Maheen Shariq

Prof. Yasser Hashmi

PSY 201

26 March 2021

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a special kind of condition where one sensory stimulus elicits a

different involuntary sensory reaction. For example, a normal visual stimulus of looking at

number, or hearing a sound does not accompany an extra sense. However, people with

synesthesia may see a color when they hear a certain sound or they ‘taste a word.’ This essay

is going to explain the characteristics, the probable explanations of synesthesia based on two

articles; “Synesthesia” by James Ward and “Synesthesia: A New Approach to Understanding

the Development of Perception” by Ferrinne Spector and Daphne Maurer. These articles

explain the research that is done on this topic and they try to take out inferences from studies

on infants, blind or deaf people, synesthetes and normal adults and they look at the pattern

that exists between them. They try to explain different types of synesthesia, the causes, and

the patterns in the perceptions. They also look at the ways those patterns exist to some level

in normal adults too. Hence, this article is going to discuss these points.

There are at least 54 types of synesthesia. The most common of these is spatial forms

also known as sequence-space synesthesia in which numbers, days or months can be seen in

the space. Other common ones include colored-graphemes in which the numbers or letters are

associated with colors. Mirror touch is another example where you feel the sensation of touch

on your body when you are touching something else, or sound-color association where

hearing tunes is associated with seeing different colors. These pairings are called the inducer-

concurrent pairing, where inducer is the stimulus that brings out the synesthesia such as the

tone, the numbers, or the letters and the concurrent is the experience that is associated with it
is for example the colors, or the taste. These sensations can be in the form of mental images

as well as extra percepts and these visual percepts can be seen in the real-world space or in

the mind’s eye as reported by some.

Overall, synesthesia can be divided into two types, developmental and acquired.

Developmental Synesthesia follows a genetical reasoning saying that it is passed through the

genes and the person develops it as they grow up. Even though the incidence rate is higher for

people whose parents have synesthesia, it still does not account for what kind of synesthesia

they have. The acquired synesthesia is when during the later stages of your life, you start

having these percepts due to some sensory inhibition, like blindness or deafness. Studies have

been done on blind people as well as normal adults who have been blindfolded for some days

and then tested if they have a greater and an extra activity in other regions and evidence have

proven that the sense that is damaged usually becomes the concurrent part of the pairing. For

example, loss of somatosensory input through amputations may lead to phantom pain, where

the person feels pain in the limb even though it is not there.

As explained by Jamie Ward, in his article Synesthesia is a comparatively new topic

to be researched on, and even though there were some cases in the past but they were not

initially considered under this. It gained popularity in the mid nineteenth century and that is

when studies were conducted to know more about it. The general findings of these studies

showed that some pattern exists in how the synesthetes perceive things. Even though there

are still a lot of variations and individual differences, some patterns and rules have been

understood through these studies. The first inference from these studies is the idea of

automaticity in these people which show that the pairing of these is involuntary and they are

consistent. Multiple studies are done and they compare the reports of such people over time

and compare it with the controls. One such version is they ask which color is elicited when

they see a certain letter and the results are compared after a few months or a year later and
they show an 80%- 100% consistency as compared to a 30%-50% consistency for controls

(Ward, 53-54). Synesthetes also report some pattern regarding the magnitude of the percept.

These include higher sounds inducing brighter colors. High pitch also induces a more

saturated color or a more angular percept. For number-color synesthesia, as the number

increases in magnitude, so does the color from light to dark and from saturated to

unsaturated. In the case of double digits, the color that results are a combination of both the

numbers. In the case of spatial synesthesia, the spatial forms run from left to right. The idea

suggested behind is that it is the effect of reading and writing which in the West is usually

from left to right. Moreover, months are said to be represented in circular forms (Ward, 64).

It is unclear of where exactly are these patterns coming from. However, psychologists have

tried to find the reasons for them which is discussed later in this essay.

Psychologist have looked at the possible explanation of synesthesia and what causes

it. There are two prominent explanations that they give, one is on the functional causes and

the other is the structural. Under the functional reasoning, they look at infants and it is proven

that infant have a higher number of neural links (synapses) than a normal adult. This also

explains the evidence that for spoken language in infants elicits activity in their auditory areas

as well as their visual areas, these connections over time are lost as they are weak. This is

known as the process called pruning. Hence, they claim that pruning is not complete in some

of the brain areas which then causes the activation of these areas and hence they experience

an additional perception. A second explanation that focuses on the structural changes argues

that in normal adults, pathways that carry these information are inhibited hence normal do not

experience a visual stimulus along with an auditory one. However, in synesthetes, these

pathways are not inhibited. Evidence for this comes from animal studies and normal adults

who are blindfolded i.e., they are visually deprived. The adults who were blindfolded for a

couple of days, their visual cortex was activated when discriminating between auditory tones.
This evidence shows that pathways connecting the auditory and visual cortex are available

and thus are inhibited under normal circumstances but can be disinhibited in the case of

sensory deprivation and/or synesthesia (Spector, 177-178).

