8 ms·

My Sudden Synaesthesia

104 points by anotherevan 9y ago

adg002 9y ago
So, Sensory Substitution Device. There's an app for that?
- adg002 9y ago
  I've just found out this http://tdwright.github.com/Creole-SSD/ http://tdwright.github.com/Creole-SSD/ https://github.com/tdwright https://github.com/tdwright
tbirrell 9y ago
Discovering you have (what this article calls) classic synaesthesia is a very interesting experience. Suddenly many many things fall into place, but you also realize you experience the world in a fundamentally different manner than anyone else.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- keeganjw 9y ago
  I remember I was 18, at college, and was eating in the dining hall with my friends one evening. We somehow started talking about our favorite colors and I said my favorite color was yellow probably because my name looks so yellow. They stopped eating and stared at me like I was crazy. They asked how does your name look yellow? I was like, what do you mean, it just is yellow. Do words not have colors for you? And just saying that out loud I realized how bizarre that sounded and that I didn't have an explanation for it. I honestly had never thought that much about the fact that words had colors for me. They proceeded to ask me what colors a ton of words were and then tested me again a few days later to see if I said the same things because they didn't believe me. And that's how I found out I had synaesthesia.
  - dwringer 9y ago
    There is a game in which players are shown a series of words that name colors, i.e. "yellow", "red", "green", etc. Sometimes the words are the same color as what they state - "yellow" being drawn in yellow, for instance. Other times, the words are written in a different color, for instance "blue" being written in green. Then, participants are asked quickly to state either the color of a given word, or to read the word, in a sequence of words according to different patterns. Studies on this seem to indicate that everyone has at least some capacity to confuse words with the sensations they evoke, and if anyone has not done one of these exercises it can be very interesting. EDIT: Also, the descriptions people report of their imagination when reading a narrative description or exposition of a scene often include details seemingly arising in a loose associative way from the words themselves, without being explicitly described in the text. EDIT 2: And I'm not entirely comfortable with the notion that people experience the world in a "fundamentally different way" when there is evidence that this may not be a fundamental difference after all. Different it is, no doubt, but this seems to be a difference of magnitude rather than fundamental nature. The predominant character of the experiences may be subjectively different, leading to a different approach to many situations in a person's life, but the mechanisms appear to be fundamental to consciousness itself.
    - gerbilly 9y ago
      This is the so called Stroop effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
  - purvis 9y ago
    Does this affect how you perceive designs with colored text in them?
    - tbirrell 9y ago
      Yes, a little bit. If you gave me a word in a certain color font, that would take precedence. Its not like I was see "my" color. But if I thought of the word out of that context, it would be its normal color again (usually based on the color of the first letter like described in the article). Exceptions are things like logos which have a fairly strong association with certain colors.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- amyjess 9y ago
  I remember the huge lightbulb that went off in my head when I discovered that number forms are a form of synesthesia. I've had number forms all my life. I never knew where they came from or why, so the way I see numbers finally made sense when I found out that it was part of a condition I've actually heard of before. I also have some weak chromagraphemia, but the number forms are much stronger. For example, here's a rough approximation of how I see the numbers 0-100. It's not perfect because it's hard to do suble slopes in text. 69 70 71 66 67 68 72 73 74 63 64 65 75 76 77 60 61 62 78 79 80 29 30 31 59 81 28 32 58 82 27 33 57 83 26 34 56 84 25 35 55 85 24 36 54 86 23 37 53 87 22 38 52 88 21 39 51 89 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 This also applies to years, by the way. Just add 1900 to all these numbers and you have my visualization of the 20th century. I find it amusing that the Great Depression is a downward slope... but so is the boom of the '80s.
- pawelk 9y ago
  I think I have now remembered the moment I became aware of my synesthesia. As a kid I was a bit of an art geek, I liked to read on art history and theory. Reading about Kandinsky there was an introduction that he had some kind of unique way of mapping sounds to colors, followed by a quote from Kandinsky. I was like "This is strange indeed, he got like half of the colors wrong!". Then the book proceeded to explain synesthesia and everything became clear.
in3d 9y ago
I have weed-induced music -> shape, texture, etc. synesthesia. Each instrument (or voice) in a song has its associated brightness, shape, texture, size, location in space, and they all are animated with the song. This form is much less common than the types of synesthesia relating to colors but I think it's the most fun. There are quite a few consistencies that make sense to people who don't have it: lower frequency sounds look darker, louder sounds are larger, drums have a "sandy" (non-solid) texture. It all comes together and makes the song look beautiful. I'd like to make a VR animation for one song to show others how it looks sometime. There are some videos produced by others but I don't think they give the full experience and they are missing something. On the other hand, I'm happy I don't have this ability normally because I would've probably gotten involved in some music-related field and that might not be a great career path. It seems to make music composition much more intuitive and just "obvious." A couple good books on the subject: "Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia" and "Sensory Blending: On Synaesthesia and related phenomena."
- sv123 9y ago
  Wish they could selectively breed strains for this.
- gyrgtyn 9y ago
  How high do you gotta get for this to happen?
  - in3d 9y ago
    Not very.
  - NegativeLatency 9y ago
    It helps if you put on some headphones, relax, and close your eyes.
- shostack 9y ago
  On the other hand, I wonder how much of a competitive edge someone with synesthesia would have with music over someone without it. My understanding is you can perceive when music looks/feels/smells right or whatever your sensory blend is, which means you can perceive things that work well together that others might not. Of course I could be completely wrong about this.
marzell 9y ago
I find it easy to approximate various flavor types with audible pitches. Bitter flavors are deep bass, oils tend to be a little higher, complex carbs are a bit higher, sweets are in the middle or a little higher (carbs and sugars make up the 'vocal range' in my estimation), and sour flavors are way up high. People have tried to convince me that this is a mild/odd synaesthesia, but I feel it may just be imagination and an overeagerness to draw parallels/similies.
pcl 9y ago
The article described an SSD (sensory substitution device) that converts a particular color under a stylus into a sound. I wonder if you could build an SSD that did a playback of a 2-dimensional scan of an input image in such a way that a blind person could rebuild the 2-dimensional image. Perhaps the brain could pick up something akin to CRT horizontal scan lines. Also, I wonder whether stereophonic output would be advantageous.
- joelg 9y ago
  This is actually exactly the topic of the 3Blue1Brown video on Hilbert Curves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s7h2MHQtxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s7h2MHQtxc Space-filling curves are a sort of optimal mapping strategy for compressing two dimensions down into one.
- chrissoundz 9y ago
  I find this video quite mesmerizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo Essentially it draws an object on an oscilloscope by splitting the audio channel into x y coordinates.
duxup 9y ago
I wonder how far Vanessa has been able to recover.

