Drs. Cytowic and Frakowiak on Synesthesia

A documentary on sight and sound. This clip discusses their fusion in the fascinating phenomenon of synesthesia.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• synesthesia
• synaesthesia
• Cytowic
• colored hearing
• colored music

[Cytowic]

Yes, most famously LSD and psylocibin. It only happens in 9% of ingestions, however. About half the Synesthetes who have also taken LSD say it isn't the same as their naturally-occurring kind. 

[drewstah76]

Love the glasses!

[JCole131]

I have synesthasia, ive had it for a while knowingly and i have a photographic memory, i love it.

[ollie0918]

@wolflover8765 F#

[Allicana13]

Monday is yellow, Wednesday is orange, and Thursday is hot pink, not blue, but Friday is blue--not yellow! That's Monday. But at least you got Tuesday right. But aside from that, this is a great video!

[EzThePker]

I just found out I have synesthesia today, different names for different people have different colours associated with them, among other things. And here I went through my life not even thinking about it, it felt normal to me haha.

[IleaMM]

I'm just learning about this, and the different types. I definitely see colors when listening to music, I see shapes as well. Numbers and letters have color and gender, even age. I see as an oval shape around me, and a week looks like piano keys. Days of the week also have gender and color, and the sound of someone rubbing a balloon makes the bridge of my nose hurt. Lol, up until last week I didn't realize that not everyone sees things that way!

[wolflover8765]

um I know I have grapheme color synesthesia, but i have another kind i think. piano keys are colored- the actual keys, not the sounds. for example, the major traid of D is navy blue (D), orange (F), and magenta/purple (A). At first I thought it was just because the colors of the letters matched the colors of keys, but a few of the keys like the keys "B", "A", and "G" are different then their counterpart letters. Does anyone know if this is another kind of synesthesia? I appreciate any help. :)

[defamfetamin]

I can taste words.....many words taste for me like different food

[mpjmt]

Same here. I didn't see anything unusual, but that music that was playing throughout the video kept me visualizing dark wavy lines. I can never concentrate on people talking while listening to music because I'm busy thinking of shapes.

[YemaConAzucar]

I've also heard about synesthesia in which the triggered sensation is not as 'real' as the stimulus. Say in my case I don't see colours in letters and numbers, but I know they have them, and I involuntarily associate them in my mind. A, 5, F, are brilliant red; S, V, G, and 7 are similar shades of greens, and so on. I don't see any coloured shape that helps me spot the triangle of '2' among the masses of '5' tho. Same thing with music, I see colours an shapes and movement, but in my mind.

[thetreeleprechaun]

@micheals1992

That's really interesting, I've never heard of that kind of synesthesia before, but it probably is a form of it.