Are you a Synesthete? Digging into the psyche.

[Keatah]

Are you a Synesthete? This basically means you have synesthesia - in simple layman's terms it means you perceive something intended for one sense with several senses. Or overlay perceptions generated by one sense over another. This includes intuition. And it can be considered part of your 7th sense.

Or perhaps you assign colors to numbers and letters. Maybe you graph your numbers in a seemingly strangely shaped map or twisted numberline.

None of this is a disease or condition, we all have it, and you'll be glad you can access this aspect of your psyche.

I would expect to hear that a number of you (no pun intended) are numbers and spatially oriented. Being science and spaceflight buffs and all that.



Additional commentary:
I got numbers synesthesia in the extreme. Every number I see and "process" gets put onto an imaginary graph of the classical 1-12 clockface. Then after 12 it sometimes progress into a dial speedometer shape till 100. AND THEN it turns into a long vertical "memory-map" type of chart with the 10's and 100's blocks delineated nicely with alternating shades of grey patterns. After about 1000, the by-now-lengthy chart swings left and takes off like a jet aircraft. It keeps going and going with little or no structure other than a straight line. Off to the right side a second chart forms and records key points along the line, like a set of pointers.

So I practice and manhandle these images into a virtual slide rule which makes for seemingly extraordinary skill at analyzing performance of mechanical devices and cosmic distances. Same thing happens on the microscopic scale.

But here, most everything down to 10-6 is pretty much moving in the right direction with stair-stepping groups of 3's like 1.000 000 000, with each set of 000's being a small box. Numbers smaller than 10-6 become linear and colored like a spectrum.

If working with large distances like lightyears and megaparsecs, I have an adaptable logarithmic scale which also goes from right to left. But always starting in the center. Never ever starting on the right side.

In considering HDD space capacity for example. There are no graphs, no charts, no nothing just a plain simple number. Regardless of size, 10MEGS or 4TB, it's all the same.


Actually it's numbers and spatial forms synesthesia. Thankfully too! No distractions or distorted senses, just a great way of organizing and visualizing things. Very useful in art and mechanical disciplines. Provides many avenues and triggers for remembering events.

Gosh I make it sound like a horrible disease or something. Or coming off as a freak. That really isn't so. And you'd be so lucky as have a "condition" like this. Actually we all do in some capacity or other, it's a question of recognizing it and putting it to use. Them damned psychiatrists label everything as a disease and abnormal. Well WTF *is* normal?

But on the other hand I can't possibly imagine letters having random colors. That would drive me insane! Unlike smelling and hearing days of the week (which I do). That is truly awe inspiring.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia"]http://en.wikipedia....iki/Synesthesia[/ame]
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromesthesia"]http://en.wikipedia....i/Chromesthesia[/ame]
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_form"]http://en.wikipedia....iki/Number_form[/ame]
http://galton.org/es...ed-numerals.pdf

Now if the daylight would stop screaming in my head I could get on with repairing some disks..

 

[Artlav]

Calendar.
Days go in a ribbon, counter-clockwise, with the winter at the bottom, spring rising on the right, summer proceeding on the top and fall falling on the left.

The ribbon twists into blocks of each month, each with an first day offset from the centreline.

So, if i know which day of the week jan 1 of the year was, i can tell the day of the week of any date in that year just by "looking" at the right place.

It's half-acquired, actually. The ribbon-spiral of the year was with me since the childhood, but the dates and offsets i've worked out and integrated into it when i was in the university already.

Never realised it can be related to synesthesia - i always thought that was seeing coloured letters or something.

 

[MeDiCS]

Util a few years ago, small numbers were uniquely coloured, and smells still are. Most abstract concepts have a visual representation, which I end up using when solving some problem. Math is a prime example: numbers are, sometimes rather complex, 1/2/3D structures, which are grown, shrinked, clipped, and joined as I do computations on it.

This type of synesthesia seems quite normal however. The really interesting cases are non-visual, such as smell for musical notes, or the reverse.

