When Colors Have Smells and Numbers Have Sex

The brain is a funny place. This condition, called “Synesthesia”, involves the interposition of senses that are normally separate. 


There are reports of these people, called Synesthetes,  who literally feel colors, but also can taste them, and hear them, and smell them. If they get a paper cut, they might see dark orange, when they hear notes on a piano they might smell a particular smell. 


Weird, right? 


But these aren’t random associations, because the same, say, number IS the same sex (Male/Female) every time. The exact same sounds evoke the exact same smells, etc. And that’s as far as this condition goes. It’s not debilitating, and synesthetes def. def. definitely aren’t dysfunctional RainMan Idiot Savants who can’t walk across the street on their own. 


In fact, Synesthetes don’t even realize they have this condition — and neither do the people around them — until someone points it out to them. They just think, say, the number 2 is greenish for every one!!


The brain is massively cool and interconnected place. But, where you’re a baby, it’s drastically more interconnected than it is now. Areas of cortical and sub-cortical tissue that are completely separate in the adult brain, overlap and commingle and communicate with each other (at first, anyway). As you develop, the brain re-orients and some connections strengthen while others weaken. One outcome of this is is that your senses get “silo’d” into unique bins. For Synesthetes, though, the thinking is that some of this overlap is retained. 


Hence the sensory mashup they exeperience. Wicked cool. I love the brain.  Here is a cool article on Synesthesia from Livescience.com.

For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower’s website.