What if Walking Through the Temerty Commons Tasted Like Celery?

What if the number five were purple? What if the words of Dr. Simmonds speaking in Prayers floated in front of you in vibrant colours as he spoke? What if when you bit into an apple you saw a splash of lime green two feet in front of you? For those with a condition known as synesthesia, this is their world.

What is Synesthesia?
For most people, their five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) are distinct. However, for a small percentage of the population with synesthesia, cross-wiring in the brain causes the stimulation of one sense to result in the response of another sense. The most common form of synesthesia is “coloured hearing”, where sounds are also seen as colours. While most synesthetes (people with synesthesia) report seeing these colours in their “mind’s eye,” some report actually seeing them externally, usually within a few feet of themselves. However, synesthesia can be a joining of any of the five senses, where the synesthete may experience a specific taste in response to certain words, a feeling in response to a sight, or a smell in response to a sound.

Biological Basis of Synesthesia
Synesthesia was first identified by Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, in 1880. However, it is only in the last few decades that researchers have really begun to understand the biological bases of synesthesia. Researchers have determined that synesthesia is a real biological condition that often runs in families, though specific conditions can vary among family members, with one experiencing tastes while the other sees colours.

Studies of the genome have shown that synesthesia has a genetic basis and affects the development of the brain. For example, synesthetes’ auditory and visionary parts of the brain form in unusual ways. Specifically, they have more grey matter, which consists of the neurons that conduct brain signals, in the area that affects sight, and more auditory/visionary connectivity in the white matter, which surrounds and supports neurons. Dr. Daphne Maurer, a psychologist at McMaster University, believes we are all born with synesthesia but most people lose it, while synesthetes retain it.

Who Has It?
According to the Palmer Lab for Visual Aesthetics at the University of California, Berkeley, synesthesia is more often seen in women than men, on a basis of 3:1. Synesthetes are predominantly left-handed and are usually average or above in intelligence.

Synesthetes are often creative and include many well-known individuals such as Vincent Van Gogh and current day pop stars Pharrell Williams, Stevie Wonder, and Kanye West. Even renowned physicist Richard Feynman was known to see letters in colours.  

In a 2015 interview with Music Times, musician and synesthete Lorde explained: "When we first started “Tennis Court” we just had that pad playing the chords, and it was the worst textured tan colour, like really dated, and it made me feel sick, and then we figured out that pre chorus and I started the lyric and the song changed to all these incredible greens overnight!!!"

Relationship Between Art and Science
It is clear that synesthesia links the world of arts to the world of science. Jamie Ward, a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, believes that synesthesia shows that there are multiple ways of experiencing the world. This can be traced back to genes right up to our conscious experiences. He has found that synesthetes are usually better at memory, able to distinguish between colours more easily, and tend to gravitate towards the arts. He is currently studying how these differences can be used in the arts to determine how the different senses relate to each other. For example, synesthetes are very good at identifying what sound goes best with a specific colour, which could be useful in areas such as marketing or designing art installations. However, he is currently more interested in determining how to use this information and the science behind synesthesia to work with blind people who rely on auditory descriptions of the world around them. Synesthesia provides an approach to go about converting colours and the spatial relationships between objects from vision to sound for the blind.

While our society often separates the arts from the sciences, Jamie Ward’s multidisciplinary work is an example of how synesthesia brings both worlds together in order to improve the human condition. It also serves as a reminder of how different perceptions of the world are something we should celebrate.