Iris: The Blog

Beauty Reeks of Rot

A contribution from an anonymous source, who we shall call Trevor.

Trevor has the most bizarre synesthesia. It overlaps. It is hard to keep track of what senses are overlapping with other senses overlapping with themselves. His most potent synesthetic response is that he ends up ‘smelling’ an aura of scents — each one unique and associated with a person. It does not appear for a while. He must get to know someone first. Eventually, they build up an aura. Scents correlate themselves fixedly with individuals, and this scent sticks. It will never go away. That is that person’s scent forever. It overrides other scents they may actually have.

Trevor gets in a whirlwind romance with a girl. It is amazing. They are in love. It is perfect. They are great for each other. They move in together.

Girl’s synesthetic “scent” appears for Trevor. It is inexplicably vile.

He does everything he can to think ‘over’ the scent. He is not very good at it. He cannot willingly change her scent. He experiences it as a bland, ugly, vegetation rot and cottage cheese smell. He actually begins gagging if he looks at her (and gets the full force of the ‘aura’) before steeling himself for it. It creates problems. He becomes physically withdrawn, and looks pained when having sex. He avoids eye contact but tries to be cavalier about it.

She notices. He has no explanation, because he thinks the real reasons why would sound absolutely insane were he to express it truthfully. “I’m sorry, your aura smells like rotted plants and cottage cheese.” He doesn’t consider it. He waffles. He struggles over it but it is causing very real and serious problems with intimacy. He is in anguish about it in private, trying to remember her real scent. Trying to drown it out.

It’s getting a little close to the end. He asks a doctor about it. Doctor gives a strange look but otherwise contributes nothing except that perhaps he should see a psychologist, especially if he is also hearing voices.

He does, at one point, do a google search, over strange things like “why do I smell people’s auras.” Gets a hit on Synesthesia. Is amazed. Brings it up delicately. Starts with the Wikipedia article. Shares it. Girlfriend is at first skeptical.

The story, hopefully with followup, continues. 

glorix:

How some Chinese characters look in my head if anyone was wondering. The first ones are names and the third is China.

So neat! It appears that this type of synesthesia is triggered by the radicals rather than the words themselves. Apparently brightness and hue and saturation are all determined by radicals.

A Gathering of Synesthetes

Over the past month, I have slowly seeded the entire nation with requests for synesthetes to step up and share their stories and their artistic imagery with us. Finally, these requests have started to come in, and the replies are encouraging. Of course, the journey is incomplete without asking on the blog itself, so here goes:

Are you a synesthete? Would you like your words, tales, or imagery about synesthesia to appear on Iris?  Over the course of the next two months, I’m a dedicated interviewer and chronicler. Please drop off an email about your synesthesia experiences, and you get in line to contribute to a collective of stories and sketches.

Kitkit And Woobul

Let’s say you are analyzing a newly found language. You have to piece together one last piece of the puzzle, and know that one of the following symbols is called a “Woobul” and the other is called “Kitkit.” Take your best guess as to which is kitkit and which is woobul.

90% of people asked this question will guess the same way. Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Brain and Cognition center at University of California in San Diego, explains that the reason why is because the mechanisms of synesthesia are common in all brains, and it’s only a matter of degrees of expression that turn some into true synesthetes. More importantly, he argues and attempts to demonstrate that those expressions involve the fundamental properties of our minds that allow us to use and understand artistic and creative language concepts, and that being a synesthete corresponds quite significantly with the talented expression of many types of artistic ability.

The above example demonstrates that you—and most other people—understand that the symbol that had the sharper, more abrupt shape was more closely related to the symbol whose pronunciation had the more abrupt sounds. This is because the underlying mechanisms that create synestheseia are the same mechanisms that enable us to make comparisons and connections between concepts across disparate sensory modalities, such as sounds and shapes. In similar fashion, you will understand what is meant when cheese (which is physically soft) is described as sharp. These are low-level metaphors, which we understand because our brains make these connections between various types of sensory stimuli.

Dr. Ramachandran further speculates (very convincingly) that these same mechanisms are what underlie our ability to use and understand analogy, simile, and metaphor. He posits that these differences form a continuum in the population, and explains that creative people, such as poets and artists, are eight times more likely to be synesthetes than are the rest of us.

Synaesthesia: not a mental anomaly, a mental characteristic

Evan Shinners is a Julliard-trained pianist who is also a sound → color synesthete. To promote his tour, Shinners makes a video where plays the Prelude from Bach’s English Suite in D-minor and then paints the colors he sees over the visual field.

(Source: mwario)

Though related to synesthesia, ideasthesia is very different. The idea, not just the experience, would induce a sensory experience. Grapheme → color synesthetes are also ideasthetes because the association to color is not strictly tied to seeing a letter.

My synesthesia is also ideasthesia because I experience colors with people and emotions, with some intersection of both.

The Beauty Of Neural Crosstalk: An Unusual Cooperation Of The Senses

The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science

Cretien van Campen explores synesthesia from both artistic and scientific perspectives, looking at accounts of individual experiences, examples of synesthesia in visual art, music, and literature, and recent neurological research. 

Van Campen reports that some studies define synesthesia as a brain impairment, a short circuit between two different areas. But synesthetes cannot imagine perceiving in any other way; many claim that synesthesia helps them in daily life. Van Campen investigates just what the function of synesthesia might be and what it might tell us about our own sensory perceptions. He examines the experiences of individual synesthetes—from Patrick, who sees music as images and finds the most beautiful ones spring from the music of Prince, to the schoolgirl Sylvia, who is surprised to learn that not everyone sees the alphabet in colors as she does.

Prince, huh? Well, as a fellow sound to color synesthete, I guess I will have to take a look at his music (said here a little more literally than usual).

The book is described as a delightfully written interplay of social sciences, neuroscience and the case study of synesthetes. A copy will be acquired, devoured, and reported on by me.

Also don’t miss a MIT press podcast interview with the author.

Scientific American’s ‘06 article on the basics of Synesthesia includes this little gem, leading to a further field of inquiry — the unique dating and living compatibility issues inherent to someone for whom your name might look like moldy bread, or taste like raw fish:

[S]ynesthetes also report making computational errors because 6 and 8 have the same color and claim to prejudge couples they meet because the colors of their first names clash so hideously.

This has the potential to result in some hilarious (or tragic) stories. For the individuals in question, I’d recommend giving them a second chance … with an acceptably colored nickname.

The One Taste of the Universe, or How To Experience Synesthesia

I tapped my hands on the table like I normally would do. But this time I noticed something different, something quite remarkable. Not only sounds but also colors invaded my awareness. Yes, there was no way to deny it, the tap on the table gave off a red color.

A self-described modern mystic at High Existence espouses the claim that it’s possible to grow into synesthesia, queues up a few gestalt mythical hypotheticals and controversies for the science of synesthetic exploration.

Things Synesthetes Say

That was the problem. Facebook’s colors feel horrible to me. I’m stuck with it because you can’t change it, and the only thing worse than that is if people could change it. Remember MySpace? That was a nightmarish orgy of terrible sensations.