Color Sound Synesthesia Explained

Synesthesia (sin-ess-THEE-zhuh) is a neurological condition that impacts an individual’s senses. Synesthesia is a phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers, such as tasting colors or feeling sounds. When one sense activates, a second sense activates at the same time. Some people describe it as having “wires crossed” in their brain because it activates two or more senses when there’s only a reason for one sense to activate.

For some, certain sounds may cause the person to see a certain color. For others, some words may bring up a specific taste. Synesthesia, which means “to perceive together,” is not an illness. It is simply a different way of experiencing the world because of how the brain automatically works. You can’t control it.

Synesthesia isn’t a disease or a medical condition, but it can be a symptom of certain brain-related conditions.

How Does Synesthesia Work?

To understand synesthesia (pronounced “sin-ess-THEE-zh-uh”), it helps to understand how your senses work. Your brain relies on your five main senses - sight, sound, smell, taste or touch - to know what’s happening around you.

That involves the following steps:

1. Detection: Your senses pick up something happening around you. An example would be using your eyes to look at your surroundings or using your ears to listen for certain sounds.
2. Signaling: Your senses send a signal to your brain describing what they’re experiencing. For example, your eyes would describe the colors and shapes of the things you can see nearby, or your ears would send signals that describe how loud a sound is, if it’s high- or low-pitched, etc.
3. Processing: Your brain receives those signals and routes them to a certain area for processing. The area that does the processing connects to areas that help you understand what you’re seeing. Examples of this are recognizing a stop sign by its shape and/or color or recognizing that a sound is a piece of music or someone’s voice.

In short, your senses describe to your brain what they pick up, and your brain creates its own understanding of the world around you from those descriptions. But people with synesthesia experience the processing step differently. Their brains process the same information through two or more brain areas at once. That causes a primary and at least one secondary effect:

• Primary effect: The primary effect is what you experience because of sensory input. An example of this would be hearing sounds and recognizing them as music.
• Secondary effect: People with synesthesia experience a secondary effect (or more than one) that seems like it’s one of their senses working, but there’s no input from that sense that should be causing it. An example of this would be seeing colors because you hear music.

Visual synesthesia can also happen in different ways. Some people experience visual synesthesia like a “projection,” meaning their brain directly combines the secondary effect into their sense of sight. That causes them to experience it as if they actually see it. Other people have an “internal screen” effect. They can automatically picture it in their head but don’t experience it as if they were seeing it directly.

Importantly, the synesthete sees the original color along with their perceived color. This is what distinguishes synesthesia from something like hallucinations or illusions.

Understanding Synesthesia: How Our Senses Mix

What Causes Synesthesia?

There are three steps the brain takes when using any of the five senses:

• Detection - A sensory event (like a sound) causes the body to respond (the ears perk up to listen).
• Signaling - Sensory data (the sound waves) travels to the brain for processing.
• Processing - The brain interprets the information into what we recognize as a sound.

These steps produce what is called a primary effect - the interpretation of one sense at a time. In this case, the brain recognizes a sound as someone talking.

In individuals with synesthesia (known as “synesthetes”), a secondary effect also takes place at the same time. While the only sensory input is the sound, the brain sees a color along with hearing the voice. This happens even though there has been no sensory input for the color.

These secondary effects can happen with any of the five senses.

Little is known about what causes synesthesia. However, there are three theories that have been established about its origins.

Developmental Synesthesia

Those with developmental synesthesia grew up with the condition. Their brains formed differently from “typical” brains. Because of this difference, developmental synesthetes are categorized as neurodivergent.

There are a few theories about how this type of synesthesia occurs. Genetics may cause the brain to develop more connections between different areas. This increases the likelihood that multiple parts will activate at the same time.

There is evidence that it runs in families. However, each member of the family may experience different kinds of synesthesia.

Its root in brain development may explain the link between synesthesia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The rates of synesthesia are three times higher in those with ASD than those without.

