Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 1:15 am Post subject: synesthesia rocks! who here has synesthesia?
I have synesthesia and I LOVE it!!!
who here has it and do you like having it???
what type do you have and also
in what way does your synesthesia confuse you?
and what is the best thing about your synesthesia?
I will describe mine in a post tomorro, coz now I am listening to music and I am swirling in a caleidoscope. lol
Joined: Dec 28, 2011 Age: 21 Posts: 380 Location: Belgium
Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:21 am Post subject:
I don't have it, BUT I have these things:
-When I have my eyes closed and hear a sudden loud noise, everything goes white, like the flash of a camera
-I can 'hear' flashing images (no it's not a hallucination because then I would really HEAR it, I 'hear' this in my mind)
All of the synesthesia I've experienced was caused by drugs. For the most part, it has been between visual and auditory, but other times it has been tactile and visual, or tactile and auditory. Never have experienced it with tastes or smells.
I've always have loved it when I experienced it. I would love to experience it while not in an altered state of mind.
I have HPPD (which is going away) - Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder. For me this causes very easily forming afterimages and tracers - if I look at something, even for a tiny tiny tiny amount of time, I get an "afterimage" of the thing I was looking at. So it happens with pretty much everything I look at. When it was at its worst, it was very difficult to read text on a screen, because it would make afterimages off of the text and I would have all these weird colors forming in the middle of the text, often yellows. They were very distracting, but I did enjoy having constant visuals. I also had a moving translucent geometric pattern over everything I saw; in bright light conditions it was not very noticeable at all. In dark though, it became very apparent, even making it difficult to see in low light, at its worst. It was also multi-colored and changed colors. The geometric pattern now is really only there in the dark, and it isn't as powerful as it used to be.
I also have strange things going on with color perception, i.e. colors will morph into other colors if there are too many colors on a screen, like the blue and green here on WP keep reversing for me, i.e. the blue will turn into that same shade of green, and the green will turn into that same shade of blue again, and they will go back to normal, usually the moment I realize the colors are off. Interesting visual textures often have strange visual "glitches" occurring to them, with me. For example, with high contrast lines very close to each other, I usually see reds and blues between the lines.
Other people have things like seeing faces everywhere and in everything, like a hardwood floor or a wall. It is clear that they aren't real faces, but they just get recognized in places they normally wouldn't, sort of like how you recognize a smiley face icon as a face, except recognizing faces everywhere.
I don't mind it though. It can be a little annoying at times but it's pleasant to me most of the time.
Joined: Jan 01, 2012 Posts: 466 Location: Home in the desert
Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 8:01 am Post subject:
Color and pitch mostly for me.
When I was a kid, letters and numbers had very specific colors to them. I don't have this as much because I don't focus on individual letters and numbers rather groups of letters and numbers and whole words or longer numbers have more subtle colors to them that are easy to overlook. It's sort of like going from a box of crayons to a well defined paint pallet for a photo-realistic painter...
Pain has a sectrum of shades and pitches + resonance... a punch in the arm is a blue or purple depending on the distribution of contact and has a pitch of -1 octave d with a dramatically shifting vibrato of about a half step at the tempo of about heartbeat (but not always in sync with heartbeat... which is generally actually represented by volume) and a smooth sine wave characteristic but also a somewhat hissing sound
most dimensional concepts I can imagine visually represented by colors and light or with auditory concepts.
Problems I've had because of it are minimal I think... If it ever did cause me any problems I didn't know because its always been there. I never knew if everyone did it or not for sure until just a couple of months ago.
I do like it, its helpful for me and helps me to understand complex concepts simply by modeling them mentally that most people have to spend a lot of time studying and researching to understand. _________________ er um... w.. eh... y.. you cant hear me um like.................. stammer on the internet ha ha ha
I'm pretty sure I have a form of spatial-sequence synesthesia. I've always seen "timelines" for lists of things related to my special interests, for the days of the week, for the months of the year, and for years in a century. I'm also a big associator in general. I have strong associations for colors and days of the week and can do ordinal and inanimate object personality if need be, because certain associations just "feel right" to me. I don't think I have full-blown ordinal personality synesthesia, but I'm pretty sure I do have spatial-sequence synesthesia. The way it rocks the most is that it is a big reason why I have such a fabulous memory, particularly for dates and facts. It also adds enriches my very vivid visual memory and is entertaining. _________________ Helinger: Now, what do you see, John?
