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Have you ever tasted a word, or seen colors while listening to music? If so, you may be in the 1% to 4% of people who have a trait designated as synesthesia. Here’s the neuroscience behind this fascinating condition.
Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which the activation of one sense, such as hearing, triggers the activation of another normally unrelated sense, such as vision. This means that people with synesthesia often experience additional sensations compared to others.
People with synesthesia are known as sinestetas.
Research suggests that synesthesia may be more common among womenalthough this may reflect sampling biases, and may be influenced by genetics.
There are many different types of synesthesia. Some people have synesthesia auditory-visualwhich means they see colors when they hear sounds.
Others see colors when they read, hear, or think about letters or numbers. This is known as synesthesia grapheme-cor.
Another example is synesthesia mirror-touchin which a person feels sensations in their own body when they see another person being touched.
We all naturally combine information from different senses. For example, when you see someone talking, your brain combines what it sees and hears to understand them better. In synesthesia, these connections are a little different – a sound can, for example, trigger a visual experience – but they can still depend on the same mechanisms.
People with synesthesia have no control over how their senses collide.
Instead, these are spontaneous, vivid experienceswhich generally remain the same over time. For example, today a person with grapheme-color synesthesia may perceive the letter “A” as being red. And most likely you will see the same tone even years later.
It is worth noting that synesthesia It is not a disease or a disorder. And it doesn’t cause harm or disability, although some people may find their synesthesia overwhelming at times.
For example, if they feel pain whenever they see another person in pain, it can be quite upsetting. However, overall it does not seem to interfere with daily life. In fact, Many people don’t realize they have synesthesia because it is simply the way they perceive the world.
Or what because?
We still don’t know exactly what causes synesthesia. But scientists have come up with two main theories.
1. Synesthetes have more connections in the brain
According to this perspective, known as the cross-activation theory, people with synesthesia have more connections between different parts of the brain. I
This can happen because the brain did not delete unused connections between brain cells. This process, known as synaptic pruning, helps the brain function more efficiently and is part of normal development.
According to this theory, a person with grapheme-color synesthesia, for example, would have the region that recognizes letters directly linked to the part that processes color. So when you see a letter, you perceive it as a color.
2. Synesthetes have slightly different activity in the brain
The other main theory is that people with synesthesia have the same neural connections as non-synesthetes, but certain routes may be stronger or more active.
Synesthesia appears to be based on mechanisms that we all have. For example, when you see a picture of a gray banana, you know that bananas are normally yellow. We even observe patterns of brain activity that reflect this. Grapheme-color synesthetes can also do this with letters, so when they see black letters, the brain activates specific colors.
In simple terms, the debate over what causes synesthesia comes down to whether synesthetes have a different brain structure or just use their brain in an alternative way.
Does it make you more creative?
You may have heard artists like Kandinsky or musicians like Lorde describe experiences similar to synesthesia. And there is some evidence to suggest that synesthesia is more common among people in creative fields.
A large survey of Australian synesthetes found that around 24% had creative professions, such as artist, musician, architect or graphic designer.
This compares to less than 2% of people in the general population who have these professions. This difference is striking, although we do not understand what is behind it.
One reason may be that the synesthetes connect ideas and sensations in unusual wayshelping them to think more creatively. Research suggests that people with certain types of synesthesia may form stronger memories or have more vivid imaginations, but only to a point.
Synesthesia is a powerful window into how our brains make sense of the world. This reminds us that perception is not a fixed process, the same for everyone. Rather, it is something that the brain actively constructs in ways that are often more varied and much richer than we might expect.
