SYNESTHESIA

Relating color and sound in our perceptual world

Synesthesia, at it simplest, is defined as the combining of one or more senses.  *An involuntary joining of senses *Perceived as real and vivid when in reality it is an internal perception *Hard to comprehend because we are taught to separate the function of the senses *Many artists and musicians claim to experience synesthesia *Primarily occurring in the frontal lobes of the brain *Predominately seems to occur more in females and left-handed people *Only about 1 in 25,000 are believed to experience involuntary synesthesia What is synesthesia, though?  Imagine sitting alone in the quiet, reading your favorite book and as you scan across the page instead of seeing black and white letters you see bursts of blue, yellow, green and orange. Your S’s are red, your E’s are purple – every page holds a rainbow for you. I can’t even imagine such an occurance. Is it a gift or a hinderance? One person who experiences synesthesia claimed that this occurance is “part of my love for speech and language….” Are you born with synesthesia?  Synesthesia can be a controversial term. Richard Cytowic believed that synesthesia was an involuntary experiences of “cross-modal” association. He claimed that the deliberate mixing of senses, as done by musicians and artists to increase learning and as a form of statement in their work was sensory fusion, not synesthesia. This idea, that by for example, combing color and sound you can increase one’s learning of music is not a completely new phenomenom. You’ve heard of the Mozart effect?