Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren voc Obam and today's episode is a classic
Speaker 1: from our erst file. Host Christian Sager. The topic what
Speaker 1: is synaesthesia and how does it work? Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Sager. Have you ever heard a color or
Speaker 1: smelled a sound? If so, don't worry. You are not alone. Instead,
Speaker 1: you're part of a group I consider superpowered. You have
Speaker 1: synast asia, or you've done some crazy drugs, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's a different episode. But when people with synastasia experience
Speaker 1: input from one sense, it results in the experience of
Speaker 1: another sense. So if you're a sinisty like author Vladimir Nabokov,
Speaker 1: you would associate letters with colors, grapheme color synast asia,
Speaker 1: that's what it's called. And there are different types of
Speaker 1: synast asia. Nabakov called his color hearing this grapheme color
Speaker 1: stuff is the most common type, but cinnast asia can
Speaker 1: occur between just about any combination of senses or cognitive pathways,
Speaker 1: and not everyone will experience the same type of cynas
Speaker 1: asia the same way. So while the soft ah sound
Speaker 1: always seems like fire engine red to one sinistete it
Speaker 1: maybe cobalt blue for others. Some people with this condition
Speaker 1: see music, which sounds kind of beautiful when you think
Speaker 1: about it. There are less common types, such as lexical
Speaker 1: gustatory synas asia. People with this condition taste certain flavors, dishes,
Speaker 1: or entire meals based on a picture, word, or sound.
Speaker 1: Smells could have colors and shapes to the list goes on.
Speaker 1: There's mirror touch, cinnast asia, ordinal linguistic personification, and number
Speaker 1: form where a person sees numbers as a distinct map.
Speaker 1: So this is all fascinating, but how do people get it?
Speaker 1: Researchers are still working on that one, but they believe
Speaker 1: the condition tends to be somewhat inherited or genetic, as
Speaker 1: about of sinistats have a close relative with cynast asia.
Speaker 1: Most sinnistates recall having the condition for as long as
Speaker 1: they can remember. It might sound like people have made
Speaker 1: pneumonic connections with sounds, colors, or so on, but research
Speaker 1: shows it is a genuine sensory phenomenon rather than a
Speaker 1: memory exercise. For example, if we drew the number five
Speaker 1: all over a piece of paper scattered with a few twos,
Speaker 1: forming a triangle. Most people would have a hard time
Speaker 1: seeing it. They would have to look closely to search
Speaker 1: for the twos and then slowly construct the shape, but
Speaker 1: a graphine color sinistete can see this triangle almost instantly.
Speaker 1: Researchers think that cinnast asia is a kind of cross
Speaker 1: wiring in the brain in graphine color cinis steats, seeing
Speaker 1: a number stimulates your graphee region and the area of
Speaker 1: your visual cortex that responds to color stimuli. One theory
Speaker 1: is that there are increased neural connections in the brain
Speaker 1: of cynistats that could have been the result of less
Speaker 1: neural pruning. That's what they call it neural pruning, while
Speaker 1: in utero. Even cooler is that there might be actual
Speaker 1: anatomical differences in the brains of cinistats, like increased white
Speaker 1: and gray matter in their brains. One bit of sad
Speaker 1: news for all the non sinnistats out there. Although one
Speaker 1: study did find that some exposure to color letters built
Speaker 1: up their association, the effect didn't last, so people can't
Speaker 1: just catch synaesthesia. But hey, it's not like all the
Speaker 1: cynist eats have a great time. It can be uncomfortable
Speaker 1: to see a number in the wrong color, and one
Speaker 1: lexical gustatory synist Eats said that if a certain name
Speaker 1: doesn't taste write to him, he has a hard time
Speaker 1: liking the person it's attached to. And it's time to
Speaker 1: talk about drugs. Don't act like you didn't know this
Speaker 1: was coming. Hallucinogens might be one way that synaesthesia can
Speaker 1: be manufactured. Several drugs can produce vivid cynist asia in
Speaker 1: non sinist eats, which might be a key to understanding
Speaker 1: the condition. One researcher has positive that in non sinistats,
Speaker 1: information in a multisensory area travels back easily to its
Speaker 1: single sense area, but in sinistats it gets a bit
Speaker 1: mixed up along the way. Hallucinogens may temporarily alter the
Speaker 1: user's neurochemistry, confusing those existing connections. I mean, let's face it,
Speaker 1: going to a concert might be pretty amazing for people
Speaker 1: with visually associated synesthesia. Today's episode was written by Ben
Speaker 1: Bolan and produced by Tyler Klang. The brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other topics, visit our
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