104 points by anotherevan 9y ago

adg002 9y ago

So, Sensory Substitution Device. There's an app for that?

adg002 9y ago
I've just found out this http://tdwright.github.com/Creole-SSD/ http://tdwright.github.com/Creole-SSD/ https://github.com/tdwright https://github.com/tdwright

tbirrell 9y ago

Discovering you have (what this article calls) classic synaesthesia is a very interesting experience. Suddenly many many things fall into place, but you also realize you experience the world in a fundamentally different manner than anyone else.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
keeganjw 9y ago
I remember I was 18, at college, and was eating in the dining hall with my friends one evening. We somehow started talking about our favorite colors and I said my favorite color was yellow probably because my name looks so yellow. They stopped eating and stared at me like I was crazy. They asked how does your name look yellow? I was like, what do you mean, it just is yellow. Do words not have colors for you? And just saying that out loud I realized how bizarre that sounded and that I didn't have an explanation for it. I honestly had never thought that much about the fact that words had colors for me. They proceeded to ask me what colors a ton of words were and then tested me again a few days later to see if I said the same things because they didn't believe me. And that's how I found out I had synaesthesia.
- dwringer 9y ago
  There is a game in which players are shown a series of words that name colors, i.e. "yellow", "red", "green", etc. Sometimes the words are the same color as what they state - "yellow" being drawn in yellow, for instance. Other times, the words are written in a different color, for instance "blue" being written in green. Then, participants are asked quickly to state either the color of a given word, or to read the word, in a sequence of words according to different patterns. Studies on this seem to indicate that everyone has at least some capacity to confuse words with the sensations they evoke, and if anyone has not done one of these exercises it can be very interesting. EDIT: Also, the descriptions people report of their imagination when reading a narrative description or exposition of a scene often include details seemingly arising in a loose associative way from the words themselves, without being explicitly described in the text. EDIT 2: And I'm not entirely comfortable with the notion that people experience the world in a "fundamentally different way" when there is evidence that this may not be a fundamental difference after all. Different it is, no doubt, but this seems to be a difference of magnitude rather than fundamental nature. The predominant character of the experiences may be subjectively different, leading to a different approach to many situations in a person's life, but the mechanisms appear to be fundamental to consciousness itself.
  - gerbilly 9y ago
    This is the so called Stroop effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect
- purvis 9y ago
  Does this affect how you perceive designs with colored text in them?
  - tbirrell 9y ago
    Yes, a little bit. If you gave me a word in a certain color font, that would take precedence. Its not like I was see "my" color. But if I thought of the word out of that context, it would be its normal color again (usually based on the color of the first letter like described in the article). Exceptions are things like logos which have a fairly strong association with certain colors.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
amyjess 9y ago
I remember the huge lightbulb that went off in my head when I discovered that number forms are a form of synesthesia. I've had number forms all my life. I never knew where they came from or why, so the way I see numbers finally made sense when I found out that it was part of a condition I've actually heard of before. I also have some weak chromagraphemia, but the number forms are much stronger. For example, here's a rough approximation of how I see the numbers 0-100. It's not perfect because it's hard to do suble slopes in text. 69 70 71 66 67 68 72 73 74 63 64 65 75 76 77 60 61 62 78 79 80 29 30 31 59 81 28 32 58 82 27 33 57 83 26 34 56 84 25 35 55 85 24 36 54 86 23 37 53 87 22 38 52 88 21 39 51 89 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 This also applies to years, by the way. Just add 1900 to all these numbers and you have my visualization of the 20th century. I find it amusing that the Great Depression is a downward slope... but so is the boom of the '80s.
pawelk 9y ago
I think I have now remembered the moment I became aware of my synesthesia. As a kid I was a bit of an art geek, I liked to read on art history and theory. Reading about Kandinsky there was an introduction that he had some kind of unique way of mapping sounds to colors, followed by a quote from Kandinsky. I was like "This is strange indeed, he got like half of the colors wrong!". Then the book proceeded to explain synesthesia and everything became clear.

