What A Pretty Sound!

Usually when one hears the phrase, “ what a pretty sound”, they think of it in the way that it sounds. But if one hears this phrase from nineteen year old, Samantha, she means it literally. Samantha was diagnosed with Synesthesia when she was just a little girl. She explains synesthesia as a disorder in your brain, where the senses in your brain get crossed. It makes her able to see the music she plays and tasting objects that is not food. Samantha explains that when she hears the letter A she sees a bright pink swirl in front of her. When she sees a chair she says she can literally taste an apple. Samantha described life as a child when she would play the piano. She told us that she noticed that she would see swirling colors in front of her face. She didn’t know that that wasn’t normal, she thought that everyone saw colors like this when they heard music. Samantha is a rare case when it comes to her synesthesia. Synesthesia is mainly genetic but it can also happen after a stroke or brain tumor and it can also be caused by different hallucinogens. Samantha had a brain tumor when she was just 3 years old. One of her symptoms was synesthesia. Her doctor said that he would be able to safely remove the tumor but the synesthesia would still be there. When we asked her, if given the chance, if there was a cure for synesthesia would she want it. She said, “No, I don’t think I would get the treatment. I think of this disorder as a gift from God. I like being able to see all the different pretty colors when I play my piano. Plus, it brightens up my day.” Samantha is very optimistic about her synesthesia. Synesthesia has been around for centuries and scientist have not yet found a cure for it yet. We asked Samantha if her synesthesia affects her daily life and she said, “ No it doesn’t affects my daily life. I mean, yes, my life is different from others but I can live on my own and do the things that I enjoy still.”
A recent study has shown that there is a new type of synesthesia, hearing motion. Hearing motion is described as hearing something when you see an object in motion. Dr. Saenz, a neurobiologist in California Institute of Technology, discovered a boy that said he could hear something when he was shown a screen full of dots that were converging and expanding. So there are different types of synesthesia that you could have. There are usually 31 combinations of the senses but since, in synesthesia, only two are paired together it brings the number down to 20 possible combinations. But the pairings are generally only one way, such as sound can create color but color can not create a sound. The estimate number of people in the U.S. that have synesthesia varies greatly from one in every two thousand to one in every twenty-five thousand. Synesthetes can function at a very high level academically. People with synesthesia are very intelligent, very creative, and have excellent memories. They have better memories than people without synesthesia because they can usually associate people’s names with a taste or a color. Many people with synesthesia end up become musicians or artist. They find an outlet for their synesthesia. Many painters will paint what they are seeing and musicians just like to see what they are playing. Synesthesia can also be triggered by different types of drugs. Drugs like LSD and hashish is a good example. The feelings that both of these drugs give you is somewhat related to how you would feel if you were synesthetic. So synesthesia is genetic, or you can acquire it, like Samantha, or it can be triggered by different types of hallucinogenic drugs.