Synesthesia

As you are reading this, I am sure most of you see this simply as a bunch of letters in a boring black color. Not very exciting. However, there are people out there who, when they read this, would see all these individual letters in different colors, each letter or number having always having a unique color.

This condition is called grapheme – color synesthesia. This form of synesthesia

is the most common, and a person with this condition is known as a “synesthete”. A synesthete with this condition associates letters and numbers with specific colors and those colors never change. If you look at this picture, on the left is how a non-synesthetic person would see the arrangement of 5’s and 2’s, and on the right would be how a person with synesthesia would see it. However, there are other forms of synesthesia as well. One other common type of synesthesia is ordinal-linguistic personification. It is less common than grapheme – color synesthesia and in this version, and instead of seeing letters and numbers with specific colors, they are seen having specific personalities.

The number of cases of people with synesthesia ranges between about 1 in every 20 to 1 in every 25,000. The disorder itself comes down to the wiring of the brain. Although not much is completely known about it, it is understood that when wires in the brain are crossed in certain ways, we end up involuntarily combining different senses or, in the case of the grapheme – color synesthesia, seeing something differently from how it actually looks. It occurs as a result of a malfunctioning pruning in the brain. Usually, pruning results in the elimination of certain connections in the brain between various regions during development. However, when this is not properly performed, the connections remain and that is when different senses are combined or there are differences within the senses themselves.

More females are affected with synesthesia than males, approximately a 6:1 ratio. However there is no surefire way to assure this is completely true for everyone because for most synesthetes, as it is something they are born with and live with (more often than not), it is perceived as completely normal for them. As a result, they may not share that they have this distinction as it does not seem like something important.

Through studies, it was noted that synesthesia was passed down through family generations. At first it was believed to be X-linked, as all studied cases of this disorder were passed down father-to-daughter, mother-to-daughter, or mother-to-son, until they found 2 cases in which it actually was passed down from father-to-sun.

So, what could be the real reason for this condition? To me, it seems to be caused by some sort of mutation in a chromosome that causes a malfunctioning enzyme that is used to get rid of unnecessary wire crossing within the brain, which would cause the failure of pruning to occur as the brain is developing, as it is often passed down through generations within families. What do you think be the reason for this?

If you want more information, you can watch one of these videos (this one or this one), or check out one of these sites (this one for synesthesia in general, and this one for more genetics based information on synesthesia).