Synesthesia, the ability to see sounds and taste colors

It is quite evident that, for most people, receiving light on the retina involves having a visual sensation, as does the fact making something come into contact with our skin generates a tactile sensation or receiving sound waves on our ears makes us hear something. However, this pattern of events is not always so simple.

There are some people who experience a phenomenon called synesthesia, consisting of perceive sensations originating from various sensory channels.

Wherever synesthesia occurs, one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another. Thus, some synaesthetic people can see sounds, while others can savor tactile sensations, etc. For example, one of the best known cases is that of the physical Richard Feynman, what said to see equations in colors, but the range of combinations of sensations that can occur as a form of synesthesia is really very wide: sounds that generate flavors, numbers and letters that are perceived as colors, etc.

Why does synesthesia occur?

Much of the community of 

neuroscientists Those in charge of studying synesthesia believe that it is produced by a kind of "crossing of cables." Thus, they propose the explanation that at the moment in which this phenomenon occurs, vseveral neuron channels associated with different senses interfere with each other, so that the information from the surrounding environment that arrives through a sensory organ reaches the brain and it transforms into another type of sensation.

Hence, people who experience this see their senses mix involuntarily and without being able to consciously regulate this transfer of information. from one sensory type to the other, and hence there may also be cases in which blind synaesthetic people can continue to experience colors when touching, hearing, etc.

Synaesthetic people may have somewhat unique brains

In short, the brains of people who experience synesthesia seems to have a somewhat different architecture from the rest of the populationAlthough that does not mean that his nervous system is damaged or that they are less capable of living a normal life and autonomously. In fact, because of the automatic and partially unconscious nature of synesthesia, it is not uncommon for a person to have been all his life mixing sensations and has not realized the peculiarity of what happens to him, or believes that it happens to everyone world.

How widespread is synesthesia?

Synesthesia, in its different forms and types, is not something that rarely occurs in those who experience it, and that is why It is possible that it is well assimilated and considered the normal way of perceiving reality, since it is part of the day-to-day life of many people.

The fact that many people are synaesthetic without being aware of it makes it difficult to calculate the percentage of the population that is synaesthetic, but recently there have been indications that synesthesia is surprisingly widespread. It could be part of the daily life of 4 or 5 out of every 100 people, much more than was believed at the end of the 20th century, the most frequent type being the one consisting of associate days with colors. Also, curiously, it is more generalized in people with autism, which in the future may provide clues to understand the origin and causes of this type of disorders.

Are we all synesthetes?

Something to keep in mind is that there are phenomena very similar to synesthesia that are very generalized, which may mean that almost all of us are synesthetes to a lesser or greater extent.

For example, it is very normal that we associate sharp and angular shapes with sounds like the letter "k", while Rounded outlines are easier to relate to the sound of the "b", although this does not respond to any kind of reasoning logical. This type of thinking has also been referred to by psychologists as cognitive biases. You can learn more about this by reading this article:

• "Cognitive biases: discovering an interesting psychological effect"

The same happens with many other elements of our day to day: we talk about acid humor, sharp tongues, etc. In case the hypothesis that these phenomena are mild cases of synesthesia, our way of understanding the normal functioning of the sensory pathways would be revealed as something more complex than we thought.

Bibliographic references:

• Baron-Cohen, S., Johnson, D., Asher, J., Wheelwright, S., Fisher, S. E., Gregersen, P. K., Allison, C. (2013). Is synaesthesia more common in autism? Molecular Autism, 4 (1), p. 40.
• Simner, J., Mulvenna, C., Sagiv, N., Tsakanikos, E., Witherby, S. A., Fraser, C. Scott, K. Ward, J. (2006). Synaesthesia: The prevalence of atypical cross-modal experiences. Perception, 35 (8), pp. 1024 - 1033.
• Steven, M. S. and Blakemore, C. (2004). Visual synaesthesia in the blind. Perception, 33 (7), pp. 855 - 868.