What is synesthesia?
Synesthesia, also spelled synaesthesia, is a mingling of the senses that can cause you to taste words, see sounds, attribute colors and/or personalities to numbers etc., or see days of the week in a spatial position around you. And those are just some of the types of synesthesia that synesthetes experience. There are approximately 63-100 types of synesthesia, with nine major categories. The most common type of synesthesia is associating colors to numbers, letters, words, or symbols. This type of synesthesia is also known as grapheme-color synesthesia. Grapheme-color synesthetes have trouble reading color texts, because the colors most often coincide with their own internal colors. And each grapheme-color synesthete had a different color for …show more content…
For example, for one person, the letter A might be sunflower yellow, but for another synesthete, A might be blood-red when they think of it, hear it in conversation, or read it. Grapheme-color synesthetes have an easier time of remembering things, because they have both color and fact to fall back on. For instance, a synesthete might remember that the war of 1812 was in 1812 by remembering that, to them, that the year 1812 is a bright blue. Of course, grapheme color is just one of many types of synesthesia, some of the rarest of synesthesia types being Lexical-gustatory synesthesia, which is the association of words and tastes -for instance, maybe the word “Duck” tastes like cold, crispy fried chicken; Mirror-touch synesthesia (which is something like a really strong form of empathy, you feel the same sensation another person feels, like pain.); Personification, which is when you attribute personality to things like numbers- for example, J is an outgoing older man; and Auditory-tactile synesthesia, which is a specific sound triggering a specific sensation in the body. And some synesthetes experience more than one type of synesthesia. For instance, one woman saw sounds, and