The Advantages of Synesthesia

Post Reply New Topic

Last night, I was reading about synesthesia when I realized how advantageous it is. It makes it a lot easier to remember numbers and the spelling of words. I think of words and numbers as patterns of colors, shapes, and personalities. Changing just one letter in a word makes a big difference in its appearance. Sort of like changing a color in a flag.

According to Wikipedia (not exactly a reliable source), perceiving time/dates in a multidimensional landscape is considered synesthetic (2005 is close, 1901 is far, 1310 is farther; morning is up and evening is down). I thought everyone thought this way. Being able to manipulate multidimensional images representing dates, geography, numbers, etc. is really convenient. If this really is a synesthesia thing and not a normal thing, then synesthesia is quite advantageous.

My synaesthesia has no advantages (I am a colour>word, number, personality synaesthete).

Peoples' names rarely match the colour of them as a person, so I am constantly getting names mixed up.

Plus, my synaesthetic perceptions are in my mind's eye and are vivid and yet transparent at the same time, but the transparency means that I can't always grasp what's going on.

When I read books I can become distracted by the colours of the words if I read too slowly, but if I try and read fast my mind becomes bombarded with childhood memories for some unknown reason, so I can't concentrate on reading at all!

Time/date>multidimensions synaesthesia sounds fascinating though!

I have a sort of visual thing for time - the year is a circle with the weeks marked on it - I can mark on events quite easily and 'visualise' how far ahead/behind they are. The week is a line going up for the weekend, then a long diagonal going slightly down for the days. I normally dont have to use a diary as I remember when things will happen by adding them to my mental picture. In fact rather than an actual picture its more of a spacial thing as I am not sure I could really draw how I 'see' it. It doesnt mean though that I can easily remember specific dates - the actual numbers of days are not that important to my system.

There are two YA novels (which are literary enough, I think, to be read by anyone) that deal with Synesthesia. The first is "A Mango Shaped Space" by Wendy Mass, it actually won some kind of award for its representation of this.

Then there is Pamela Porter's "The Crazy Man" which I find so personally moving I always cry as soon as I start reading it. It won the Governor General's award, here in Canada and its a very fine piece of writing.

Both show the advantages of Synesthesia.

There's a book called "How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci" that encourages normal people to develop synthesia.

I'm curious if the methods used by people without it to develop it could help people with it to control it more the way they want to use it.

Another good book on synaesthesia is the classic "The Man Who Tasted Shapes," by Richard Cytowic.

Me, I remember phone numbers because of my colors and I can remember vocabulary words and definitions due to color.

Plus, since music notation translates to color for me (at the least the notes do anyways), I can remember phrases of music easier that way.