Synesthesia

For my response paper, I decided to reflect on Synesthesia. Synesthesia is a nerve condition where a person experiences two senses at one time. This condition happens when one sense triggers another one. For example, if someone sees an image they will be able to hear what they see within the image. This phenomenon’s name derives from the Greek, meaning "to perceive together", comes in many varieties (Carpenter, 2001). Some synesthetes hear, smell, taste or feel pain in color. Others may taste…

found out I had synesthesia It was in 2013, a bright summer day. The day of my 10th birthday, in fact, when I noticed something strange. My friends and family were singing “Happy Birthday” to me and I started perceiving… blue? Turns out I had synesthesia, a condition when certain senses are stimulated you can “see” flavors and “smell” colors. I don’t actually see or taste anything, I just perceive it. Check out this link for more info. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia I have a type…

Synesthesia is a neurological ‘phenomenon’ (the opposite of anesthesia, which means ‘no sensation’) that causes people to experience sensations in one part of the body because of simulation in other organs of the body. Research has shown that this is not just a memory exercise, but a genuine phenomenon. This is because it happens without the person thinking about it and it is ‘experienced’ rather than ‘made up’. Once a particular sensation has been attached (during childhood) to an object, it…

smells like cornflakes. This is caused by the condition we are going to be focussing on in this essay. Synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon which combines the senses due to a cross-wiring in the brain (E.g. Colours linked with letters / Colour-Grapheme Synesthesia). It is a condition that could occur between pretty much any combinations of senses. People who experience Synesthesia (The Synesthetic) may taste words, see sounds or hear music when they smell certain scents. They…

Genuine Synesthesia: The thought behind genuine synesthesia is that this type of synesthesia is a condition in which a person is born with. One of the hallmarks of genuine synesthesia is consistency, which can be described by a high inter- and low intrapersonal variance between inducer-concurrent couplings. Consistency is usually observed in a “test-retest” experiment where results observed and recorded initially will be observed again after a certain period of time. In 1987, Cohen performed…

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. Difficulties have been recognized in adequately defining synesthesia: many different phenomena have been included in the term synesthesia, and in many cases the terminology seems to be inaccurate. A more accurate term may be ideasthesia. In one common…

merely give someone a pleasant fragrance or a horrid odor. In a synesthete’s world—that is, someone diagnosed with synesthesia—these interpretations tend to skew. The first notable case was published by Georg Sachs in 1812, based on the elucidation of himself (Jewanski, Jay, & Ward, 2009). SYMPTOMS As mentioned previously, Sachs was the first medically documented case of synesthesia. His situation noted the automatic assimilation of color and thought, in which things such as numbers, letters,…

Synesthesia is considered a neurological condition, but I see it as a gift. It is something that can have a myriad of definitions, but for me, it is the overlapping of my senses. This results in experiencing sensory overload, light headaches, and constantly…

In the scientific review, Synesthesia: Strong and Weak, scientists Gail Martino and Lawrence E. Marks distinguished the differences between strong and weak forms of synesthesia. Synesthesia means “to perceive together” (Martino and Marks). For example, some people who experience synesthesia, such as Carol in the article, can relate pain with color and sounds. Throughout the article, Martino and Marks discuss the differences between strong synesthesia and weak synesthesia. Instead of classifying…

In A Mango Shaped Space, the main protagonist is Mia Winchell, a 16 year old girl living with synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon in which your senses are jumbled together and words, numbers and sounds have different colors shapes and textures. This can sometimes cause OCD behaviors, for example in Mia's case she can’t write a word or number unless it’s in the color she associates with that symbol. This obviously causes problems for her not only in school, but with her friends and her…