Today's Fredlines: February 15, 2009 Archive

Seeing music -- synesthesia

Posted at 5:53 PM on February 15, 2009 by Fred Child (11 Comments)

For some synesthetes, months have color. For others, numbers have shapes. Others taste words.

So...what is synesthesia?

Here's what Richard Cytowic says:

"Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. In addition to being involuntary, this additional perception is regarded by the synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye."

(R. Cytowic, "Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses.")

On Monday's show, we're devoting a full hour to synesthesia...in particular, to people who see colors when they hear music.

Curiously, the experience is different for every synesthete. This diagram shows the connections that Russian composer Alexander Scriabin had between musical keys and colors. (Click on the diagram to see a bigger version.) For him, D Major was yellow.

But that was only Scriabin's experience. American composer Michael Torke told me about his experience: D Major is blue, G Major is yellow. (To hear my entire conversation with Torke, check out the PT synesthesia page. This page also has my entire conversation with Dr. Oliver Sacks, and links to much more info about synesthesia.)

Think you might have synesthesia? Test yourself here.

If letters, numbers, or words trigger colors for you, these Canadian researchers would like to hear from you.

A researcher at Cal Tech stumbled across this...apparently about 3% of people hear sounds when watching these moving dots.

If you hear things when watching that video, these folks at Cal Tech might like to hear from you.

Here's an entertaining video from the Discovery Channel. Sean Day likes to eat chicken with ice cream and orange sauce -- not for the flavor, but for the floating blue cloud he sees.

If you'd like to spend the rest of your day on synesthesia, check out the links here.

I'm afraid my senses are discreet...I don't have this experience at all. If you do, leave a comment, I'm *SO* curious about this. After reading up on it in preparation for Monday's show, and after talking to a couple of people who have it, I feel inferior. Or at least...deprived.

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