Autism and synesthesia?

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Oh I forgot to mention...

...I have something else that I'd always assumed was synaesthesia. Except that in synaesthesia, other people don't tend to agree 100% with your colors/etc. And in this case, the only other people I have to compare with, do agree with mine, if not 100% then close.

This is sort of... colors, shapes, tactile sensations, etc. that come in response to different situations, people, emotions, etc. And the level of accuracy between each other becomes ridiculous. I'm not sure if it's the same thing as personality-color synesthesia or anything like that, because usually with that, different people have different colors, and that's not how it seems to be with this (nor does it seem to be.... there's just too many differences in general, but they're hard to describe).

That's an interesting angle.
Although I don't get colours directly, anbuend's black/white for 0/1 feels exactly right all the same: 0=black, 1=white (although with me that's a fixed association), 2=yellow doesn't feel right, and green feels 'more likely' - but 3=red and 4=blue does feel right.
Interesting stuff.

I have a synesthesia question.

For a while now, I've wondered if I have a mild form of synesthesisa, as I strongly associate days of the week by color and I have visual-spatial timelines for days of the week, months of the year, and years in a century.

My question is this: Is the "feeling right" association thing always synesthesia? Because I have always had a knack for saying that a color "feels" right for something or (when memorizing trivia) that a number "feels right" for a particular fact. For example, my strongest special interest is I Love Lucy, and in memorizing the episode numbers, not only do I have a specific timeline of episodes/numbers, but the reason I'm so good at memorizing them is that they "feel right." Like, I'll never forget that episode #174 is "Lucy's Night in Town," because the number "feels right" for the episode. It's almost painful to imagine the episode with a different number.

Do any other synesthetes experience this? Or is this just my own quirk? Very interested to know.

I have had the "it just doesn't feel right" reaction to certain things in the past but I can't say if it's related to my synaesthesia. As for visualizing time, yes, that is synaesthesia. I described mine back on page 2 I believe if you want to check it out.

I am not sure if this would count as Synestesia, but for me, I kind of associate Numbers, Letters, Time, and Dates; with being light or dark. It kind of works like a spectrum for me, for example "1" is dark and the numbers get lighter until "13" then darker until "30", etc. With the alphabet, from "A" to "N" is light, then it gets darker each letter from "O" to "Z". Then January to July is dark (but different levels with each month), and from August until like the 20th of December is lighter. Idk, I am weird.

BTW, I do have Aspergers.

^I'd say that's why. That sounds AWESOME.

You don't actually have to physically experience the responses for it to be real synesthesia - that's called projected synesthesia. If you only experience it in your "mind's eye" it's called associative synesthesia.
Basically, the general rule of "real" synesthesia is that the responses must be consistent (5 can't be red one day and blue the next, for example) and involuntary (it's not syn if you just suddenly decide that the sound of a guitar is purple just because you want it to be).
Also, I wouldn't say it's syn if the association response is obviously related - thinking of the sound of an engine or the smell of car exhaust when you hear the word "vehicle" isn't syn.
As for the more random, unrelated "remembered" associations (someone mentioned that the colors they think of for numbers might just be from reading a book with the numbers in those colors as a kid or something), if you don't remember the specific book (or perhaps recall an actual picture you've seen of appropriately colored numbers) and yet those specific responses are completely natural to you... some would say that's not syn because it was influenced by a source outside the brain, but I'd argue that, in some cases, it could be.

Sorry for rambling.. I'm VERY fascinated by synesthesia. I could blab about it all day.

I tried the test, and it said I didn't have absolute pitch (I scored only 4.5 for pure tones and 7 for piano tones). My piano teacher also once tested me for perfect pitch and said that I didn't have perfect pitch but that I did have good absolute pitch - I would be inaccurate until she played certain notes after which I had apparently found my place in the scale and would get everything right after that until she ran her hand along the keys to 'reset'. (I hope that explanation makes sense.)

There are several things that complicate my pitch identification and mean that the test doesn't accurately show my pitch identification abilities. One of these is that the 'names' I have for pitches in my mind are not traditional note names like A B C or 'do, re, mi', but rather the number of fingers I would put down to play that note on the violin. I 'hear' these numbers in my head, but to convert that to a note identification in a conventional system takes some time - I have to figure out which string of the violin that fingering is played on, and then identify the conventional note name for it. This means that I am likely to be inaccurate by a 5th, since violin strings are a 5th apart.