Acquired Synesthesia

Brain damage in some individuals may cause the development of synesthesia. This is known as acquired synesthesia. The physical trauma of a brain injury can reorganize neural connections in the brain.

In very rare occurrences, this may cause senses to link together.

Acquired synesthesia is distinct from developmental synesthesia in a few ways. For one, it may not be as consistent and may even go away over time. Synesthetic episodes are also shorter than they are for those with developmental synesthesia.

Drug-Induced Synesthesia

Some individuals have experienced synesthesia after taking certain drugs designated as hallucinogens. These include drugs such as:

• Dimethyltryptamine
• LSD
• Peyote
• Psilocybin (mushrooms)

Drug-induced synesthesia only occurs with high doses of these drugs. It is not an automatic or controllable outcome.

What are the Types of Synesthesia?

While you have five main senses, there are many different things you can identify with each sense. These are perception abilities. Some examples include:

• Sight: Colors, patterns, textures, shapes.
• Hearing: Volume, pitch, frequency.
• Touch: Temperatures, pressure, textures, vibrations, pain.

Some perception abilities involve more than one sense, like balance. Your perception abilities can also involve concepts you understand using your senses, such as time, numbers and language.

Because there are so many possible combinations between your senses and perception abilities, researchers can identify at least 60 different forms of synesthesia. Some experts estimate there are more than 150 different forms. This is also why many people with synesthesia have it but don’t know what it is or that it’s unusual.

Based on the variety of sensory input, it is difficult to know how many versions of synesthesia exist. Researchers have posited that there may be up to 73 distinct types. It is also possible for one individual to experience multiple types of synesthesia. However, some are more common than others.

Some forms of synesthesia are better known or are more common. This is one of the more common forms of synesthesia.

Auditory-Tactile Synesthesia

Auditory-tactile synesthesia is a link between the senses of hearing and touch. Certain sounds will elicit a physical feeling, like pain, temperature changes or pressure.

Day-Color Synesthesia

Day-color synesthesia pairs a specific color with each day of the week. For example, the individual may recognize Tuesday as blue and Friday as green.

Grapheme-Color Synesthesia

“Grapheme” is the word for the smallest part of a written language, like a letter, number or symbol. Some people see different graphemes with specific colors. People who experience visual synesthesia’s projection effect often see graphemes as different colors.

Grapheme-color synesthetes also experience an automatic link between words and colors. However, the colors are linked to the graphemes, or characters, that make up the words. In these cases, the letter “S” might be blue and “T” may be red.

Grapheme-color synesthesia is one of the more common forms. Some with this form of synesthesia report seeing words as a rainbow of different colors. Others report that a word appears as the color of its starting letter.

Chromesthesia

Chromesthesia is an inherent link between color and sound. Chromestetes may also experience a shape or motion coinciding with the color. Those who have this form of synesthesia often find music more enriching.

Several famous composers have been chromesthetes. These include Franz Liszt, Leonard Bernstein and Tori Amos.

Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia

Lexical-gustatory synesthesia forms a link between taste and words. The taste will occur whether the person is reading, hearing, speaking or thinking the word. The flavor associations are consistent over time.

Mirror-Touch Synesthesia

Mirror-touch synesthesia (MTS) involves physical sensations. Individuals with MTS feel sensations that mimic what another person is feeling. MTS is rare, impacting around two of every 100 people.

Those with MTS may find that they feel pain when watching someone get hurt. They may even feel pain from listening to someone describe an injury. These sensations can also occur in more benign situations. They may feel the warmth of someone else's handshake or the weight of an item another person is carrying. Often those with this form of synesthesia also have high levels of emotional empathy.

Number-Space Synesthesia

Number-space synesthetes see numbers in a particular spatial layout. Some see the numbers lined up horizontally or vertically. Others see them arranged in more complicated patterns.

Ordinal-Linguistic Personification

Individuals with ordinal-linguistic personification associate letters and numbers with distinct personalities and genders.

