Synesthesia!

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i think Cidey is describing an example of mirror-touch synesthesia. if you see someone hit their finger with a hammer, and you actually feel pain in your finger, you have it.



no idea on that stuff. (not sure what one's hip would have to do with being threatened.) i used to cough (unconsciously) when walking by someone i knew i should say hi to when i was in school - a tic? a stim? who knows. definitely a response to social discomfort. i only know i did it because someone told me.



this is spatial-sequence synesthesia (or synaesthesia - both spellings are correct: the first American, the second British according to my dashboard dictionary). i have it too, but not sure if it totally qualifies because what i see is a black and white wheel with the current month or day of the week (or season) on top, where usually people see days and months in color and they reside in a particular immovable place in the physical space around them.

i'm sure NTs can have synesthesia, but it seems spectrumites have quite a lot of it. if you type synesthesia into the WP search box you will find many threads about it.

Wow, my grandmother described experiencing that and it never occured to me that it could be a form of synesthesia or really anything out-of-the-ordinary. At the time, I thought it was an interesting but not pleasant way to be. I suspected that some of the other people in the room didn't believe her but no one wanted to say so out of respect.

This puts an interesting spin on things because I had always assumed that the autism in that side (my mom's side) of the family came through my grandfather who has some aspergerish traits but nothing fully manifested and that my grandmother was totally NT.

The more I try to suss out the genetic patterns in my family the more I see assortive mating (I think that's what it's called) because signs of autism are all over both my mother's and my father's family. And now I'm wondering if my mother's parents are another example of assortive mating as well. With all the spectrum genetics all over the place, I really do wonder how my sister ended up NT.

Haven't heard the topic of synethsthesia in years.
But.. reading through the thread, I have to wonder if there isn't some of it in me.

I can feel something in some music.. and i'm not talking about what the sub-woofer does.
I can certainly feel something like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Some sights even have a physical effect on me, and not "goosebumps" kinda effects.
I don't know it's synesthesia, kinda doubt it is. But some things that are .. hrm... only way i can put it, is "mathematically beautiful" can cause physical feelings.
untouched nature can do it too.
But then, untouched nature is purely mathematical, ain't it?

ooh! look! a list of different kinds of synesthesia!

I had never heard of anyone else having my "faces have smells" synesthesia before but it's on the list! It says that roughly 0.4% of people with synesthesia have person -> smell type.

http://home.comcast.net/~sean.day/Types.htm

Hah...I'm NOT on that list. (Sound --> greyscale shapes) Figures I'd be the odd one out.

BTW, Sparrowrose, please feel free to let me know if I said anything in my last PM that I shouldn't have said. No offense was meant.

No offense was taken, but you shifted the discusson to a place I don't go. You started asking for details about my Faith to help you write a character better and shifted it to debate against the information I provided and I don't debate my Faith.

i don't believe i have the gift of synesthesia, but i am wondering now- all my life i have seen people's faces in clock faces, IOW when the clock hands indicate 5:42 i "see" one person's face but when the time is 8:37 i "see" somebody else altogether. is this synesthesia or just garden variety cuckoo?

that's obviously: auntblabby's garden variety cuckoo clockface ---> person synesthesia

and if you're the only person who has it, that's even cooler!

It's really 0.1% to taste smells? Wow, I didn't even know that was a form of Synesthesia. I do this, but only if it is a strong smell, or I am purposefully sniffing something. So, I don't know if that would count.

Taste and smell are closely linked. I can taste some of the faces that I smell if the smell is particularly strong.

Bleh, that must not be pleasant.

It's not.

That's why all my favorite actors and people smell acceptable and I avoid the people and movies with the actors who smell awful to me.

If I have any form of this, I decided a good while back that it would be Vision -> syn. Sound

I can't be certain of this. I know whenever I see repetitive animations that don't have any sound, my brain automatically fills in with some sound (not always related to the action but in sync with the movements).

I used to forget that I have my sound turned off while playing a game. My brain would automatically fill in every sound effect. I can't remember the last time that happened since I don't play with sound off as much as I used to.

I don't think I meet the qualifications. It's rather difficult for me to determine if it is consistent.

When I was younger I had a lot more of a synthesiac experience of the world than I do now, I used to see different days as different pictures and patterns, along with times, lessons, and all sorts of things.

Though I still think very visually, I don't do it to the extent I used to, which I find sad really

Ahh...criticism was not the intention--I want to understand better. As to the particular section (the one I suspect caused the issue) there is some very personal stuff there, but dropping that section is no problem, because it's exactly that...personal. In the end all I can know for certain there is what has happened in my own experience. I definitely apologize for creating an awkward situation--again, that was not the intention.

Last edited by SoSayWeAll on 07 Jun 2010, 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

No worries. I hope I haven't created an awkward situation with my answer to you here. If so, I do apologize.