The Synesthesia Is a peculiar process of the perceptive systems of humans in which are jointly assimilated several types of sensations referring to different senses in the same perceptive act. In this way, the person manages to perceive as a whole two different perceptions such as sound and color.
It seems strange that this may happen but it is a phenomenon scientifically proven and experienced by several people in the world.
If you want to know more and understand exactly what synaesthesia is, do not miss this review we will make on this peculiar phenomenon.
What exactly is synesthesia?
When we speak of synesthesia, we refer to a process of human perception in which in that perception, two or more senses are activated.
"Normal"people, when we hear a sound, be it a musical note or any noise, the receptive senses of the ear are activated in our brain.
However, what happens with synaesthesia is that listening to a sound not only activates the senses concerning the ear, but other sensory modalities such as visual can be activated.
Thus, a synesthetic person has the peculiarity that he is able to activate more of a perceptive sense before a concrete stimulus.
Synesthesia
As we see, providing a clear definition to the phenomenon of synesthesia is not a simple task, due to the great confusion that can generate.
In fact, since the beginning of their study, the definitions of synesthesia have been much discussed with each other, to the point that no universal definition has yet been agreed upon.
This fact is explained in part by the large variants that can be observed within this phenomenon.
The most frequent are those involving a letter and a color, whole words and a color, and a number and a color.
However, there are also some more questioned but equally studied as the combination between pain and color.
Thus, we see that all phenomena of synesthesia refer to the involvement of two perceptual modalities in the same sensory stimulus.
The main problem lies in agreeing which associations should be included and which should be excluded within what is understood as a phenomenon of synesthesia.
In fact, by involving different perceptual modalities in the same sensorial sense, the experimentation of emotions and personifications also comes very forcefully.
This controversy is especially important when we analyze the synesthesia within the artistic world, giving a high creative capacity to this peculiar phenomenon.
However, for many scientific researchers seeking to study the underlying mechanisms of synesthesia, it is vitally important to focus on perceptual modalities.
From this point of view, which may serve for more complex conceptualizations on the concept of synesthesia, this phenomenon can be defined as the capacity of the perception system to induce perception within a sensory modality by the stimulation of a different sensory area.
Obviously, few people have this phenomenon and are able, as the previous definition explains, to perceive stimuli through a sensory modality different from the one it belongs to.
In this way, a person with synesthesia would have the ability to see sounds or listen to images.
Likewise, associations within the same modality are also frequent, such as associating colors with letters, numbers or words.
As we see, the sensory possibilities that can appear in a synesthetic person are multiple; Can hear colors, see sounds, savor textures or associate different stimuli in the same perceptual sense.
In addition, sensory associations are infinite, since rarely do two synesthetic individuals share the same characteristics in terms of their perceptual capacity.
This fact makes synesthesia become an attractive and interesting phenomenon for scientific research, as difficult to study and delimit with explanatory parameters.
In fact, many scientists dare to claim that the synesthetic people possess what is in itself an extra sense that allows them to multiply per thousand the perceptual capacities of a normal person.
Thus, through this sense it becomes evident how reality is not the same for everyone, since each person can have a different world experience, and in the case of synesthetic people can perceive all the elements in a completely different from others.
How many people have synesthesia?
When we try to understand the phenomenon of synesthesia, we find it difficult to assimilate that there are people who have sensory capacities so different from those of"normal"people.
Likewise, it is difficult for us to imagine clearly how it might be that a person can perceive stimuli through different sensorial modalities or even through more than one perceptive sense simultaneously.
The truth is that synaesthesia has always been considered a very rare phenomenon, that is, there are very few people in the world who possess this type of abilities.
However, the great scientific interest that is uncovering this phenomenon, as well as the recent connection between synesthesia and art or creative capacity, has shown that the prevalence may be much higher than previously thought.
Thus, despite the lack of comprehensive results and data today, there are scientists who point out that the prevalence of synesthesia could be up to 100 times higher than initially believed.
In fact, researchers who point to a high prevalence of the phenomenon of synesthesia claim that one in 23 people could possess this strange phenomenon.
Obviously, these data have not been fully corroborated or demonstrated in a reliable way, so affirming such a high prevalence of synesthesia could be an act of excessive optimism.
However, certain scientific data on the prevalence of synesthesia have been reported, which although they have to be analyzed with caution, would indicate that the most common type of synesthesia is the ability to see colors when they hear letters or numbers , A phenomenon that could be present in up to 1% of the population.
Despite all provisional data, it is clear that synesthesia is still a confusing phenomenon, difficult to define and characterize, so it is not possible to comment clearly on how many people can possess this type of characteristics.
Synesthesia music - color
The discovery of subjective synesthesia is given to Lussana, who in 1883 gave evidence of the existence of these phenomena.
Also, this author was dedicated to look for the relationship between colors and emotions
In formulating his research, he starts from the hypothesis that if letters and emotions evoke a color easily, why can not they also evoke a sound.
