Our neurons communicate with each other through chemicals called neurotransmitters. But synesthetes might not be properly shutting down those bridges, making their lives a little bit trippier than everybody else's.Īnother theory suggest that synesthesia is caused by neurochemistry. Scientists theorize that we're born with our senses sort of all tangled up and then over time, our brains shut down the neural bridges between our senses so we experience them separately. Now of course the question is: what are these people's brain up to? One idea is that it might be a defect in the neural structure. Like "Oh my god, this Elton John song playing in the T.J.Maxx smells like gasoline! Get me out of here!" And finally number five: the perceptions may be really emotional. So if a synesthete always associates the name Dave with the color purple, they'll usually remember the purple first, which tells them that it's Dave. Four: often the secondary perception will be more memorable than the primary one. Bacon can't taste like Bach one day and Beethoven the next. Three: the sensory mix up is durable, meaning that the associations are always the same. Like if I asked 'what color is a triangle?', a synesthetes would see a color, say yellow, immediately and they wouldn't have to think about it before their brain made the association. Two: their condition is experienced rather than imagined. One: their mixed perception of senses is involuntary, it happens without them thinking about it. Like the letter A is red and the number 4 is brown.Īnd you might be thinking "Psshh yeah, that person probably just had a red A magnet on their refrigerator when they were a little kid, so they think of A's as being red." But most studies suggest that there is something funny going on with the synesthetes' brain.Īlthough there is no established way to diagnose synesthesia, true synesthetes have a few things in common. This is when people perceive letters, or numbers, or words, or days of the week - whatever - as being inherently colored. Scientists at Baylor University think that they've identified a region of DNA on chromosome 16 as the culprit, at least for the most common form called 'colored sequence synesthesia'. Though members of a family will sometimes have different types. Researchers have found that synesthesia is often inherited. Synesthesia is Greek for 'joined perception', and it can involve mixing any of our senses, sometimes even three or more of them at once, although that's more rare. A neurological condition in which two senses are perceived simultaneously. Not the case! You could instead have synesthesia. You might think you'd have to be on some kind of psychoactive street drug to see music or taste the feeling of the wind in your hair.
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