Note on my Synaesthesia
• For me, music and thoughts are shape-shifting dense 3D clouds
• I see two distinct scripts in a variety of colours and relative weights
• Because I am fluent in four languages, colours of one letter can bleed into that of another, depending on how they appear in particular words
As far back as I can remember, I have seen letters and numbers in colours. I never thought anything about it, it was just the way it was. I had no clue it was anything unusual or uncommon. I took it for granted that that must be how everyone saw letters and numbers. Much later, in my early twenties, I realized by chance that this is something unusual. I was struck by something or the other I had seen, and later I excitedly told my then girlfriend: "You know it was yellow, fluoroscent yellow like D". She said "Yeah, yellow huh, fluoroscent... uh... sorry, what was D?". And I said: "You know D, capital D, it was fluoroscent yellow like D." And she looked uncomprehendingly at me, vaguely suspecting a joke or a prank, vaguely sensing I was speaking earnestly, and not quite comprehending what I was on about. Gradually, it dawned on me that something wasn't getting conveyed, something that was glaringly obvious to me. So I changed the topic, and that was that.
Few years later, I was sitting in my PhD lab and browsing the internet, and suddenly I came across this article explaining how a tiny minority of human beings see letters and numbers in colour, and that the phenomenon belongs to a family of neurological phenomena called 'synaesthesia'. I was so excited by this I instantly mailed my girlfriend (not the one who was puzzled about fluoroscent yellow D, that one and I broke off later) working in another lab "You know what... I just realized I suffer from synaesthesia!" (In hindsight, I should not have used the word 'suffer'.) And within a few minutes I received her alarmed reply: "How do you know? Who told you you suffer from synaesthesia? How can you tell without any tests?" I admit I was a little put off. I thought surely it was not such a big deal, I mean, yes, I saw numbers and letters in colours, but why the hell is she sounding so alarmed. Later, she told me what had happened. On reading my mail, she had asked a labmate what 'synaesthesia' was, and the labmate had told her it was a fatal illness of the liver!
I think these kind of tragicomic tales are common to the lives of all synaesthetes. Fortunately for me, they remained on the comic side. Since then, I have become more aware of various aspects of my synaesthesia. I realized that I have other kinds of synaesthesia too, though I wasn't consciously aware of them until my 20s. A synaesthete describing these phenomena would be a fun read for at least some readers, so here it is.
Grapheme-colour synaesthesia
Let's begin with the most common and well-researched one: grapheme-colour synaesthesia, in which letters/numbers have colours. I learnt two scripts in childhood, Latin and Devanagari; I see both these scripts in colour, and have no memory of the colours ever not being there. As an adult, I tried learning Kannada and Telugu and Malayalam scripts, but had a lot of difficulty due to the absence of colour variations. Even today, Kannada and Telugu and Malayalam letters all appear the same neutral white/grey shade to me. The equivalent Latin or Devanagari letters appear in their respective colours if I think of them while trying to imagine Kannada/Telugu/Malayalam letters, but the scripts I later learnt remain monochrome. However, if I imagine a Kannada/Telugu/Malayalam phrase written in Devanagari or Latin, I see the phrase in my 'normal' Devanagari or Latin colours.
So at least for me, sensory cross-connections did not develop in case of scripts I learnt as an adult. Why? Maybe one has to learn scripts before the childhood pruning of neuronal connections happens, so that the sensory cross-connections remain unpruned in some brains. Perhaps the adult brain simply isn't plastic enough for new sensory cross-connections. I am simply speculating, I don't know the reasons. Moving on...
Here are a few noteworthy points about my grapheme-colour synaesthesia:
- I find it difficult to describe the exact shade of the colour of an alphabet.
- Blue is completely absent in my alphabet and number colour scheme.
- Letters have a strong and distinct colour, but words do not have colours as distinct and strong, because the colours of the letters in a word sometimes cancel each other. So a word is often a spectrum of colours, though the colours of the first two or three letters dominate.
- Depending on the script in which I was first exposed to a word, I instantly visualize some words in Devanagari and some words in Latin, and some words in both scripts.
Travails of a synaesthete fluent in four languages and two scripts
I can fluently speak, read, and write
- Konkani, which does not have its own script, and therefore is written in whichever script the writer knows (Devanagari or Latin in my case)
- Marathi, written in Devanagari script
- Hindi, also written in Devanagari script (but with notable differences to the way Marathi is written)
- English, written in Latin script
This multilingual life leads to fascinating synaesthetic mixtures/mixups. Few examples:
- For me, Latin 'g' has a colour similar to that of Devenagari 'рдЧ', a faded wood orange. (As I said earlier, I find it very hard to accurately describe the colours I see letters in. This kind of peculiar descriptions are the best I can do.) However, consider this: the 'G' in 'Germany' is pronounced differently from the 'G' in 'Greece'. In Devanagari, 'Germany' starts with 'рдЬ' (and is written as 'рдЬрд░реНрдордиреА'), not 'рдЧ', and I see the two Devanagari letters in very different colours. For me, the colour of Devanagari 'рдЬ' is similar to that of Latin 'J', a faded honey maroon. So when I imagine 'Germany' in Latin script, the colour of 'J' bleeds into the "original" colour of 'G', so that the 'G' in Germany has a colour which is a mixture of the colours of standalone 'G' and standalone 'J'.
