The letter “A” is red, the number “8” is purple, “July” is bluish-green, and the broken knee pulsates in shades from orange and yellow to purple and burgundy. All of these are not metaphors, but a very real perception of the world, characteristic of some people.
Definition
Synesthesia is a word, as it is not difficult to guess, Greek: "sin" - union, "esthesis" - sensation, and the phenomenon in the modern sense is a special way of sensory experience. For some people, who are called synesthetes, symbols, days of the week, sounds and anything else take on colors, taste or smell - a kind of mixing of feelings happens.
Scientific explanation
Synesthesia has been known to science for three centuries, and the first mentions of it date back to antiquity at all, but doctors and scientists did not take these quirks of consciousness seriously, taking them rather as a product of active imagination and even a mental disorder. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did they become seriously interested in mixing feelings. Synesthesia, albeit reluctantly, was recognized as a real phenomenon of mental life with a certain neurological rationale. The first scientists in this field were Yale University psychologist Larry Marks and neurologist Richard Saitovik.
They hypothesized that in synesthetes there is excitement in certain areas of the brain, which contributes to the mixing of different perceptions. Then, after some research, it was decided that synesthesia was prevalent primarily among people in creative professions.
Promotional video:
Synesthesia in art
Vladimir Nabokov, as is evident from his autobiography, was partly a synesthetics: “It happened when I was seven years old. I took a bunch of letter cubes and accidentally told my mother that their colors were "wrong." Since Nabokov's mother herself lived with synesthesia, she quickly realized that the child was referring to the discrepancy between the actual coloring of the cubes and the color of the letters that appeared in his mind.
The French poet Arthur Rimbaud dedicated a whole poem to his own perception of vowel letters in specific colors. Composer Alexander Scriabin saw the color of musical notes, while the abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky, on the contrary, heard the sound of colors and even used musical terms to describe his paintings: "composition", "improvisation".
Synesthesia is also no stranger to modern stars. So, Farrell Williams said in one of his interviews that his hit “Happy”, which thundered all over the world, is yellow with shades of mustard and light orange.
Etiology
Neurophysicists have not yet come to a consensus on this score. One of the most common interpretations comes from Dr. Grossenbarher of the American National Institute of Mental Health. He explains the onset of synesthesia by the excitation of special areas of the brain, where different sense organs intersect. Sometimes some senses transmit impulses to others, which causes a “confusion of feelings”.
According to another theory, by Daphne Mauyer of the University of Canada, we are all born synesthetes, and up to six months all the senses in our brain are mixed. Mauyer suggests that children do not have five different senses, but rather one, which includes the work of all organs at once. So, the child not only hears the voice of his mother, but also sees it, smells it.
In the future, however, the channels of communication of some feelings with others seem to be blocked, and most people can no longer feel confusion.
Is it possible to become a synesthete
We perceive the world as a whole, and all our senses constantly interact with each other. Moreover, often we can really say what color a particular concept is. However, you should not rush to classify yourself as synesthetes. In most cases, our knowledge is not formed by sensations, but by experience. For example, our anxiety is likely to be colored red due to the well-established designations of this concept. The synesthete, on the other hand, can see anxiety in any other color without being able to say what exactly formed the connections of his sensations.
Synesthesia cannot be controlled, and the likelihood that a person suddenly learns to smell emotions or see the color of words is minimal. Science, however, knows several examples. In particular, this is the story of a forty-five-year-old Toronto resident who, having suffered a stroke, suddenly felt that blue smells like raspberries, and fell into real ecstasy from listening to the James Bond soundtrack. Often psychedelics trigger this experience.
Oleg Bergen
