Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a condition of people who have mixed senses. For example, when you hear a sound, you see something. Or you see something, and that triggers you to taste something. This condition hasn't been studied for a long time and they thought such condition was rare, but as internet became accessible to everyone they noticed that this condition is not that rare after all and reported by many. Most common of this condition is number to colour association. People with this type of synesthesia has colours for numbers.
I saw a TV program about synesthesia about 15 years ago. When I saw this, I realized that this thing had a name. From then on, I could read about this condition. My strongest synesthesia was people and colour. Not everyone has a colour, but many people had a colour. Some people have very strong colour, and some people have weak colour. When I was in elementary school, my good friend had very strong dark green colour. It was true that she often wore green, but my association of the colour was so strong that I asked myself why there was such a strong green with her. I haven't seen it in my eyes, but I had such a strong green feeling about her. I also have colours for many things. School subjects always had a colour, so when I make a time table, I always coloured the right subject colour. Sometimes I couldn't find the right pencil, or more than one subjects had similar colour, but as much as I could, I used the right colour for the subject. I also tried match colours of notebooks with the subject, too. I have colours to numbers, weeks, month, and many other things. However this association had weakened over the years. It was very strong when I was younger, but not any more. I also noticed that loud music bothers my visual. When I was in a car, if the radio or music is on, I feel that I can't see very well. It is not that I can't really see, but I just have this feeling that noise interferes with my viewing.
I took different synesthesia tests online. Today, I took one at http://synesthete.org . I didn't remember I ever registered there before, because I took many different tests online in past several years. It turned out that I took the test on this web site in 2009. I recovered my lost password and I took the test again. For number/letter colour association test, I got the score of 0.82. They say that if you get the score of less than 1.0, you are synesthete. I could also see the score I got from 2009. My old score was 0.72. I took a look at the colours I made association in 2009. Most of them are the same, but some are changed. As I said, my synesthesia isn't so strong now, and my strongest association was people to colour. For some symbols, I have stronger association of a colour, but for some other symbols, I don't have strong sense. I have to think and feel which colour the symbol could be. Sometimes I can't say exactly which colour it is because I get more than two right colours. For example, Y. Y is either green or yellow. I think it is green, but sometimes I think it is yellow. When I look at the test results, both 2009 and today, I had associated with both. Many of other associated colours are shade of brown and hard to describe. Some have more reddish brown, and others have more yellowish brown. To feel the distinction between different browns aren't very easy. For today's test, there were more tests than 2009. I tried week, months, sound, Chinese characters tests, too and all were under 1.0 except Chinese character test.
Apparently, this condition could be inherited. My daughter has some form of synesthesia, too. First time I noticed was that she told me that when she hears a word "fish", the back of her foot becomes ticklish. She didn't have any other words that made her feel differently, but then, a few years ago, she reported that she has time lines. Time line is that some people have time ordered in space. I don't have a such thing and when I read about it, I didn't quite get this, but my daughter described me exactly like what I read. So we have totally different types of synesthesia but we both have some.
If you want to try the test yourself, register at http://synesthete.org and go to the synesthesia battery test. Although it makes you tired, it is fun, too.

Image by twitchcraft on flickr