Spector, now an associate lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, presented her findings at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. She suggests that all our brains may be wired for sensory crosstalk. In most of us, those connections are inhibited. But in a few lucky individuals, the cross-wired brain regions are free to chatter away. “Connections that lie dormant in most of us are selectively active in synesthetes,” Spector theorizes.
Researchers also point out that those of us with “normal” perception comfortably commingle our senses in speech all the time. Orange is a warm color. Cheese tastes sharp. The winter air is bitter. Even beyond metaphor, Dixon says, the average person tends to make certain associations repeatedly. For example, most people automatically attribute low sounds to big objects and high sounds to small objects. “We have these implicit associations,” says Dixon. “That suggests the connections may be there.”
For most of us, those connections are present only in the subconscious. For synesthetes, they exist in living color. Steen is a successful artist, and she draws on her vivid sensory perceptions when creating new pieces. “If you have the ability to experience the world in mixed media, it’s very rich,” she says.
Synesthesia has been linked to other creative personalities as well, from the artist David Hockney to the writer Vladimir Nabokov (who described the letter “M” as a fold of pink flannel, and “L” as a pale, limp noodle.) Some studies suggest synesthesia benefits memory, too, Dixon says. “I think the cognitive advantages are slowly beginning to emerge.”
But synesthesia may offer even more than creative inspiration and memory aids. It may also be a window into the machinery of the mind. “We’re like researchers in a cognitive candy store when it comes to studying synesthetes,” says Dixon. “They show us the limits of what’s possible in terms of how the brain works.”
Some Forms Of Synesthesia
Grapheme (or Color) Synesthesia: Letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored.
Sound-Color Synesthesia: Voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds make the individual see flashes of color and simple shapes.
Spatial-Sequence (or Number-Form) Synesthesia: Numbers, months of the year and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space. (For example, October may be located to the far right, near the floor.)
Ordinal Linguistic Personification: Numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.
Sound Synesthesia: People hear sounds in response to visual motion and flicker.
Gustatory Synesthesia: Individual words evoke taste sensations.
This article was first published in Brain World Magazine’s Fall 2010 issue.