 

[sitha241]

You are x-men!
Just like MeDiCS I had same thing until I was 15-16..

 

[Urwumpe]

Can't remember much like that, I suspect I have a strong bug in my intuition there. I have a strange 7th sense when driving my car. I have an electric feeling in my back and a feeling of danger - and then usually a deer runs in front of my car, when I am already standing on the brakes and prepared for it. Never ever hit one. One night, I actually had this feeling already so early, that I had to honk the poor shocked animal away from the road so I can drive home.

I can't explain, why I notice the presence of animals that strong. I can't notice posts in my way and usually need hours finding what I want in a supermarket. But have a mouse fart next to me while doing a walk, and I am already turning my head to it before I even thought about it.

When tabletop gaming, I have a sense of flow on the board. I look at our own units and the units of our enemies, and I start sensing how the many small individual units turn into clouds, which are attracted and repelled. I can't really tell it is a different sense, it is just a feeling for the situation there. I see where our opponents would have to go in the future, because of a sensed inertia. I could later spend hours analyzing the situation, like a friend usually did before doing his move of his single unit, and find out that my feeling was right, the alternatives would have been far worse choices. But I already felt this way after just meditating over the situation for a minute.

But I suspect, that is just a trained capability, not really special. Every unit is just a particle, and if you try to think in individual particles while handing 30+ units, you will go insane. You need to abstract and then only fit the coarse solution for all units to the exact unit. Then, your opponent can't really surprise you, the order in which you move is not so important, because you already know where your opponent will be moving, so it is no problem if you have to move before your opponent.

 

[Izack]

The Internet: where you find out the things you were laughed at for as a child turn out to be actually normal.

 

[Ghostrider]

That's situational awareness. Your mind unconsciously paints a composite picture of your surroundings collating data from various senses and then slaps your conscious mind with it. With tabletop gaming it is trained - simply the mind adapts to the new "senses" and presents the conscious with information the way it would do with the real stuff.
This is actually good - trying to consciously think about every tidbit of information on purpose simply overloads you and makes your head *EXPLODE*.

 

[jedidia]

I'm strongly concept oriented. Visuals, sounds, numbers, whatever, I can't remember any of it unless I understand the logic behind it.

Beyond that, I'm completely avisual. I have a very hard time remembering whatever images, I'm mostly not very touched by images, I have an almost impossible time imagining what something should look like in my head, and my spatial sense is the stuff of legend... That is, how incredibly bad it is. If I figure out a way by myself, or you give me a good verbal description, I'm pretty sure to find it again.
If you show me the way on a map, or even drive me the whole way n times, I'm sure to get lost first time searching it on my own.

It is somewhat better with sound. I hear people talking when reading a book, but I can't see them. Their faces and clothes remain literal descriptions without any visuals, but their voices get fleshed out, even get accents that were not described

On the other hand, remembering a complex rythm is almost impossible too. I have to write it down, practice it, and then I'll actually visually see the notes even when I don't read them while playing. I orient myself in the song by looking at where I am in the page and knowing where on the page I'll have to be next. Until I really know the song, then it all just gets muscle memory anyways.

I'm not sure why I have to visualise sound to remember it despite generally being able to remember sounds better than visuals. It's more the process of writing down the sound and rehearsing it that I remember than the actual visualisation, I guess...

 

[marooder86]

I think we are all Synesthetes one way or another and I think it might have something to do with our consciousness. Though we all have the same hardware(brain), the software(consciousness) is most probably totally differernt for each of us, thus we percieve the same things in a different ways.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y"]Here[/ame] are some Richard Feynman thoughts about this fenomena I find iteresting.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

0-transparent
1-white
2-red
3-light green
4-blue
5-darker red
6-light green
7-dark green
8-purple
9-orange

My mind has worked like that since grade school, but I did'nt really notice it until the last year or two. In that sense, a matrix looks like a painting to me.

I also associate chemistry with the monty Python "Spam" sketch. That one is a bit of a longer story.