Hearing-Motion Synesthesia

Some people experience sounds related to seeing things moving. An example of this would be a person hearing a “whoosh” sound when watching something go past them.

Time-Space Synesthesia

This is a form of synesthesia where you visualize things in a very specific way. People who have this form of synesthesia often “see” sequences with specific patterns or forms. An example of this is visualizing a calendar or a string of numbers in a certain way. Some people can mentally “map” these out in vivid or detailed ways.

Does Synesthesia Affect Vision?

Visual forms of synesthesia involve colors, patterns, shapes and other sight-specific cues. This does not mean that visual synesthetes have poor vision. However, it does mean they may see certain things that are not physically there.

For some, the sight is interpreted by the brain as something real they are looking at, like a projection. These synesthetes may read words written in black but see them in different colors. For others, the sight may be an internal perception. They see the letters on the page are black but picture them as different colors inside their minds.

Have you ever associated a piece of music with a specific memory? Most of you have, but now imagine replacing a memory with an actual physical manifestation. Something you can see with your own eyes. Anything from people talking, to the sound of fireworks can trigger chromesthesia, although it is the connection with music that brings the most out of this particular ability.

This phenomenon is often described as the experience of two or more senses acting simultaneously, though this terminology has at times been branded inaccurate. Sure, most of us can attribute different noises with shades of colour - loud noises alluding to reds, and the sound of ocean waves making us think of blues and greens for instance, however, we do this by choice. For synesthetes this skill is inherent and occurs involuntarily.

Lorde has gone on further to explain how chromesthesia affects the way she operates in the studio saying she “…Can see the finished song, even if it’s far off and foggy,” alluding to the act of colour-coding her songs and connecting certain themes in her music with different hues. It’s no surprise that a high percentage of people who regularly experience chromesthesia work in a creative medium, whether it’s as a musician or an artist.

For instance, Billy Joel has said he connects different colours with lyrics. Strong vowel endings such as -a, -e or -i evoke images of blues and greens, whereas hard sounding consonants like -t or -p are associated with vivid shades of red or gold.

This particular phenomenon is called grapheme-colour synesthesia and basically describes the experience of seeing letters and numbers in shades of colour. Stump stated that most letters and numbers feel like a colour, and that it wasn’t until he opened up about his experiences in 2011 that he learned it was a more common phenomenon among other musicians than he first thought.

While synesthesia has sometimes been described as a disorder or medical condition, Pharrell Williams argues otherwise. He has often referred to it as an asset and a gift to make writing music easier.

Synesthesia has even been documented as far back as the 19th century, with Hungarian composer Franz Liszt reportedly using terminology like “a little bluer” and “not so rose” when speaking to his orchestra. Another 19th composer, Amy Beach had extremely specific associations of colour due to her chromesthesia.

In Beach’s case, her chromesthesia and inherent ability of having a perfect pitch went hand in hand and it’s mind-blowing to imagine just how well she could command and control music exactly the way she wanted to.

Over the years, synesthetes have been known to excel in their chosen profession, whether it’s due to having an improved memory, seeing music as colour, or possessing more in tune cognitive skills. It’s easy to see how anyone in a creative capacity can benefit from this ability.

Life with Synesthesia

Synesthesia can occur in a wide range of types and intensities. Some may have multiple forms that appear in passing. Others may experience episodes that are so intense they become disruptive. Luckily, this level of intensity is rare.

Most forms of synesthesia do not require any treatment. However, those experiencing drug-induced synesthesia might need medical attention. Synesthetic responses only occur at very high doses, so it is important to seek help in case of an overdose.

It is estimated that 2% to 4% of the worldwide population are synesthetes. The real number is potentially higher. This is because many are so used to how they experience the world that they don’t know there’s something else going on. Others may feel embarrassed by their experiences, leading them to hide their synesthesia.

Synesthesia has many perks. There is evidence that synesthetes have stronger memory capabilities. Intelligence tests often show higher scores for synesthetes.