Synaesthesia: a colourful world

Date: 25 April 2010 16:20:30

[caption id="attachment_89" align="alignright" width="300" caption="I see small numbers, medium-sized and larger numbers in various places in space. The colours are not as I've done them here because each number has a unique colour"][/caption]

Yesterday, TractorGirl mentioned that I have synaesthesia, and Jack the Lass was interested in how that works. Well...

According to the BBC, about one in two thousand people have the condition and scientists are unsure about whether the neurons in the brain work differently or are somehow 'crossed', but either way the result is a sort of mixing up of the senses, which is unique from person to person.

I hadn't realised that other people don't tend to see colours until a chance conversation with TractorGirl a few months ago, so I'm still getting used to trying to imagine what the world looks like without it. For me, sounds have colours and colours have sounds. Colours are also linked to numbers, emotions and strong physical sensations. What this means in practice is that I see a sort of flash of colour when I hear a particular note, or feel a particular emotion, and numbers have a colour even if I write them all in the same colour ink, so nine is green, for instance.

With music, the colour I feel depends on how the piece makes me feel. High notes tend to have brighter shades than lower notes, and loud sounds produce more colours. Green, blue and purple are good colours, red is usually either excitement, danger or a strong physical sensation, pink and orange happen sometimes but rarely, and yellow and brown are bad colours. People seem to think I'm mad if I describe my mood as a colour, but that's why. Yellow is sometimes accompanied by a horrible scrapping sound. Sometimes, all the colours, sounds and sensations get too much and I get sensory overload, but mostly synaesthesia is a good thing :)

In terms of numbers, they have their own colour and also their own place. I've made a picture to try to illustrate what I mean. I can see patterns in the numbers and sort of see if they look right, which helps with arithmetic and seeing patterns in sequences. People often have colours, and God is a particularly velvet turquiose.