There is also debate over whether there is a direct pathway between the two sensory

percepts or an indirect pathway or whether its unidirectional or not. Mirror-touch synesthesia

is an example of indirect pathway as it includes a complex mechanism as there is a

connection between the spatial areas and those for the touch. The direct pathway idea says,

however, that the pathways or regions that are close to each other, when one gets activates,

the other gets activated too. This is based on their physical proximity of the regions.

Grapheme-color synesthesia can be explained through this direct pathway model. However,

these explanations do not explain why one type of synesthesia exists more than another.

Because in mirror-touch synesthesia the regions activated are not adjacent to each other, yet

they exist in people more than grapheme-color synesthesia.

Spector and Maurer in their article also try to establish different connections between

normal adults and synesthetes. She claims that the basic way in which synesthesia works, the

pairings and the mechanism behind it exists in all humans. For that, they mention several

studies that show that normal adults when asked give similar answers to what synesthetes

perceive and there is consistency in their responses. As mentioned above, synesthetes link

brighter percepts to higher pitch and darker percepts to lower ones. Studies suggest the same

pattern in normal adults and they also have a lower reaction time in such conditions,

suggesting the pattern is available at some level. Similarly, the same pattern can be seen for

the colors associated with the letters. Even though there are variations in this within

synesthetes themselves, however, there is a consensus over some letters. For example, A with

red or C with yellow. When looking at sound-shape patterns, we find that shapes that are

sharp are associated with words that involve a constricted movement of the tongue and
rounded shapes are associated with words that have rounded vowels. Based on these findings,

studies are also done on toddlers and psychologists try to apply these inferences on them to

understand their development better.

The claim is that these mappings are available naturally in all humans, but they are

present in an exaggerated form in synesthetes. While looking at the reasoning, they claim that

some of these can be explained through learning and experience. For example, people can

associate the letter G with green only because it starts with ‘g’ or the association of sound

with certain shapes but not all of them can be explained through this as there are studies in

which the toddlers made associations that were not already available in the findings from the

adult studies and since toddlers have very minimal learning, it can be said that these

associations are coming from a different explanation. They claim that it may be due to the

naturally biased associations in the system that are caused by the activation of adjacent areas.

Hence, the two explanations for this are learning from experience that help us create these

associations and for some there are already present natural biases which are then present in

exaggerated forms in synesthetes either due to lack of pruning or disinhibition of these

pathways.

The learning theory of Piaget and Gibson is incorporated in the explanation of

synesthesia. As Piaget talks about the different developmental stages in a baby and it is quite

later in life, that a toddler starts to recognize the object before that he cannot differentiate

between the different sensory inputs. And it is through the environment and the different

schemas learnt, are they able to understand the environment. Gibsonian theory also looks at

how an infant learns to differentiate its mother’s face and voice and hence the color-letter

association or the sound-shape association is hence learnt. Hence, these theories along with

empirical evidence is used by psychologists to explain some of synesthesia, however,

psychologists also look at non-environmental reasoning of it which is not explained by

learning. Hence, they add on to those theories.

We would expect these extra percepts to be interfering with these extra percepts.

However, these people go along with their normal daily routines. Moreover, studies have

shown that people who have it have a better color perception especially those who have

grapheme-color synesthesia. They have an enhanced system and are more perceptual to

distinct colors, contrast, frequency etc. They are also found to have extraordinary memory

and case studies like a person who could remember the value of pi up to 20,000 decimal

places, have provided evidence. However, in the case of memory it is argues that not all types

of memory are enhanced equally. Moreover, they are also known to have artistic tendencies

and hence are highly creative. Studies have also been done on them where they are given

tasks for creativity and they outperformed the controls. When asked synesthetes to list their

strengths and weaknesses, they listed them to be memory, language, written and verbal

communication and art and listed balance and coordination problems and sense of directions

in their weaknesses (Ward, 68). Hence this show that while they do have some advantages,

they also have some impairments because of it. And even the advantages they have are not a

set rule. If they have a better perception, there is not a rule for which kind of perception

enhances and the same is the case with memory.

Synesthesia is a relatively new topic since only a few percent of people have it.

Hence, it does not have a very extensive research. However, it is an interesting topic for

psychologists and they are trying to know more about it. The reasonings given does not

explain everything. For example, what causes the lack of pruning or the disinhibition in the

case when it is not explained by genetic or a loss of any sensory input. Moreover, it also does

not explain why people get different types of synesthesia. Even the genetic reasons do not

explain why people have different types as genetic reasons only increase the chances of
having synesthesia. Another question arises whether the two possible explanations mentioned

are alternate explanation or do they occur together but for certain types of synesthesia. Hence

these are some areas and questions that need further research.

Works Cited

Spector, Ferrinne, and Daphne Maurer. “Synesthesia: A New Approach to Understanding the

Development of Perception.” Developmental Psychology, vol. 45, no. 1, 2009, pp. 175–

189.

Ward, Jamie. “Synesthesia.” Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 64, no. 1, 2013, pp. 49–75.