Confessions that speech and music are perceived in different colors have long been considered fantasies or enduring childhood memories. The latest methods have shown that the brain is indeed capable of simultaneously turning on two or more departments responsible for different physical senses. This condition is called synesthesia. What science knows about it.
The letter "A" glows red, the name "Maria" tastes sweet, and the sound of the saxophone is like a scattering of colored balls: during synesthesia, vision, hearing, and taste are immediately involved. For example, for some musicians, the sounding notes have different sizes and brightness.
There are many creative people among the synesthetes. The artist Wassily Kandinsky, the writer Vladimir Nabokov were synesthetes. It is believed that Marc Chagall did the same, since in many paintings he depicted people with green and blue faces (personal synesthesia).
There are many examples of synesthesia in the scientific literature, but how widespread it is is unknown. By some estimates, four percent of the human population is synesthetic, with 23 percent of artists. Some researchers believe that every two hundredth is a synesthete, others - every two thousandth.
A total of six dozen types of synesthesia have been described. Grapheme-color predominates, when a person perceives letters or numbers in color. Many synesthetics see the days of the week and music as colored.
Musical-color synesthesia as seen by the artist: the sounds of various percussion instruments are colored from bottom to top in different colors.
Just like others?
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Synesthetics do not seek to talk about their perception of the world to others - they just think that this is the case with everyone, and are very surprised to learn about their uniqueness. This often occurs during adolescence or even adulthood.
Congenital synesthesia accompanies a person throughout his life. It is impossible to control it - it will not work to turn off the work of one of the physical senses or to extinguish it. Synesthesia starts automatically when a stimulus appears. For example, all oval objects are involuntarily perceived as crimson.
Scientists note that in two percent of people, puberty triggers synesthesia. Perception of the stimulus is accompanied by color forms, taste, smell, sounds, tactile sensations, associated with the highest degree of trance, the boundaries of reality are lost.
Synesthesia, including a rare form when emotional perception is connected, can be acquired - as a result of neurological diseases, trauma. For example, patients with hemorrhage in the thalamus may experience sensations outside the body, strong disgust when reading words printed in blue letters. The blind, who use sound devices that replace the organs of perception, sometimes also develop synesthesia. Some people perceive objects as certain sounds.
Among people with autism spectrum disorder, synesthetics are common who experience tactile sensations without actual physical contact. For example, a child at the sounds of a copper pipe sees brightly colored triangles in front of his eyes and feels the touch on his hand. This prevents him from sitting still. Looking at something, an autistic person can feel the touch or, conversely, the skin can feel someone's gaze or music. The state when a person feels sounds rather than hears them is called "sound feeling".
Test for the detection of grapheme-color synesthetics. To find two's among fives, the average person must analyze the shape of the numbers (left). Synesthetic immediately snatches out the red numbers (on the right) / Illustration by RIA Novosti. Alina Polyanina.
Looking for genetics
The phenomenon of synesthesia has been known for over a hundred years, but only in the last two decades has its study acquired a full scientific basis, thanks to the ability to register the activity of various parts of the brain using functional MRI. In synesthesia, stimulation of one sense triggers an involuntary response from another or more. This is what the tomograms show. For example, grapheme-color synesthetics have two parts of the cerebral cortex involved: those responsible for verbal perception and color. The active regions are clearly related to each other, but the molecular nature of this relationship is unknown.
Scientists believe that synesthesia is one of the forms of brain hyperconnection, when several departments interact at once. This is observed in some diseases, the same autism. Recently it was revealed in people with perfect musical ear.
What causes the brain to overload is also unclear. According to one version, we are all born synesthetics, but as the brain develops, the connections between its departments responsible for physical perception are broken. In some people, they persist for an unknown reason, for example, between the auditory and visual cortex.
Scientists cannot yet say if synesthesia is genetically determined, but some evidence suggests it. Recently, European experts analyzed the genomes of three families that perceive music in color. It was found that variations in 37 genes are responsible for the inheritance of this quality, and six of them are involved in the formation of axons - processes of nerve cells. This happens in the brain in early childhood, just then synthetic perception is manifested.
Creative individuals draw inspiration from synesthesia. If scientists reveal its genetic and molecular nature, it is possible that this condition will partially lose its mystery in the eyes of artists and musicians, but humanity will have a chance to better understand some neurological diseases, to help people with autism spectrum disorder.
Tatiana Pichugina
