So, for instance, one synaesthete a low note on the piano was a big round ball that she could see low down in space, whereas a high note on the same instrument, on the piano, was much smaller and kind of sparkly and a brighter colour.Īnd by studying people's experiences and getting them to really illustrate those complexities, we can start to get a sense of what the underlying patterns are. And what we found was that far from just being colour, they were essentially geometric objects.
So quite often we study the colour aspect because that's the bit that's maybe easiest to get a handle on, but in one of our studies we looked at the types of experiences evoked by just single tones on different instruments. Lynne Malcolm: And some people, not only do they see colour in relation to letters and numbers, but they also see shape.Īnina Rich: That's right. And there are some estimates that suggest that that may be actually the most common, but we don't know yet how closely that's related to the colour forms.
So if you are seeing somebody being touched-people with mirror touch synaesthesia actually experience a sense of touch themselves. There's also some other forms which relate to how we might perceive touch. Also types of auditory visual synaesthesia seem to be relatively common.
So with any of these are approximates, but certainly grapheme colour synaesthesia, where people have letters and numbers evoking colour experiences, very common. And so lots of people have synaesthesia and don't realise it. Although estimating the prevalence of any type of synaesthesia is quite tricky, because it's not a disorder. Lynne Malcolm: So that's the most common mode?Īnina Rich: Yes. Perhaps the most common form is where people have vivid experiences of colour in response to letters, numbers and words-whether they see them, hear them, or even think about them. So it might be moving pictures, it might be particular objects that have a colour and a form and a location that they see every time they hear that particular sound. So, for example, people who have auditory visual synaesthesia have sounds of different types it could be voices, it could be musical notes, it could be musical genres, evoking very specific and consistent experiences in the visual domain. In fact it's an umbrella term that can encompass a lot of different types of experiences that all fit within a sense of having an extraordinary response to a very ordinary stimulus. And so people have often described it as a mixing of the senses. Today, how synaesthetes perceive the world.Īssociate Professor Anina Rich is the director of the Perception and Action Research Centre at Macquarie University, where she heads up synaesthesia research.Īnina Rich: The word synaesthesia actually comes from the Greek syn, meaning together and aesthesis meaning of the senses. Lynne Malcolm: More from artist Nina Norden in our next episode looking at synaesthesia and art. Every number has a colour and a shape to it and the year, the week-I can just make the list longer and longer the more I think about it. Always little sounds in the silence as well that I see. Even silence has the colour more white that is like a void that I can see it as a shape. I can't even imagine how it is to not see a sound. Nina Norden: Everything I hear, I see in shapes and colours. If those questions don’t sound too strange to you, you may be a synaesthete. Lynne Malcolm: What colour is Monday for you? What about the number 4? Can you taste the colour purple, and does the saxophone sound orange or blue? It feels like it's-especially in songs that I really like-sort of trying to take me to that point. I see the colour shooting past my head to like a point in the distance, which is really cool. I’m Lynne Malcolm.Įliza Watt: Some of my favourite synaesthetic experiences is with music. Lynne Malcolm: Hi, it’s All in the Mind on RN.