Have you ever associated numbers and letters with different colors? Does a sound or smell ever just seem so “red”? If so, you may have synesthesia, or the simultaneous stimulation of two cognitive pathways that causes the experience of a sense to trigger another.

More specifically, the form of synesthesia that only involves feelings of association between a stimulus and whatever color, shape, gender, emotion, etc., is known as associated synesthesia. The other form is called projected synesthesia, where the synesthete can actually see projected images of colors, shapes, and other forms in response to a stimulus. While an associative synesthete may hear a sound and feel that it sounds blue, a projective synesthete could hear the same sound and see a blue line midair. Synesthesia could link any two of the existing five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch together. In fact, the number of involved senses need not be limited to just two. Solomon Shereshevsky, a Russian journalist of the early twentieth century, famously experienced synesthesia that involved all five senses. Shereshevsky, because of his unusual imagination, photographic memory, and rarer form of synesthesia, was often a participant in neuropsychologist Alexander Luria’s behavioral studies. He is said to have suffered from unnecessary thoughts and emotions triggered by stimuli even while undertaking basic tasks such as reading or writing. His excellent memory drove him to become confused and anxious. His stressful lifestyle may lead some to view synesthesia as more of a curse than a blessing. However, barring one has an extreme form of the condition, synesthesia can be quite useful for aspiring musicians, artists, and even mathematicians. In her interview with VICE, Melissa McCracken, a 26 year old artist from Missouri, explained the influence synesthesia had on her paintings. She spoke,

“People seemed interested in my synesthesia so it became my core subject...Expressive music such as funk is a lot more colorful, with all the different instruments, melodies, and rhythms creating a highly saturated effect. Guitars are generally golden and angled, and piano is more marbled and jerky because of the chords. I rarely paint acoustic music because it‘s often just one person playing guitar and singing, and I never paint country songs because they’re boring muted browns. The key and tone also has an impact, so I try and paint the overall feeling of the song.”

Other notable individuals with synesthesia include Marilyn Monroe, Vladimir Nabokov, Stevie Wonder, Vincent Van Gogh, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, and Franz Liszt. Franz Liszt is known to have often requested his orchestra to play “a little bluer” or “not so rose” while conducting.

Because synesthesia involves all five senses, over 80 different types of the condition exist. Just a few of those different forms include grapheme-color synesthesia, chromesthesia, spatial sequence synesthesia, auditory-tactile synesthesia, ordinal linguistic personification, and mirror-touch synesthesia. Both Melissa McCracken and Franz Liszt experienced chromesthesia, or a form of synesthesia in which a person feels a strong association between certain sounds and colors. Solomon Shereshevsky had ordinal linguistic personification, or a form of synesthesia where ordered sequences (letters, numbers, etc.) are personified and given genders and personalities.

Despite continued research on the topic, scientists have not yet been able to pinpoint the exact cause of synesthesia. There is speculation, though, that synesthesia could be a result of overwork of the brain’s visual cortex. Further research will have to be conducted for us to discover the mechanics behind this phenomenon.

<Dayeon Hwang/ North Hollywood HGM/ 12th grade>