Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff. I'm Lauren voc Obam and today's episode is a classic from our erst file. Host Christian Sager. The topic what is synaesthesia and how does it work? Hey brain Stuff, it's Christian Sager. Have you ever heard a color or smelled a sound? If so, don't worry. You are not alone. Instead, you're part of a group I consider superpowered. You have synast asia, or you've done some crazy drugs, and maybe
that's a different episode. But when people with synastasia experience input from one sense, it results in the experience of another sense. So if you're a sinisty like author Vladimir Nabokov, you would associate letters with colors, grapheme color synast asia, that's what it's called. And there are different types of
synast asia. Nabakov called his color hearing this grapheme color stuff is the most common type, but cinnast asia can occur between just about any combination of senses or cognitive pathways, and not everyone will experience the same type of cynas asia the same way. So while the soft ah sound always seems like fire engine red to one sinistete it maybe cobalt blue for others. Some people with this condition see music, which sounds kind of beautiful when you think
about it. There are less common types, such as lexical gustatory synas asia. People with this condition taste certain flavors, dishes, or entire meals based on a picture, word, or sound. Smells could have colors and shapes to the list goes on. There's mirror touch, cinnast asia, ordinal linguistic personification, and number form where a person sees numbers as a distinct map. So this is all fascinating, but how do people get it?
Researchers are still working on that one, but they believe the condition tends to be somewhat inherited or genetic, as about of sinistats have a close relative with cynast asia. Most sinnistates recall having the condition for as long as they can remember. It might sound like people have made pneumonic connections with sounds, colors, or so on, but research shows it is a genuine sensory phenomenon rather than a
memory exercise. For example, if we drew the number five all over a piece of paper scattered with a few twos, forming a triangle. Most people would have a hard time seeing it. They would have to look closely to search for the twos and then slowly construct the shape, but a graphine color sinistete can see this triangle almost instantly.
Researchers think that cinnast asia is a kind of cross wiring in the brain in graphine color cinis steats, seeing a number stimulates your graphee region and the area of your visual cortex that responds to color stimuli. One theory is that there are increased neural connections in the brain of cynistats that could have been the result of less neural pruning. That's what they call it neural pruning, while
in utero. Even cooler is that there might be actual anatomical differences in the brains of cinistats, like increased white and gray matter in their brains. One bit of sad news for all the non sinnistats out there. Although one study did find that some exposure to color letters built up their association, the effect didn't last, so people can't just catch synaesthesia. But hey, it's not like all the
cynist eats have a great time. It can be uncomfortable to see a number in the wrong color, and one lexical gustatory synist Eats said that if a certain name doesn't taste write to him, he has a hard time liking the person it's attached to. And it's time to talk about drugs. Don't act like you didn't know this was coming. Hallucinogens might be one way that synaesthesia can be manufactured. Several drugs can produce vivid cynist asia in non sinist eats, which might be a key to understanding
the condition. One researcher has positive that in non sinistats, information in a multisensory area travels back easily to its single sense area, but in sinistats it gets a bit mixed up along the way. Hallucinogens may temporarily alter the user's neurochemistry, confusing those existing connections. I mean, let's face it, going to a concert might be pretty amazing for people with visually associated synesthesia. Today's episode was written by Ben
Bolan and produced by Tyler Klang. The brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet how stuff Works dot com and for more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.