Synaesthesia
May 24th 2006 02:08
What is Synaesthesia?
Despite the fact the the word synaesthesia is a lovely sounding word, it's als a really cool phenomenon. Basically it is a term used to describe when one sensory modality gives rise to another sensory modality. Modality is the technichal term used here for 'type' of sense.
For example, in an auditory synaesthete (a person who experiences synaesthesia is a synaesthete) an auditory experience may give rise to an experience in the visual modality.
It may be just music-industry-hype, but the performer Aphex Twin is said to possess auditory synaesthesia. Pink Floyd's Syd Barret was also a synaesthete. And Jimi Hendrix named the song Purple Haze after the chord E7#9 from a synaesthetic experience.
Syaesthetes often also experience relationships between the shades of colour, tones of sounds, and intensities of taste. For example, I may see a more intense red on a surface as a pitch rises in tone. Crazy stuff indeed.
If you think about it, we use the concept of synaesthesia in our everyday language. To say someone is 'sweet' for example. The poet Andrew Marvell has saidin his poem 'garden':
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade .
And if you say 'sour lemon'...do you feel a slight sensation of sourness in your mouth as you think about the taste of a lemon?
Can you think of any more examples?
People who take hallucinogenic grugs such as mescalin and LSD report similar effects of synaesthesia. In fact a friend of mine reported seeing visual patterns corresponding to the sound of music actually coming out of the speaker.
Interesting, no?
Despite the fact the the word synaesthesia is a lovely sounding word, it's als a really cool phenomenon. Basically it is a term used to describe when one sensory modality gives rise to another sensory modality. Modality is the technichal term used here for 'type' of sense.
For example, in an auditory synaesthete (a person who experiences synaesthesia is a synaesthete) an auditory experience may give rise to an experience in the visual modality.
Syaesthetes often also experience relationships between the shades of colour, tones of sounds, and intensities of taste. For example, I may see a more intense red on a surface as a pitch rises in tone. Crazy stuff indeed.
If you think about it, we use the concept of synaesthesia in our everyday language. To say someone is 'sweet' for example. The poet Andrew Marvell has saidin his poem 'garden':
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade .
And if you say 'sour lemon'...do you feel a slight sensation of sourness in your mouth as you think about the taste of a lemon?
People who take hallucinogenic grugs such as mescalin and LSD report similar effects of synaesthesia. In fact a friend of mine reported seeing visual patterns corresponding to the sound of music actually coming out of the speaker.
Interesting, no?
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