Synethesia: I Taste Blue & Hear Orange

Ever wonder what it would be like to hear the color orange or taste the color green? When I first stumbled upon this disorder, I thought it was so peculiar how our bodies could somehow be cross wired and pick up things not meant for them.  It sort of felt like what it would be like being on a walkie talkie on a different wavelength picking up signals meant for someone else.  Most people would find tasting colors is just silly, but to people who have to live with synesthesia that is often the case. Synesthesia is the perception of one sense is simultaneously perceived by another or other senses.  Although this disease has no official established method to diagnose, about every 1 in 200 people have synesthesia.  It is thought that people with synesthesia’s neurons and synapses that are supposed to be within one sensory system somehow cross to another sensory system. It is also believed that these synesthetic experiences happen in the cerebral cortex. The most common form is colored letters and numbers.  The way a person with synesthesia perceives life is involuntary.  They don’t think of what they are seeing they just see.  It is projected outside of the body rather than just in the mind when they are asked to imagine something.  For a patient to have synesthesia, it must be the same everytime.  For example, if you see blue when your try to imagine a 7, it has to be blue always. The video below is a short film I found on Youtube.  The two boys have different kinds of synesthesia.  The boy who is putting headphones into different foods perceives tastes as sounds.  The boy who is on the floor smelling records perceives sound as smell.  The items all coming out of the giant speakers show that sound can be perceived as different colors, shapes or textures.