in3d 9y ago

I have weed-induced music -> shape, texture, etc. synesthesia. Each instrument (or voice) in a song has its associated brightness, shape, texture, size, location in space, and they all are animated with the song. This form is much less common than the types of synesthesia relating to colors but I think it's the most fun. There are quite a few consistencies that make sense to people who don't have it: lower frequency sounds look darker, louder sounds are larger, drums have a "sandy" (non-solid) texture. It all comes together and makes the song look beautiful. I'd like to make a VR animation for one song to show others how it looks sometime. There are some videos produced by others but I don't think they give the full experience and they are missing something. On the other hand, I'm happy I don't have this ability normally because I would've probably gotten involved in some music-related field and that might not be a great career path. It seems to make music composition much more intuitive and just "obvious." A couple good books on the subject: "Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia" and "Sensory Blending: On Synaesthesia and related phenomena."

sv123 9y ago
Wish they could selectively breed strains for this.
gyrgtyn 9y ago
How high do you gotta get for this to happen?
- in3d 9y ago
  Not very.
- NegativeLatency 9y ago
  It helps if you put on some headphones, relax, and close your eyes.
shostack 9y ago
On the other hand, I wonder how much of a competitive edge someone with synesthesia would have with music over someone without it. My understanding is you can perceive when music looks/feels/smells right or whatever your sensory blend is, which means you can perceive things that work well together that others might not. Of course I could be completely wrong about this.

marzell 9y ago

I find it easy to approximate various flavor types with audible pitches. Bitter flavors are deep bass, oils tend to be a little higher, complex carbs are a bit higher, sweets are in the middle or a little higher (carbs and sugars make up the 'vocal range' in my estimation), and sour flavors are way up high. People have tried to convince me that this is a mild/odd synaesthesia, but I feel it may just be imagination and an overeagerness to draw parallels/similies.

pcl 9y ago

The article described an SSD (sensory substitution device) that converts a particular color under a stylus into a sound. I wonder if you could build an SSD that did a playback of a 2-dimensional scan of an input image in such a way that a blind person could rebuild the 2-dimensional image. Perhaps the brain could pick up something akin to CRT horizontal scan lines. Also, I wonder whether stereophonic output would be advantageous.

joelg 9y ago
This is actually exactly the topic of the 3Blue1Brown video on Hilbert Curves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s7h2MHQtxc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s7h2MHQtxc Space-filling curves are a sort of optimal mapping strategy for compressing two dimensions down into one.
chrissoundz 9y ago
I find this video quite mesmerizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo Essentially it draws an object on an oscilloscope by splitting the audio channel into x y coordinates.

duxup 9y ago

I wonder how far Vanessa has been able to recover.