Applied Cognitive Psychology of Synesthesia

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     It all comes down to Nature vs. Nurture. What makes us who we are? Though I have always been one to put more weight into nurture and the power of the mind, I do see the role that genetics, and biology play in making us who we are.

     Some of you who know me know that I'm a synesthete. However not many of you really know exactly how it affects my life and what it contributes to making me who I am. I thought I'd take a second to explain it a little more in depth.

Intro

     What exactly is synesethesia (also spelled synaesethesia)? It is a condition where a one stimulus can stimulate multiple areas of the brain. The most common are color and taste relations. For example when some people hear certain words they taste different things in their mouth. While they are aware there is nothing in their mouth, they can still taste it. Others read and associate color to words. Others, like myself associate colors to sounds.

     For me, when I hear noises, I hear colors with them. It's an odd thing to describe as I don't see the colors, but I feel their presence. It exists two ways. One is that I feel as if the sound it self wraps around me in diaphanous ribbons and I'm able to push on it. Second I feel the sound as a mixture of stained glass window. The colors are tone specific, but since sound is a mix of tones from everywhere the colors mix. Different qualities to sound create more prominent colors in the overall picture. For example, a higher noise is a red triangle shape. A low bass sound is a blue rumble. When combined they create beautiful tapestries. For me ska music is green and orange flows with brown clicks. Industrial music is an indigo purple of spikes in a black haze with some reds and whites.

      So different music styles paint different mental pictures. Because of this, I have a literal music addiction. I crave new sounds that I'm not familiar with to give me new aural sensations. This is why my music tastes are so eclectic and why certain music appeals to me. Like a drug, there are sounds that give me euphoric feelings. Certain songs create such beautiful patterns that it is like being high. Like any other drug though, the more I hear this song, the less powerful it becomes and I need to find that feeling again. There is even a blue rumble that leaves me breathless and orgasmic. I've only encountered it twice.

      The question is how is this possible, what makes this happen? It all has to deal with the compartmentalization of the brain. The brain has specific centers that are sectioned off to deal with specific stimuli. The reason the brain works the way it does is because of inter-neural connections. Synesthete brains have more interconnections than the normal brains. Its as if the brain itself is hyper-wired. For me, it's easy to memorize songs or pitch related things because I'm storing that information in terms of what I hear and color. However, synesthesia isn't an all or none process. Take this for example.



      If you had to guess, which of these shapes would be a booba and which would be a kiki? 98% people asked agree that the purple one is the booba. This is synesthesia on two fronts. Kiki looks more similar to the orange one because of the shape of the K. The K noise is also short and quick in the auditory center of the mind, which the mind relates to the shape. The booba seems round a flowy like the shape of the purple. Yet beyond this the orange seems like a more sharp color than the soft purple. This is a low-level synesthesia test.

Statistics

      The majority of people are aware of that simple connection, but that is as far as their senses go. It's like an exponential spectrum where the majority of people have little or no synesthesia and few could have total, but with different people spread at different points in between. 1 in 25,000 or 3% the total population reaches a point of noticeable twin sensory. Each connection is another 3% of them. So for me to hear sound and feel sensation and see color I am .09% the population. Interestingly enough they've found that it occurs in females more predominately in a 3:1 ratio. A simple ratio like that strongly indicates sex linked genes, which makes me even more rare as a male.

      Yet this is only for a one-way sensation. When I hear something, it causes color and sometimes sensation. When I see color, I don't hear sound. These pathways in the brain are usually one way. The odds of someone having a two-way connection are even more rare. Consider that for someone to have a five-way sensation. (Sound causes, color, sensation, taste, smell (and the regular sound, being the fifth)), statistically out of the 6.4 billion people on the earth only about 150 have the same odds, but they are likely to have mixed smell causes sensation, taste causes color, sound causes taste, ect...

Application

      Think about this scenario though. If every time you heard something you had a physical sensation, tasted something, smelled something, and associated colors, life would be overwhelmingly confusing. Seeing someone like this they would automatically be considered different because of how they reacted to life. If there were able to get a handle and effectively function in society, they would have to learn to repress and ignore all these distracting senses.

      For more common synesthetes, we still have do repress some of that. I remember being a child and trying to explain these sensations to my parents. At first I was a cute child with a strong imagination. As I got older I became a boy with an overactive imagination. Since neither my parents, nor myself knew what a synesthete was, and that I was one, I taught myself to repress and ignore those sensations to a degree. I was still aware of them, but had learned to not mention them so to better function in society. However, I couldn't seem to understand society. I couldn't understand why people weren't so passionate about sounds and music. Understandably, my attempting to be like everyone else, when I was obviously not made me come off as quirky.

      It wasn't until I learned about them that I realized how I fit into everything and why life seemed different for me than most people. While this couldn't shape my beliefs, morals, or how I believed, it shaped how I did things.

Shaped Lifestyle

      As I said, I tend to be different from most people in a day-to-day context. When I knew that I was one, I was able to research it and find answers to the quirks in my day-to-day life. There are lots of good resources out there, but the most informative I found is here. While I have no idea what its like to be a color taste type, there are things that most synesthetes have in common. This has to deal with other areas of brain connection. Think of it as hyper-wiring where everything is a little more connected than it needs to be.

