Know your brain: Synesthesia

[ThileFan2]

Very educational. I have synesthesia, and this really helps me further understand how exactly it's caused.

[jtturner2020]

I am a synesthete myself. I have grapheme-color synesthesia. I can see colors in my alphabet.

[MrTomfooligans]

I appreciate this video. I have only a boring form of synesthesia, which deals with numbers, time, calendars, etc. Always happy to learn more, though.

[TheLaughingOut]

At the end you gave two possible explanations and said that it could only be one. I have two questions.

1. Why could it not be both, depending on the different persons?

2. How do you know that there are no more possible explanations such as the letter stimulus directly stimulating colour sensitive neurons?

p.s. I love these videos.

[MichaelPayton67]

@TheLaughingOut

1. It might actually be different for different abnormalities. I regret how I phrased that. I was more saying that in any one case it could not be both. I think reading some of the material in the info bar might interest you on this question

2. Letter regions directly stimulating colour regions would have to be deemed an abnormal connection functioning in normal ways because typical human subjects do not have this pathology.

[TheLaughingOut]

@MichaelPayton67 I usually check the description. I don't know why I didn't do that this time. Thank you.

[DivergentMind]

I quite like these videos - thanks

[Blackmark52]

Interesting. I once had a bad experience with drugs in which, though I was screaming and writhing and being held down and gagged by my friends, internally I was completely calm, thinking "Oh, this is how it's supposed to be." I saw the sounds, felt the colours, and so wasn't able to discern at all what was really happening. I took me a year to recover, cost me my college degree, and kinda turned me off drugs, but it was an experience I wouldn't want to trade.

[AManOfHope]

The feel of certain fabrics make my teeth feel tingly and somewhat numb. Like the cloth found on a car's ceiling. I never understood why.

[smpaudio]

Here are the colors of the scale as I see them:

C- white with black outline

D- brown

E- aqua

F- brown and green striped

G- purple

A- orange

B- yellow

I've always wondered if anyone else saw them the same way.

[jacobromu]

@smpaudio what about bent notes and quarter tones?

[smpaudio]

@jacobromu I only associate pure color with single notes, like I would do with numbers or the alphabet. But with actual 'music', when sounds are happening *over time*, like a note that bends or a phrase or a snare drum pattern etc, I associate imagery with those things, that look a bit like wireframe shapes or buildings. My musical side of the synesthesia is the most detailed and elaborate. But I rely on it for memory. Good for music, but not so good for remembering to pay the bill. :-)

[Adawg4008]

totaly fake and totaly GAY

[8WholeThing]

Very interesting. When I was a kid, after learning to use the bathroom by myself, I would get a warm feeling like I felt when I looked at a deep blue color. Mom never did figure out what I meant when I told her I made blue by flushing, putting the seat down, standing on the step-stool to turn off the light and closing the door.

[BuBBaGump014]

Does shit taste like shit?

[MrStillmans]

I wonder if the female in the CBC clip experiences adaptation. You'd think after hearing thousand's of words all day she would stop noticing taste sensations.

[insidetrip101]

This is really interesting, especially the words. It appears that the taste is of the signified (meaning) rather than the signifier (sound). Do you think it possible to view these phenomenon in light of Anaxagoras' ancient view that "Mind is the ultimate reality"?

[saintpine]

@saintpine

you can find many videos of a certain Derek Paravicini, I blind and autistic young man who is able to hear the sounds of even 10 notes on the piano together and is able to play them first shot simultaneously.

[junka22]

Awesome video, very interesting! I have synesthesia, I only found out about it a few years ago but I always saw colors where there were none. For example letters and numbers like 3 to me is green and 8 would be a golden color and the letter K is brown and so on

[AceObrin]

@junka22 3 is green to me as well!!! 8 is golden-brown. Let me guess: A is red and B is blue? K is dark forest-green to me. Re: the top comment: Synesthesia is not a disorder, just a particular conditioning to which some people are predisposed for neurophysiological and experiential reasons

[junka22]

@AceObrin Cool! A is indeed red but B is more like a yellowish brown, a bit like eight but less golden

[saintpine]

2.

But the filter isn't easy to control, once my nephew asked how I could resist that noise for a week now ?

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, he told me he could hear it from the sitting room (15m away).

He starting imitating the sound, I tried hard to hear it, it took me some minutes before I could faintly hear it, once it was pin pointed, I slowly brought the sound to full intensity and it was quite annoying.

So it seems that we do have subconcious elaboration of info.

[saintpine]

Is it possible that we all have a certain degree of synesthesia and some people are simply lacking the subconscious filtering of nonsense information or the elaboration capabilities?

By comparison, when I get an inflamed throat, for some reason my subconscious filtering of sound doesn't work well, and I have problems hearing a person speaking because I cannot filter his words from the surrounding noise very well.

Cont..

[LJonYT]

This is fantastic, Michael. In a clinical setting you have to learn quickly that everything effects everything else and this is a great albeit extreme example. Love it. Can't get enough. More pathology please!

[DasAmericanAtheist]

Do you know, do people who experience taste with words also experience the same rewards associated with eatting those things? Chocolate, for example.

[viicISrotcib]

kind of jealous of synesthetes

[Gameboygenius]

@MichaelPayton67 I'm hearing a slight reverberation effect on your voice. Is this something you added to the recording, or is it the natural reverb of the room? If so, what kind of room is it? It sounds like a large room, maybe a lecture hall?

[markdzima]

I'm quite happy that I can't taste the speeches of Michele Bachmann!

~

Fascinating video. I enjoyed it very much.

[HappyAtheist76]

Great video. This is an interesting topic. I'm going to look this up to learn more.

[BeefTorpedoes]

I never thought I would ever want a disability until now.

[sirdelrio]

Despite the fact, at least for me, that when i listen or play the piano I literally see the colors, because some tonalities awake definite colors in my brain, I had never given Synesthesia any credibility, since me experiencing it, or even many others, would be no basis for it being a neural phenomenon. It could have been just a simple asociation. But nice and also kind of disturbig to see that it's kind of a disorder. = L

[MichaelPayton67]

@sirdelrio

What you're describing is a musical-colour synesthesia and if you can clearly see coloured blobs or shapes during musical performances than you'd definitely qualify as a synesthete.

[Gameboygenius]

@sirdelrio There are ways these things can be tested to make it more or less likely that they are neural phenomena. You can for example test the repeatability. If a person for example mentions the same colors when the same musical piece is played back at two different times, this makes it more likely that it is a neural phenomenon. Also, how could simple association create actual visual feedback if it were not neural? You have to distinguish actually seeing a color from thinking about a color.

[cloud0123]

@sirdelrio Don't worry about mainstream science and their barbaric (actually, little to none) understanding of this condition. It is NOT a disorder. It is a gift. If you had the ability to lets say, move objects with your mind. They would say you had a disorder. Why? Because your brain doesn't behave like everyone elses. Its a gift, don't get yourself down.

[truvelocity]

As someone who see's letters in color, then you'd have to re define a pattern in your world. Instead of a highlighter in books you study, you have to use a pencil to circle paragraphs. Things like that.

[TheAtheistPaladin]

I always wondered what love tastes like. (and no you perverts, don't say a word.)

[95TurboSol]

Great stuff, I really enjoy these videos.

[YesIamJames]

I've always found Synesthesia interesting but don't know much about it. I think chart A is more likely to be accurate due to occam's razor but I could most certainly be wrong.

[Unworshipediety]

Quite interesting I think I have found something to study that will take up quite a bit of time.