Thursday, May 05, 2005

Synesthesia

I have just discovered the coolest thing. There is a term for something I have - synesthesia. It is a different way of perceiving things, due to crossed wires in the brain. It's two different senses working at the same time.


Some synesthetes hear, smell, taste or feel pain in color. Others taste shapes, and still others perceive written digits, letters and words in color. Some, who possess what researchers call "conceptual synesthesia," see abstract concepts, such as units of time or mathematical operations, as shapes projected either internally or in the space around them. And many synesthetes experience more than one form of the condition.

Synesthesia is the general name for two related sets of cognitive
states. In the first set, "synesthesia proper", stimuli to one
sense, such as smell, are involuntarily simultaneously perceived as if by one or more other, additional senses, such as sight and/or hearing. The sounds of musical instruments will make some people see certain colors, each color specific and consistent with the particular instrument playing. Some people have colored taste sensations; for example, the taste of espresso coffee can make them see a pool of dark green oily fluid about four feet away from me.

With the second form of synesthesia, "cognitive" or "category
synesthesia", certain sets of things which our individual cultures teach us to put together and categorize in some specific way – like letters, numbers, or people's names – also get some kind of sensory addition, such as a smell, color or flavor. The most common forms of cognitive synesthesia involve such things as colored written letter characters (graphemes), numbers, time units, and musical notes or keys. For example, the synesthete might see, about a foot or two before her (the majority of synesthetes are female), different colors for different spoken vowel and consonant sounds, or perceive numbers and letters, whether conceptualized or before her in print, as colored.



In my mind's eye, I see colors and a timeline whenever I see or think about the months, days, years, numbers, time, alphabet. Monday is an unidentifiable color, Tuesday is orange, Wednesday is blue and white, Thursday is brown, Friday is a deep olive green, and Saturday and Sunday are a bright, like sunshine color. Odd numbers are bad, even numbers are good. Certain letters are good, certain letters are bad - there is a positive/negative feeling related to them.

Most synesthetes are female, bad at math, left-handed, and have an excellent memory. All those fit me except I'm right handed.

this is a very fascinating type of perception. If you do a search for it, there are tons of articles and info about it.

Monday, May 02, 2005

blogger art challenge

Finally, to get back to a semi-scrapbooking post LOL. Here's my first blog challenge from twopeasinabucket.com

a meme is an idea that is shared and passed from blog to blog, like a question posted in one blog and answered in many other blogs. I thought it would be fun to post a challenge, photo assignment or question that we would all answer in our blogs at the same time that week. Then we could post here when we posted so that we could all share together with each other.

http://artpad.art.com/gallery/?ifv6gaurn8c

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