{"id":12014,"date":"2022-04-17T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-17T03:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=113717"},"modified":"2022-04-17T05:21:12","modified_gmt":"2022-04-17T03:21:12","slug":"what-is-synaesthesia","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/what-is-synaesthesia\/","title":{"rendered":"What is synaesthesia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Dr Claire Asher\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 17 April 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon where stimulation of one sense triggers experiences in another sense. For example, a synaesthete might see colours<\/a> when music<\/a> plays, or taste flavours when they speak different words. The word synaesthesia originates from the Greek words \u2018syn\u2019 for union and \u2018aesthesis\u2019 for sensation, literally translating to \u2018a union of the senses\u2019.<\/p>\n

There are over 70 types of synaesthesia, which cause associations between different types of sensory input, but what they all have in common is that the associations are involuntary, present from early childhood, and remain consistent throughout life. It is thought that synaesthesia is caused by extra connectivity between sensory regions of the brain, so stimulation of one sense cross-activates the other.<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, sound-colour synaesthetes were blindfolded and put into an fMRI scanner. They displayed activity in visual regions of the brain when sounds were played, a pattern not seen in non-synaesthetes. We now know that white matter, which connects different brain regions, is organised differently in synaesthetes\u2019 brains, and they have more grey matter in regions responsible for perception and attention.<\/p>\n

We are all born with many cross-connections between brain regions, but for most of us, these are pruned during early development. One theory is that synaesthetes\u2019 brains go through less pruning, so they experience interlinked senses throughout life.<\/p>\n

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When was synaesthesia discovered? \u00a9 University Of California San Diego\/Hubbard et al.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

When was synaesthesia discovered?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Greek philosophers may have been the first to examine the phenomenon in the 17th Century, when they pondered whether colour was a physical property of music. However, the first documented synaesthete was Georg Tobias Ludwig Sachs, an Austrian physician who wrote about his own experiences with coloured words and music in 1812.<\/p>\n

Interest in the phenomenon faded during the 19th Century and synaesthesia wasn\u2019t formally recognised as a neurological condition until the 1980s. Since then, researchers have begun to unravel the developmental, neurological and psychological roots of synaesthesia, but many questions remain.<\/p>\n

Discover more about the brain:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n