- Consider the word 'gimp'. I had read it long before hearing anyone pronounce it, and I started pronouncing the 'G' like in 'Gibraltar', and not like in 'Gilbert'. So I ended up visualizing the word in Devanagari as 'рдЬрд┐рдореНрдк' ('jimp') or 'рдЬрд┐рдВрдк', and not as 'рдЧрд┐рдореНрдк' or 'рдЧрд┐рдВрдк'. Now I know that the latter pronunciation is correct, but the former Devanagari picture (with the colour for 'рдЬ' or 'j') is stuck in my mind, and it often slows me down when I want to pronounce the word. It also affects the colour of the 'g' in 'gimp'. When I visualize 'gimp', a bit of the colour of 'j' bleeds into the original colour of 'g'.
- Let's talk about the name 'Zaheer'. In Marathi, 'Zaheer' is written as 'рдЭрд╣реАрд░', while in Hindi, it is written as 'рдЬрд╝рд╣реАрд░'. Recall that the first letter of the Hindi word is similar to the first letter of 'Germany' written in Devanagari, but now with a dot at the bottom. For me, the dot makes no difference, the colour of that letter remains faded honey maroon. In contrast, the colour of 'Z' is textured dark green, while the colour of 'рдЭ' is a sort of whitish gray, with a bit of green bleeding into it. In contrast to my experiences with 'Germany', the colours of 'Z' in 'Zaheer', 'рдЭ' in 'рдЭрд╣реАрд░' (Devanagari Marathi) and 'рдЬ' in 'рдЬрд╝рд╣реАрд░' (Devanagari Hindi) remain largely unaffected.
- The 'zh' in 'Alappuzha' (a place in Kerala, India) is pronounced like a hard 'la' (the sound is made by dragging the tip of the tongue from the back of the mouth's ceiling towards the front). Marathi has the letter 'рд│' for the hard 'la', so the name of the place in Kerala can be written as 'рдЖрд▓рдкреНрдкреБрд│рд╛' in Marathi. However, Devanagari script for Hindi lacks 'рд│', so the place's name is often written in Hindi as 'рдЖрд▓рдкреНрдкреБрдбрд╝рд╛', a doesn't-feel-right approximation similar to the 'zh' in Latin script. Since my colours for 'рд│', for 'z' and for 'h', and for 'рдбрд╝'' are very different, and since the word written in Latin or in Hindi Devanagari feels wrong to me, I always mentally translate 'Alappuzha' written in Latin or 'рдЖрд▓рдкреНрдкреБрдбрд╝рд╛' written in Devanagari Hindi to 'рдЖрд▓рдкреНрдкреБрд│рд╛' in Devanagari Marathi, and take it from there.
- I did a PhD on DNA and RNA and protein structures, so had to frequently deal with their 3D models. Nitrogen and oxygen are always part of these molecules, and nitrogen often ends up with a net positive charge, while oxygen ends up with a net negative charge. Therefore, by convention, 'N' for nitrogen is shown blue, and 'O' for oxygen is shown red in models of these molecules. These colours clash violently with my colours for 'N' (kind of orangish red) and 'O' (a peculiar shade of grey), so I always had some difficulty dealing with real 3D models for DNA/RNA/proteins, as well as with their digital versions.
I also see all music in colour, but it is almost monochrome, they are all shades of grey. However, I also 'see' music as a sort of distinct three-dimensional cloud with weight and volume and density (more on that below).
Timbre-shape synaesthesia, but with a very strong sense of comparative weights
The Devanagari and Latin letters and numbers I see are not simply line sketches in particular colours, they are three-dimensional shapes with a certain density and hence weight. A 'рдЬ' is heavier than a 'рдХ', for example (but the equivalent 'j' is not as heavy compared to the equivalent 'k'). However, I don't assign precise quantities to these densities and weights, I just know that 'that' letter or word is heavier than 'this' letter or word. A shorter word made up of heavy letters is overall heavier than a longer word made up of light letters. As an example, 'рднрддреАрдЬреА' (the Hindi word for 'niece') is heavier than the longer word рдХрдорд▓рд╛рдХрд░ (a male name, spelled 'Kamalakar' in Latin) because it has heavier letters.
When I imagine a sentence, it has a shape and size and volume and rough weight. In fact, at the level of sentences and paragraphs and sections of text, the colours of individual letters and numbers blur into each other leaving behind a whitish grey monochrome, while the dynamic of the shape and size and weight overwhelmingly dominates the visual picture. The text cloud pulsates with life. This often helps me in remembering sentences/phrases. It also helps me in judging if I am remembering correctly—the overall shape and size and volume and weight feels wrong if even a single word is off.