Thus, in his book" Physiology of colors "Lussana recounts the following aspects:
Colors are characterized by a growing number of vibrations (from red to violet), which provoke in the view different excitations, to which different sensations correspond, which in turn are related to different and diverse ideas.
In this way, Lussana points out that there is a natural and physiological relationship between the harmonies of colors and that of sounds.
Likewise, he commented that the cerebral centers belonging to color and speech are contiguous and form in the same convolution, a fact that could explain the origin of synesthesia. Thus, through these formulations, we arrive at the first medical explanation of synaesthesia in which sounds and colors are associated.
However, from these theoretical foundations arise contradictions in themselves. That is, if the brain mechanisms discussed above are true, are these in the brains of all people or only those with synesthesia?
Obviously, if the synesthetic people are very scarce worldwide, these cerebral characteristics should be cataloged as rare or anomalous.
Following this line of research, the Famous psychiatrist Bleuer Center of a large part of his professional career in researching schizophrenia And psychotic disorders, was also interested in synesthesia.
The Swiss psychiatrist, together with Lehman, published the most important research on synesthetic phenomena.
Specifically, I studied a sample of 576 people, of whom 76 were"audiocolorists", that is, they had the peculiar ability to associate auditory and visual perceptions.
Through the study of these 76 people, we begin to look for a definition that can be optimally adapted to the peculiar characteristics of"colored hearing", which ends up being the next one.
"In certain individuals the hearing of a sound is immediately accompanied by a luminous and colored sensation which is repeated in the same way as the auditory sensation occurs.
Thus, it is concluded that certain synesthetic individuals are capable of mentally reproducing visual sensations through the collection of an auditory stimulus.
Synesthesia and art
Research on synesthesia during the nineteenth century has continued and has been increasing in recent years.
Due to the particular characteristics of this phenomenon, which provides an infinite increase in the perceptual capacities of the human being, synesthesia has become a subject of special interest in the artistic field.
In fact, no current has as much interest in the senses and expressive and perceptive capacity as art, so it is very understandable that it is this discipline that more research efforts have devoted to the study of synesthesia.
In this sense, studies that relate music to painting, music to sculpture and music to color have gained special importance in the last 20 years.
As we see, the study of the relationship between different artistic modalities arouses great interest in the investigation of the sensory, cognitive and creative processes that people possess.
Likewise, neuroimaging studies have demonstrated how Neuronal plasticity Of human brains can provide a large number of mental abilities.
In fact, it has been shown how the mixture of stimuli captured through 27 sensory mechanisms provide the particular"world"of human perceptions.
As regards the relationship between music and painting, many authors are looking for synesthesia as their source of inspiration.
Likewise, artists who are not synestheticians, look to exploit this capacity, aided by the mixture of sensory perceptions to Develop your creativity .
In this way, we can find at present a large number of pictorial works in which the modality referring to the painting with the musical one is related.
Especially in the Renaissance can be found works like the Titian Which is influenced by Giorgione, The country concert or Venus recreating with love and music , Where a clear musical influence is visualized in the pictorial paintings.
Concerning the relationship between musical tonality and color, the main focus is on the ability to evoke colors through musical harmonies.
As we have mentioned, synesthetic people are able to automatically associate a color with a musical note, always relating the same musical tonality to a particular color.
The main characteristic is that each synesthetic person has particular categories of association, ie, not all synaesthetics associate the same color with the same musical tone.
In contrast, non-synesthetic people do not make this automatic association between musical tonality and color, so they can try to associate colors with harmonies in a more anarchic way and motivated by different variables.
Normally, dark colors are associated with severe musical tonalities, and light colors with sharper sounds.
In short, the phenomenon of synesthesia is very useful to realize that human beings are able to influence and be influenced, through art, by multiple sensorial modalities.
As the Russian painter Kandinsky states,"art is the language that speaks to the soul of things that are for it the daily bread, which it can only receive in this form."
References
Baron-Cohen, S., Burt, L., Smith-Laittan, F., Harrison, J., and Bolton, P. (1996). Synaesthesia: prevalence and familiarity. Perception, 25, 1073?? 1079
Compeán, Javier (2011). Synesthetic Tonality: Relations between the tone of music and color through a personal proposal. (Doctoral thesis). Polytechnic university of Valencia. Guanajuato-Mexico.
[Links] Synesthesia: Theoretical, Artistic and Scientific Foundations. Granada: International Artecittà Foundation.
Hubbard, E.M., Arman, A.C., Ramachandran, V.S. & Boynton, G.M. (2005). Individual differences among grapheme-color synesthetes: brain-behavior correlations. Neuron, 45 (6), 975-85.
Page 2 (2011). Sound-color relation in the synesthetic experience of classical music. (Doctoral thesis). Universidad Centroccidental?? Lisandro Alvarado???. Barquisimeto, Venezuela.