way, but precise data has not yet been found for one simple reason: those who experience it do not realize it, even for years, because for them that is their way of perceiving the environment and it is, until they share their perceptions, that they realize that they live it differently (as happened to me personally, while writing this article).

However, this phenomenon can sometimes be confused with other diseases. Schizophrenia, for example, maybe one of the hurried diagnoses of something that is completely normal for some people. Their way of perceiving, feeling, smelling and seeing is different, since their senses are not associated with the way we understand them, but intersect with each other.

However, we must be clear that synesthesia is not a disease, nor a disorder, it is just a peculiar way of tasting the world. Some studies indicate that it even brings benefits in terms of creativity or memory, so that, if you have it, savor the sounds, enjoy how that aroma looks and caress the colors around you with your hand.

And you? Do you have any kind of synesthesia or have you never rethought if you had it?