I live my life in an array of colors, whether it’s my colorful pens that I use to organize my school supplies or my comforter, which has just about every color under the sun in it. However, I also experience color in other ways, such as when I hear music or when I read something. It turns out I’m not alone; this phenomenon is called synesthesia, and it explains why Tuesdays are orange and Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” is lilac.
Photo courtesy of Taylor Thomas
According to Psychology Today, “synesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway (for example, hearing) leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway (such as vision).” Basically, when one sense picks up on something, it causes a reaction from another sense that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with it. The most common type is what’s called grapheme-color synesthesia, where individual numbers, letters, or units of some kind are associated with individual colors, patterns of colors, or a certain mix of colors.
Photo courtesy of Taylor Thomas
Studies also show that those with synesthesia (otherwise known as synesthetes) are better at distinguishing between shades of colors and similar sounds. Also, apparently only 3 to 5 percent of the world’s population has this ability, so if you do, consider yourself lucky!
All information courtesy of: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/synesthesia