

Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia? - santadays
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/can-you-teach-yourself-synesthesia/259519/

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namelesstrash01
I have synesthesia in real life. For me, I have one of the "most common"
forms, between words and colors. Specifically, I have a color-word synesthesia
("association" is _not_ the right word here) between days of the week and
colors. For example, Friday for me is a "medium green", Tuesday is a "light
blue" and Wednesday is a sort of "soft red"... Every day has its own color,
though I must mention that Saturday and Sunday are both white, though
different shades. Each of these colors also has a "brightness" to it that is
kind of impossible to describe in terms of regular colors, though colors seen
on a computer display get close. I also have some mild synesthesia between
specific letters of the alphabet (but not all of them), as well as every
single-digit number. It's worth a mention that I can't think of specific
instances of this synesthesia helping me remember anything, though I am pretty
good with remembering numbers, and it needs to be said that I don't know what
it's like _without_ synesthesia, so I can't offer a comparison.

Very much related to this post, I can't say whether or not learning synethesia
is possible. It's so hard to describe the synesthesia between words-colors, to
such a degree that I'm inclined to say that any learning would be simple
association, and not the synesthesia that I experience myself. For example,
when I read the word "Wednesday" it's a very specific color of red with a
certain bright softness about it. I "see" that color every time I hear or see
_and then comprehend_ the idea of Wednesday. When I see "Wednesday" as a
collection of letters, there's no color, but when I summon the internal
idea/concept of Wednesday, then the color is there. See how retarded I sound?
That's how confusing the internal "association" is, and why I am inclined to
believe that "one does not simply _learn_ synesthesia"...

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naiquevin
Whoa! I think I may be having a weaker version of the same type of synesthesia
that you have described. I tend to "imagine" colours when I think of certain
letters, numbers, days or months. I don't feel this way for each one of them
though.. for eg. 2 = red, 4 = green, 5 = pink, 6 = blue, 7 = purple whereas
nothing for 0, 1, 3, 8 and 9 (may be black?). Similarly, E = yellow, F = pink,
saturday = green, march = yellow etc. Also, I don't "see" colours while
reading text, just when I happen to think more about a letter, number or word.

All this while I was thinking this is common and normal in all people like
photographic memory or something. Learnt something new today :-)

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namelesstrash01
Yes, that's _exactly_ it! Some letters are not there (actually most letters),
and I know that some numbers are "weaker" than others. I also know that some
of these color synesthetics have changed over time. For example, I know that
the number 2 for me didn't always trigger darkish pink, but I can't remember
what it used to be. Also, I have lost synesthesia for G, H, and J, which used
to be yellowish, yellowish, and green, but now don't "do" anything.

If you are experiencing more of a one-to-one idea/color analogue instead of a
simple kind of "association" between an idea and a color, then what you are
describing is highly likely to be similar to what I have, which is word-color
synesthesia, the most common form of the "condition". For example, it's much
more intrinsic than the simple association we normally feel between, say, the
word "money" and the color green. That's a simple word-color association. When
I see the word "March", I "feel/see/experience" the color blue (and vice
versa, though this vice versa is a bit weird because I'm not so good at
distinguishing individual colors).

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naiquevin
Yes, it's different from the money-green association. I wonder what made me
think it was normal and everyone else thought this way too!

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vanderZwan
You could argue everyone who is literate has synesthesia - I can not look at
symbols representing the alphabet and not hear the associated phonemes in my
head. Makes me wonder what you see if you scan the brains of people who are
born-deaf when reading, actually - which parts of the brain light up? Oh, and
when reading logographic alphabets like Chinese of course.

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lobster_johnson
Subvocalization [1] -- "hearing the words" -- actually varies between people.
Anecdotally: I myself don't "hear" anything while reading. There is apparently
some evidence that all, or almost all, people subvocalize, but that for many
people it happens subconsciously and involuntarily, and that you can detect it
only by monitoring the vocal chords. There was an HN thread discussing it
recently [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization>

[2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5278039>

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vanderZwan
I never heard of subvocalizatin before, fascinating! Any (non-historical)
reasons it is considered separate from synesthesia?

