Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Saker. 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 synastasia,
Speaker 1: or you've done some crazy drugs, and maybe that's a
Speaker 1: different episode. But when people with synastasia experience input from
Speaker 1: one sense, it results in the experience of another sense.
Speaker 1: So if you're a synisty, like author Vladimir Nabokov, you
Speaker 1: would associate letters with colors, grapheme color synastasia, that's what
Speaker 1: it's called. And there are different types of synastasia. Napakov
Speaker 1: called his color hearing. This grapheme color stuff is the
Speaker 1: most common type, but cinnastasia can occur between just about
Speaker 1: any combination of senses or cognitive pathways, and not every
Speaker 1: everyone will experience the same type of cynist asia the
Speaker 1: same way. So while the soft ah sound always seems
Speaker 1: like fire engine red to one sinistete, it maybe cobalt
Speaker 1: blue for others. Some people with this condition see music,
Speaker 1: which sounds kind of beautiful when you think about it.
Speaker 1: There are less common types, such as lexical gustatory cynast asia.
Speaker 1: People with this condition taste certain flavors, dishes, or entire
Speaker 1: meals based on a picture, word, or sound. Smells could
Speaker 1: have colors and shapes to the list goes on. There's
Speaker 1: mirror touch cynist asia, ordinal linguistic personification, and number form
Speaker 1: where a person sees numbers as a distinct map. So
Speaker 1: 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 sinistets have a close relative with cynast asia.
Speaker 1: Most sinistets 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 are 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
Speaker 1: two's forming a triangle, most people would have a hard
Speaker 1: time seeing it. They would have to look closely to
Speaker 1: search for the twos and then slowly construct the shape.
Speaker 1: But a grapheme 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 synistets, seeing a
Speaker 1: number stimulates your grapheme region and the area of your
Speaker 1: visual cortex that responds to color stimuli. One theory is
Speaker 1: that there are increased neural connections in the brain of
Speaker 1: cynistats that could have been the result of less neural pruning.
Speaker 1: That's what they call it neural pruning, while in utero,
Speaker 1: even cooler is that there might be actual anatomical differences
Speaker 1: in the brains of cinistat's, like increased white and gray
Speaker 1: matter in their brains. One bit of sad news for
Speaker 1: all the non sinnistats out there. Although one study did
Speaker 1: find that some exposure to color letters built up their association,
Speaker 1: the effect didn't last, so people can't just catch synaesthesia.
Speaker 1: But hey, it's not like all the cynistats have a
Speaker 1: great time. It can be uncomfortable to see a number
Speaker 1: in the wrong color, and one lexical gustatory synistats said
Speaker 1: that if a certain name doesn't taste right to him,
Speaker 1: he has a hard time liking the person it's attached
Speaker 1: to and it's time to talk about drugs. Don't act
Speaker 1: like you didn't know this was coming. Hallucinogens might be
Speaker 1: one way that synaesthesia can be manufactured. Several drugs can
Speaker 1: produce vivid cynist asia in non sinistats, which might be
Speaker 1: a key to understanding the condition. One researcher has positive
Speaker 1: that in non sinistats, information in a multisensory area travels
Speaker 1: back easily to its single sense area, but in sinistats
Speaker 1: it gets a bit mixed up along the way. Hallucinogens
Speaker 1: may temporarily alter the user's neurochemistry, confusing those existing connections.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's face it, going to a concert might
Speaker 1: be pretty amazing for people with visually associated synesthesia. Check
Speaker 1: out the brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.