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I’ve never been so glad I was wrong – turns out it wasn’t wikipedia that let me down, it was person doing the subtitles, and me of course. Anywyas, as many of you have pointed out, yes, my spelling was wrong, its in fact spelled synesthesia or synesthaesia like I suspected, and here is the wiki link where you can read more about this fascinating condition. oh and the people who have this are called synesthetes.
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I can’t believe it, but wikipedia has let me down, and not on some random obscure topic either. I wanted to know more about synthaesthesia, but the good old wiki had nothing to offer. Its not even recognised as a word here, angry red zigzaggy lines under it.
I caught the end 5 minutes of a documentary on it just now, on Discovery channel. Synthaesthesia is a neurological condition that approximately affects 1% of the world’s population. Synthaetics somehow link different sensory parts of their brains together. Most cases are discovered through sound and taste, in association with colour. For example, synthaetics listen to music and immediately visualise different colours for various notes and instruments. similarly, some also taste foods and each food has a unique colour, but not one that can be set by the person themselves. as a result, sometimes a delicious food or beautiful instrument might have an awful colour. Many times, sythaetics choose music/food according to the colour combinations that they offer, so the man in the documentary I watched had an interesting dinner menu. Roast chicken with a sideline of vanilla ice cream all lathered in orange sauce. According to him, that combination produced a lovely mixture of sky blues that appeared in a large oval in front of him, and faded as the taste wore off. He also said that although he enjoys the sound of a french horn, he cannot stand the colour associated with it, which is akin to an oily green.
Scientists still don’t know what causes it, though they came up with 2 theories. the first is that the parts of the brain of synthaetics somehow are linked closer to each other than normal human brains are. The second theory is that all human brains are connected physically but because of the opposing stimuli the connections are hampered or something.