When individuals hear the phrase ‘synesthesia,’ often the idea of sounds being related to colors involves thoughts. Whereas it’s by far the commonest definition of the time period, it’s undoubtedly not the one one. There are a selection of various kinds of synesthesia that you just won’t learn about. This text will go over a few of the ones which might be at present essentially the most researched, so you’ll be able to have a greater understanding of how various this phenomenon will be.
What Is Synesthesia?
For many who are unfamiliar with synesthesia and what it actually entails, it’s merely a perceptual expertise that happens when a stimulus. Take into consideration listening to a sound or seeing a letter or quantity that causes a response in numerous sensory pathways within the mind.
Often, this includes seeing colors tied to the aforementioned stimuli. Nonetheless, there are different attention-grabbing ones too. Additionally, synesthesia, basically, is fairly uncommon, however sure ones are extra widespread than others. You’ll find out about lots of them by this text.
Photograph, Towfiqu Barbhuiya.
1. Grapheme-Coloration Synesthesia
A grapheme is a time period that refers back to the smallest unit in a writing system. It’s potential for individuals to affiliate issues like letters, phrases, and numbers with particular colors. For instance, somebody may join the quantity 5 with the color crimson or the letter G with blue. This is named grapheme-color synesthesia. It’s really one of the widespread types that individuals expertise.
2. Chromesthesia
One other frequently-reported type of synesthesia includes seeing colors in affiliation with sound, particularly music. Chromesthesia is often what individuals robotically consider when the time period synesthesia comes up, when in reality, it’s simply certainly one of many. Nonetheless, it’s a really fascinating phenomenon that has hyperlinks with different talents, similar to perfect-pitch.
3. Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia
Do you know that, for some individuals, sure phrases can have a style to them? Whether or not it’s studying, listening to, or saying them, these phrases can evoke distinct tastes that may be fully unrelated to at least one one other. For instance, somebody with lexical-gustatory synesthesia, which is without doubt one of the rarest types, may style rooster when coping with the phrase ‘automobile’.
Photograph, Romina Farías.
4. Auditory-Tactile Synesthesia
Whereas listening to sound is well-known to supply colors within the minds of numerous synesthetes, it is usually potential for them to expertise sensations on their physique when listening to them. This isn’t the identical as having goosebumps when listening to music that strikes or impresses you. Somewhat, individuals can really feel tingling, stress, or a change in temperature. These are just some of the potential sensations that may occur to individuals with auditory–tactile synesthesia.
5. Spatial Sequence Synesthesia
The kind of synesthesia often known as the spatial sequence is most incessantly related to numbers. Nonetheless, it will possibly additionally apply to letters and phrases too. Folks with this synesthesia can visualise issues just like the time and date within the bodily house round them. Moreover, it’s believed that these with it will possibly have a stronger sense of reminiscence than those that don’t have it.
6. Mirror-Contact Synesthesia
One of the vital uncommon types of synesthesia includes feeling like somebody’s touching you with out it really occurring. With mirror-touch synesthesia, one can merely witness another person being touched and have the identical sensation on their very own physique. It’s additionally price noting that individuals with this type of synesthesia can have larger ranges of empathy for others on account of mirror neurons being heavily-involved.
Photograph, @chairulfajar_.
7. Misophonia
Have you ever ever been offended or irritated by sure sounds, particularly ones that come from the mouths of others or repetitive ones like clicking and tapping? Then it’s potential you will have misophonia. This, imagine it or not, that is one other of the a number of forms of synesthesia. Some individuals can have gentle signs of this, whereas others can change into visibly distressed to the purpose the place they wish to keep away from noises that set off them.
8. Quantity-Kind Synesthesia
Folks with number-form synesthesia can involuntarily visualise numbers in a sequence of their minds. Due to this fact, they’ll create a psychological map at any time when they consider numbers. It shares some similarities to spatial sequence synesthesia mentioned earlier, and it’s additionally one of many rarest and under-researched types on the market.
9. Ordinal-Linguistic Personification
Ordinal-linguistic personification, or just OLP or personification for brief, is a kind of synesthesia that includes associating personalities or genders to letters, numbers, or phrases. For instance, somebody may robotically think about the letter Q to be pleasant and playful or the quantity 2 as a classy feminine.
Photograph, Anthony Tran.
10. Olfactory-Visible Synesthesia
For some individuals, colors will be tied to particular scents and vice-versa. Some scents can produce colors of their minds. As an illustration, the scent of gasoline may set off a blue-ish purple color. Typically it will possibly additionally create shapes too, and all of these items can assist contribute to a stronger skill to understand odours.
The place To Study Extra About Synesthesia
Even for those who don’t have synesthesia your self, it’s nonetheless an extremely attention-grabbing topic for lots of people, and for those who’re trying to discover extra details about this subject and have extra of your questions answered, BetterHelp has extra in-depth articles on synesthesia, like this one, so that you can get pleasure from.
Moreover, suppose you will have synesthesia, and also you suppose that it’s unhelpful or presumably annoying or distressing, similar to with misophonia. In that case, you can even attain out to a counsellor or therapist who can assist you learn to cope higher with synesthesia.
However, in case you are not sure when you’ve got some type of synesthesia, you’ll be able to think about discovering exams that may assist decide that you just may need it. We will all the time study one thing new about ourselves every day, even when it’s been with us endlessly, like synesthesia.
Conclusion
As you’ll be able to see, there are numerous forms of synesthesia. It may be a various phenomenon and manifest in another way throughout completely different people. The truth is, regardless of these being a few of the most well-known forms of synesthesia on the market, this record is certainly not exhausted, and it’s estimated that there will be wherever from 60 to 80 differing types, and plenty of of them haven’t been researched but. Nonetheless, hopefully, this text has opened your thoughts to how synesthesia can have an effect on others by crossing completely different senses.
Marie Miguel has been a writing and analysis professional for almost a decade, protecting a wide range of health-related matters. At the moment, she is contributing to the enlargement and progress of a free on-line psychological well being useful resource with BetterHelp.com. With an curiosity and dedication to addressing stigmas related to psychological well being, she continues to particularly goal topics associated to anxiousness and melancholy.