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lobster_johnson
Because it's a separate phenomenon? Synesthesia is explicitly about different
senses crossing paths, and does not apply only to reading. For example,
synesthetes might see colours in conjunction with smells.

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vanderZwan
So how is "hearing a visual pattern" not two senses crossing paths?

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lobster_johnson
It's not so much hearing a visual pattern as it is to speak it.
Subvocalization engages the voice apparatus in a way that is very close to
actually speaking.

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vanderZwan
If that is true, then why does this work?

<http://xkcd.com/462/>
<http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/22402009.jpg>

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dchichkov
Well, syntax highlighting has been around for some time. So if present,
shouldn't an effect of induced synesthesia be well known by now?

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namelesstrash01
This is an interesting observation. I've been writing code for about twenty
years, and using some form of syntax highlighting for a little over ten of
those years. I change the colors in vim (and geany, my other IDE-du-jour) to
match function names with a bold blue and variables with a bold, dark red.
These colors are the ones I definitely change every time on a new
install/machine/whatever. I can see exactly what we would think with the
color-syntax association, but it's _not quite_ the same as my synesthesia.
Like, when I type out a function definition, I don't have a bold blue
"mindset" while doing it. However, when I type the word Wednesday in that
context, there's a thick undercurrent consisting of the "softish bright red".
It's really, really hard to explain, but there is a difference for me.

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dchichkov
Oh well, it's no surprise, really. Visual cortex is vast and depending on
which areas/levels take part very different effects may be present.

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namelesstrash01
Yes certainly, synesthesia has many different forms. From what I understand --
and I could be completely off, but this is just information I've tried to
collect since I finally had a word for the condition -- the word-color
synesthesia thing is pretty common. Sound-color exists, but it's pretty
uncommon. Among many, many different combinations. One of my friends has
confided in me that she feels different temperatures with different words. I
hadn't heard of that before, but I don't doubt it. There were some scientists
who did MRI work on synesthetes and found that it basically amounts to
functional crossovers in the brain between the affected areas.

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efferifick
I have always wanted a firefox add-on that would make each letter a different
colour consistently to test this theory. I know "If you want it, then make
it"... Maybe this summer.

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hfsktr
At first I thought that was a great idea and thought about how it might be
done. Then I realized reading a word where every letter was a different color
would be incredibly annoying (for a while).

I imagined bright colors like this:
[http://img3.etsystatic.com/006/0/5982325/il_fullxfull.367326...](http://img3.etsystatic.com/006/0/5982325/il_fullxfull.367326283_qwvp.jpg)

To me that is very distracting.

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robertfw
in the study they only printed four letters in colour, not the entire alphabet

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tren
Does anyone know if a comparative study has been done comparing the
word/colours that people with synesthesia see to determine if there is any
pattern? I'm wondering the same thing for auditory/colour patterns, it could
have interesting applications for lighting at live music shows.

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namelesstrash01
From what I can tell, there's no pattern in any synesthesia. It's due ("they"
think) to essentially a hardware crossover in the regions of the brain
responsible for these "cognitions"... You have the same idea I did for some
time when I was much younger. A really good friend of mine organized raves
back around the first time they were popular and I knew if people could
experience what I experience for only a while, it would have a result similar
to the consciousness-altering properties of drugs. It's always been normal to
me, but I also know what it's like to think of words/colors that have no
meaning together, so I can imagine how empty my vocabulary would be without
this extra layer of interconnectedness. I'm terribly sorry if this comment
meets your disapproval. I'm really just trying to help extend my experience to
fellow HNers.

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miahi
<http://xkcd.com/1213/>

~~~
dm2
[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1213:_Combin...](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1213:_Combination_Vision_Test)

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IvyMike
Chrome plugin, please.