Nash: Recognition...
Helinger: Well, try seeing accomplishment!
Nash: Is there a difference?
Joined: Oct 12, 2011 Posts: 151 Location: In a grove of oak trees, having a tea party with squirrels.
Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 9:28 am Post subject:
From what I've studied in art from the early 20th century I've gotten the impression that most people are able to sympathize with the making of associations between various stimuli. Are some people unable to do so?
Don't have it and didn't know anything about it until I watched the anime Canaan. You might enjoy it, I thought it was pretty cool as far as realism and fantasy being mixed together.
I can smell things that I see (e.g. I can smell a real horse when I see a picture). Memories, sounds and textures can all trigger smells for me. The weather has a smell.
I link smells to shape and colour, so a particular smell looks and feels like a shape - e.g. spiky, smooth, soft, or orange.
I also have the sound / vision cross-over that others mention above, seeing flashes and colour with sound, especially when startled, or hearing some kinds of images.
I see colours and shapes and textures. Every word is like a 3-D abstract painting. I also feel stuff in my body, when I hear sounds or music. I do associate some smells with thoughts or impressions and also I taste words sometimes. It is bizarre but mostly I pay attention to the feeling of music in my body and to the seeing of words.
The problems that I have is that too much music can make me go on an overload of the senses, which can be good but can also not be so good as I can't get out of that state easily. The other problem is that when it comes to names, dates, etc sometimes instead of remembering the actual name or date I remember the colours and shapes.
So I might think, "whats this guy's name again? it's like light orange haze, so it must start with a J" yet I can't remember his name. I just remember what it looks like in my mind.
I can smell things that I see (e.g. I can smell a real horse when I see a picture). Memories, sounds and textures can all trigger smells for me. The weather has a smell.
I link smells to shape and colour, so a particular smell looks and feels like a shape - e.g. spiky, smooth, soft, or orange.
I also have the sound / vision cross-over that others mention above, seeing flashes and colour with sound, especially when startled, or hearing some kinds of images.
I smell colors too. The best way I can describe it is they smell like fruit but nothing like any fruit that I can identify, just 'fruity'. Anyway, I'm glad brown doesn't smell like sh**, that would have sucked.
I can smell things that I see (e.g. I can smell a real horse when I see a picture). Memories, sounds and textures can all trigger smells for me. The weather has a smell.
I link smells to shape and colour, so a particular smell looks and feels like a shape - e.g. spiky, smooth, soft, or orange.
I also have the sound / vision cross-over that others mention above, seeing flashes and colour with sound, especially when startled, or hearing some kinds of images.
I smell colors too. The best way I can describe it is they smell like fruit but nothing like any fruit that I can identify, just 'fruity'. Anyway, I'm glad brown doesn't smell like sh**, that would have sucked.
so what does black smell like? and other basic colours?
my sense of smell is only associated with sad memories, some smells bring them back. nothing else tho I dont think.
Its fairly common. I can see sounds a lot of time, especially musical notes. But I also think that months of the year have personalities. All humans have these, it makes for good writers and creative artists.
I once heard some music and in my head I saw a pot, pan and a soup bowl with legs crawling up a stairway.
I used to thought I had synesthesia until I watch a video about it, a woman said that she can't see when there is loud music playing because the sound invades all her vision, althought I assosiate colors to music they don't invade my vision, they are in another layer(they are mental visualizations). I also can feel the taste of something when I watch it or 'touch' with the eyes but I supose I just have a vivid sensory memory.
_________________ I'm not a native english speaker, please correct me if I write like a robot or something, so I can improve.
as a face, except recognizing faces everywhere.
I'm missing out. I experience nothing of this.