 

[Izack]

I recall one being blue, two being green, three being rose, four being yellow, five being maroon, seven being green, and nine being something to avoid at all costs. It's been a while since I've thought of things this way, or thought of thinking of things this way. It faded some years ago.

Nowadays, my mind is organised in an odd way that works only for me, seemingly. For instance, to remember something important, I think of that thing, then let my mind wander to wherever it will afterwards. It will create an association between those things, and if ever I think of the second one again, the first one will immediately return much more clearly than if I had simply tried to remember it in the first place.

I'm surprised at how much this is documented, mostly because I'd always considered myself to be 'strange,' or possibly insane at earlier, less etablished points in life, and never would have thought any of thise was anywhere near to normality.

Psychologists!

Edit:

I also associate chemistry with the monty Python "Spam" sketch. That one is a bit of a longer story.

:blink: !!
For whatever reason, I immediately thought of Chemistry when reading your 'SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM' signature. I propose research be done on this 'Canadian Telepathy.'

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

I recall one being blue, two being green, three being rose, four being yellow, five being maroon, seven being green, and nine being something to avoid at all costs. It's been a while since I've thought of things this way, or thought of thinking of things this way. It faded some years ago.

Nowadays, my mind is organised in an odd way that works only for me, seemingly. For instance, to remember something important, I think of that thing, then let my mind wander to wherever it will afterwards. It will create an association between those things, and if ever I think of the second one again, the first one will immediately return much more clearly than if I had simply tried to remember it in the first place.

I'm surprised at how much this is documented, mostly because I'd always considered myself to be 'strange,' or possibly insane at earlier, less etablished points in life, and never would have thought any of thise was anywhere near to normality.

Psychologists!

Edit:


:blink: !!
For whatever reason, I immediately thought of Chemistry when reading your 'SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM' signature. I propose research be done on this 'Canadian Telepathy.'

...(Theme from the twilight zone starts playing)...

That is really weird. My association with Spam/Chemistry comes from 2 things. The first one was a chem test during which the sketch was stuck in my head. It ended up being one of the best ones I wrote that year...

The other half is a sort of odd one. At the end of the sketch the vikings are wandering around & bumping into each other, like a gas molecule...

I think it would be worthwile for others to post their number associations, so we can see if there are any commonalities. Whats wrong with 9?

 

[Izack]

Whats wrong with 9?

I don't remember exactly, but whenever I wrote, said or thought it, I felt compelled to think the word 'then' and then blink twice before anyone in earshot said anything. But that's [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive_compulsive_disorder"]another issue entirely[/ame].

 

[FADEC]

Weekdays, and moth.

No matter in which context I have to say/write/think about a certain day or month, there is always the picture of the blackboard in my had, on which my teacher wrote the weekdays and month when we had to learn it back in elementary school.

Same for numbers as well. From 1 to 10 I always "see" the numbers in my head as a horizontal row. Followed by another row below it, from 11 to 20. And so on. And always on top of the blackboard. Even during mental math.

Is this already related to synesthesia? Or I am just suffering from a school disease? :lol:

 

[Aeadar]

I got numbers synesthesia in the extreme. Every number I see and "process" gets put onto an imaginary graph of the classical 1-12 clockface. Then after 12 it sometimes progress into a dial speedometer shape till 100.

Interesting.

My number 'structure':



It seemed easier to do it this way than to try and describe.

Each group of ten follows a basic 'U' shape except for the teens, and I don't know why I visualize the teens differently, but I always do. The structure follows this pattern to 100, and then repeats.

And the teens are always this way.(Always bugged me it has.)

 

[Aviator]

I see numbers sort of stair stepping to the right but not evenly, 0 - 10 horizontal then 10-100 vertical, 100-10000 horizontal 10,000 to 1M vertical then i just imagine it continuing off into infinity to the right slowly bending upward the further you go.

Artlav reminded me, i have always wondered if i could train myself to mentally "see" a slide rule and work it in my head to get the answers to complex problems without actually doing any math..