Also, I am (or at least used to be) good at identifying pitches on stringed instruments (especially violin and viola) and piano, but am more or less hopeless with wind instruments and voice - I still hear numbers, but they're not accurate, and not necessarily even consistent with each other and the intervals between notes.

Is it a real synesthesic trait that when I go out in the harsh sunlight or take off sunglasses I immediately start sneezing? Without being sick at all.

An associative Synesthesia might be when I compare the way high-end (or hi-fi, or actually everything that reproduces sound) audio equipments sound to colors or shades. For example, tube amplifiers tend to sound light brown or reddish, with yellowish or chrome treble. Solid-state amps tend to sound gray, bluish-gray, with metallic blue highs. The warmer (!) sounding solid-state amps have more green and pink in their sound. These may also be attributed to fake or learnt Synesthesia. I don't dwell much in these connections, I rather use more abstract, unnameable or hard-to-define concepts describing sound characteristics.

Probably not:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... r-a-sneeze

I've always had synesthesia, although as a small child I remember it being extremely intense. I remember being extremely sensitive to temperature, pressure and pain, and these would often couple with one or more of my senses. I could also taste and smell colours...if I even saw a bit of a colour I liked in the environment my mind would start daydreaming all of the possible smells and tastes it would remind me of. Neon and pale colours always did it for me. I I was about 12 or so when the world started being less intense.

My mom has synesthesia too (although she's not on the spectrum). I remember her buying a book wen I was young called 'The Man Who Tasted Shapes'...and remember telling her about the tastes of the shapes on the cover and inside the book...!

Now my synesthesia is very limited: numbers and people I know all have colours of different shades.

While I don't have true synesthesia, I have something sort of similar. For me, emotions and sensory experiences are part of the same continuum. One result of this is the fact that I experience a kind of "associative" emotions that are associated with particular places, situations, objects, or people. They are distinct from more usual kinds of emotions (which I also experience) in that they are considerably more specific (although they are quite often associated with a few places/situations/objects/people that have some kind of connection as opposed to being specific to only one), and I have a rather large number of them. They can be either positive or negative, and while they are distinct from each other, they are all of the same basic type.

I didn't realize it for a long time but I have synesthesia.

Like my brain has an extra personal entertainment module.

For years I thought it was kind of weird how vague lights would move around in my visual field. I figured it was just the remainder of light reflections off of other things.

That does go into it, but then I paid attention and realized this is impacted by sound and especially music.

When I close my eyes I get what people in drug culture call "Closed-eye visuals" when I'm SOBER! These are very vague CEVs.

THC heightens the experience even more. In both cases the visuals run very slowly and I can alter them a little cognitively.

For a long time when I first started reading about Asperger's I felt like it was the end of the world. Now I'm realizing this is fun. The NTs have the short end of the stick.

In addition to synesthesia I can amuse myself theorizing sometimes even forming a really hard theory within a few seconds after I start looking at information, I can stare at things and look at patterns of things like trees, mountains, facial patterns(strangely these are the kinds of patterns that stick out the most) where another person would have to strain themselves to notice and would quickly lose interest. Things like the pattern of windows on buildings, walls, ceilings, wood.

And it's not like it's even stopped me from making friends, going to college, getting laid, anything.

There's a lot of things I can do that NTs can hardly or even can't at all. Other way around there's a lot of things I'm not as good at but still can do and keep doing better at. So if you think about it, I win.

Yes I think I have high functioning autism (very high functioning) and have synesthesia: I see coloured letters and also can hear music if I see certain colours or pictures. This has inspired many of my music compositions. I am a musician and a visual artist and I study psychology. I have a degree in social anthropology and I am at uni again currently in a first year clinical psychology degree.

The spatial processing-area of my brain seems to be involved in a lot of my cognitive thinking, speaking both of visual/spatial representations of letters and numbers and words as well as in more abstract or subconscious thinking. When someone asks where something is (and I happen to know) I'll have immediate details about where the item was in relation to other things in the space, even if I wasn't consciously noticing the missing item previously.

This is really hard to explain right now for some reason. Maybe I'll try later.

yes, I think AS and synesthesia are related. I have synesthesia (grapheme-color, pain-color, personification.)
I googled it once and I bunch of good articles popped up.

I totally get what your saying (except 5 is obviously blue,jeeze get it right lol)
I even were a bracelet with different color beads representing different numbers. And there all next to the friends (they all have a personality)
dang... To any one with out synesthesia I probably sound crazy...