Synesthesia: A Fragment of the Aggregate
When Franz Liszt asked his orchestra to play “a little bluer,” they were filled with confusion. Liszt had sound to color synesthesia: he saw colors when listening to music. His reality was that the colors were always there, and the conductor expected that all others experienced senses the same way. In truth, multitudes of people are affected with this perceptual phenomenon. Liszt is just one example and type of many. Others see characters with colors, feel sensations on their skin when hearing or eating, and more. Although the combinations and significance are widespread, the knowledge about synesthesia is not so grand. If psychologists could get a better understanding of this phenomenon, they could grasp a greater hold on the processes and mechanisms of the brain. Despite not being very common, the importance of understanding synesthesia is immense; as seen by defining synesthesia, displaying how it alters perception, and how that is relevant to studying other sensational problems that have arisen and could arise.
It is often our assumption that those around us are viewing and experiencing the same environment in the same way — but this is false. By knowing about synesthesia, scientists know that perceiving the world is not as cut-and-dry as it has been known to be. Feldman states that this trait takes place when the stimulation of one of the senses arouses another (Feldman, 2015, p. 113). Psychologists and researchers debate the number of assortments, ranging from 60 to 150 kinds (Zaraska, 2016). What causes synesthesia? Watson describes that this occurs when there is an “unusual connectivity between brain areas responsible for processing stimuli from the inducer domain and areas responsible for concurrent experiences.” A synesthete’s reaction of senses is normally caused by what the person has learned about the object that induces their reaction (Watson et. al., 201, p. 4, 11). For example, if a synesthete’s parents are often angry, they may view them as being red in color. Their brain preserves what they have learned and as more is learned, more connections are made. They begin to associate one stimulus with another and by using these associations, synesthetes learn about the state of the environment. Sheridan found that the “the brain cells of synesthetes were more interconnected than those of people without this trait” (Sheridan, 2018). Synesthesia establishes in the early stages of development when the brain is plastic enough to take on powerful connections (Watson et al., 2014, 11). Most synesthetes are such since they can remember and very few of them learn this trait when older than adolescents. Another theory regards that this phenomena occurs in conjunction with genes. The “synesthesia genotype” stems from a variety of genetic characteristics (Zaraska, 2016). Six of the 20,000 genes of the genome differ in synesthetes. Although they seem small, these changes have a profound ramification on perception (Sheridan, 2018). Theories show that synesthesia is both learned and biological. It dictates the way of life and recognition of reality in those affected. Humans may not all be synesthetes (only a small fraction are), but all humans experience the world in disparate ways.
How does synesthesia alter perception? The “brain of a synesthete responds differently to sensory stimulation than a typical brain” (Zaraska, 2016). Not only are the senses experienced real, they are involuntary and natural. The normal brain will activate solely the area of the brain involved in that specific sense. However, synesthetes activate language-processing areas, vision, and color at once. When their brains are scanned, it looks like they are “bulb-laden Christmas trees” (Lemley, 1999). The color viewed is just as “vivid as real color at the subjective level.” Rather than creating new connections in the brain, synesthetes are just taking advantage of processes that all humans have — but rarely use. Chiou and Rich state that “we propose a conceptualization of synesthesia as a benign anomaly of the general mechanisms for representing object concepts” (Chiou and Rich, 2014, p. 2, 7). Expanding on this, the psychologists concede that synesthesia has roots in cognition (thought, experience, and senses) but where they differ from the typical brain is they build a different network of connections (7). They gather that behavioral evidence suggests “synesthesia is strongly reliant upon and influenced by the conceptual representation of inducers and has attributes that are distinct from those of actual color” (2). What can be concluded from the summation of Zaraska, Lemly, Chiou, and Rich is that the brain of a synesthete takes advantage of more connections in order to make this phenomenon just as realistic as any other of the senses.
Synesthetes show psychologists the learning and comprehension benefits of having a more interconnected brain. Lemley contends that the answers found when studying this phenomenon may “illuminate a central existential conundrum [of the brain]” (Lemley, 1999). Cognitive scientists agree that these people lead the way to understanding the puzzle of human consciousness. Through the study of synesthesia, scientists have discovered that “immune proteins play a part in brain development and maintenance,” and the central nervous system is affected by the immune system (Zaraska, 2016). This is based on the oddly high number of people with autism, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and migraine who also have synesthesia.
This phenomenon aids in the process of learning and production of avant-garde thoughts. Synesthetes have memory advantages of about “0.5–1 standard deviations over non-synesthetes” and are better at retrieving information and memories. The brain processes of synesthetes require the grouping of inducers into different classes, of which are discriminated and learned from (Watson et al., 2014, p. 7, 9). Psychologists have found that the “link between synesthetic inducer and concurrent is not random and arbitrary but guided by conceptual knowledge about lexical/semantic properties and cross-modality relations” (Chiou and Rich, 2014, p. 11). The conscious does not have to identify the stimulus but the meaning of the inducer must be pinpointed. While non-synesthetes see these processes as voluntary, requiring thought and perception, synesthetes are involutile with these perceptions. Their minds need to give no thought to perceiving senses in this way, just as non-synesthetes perceive senses without thought. For vision to color synesthetes, their perception of letter having color comes from the concept of the letter rather than the shapes and characteristics of the letter (Chiou and Rich, 2014, p. 3). From these findings, psychologists have found that “there are clear differences between synesthetic color and real color, suggesting there must be crucial differences in the mechanisms that underpin the two forms of color experience” (5). They apply the connections they make to the world in front of them.
Knowledge about synesthesia shines light on the mechanisms of the brain that are used by few humans. This odd way of experiencing the environment creates better learning and memory outcomes, promotes creativity, and diversifies notions. Further studies should be conducted in order to better comprehend the mechanisms of the brain. It is dire for more attention to be placed on this trait because the studies are applicable to many more areas of brain processes. Psychologists have a remarkable opportunity in front of them and few have taken advantage of it. The more we know about a fragment, the more we know about the aggregate.
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