I also have a very visual picture of the real number line in mathematics as a hyper-dense two-dimensional cloud kind of region (with the third dimension along the conventional z-axis not absent but squeezed into a very narrow zone), and of zooming in and finding the zoomed-in region as dense, and zooming in and again finding the cloud as dense. I see integers as vivid points in that cloud along a roughly linear path
Musical tunes as shape-shifting clouds with weight/volume/density
As mentioned above, I see any music as a distinct three-dimensional cloud with weight and volume and density. As the music ebbs and flows, the cloud also shifts in shape and size. I tend to prefer music that climbs down and up and down and..., as compared to music that remains at the same pitch, because the former is far more exciting visually.
I tend to remember tunes because of this synaesthesia; often, I end up identifying even a very small segment of a musical composition as something I heard in some other piece in the past. Sometimes, I can identify that the segment I am listening to is a slowed down or speeded up version of another segment heard long ago.
I have no formal training in music, so the language I use to convey such information is hand-wavy. Readers trained in music can judge this from the previous two paragraphs.
For me, other sounds also have vague shapes associated with them, but they lack the richness of the clouds associated with music. These shapes are ephemeral, ghost-like.
Interestingly, in case of music, I find it extremely difficult to remember lyrics; when I hum, I simply tend to put whatever words come to mind, and roughly fit the tune. (In contrast, I have a strong memory for text I have read/heard.) I think this inability to remember lyrics is a side-effect of seeing tunes as shape-shifting clouds. Because I see visuals only for the tunes, and not for the lyrics, I struggle to retain memory of the lyrics.
Thoughts as shape-shifting clouds with weight/volume/density
My thoughts are also visual, very similar to the visuals for music. They are distinct three-dimensional clouds—they literally ebb and flow, they change in shape and size, they thin out or they become denser.
I don't even know if this qualifies as synaesthesia. However, because of this, I cannot study or think deeply while music is playing in the background. Heck, I cannot even jog/run on the street with earphones plugged in. The visuals for the music occupy most of my mental bandwidth, and I am unable to concentrate on thinking or even running with a good rhythm.
Synaesthesia influences both leisure and work
Synaesthesia plays a role in what I write and how I write. It influences the way I watch and enjoy movies. It has a bearing on what I remember, and how I remember it.
Synaesthesia makes me quite literally a slow learner. When I am reading an academic textbook, I automatically visualize the letters, words and sentences I am reading, while also simultaneously visualizing the thoughts triggered by the lesson/concept elaborated by the text I am reading. On top of that, the lesson may include actual figures or graphs, which I need to understand and assimilate. I may also visualize the actual diesel generator or bacterial culture or whatever else the text is describing. All these visuals compete for mental bandwidth, and make it hard for me to learn at a good clip. I need to think through the lesson again, I need to come at it from many different angles, I need to imagine myself explaining it from different perspectives, I need to fit it into multiple larger pictures, and I need to engage in other forms of mental gymnastics, before I feel even remotely confident of having learnt it. On the other hand, once learnt, I remember the essence of the lesson for a very long time, because I have so many visuals and shapes and sizes and densities associated with that topic, and I can sort of move fluidly between them as one cloud effortlessly morphs into another.
Synaesthesia also influences the way I think about and analyze scientific problems. For example, I instinctively find eternalism, or the idea of the block universe (implied by general relativity), very dull. It feels static, it feels boring. In contrast, I find fascinating the challenges to this view coming from studies of the brain. For example, we know that our consciousness does not present every single instant to the brain, it packages multiple instances together and presents it as one unified experience. Essentially, we experience slices of time, not single instants. This gels with neither eternalism nor presentism, but it somehow corresponds with how I visualize the real number line and various mathematical topologies, and therefore feels correct.
To be clear, I am not really commenting on the objective validity of any theory of time. None of the theories of time we have at present succeed in reconciling biology and physics. I am simply highlighting how the peculiar architecture of an individual's brain may bias him in favour of one approach over another.
Overall, synaesthesia is intrinsic to who I am, it is woven into the warp and weft of my personality.
Do other animals have synaesthesia?
I sometimes wonder whether crows or dolphins or elephants or non-human apes have synaesthesia. Since they do not have scripts, they are unlikely to have grapheme-colour synaesthesia, but I think they would have other kinds of synaesthesia. I see no reason why cross-connections between senses cannot happen in non-human animals. However, it may be hard for human researchers to design behavioral experiments to prove this. And harder to procure funding for such a study!
Social and biological aspects of synaesthesia?
Is the proportion of synaesthesia among malnourished children, or among the children of chronically malnourished parents higher or lower as compared to well-nourished children of well-fed parents? Contemporary societies are highly unequal and exploitative—will the proportion of synaesthetes in the population change as societies become more/less egalitarian? In which direction?
I guess we will never know the answers to these questions. Synaesthesia is fascinating to those who are interested in it, but it doesn't seem particularly relevant socially. Neither its presence nor absence is a pathology or a disability, so there is no reason to spend enormous resources understanding it.
Nevertheless, study of synaesthesia may throw light on brain development, research might some day indicate whether it is evolutionarily selected, or merely a spandrel. For these reasons, it will always remain an intellectual rabbithole for a tiny proportion of scientists and artists and enthusiasts. This feels right, I think that's just the way it should be.