      I've always felt that I had a better memory than most. This is related to the fact that I store information two different was instead of one. For me to remember it, I have two paths to take. They've found that we have increased special memory that leads to OCD type tendencies. The spatial location of objects is also strikingly remembered, such as the precise location of kitchen utensils, furniture arrangements and floor plans, books on shelves, or text blocks in a specific book. Perhaps related to this observation is a tendency to prefer order, neatness, symmetry, and balance. Work cannot commence until the desk is arranged just so, or everything in the kitchen is put away in its proper place. Synesthetes perform in the superior range of the Wechsler Memory Scale. Anyone who knows me knows that I can't study until my room is perfectly clean. Asymmetry bothers me terribly. I'm uneasy around geometric disorder.

      My mother was dyslexic and my father exhibits lower level synesthesia as well (after talking with him and teaching him what it was). With two parents with mixed brain connections, it makes more sense that I would be the rare male. A first-degree family history of dyslexia, autism, and attention deficit is present in about 15%. Very rarely, the sensual experience is so intense as to interfere with rational thinking. This is an explanation of the orgasmic, euphoric sensation I feel with the deep blue sound. Even normal life for me is like having a TV full of entertainment on at all times. To function I have to ignore it, but it gets your attention every once and a while.

      Out of everything I came to learn about myself, there was one thing that took my breath away and finally gave me an answer to why I am how I am. It's no secret that I'm lucky. It's not that I'm just lucky here or there, but constantly lucky, absurdly so. Along with that, I sometimes get senses that something is going to happen. As a group, synesthetes seem more prone to "unusual experiences" than one might expect. Deja vu, clairvoyance, precognitive dreams, a sense of portentousness, and the feeling of a presence are encountered often enough. No I don't claim to be psychic, but there is a reason that we seem to be a little more perceptive.

      Think of a world as a bundle of stimulus. The average mind can only take in and process so much. Think of how you can smell rain coming. This isn't something you are consciously smelling for. Your brain is always subconsciously receiving and sorting info. When it picks up a pattern (i.e. Every time the outside smells like this it rains), it transfers that message to the conscious mind so that it can react (i.e. Take cover). However, there are limits to what a brain can process and absorb subconsciously. Since the synesthetic brain is hyper-wired, it is looking for patterns not only in the original context of stimulus, but also in the translated synesthetic stimulus. It is as if there are trends and patterns that are too subtle to be seen regularly that only a hyper-wired brain can pick them up.

      I've been at two parties in the past couple years. At one I told everyone I needed to go home because something bad was going to happen. Later a buddy of mine got his head split open and had to go to the hospital. More recently I told everyone the same thing, this time a buddy went on a bit of a rampage and punched a whole through a car window of another friend. In both instances, there was nothing outwardly that could have suggested something bad would happen. Everyone was having a good time, everyone got along. Yet somehow subconsciously I was able to maybe sort information that no one else could see and relate it to a trend of the past where something bad happened. When I get the feeling, I can't explain why I feel it or what will happen exactly, but I have the urge to act.

      This also relates to my luck. Sometimes I get the feeling that I need to do something without reason. I do lots of random obscure things without reason and something good will happen. My life seems to be a life of lucky breaks, but before each of those breaks, I have the compulsion to do something out of the ordinary. A couple instances of this are being able to win first prizes on prize wheels and telling people before hand which prize I will win. It's only luck with things that I can react to. My favorite team won't win the Super Bowl, but I can feel compelled to stand somewhere and seconds later sprinklers will come on and soak everyone but me. I think the difference is that it's simply chalked up to luck, psychic powers, etc to those without a solid scientific background.

Cons

      While the synesthesia is certainly a gift in most aspects, it does have its downsides. As I said, for me to function normally in society, I have to tone down what I feel. I would comparing it to being a Japanese man who lives in American, and is expected to act like an American without understanding the culture. I have to find a way to translate the way I see things into the way most people do. At times the stimuli do become overpowering and too much which just results in a slight anxiety or confusion.

      I'm extremely attracted to colors. The more color a women wears the more beautiful I find her. But my affinity for color is so strong that it detracts from my ability to create music or paint. I love to write music, but have trouble matching the sounds with the colors I would like to feel and usually wind up ultimately frustrated. Similarly with colors, I can paint well by normal person standards, but I can't match the vibrancy of colors that I enjoy. It's easier for me to appreciate than create. Thus the mode of my art is in writing and performance, someplace devoid of color, but where I can be happy with my finished product.

      Another common side effect of the synesthesia is a lack of direction. I'm not exactly sure why that is, since he never explains why in his studies, but its certainly true. Anyone knows that I get lost extremely easy. I've lost my car for days; I can go one road too far and not know where I am. Because of this I had to turn into a male even more rare than a synesthete, the male who asks directions. My guess would be as we are compelled by spatial memory, we tend to have trouble navigating roads that curve or turn. This makes it easy for us to get lost. In our mind we form mental maps similar to average special maps where we want this road to go North South, this one East West.

Closing

      So basically that is why I am how I am in a nutshell. It explains my intensity and why I do some things. Yet in spite of all of that it simply defines how am I, while I believe the "who I am" is defined by my philosophies, and morals to life. To me that is what is more important. I think that no matter how we are or how we prefer to do things, we have that option and ability to choose how we will live and what we will live for. That's why I give more weight to nurture than nature. Sometimes nature just makes it more interesting.