A while ago I asked on Twitter if anyone else saw things as I did - for example numbers on a squiggly line moving upwards in a kind of stepping stone pattern. Also, I explained how I imagine days of the week as Sunday being in a dip lower than Monday and Wednesday being on a hill and slightly green. I got a couple of people saying that they saw things similar to me, a few people telling me it sounded like synaesthesia, but the majority of people going "Eh?! You're mad!" as they hastily rang up the men in white coats to cart me away for finally giving in to insanity. Well...not quite. After a quick Google I stumbled across a few things on the internet by people experiencing similar things to me (here, here and here) which somewhat confirmed that I probably do have synaesthesia.
Synaesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory of cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In other words, triggering one sense automatically triggers another sense which would not normally have an associated reaction. This can lead to people seeing numbers and letters as having their own colours; one word or sound triggering a taste response; or imagining or "seeing" periods of time or numbers as spatial 3D map. Someone told me of a programme they saw where every time a man touched a £5 note he tasted bacon and many people can distinctly say that the number five is yellow, Z is white etc. It's a strange and fascinating thing but something I'm very interested in because I'm pretty sure I have spatial-sequence and number form synaesthesia. Not as fun as tasting bacon every time I touch a fiver but still pretty handy and something I can't imagine not having.
How the year might look to someone with synaesthesia
"If you are a synaesthate with a red A, your A has always been red and will always be red. And it's so intrinsic, that many synaesthetes never question whether this is unusual". It's important to note that although often similar, the forms/colours people associate with different months/numbers etc are exclusive to each person, therefore the information available about each type varies widely.
How numbers may look to someone with grapheme-colour synaesthesia (by Angela Hill)
I have thought this way for as long as I can remember, but it was very prominent when I was in primary school, especially learning numbers and times tables. I get this effect of "mind-mapping" with every kind of sequence possible. Days of the week, times of the day (a bit less unusual as I simply visualise the clock-face), months of the year, years throughout history...and I still use it constantly today.
It's quite difficult to draw on paper how I visualise things as instead of a set 2D form it's more of a dynamic 3D map, kind of like a computer simulation, which I "fly over" in my mind. For example smaller numbers (1-10) are in a kind of valley and higher numbers - into the thousands - are at the top of a mountain. If I'm thinking of a number such as 15 I'll place in my mind being at the bottom of a mountain, looking up towards the higher numbers which are sitting on the outline of the mountain slope. Not a literal mountain, but the shape and the contours are similar.
I rarely see the full set of months at a time, only the months which are important to me at moment I'm having to think about them. For example if it's January and I'm thinking towards the coming September, I'll only see the names of January and September and September will be significantly further away and lower down than January. Therefore once I put all the months together on a drawing like below, it doesn't look much like how I'd actually imagine it, but I don't think there's a way I could accurately depict how it looks. It's like asking someone to explain a dream vividly from start to end or to draw it - some bits are blurrier than others and other parts are missing, with some parts just not making any sense in reality. Although I know how I imagine some months very vividly, other months like August are a bit wishy-washy. I'd describe it as a kind of mental calendar or diary where I can see each week in a month laid out, including the things I have planned on each day. I rarely use actual calendars/diaries as my mental calendar is so accurate I don't need to - the money I don't spend on diaries I can spend on vodka - hooray!
In terms of visualising numbers, I've always imagined them as if they are on a kind of hill. For example if I'm doing maths and I'm adding or subtracting I visualise myself hopping up or down a hill, however many units I need to add/subtract by. I'll visualise myself at the bottom of the "hill" at 0 and look up to see 20, 30, 40 etc, the bigger the number the further up it seems. 100 is always at the top of the hill, and then after that the "hill" repeats so that 100-200 is just another hill, on top of the first original hill. (Does this make any sense? I think I'm lost too...) Higher numbers continue infinitely upwards to the right, and lower numbers infinitely downwards to the left.
I really struggled to draw how I visualise the week, because although many existing diagrams have expressed the week in a sort of circular repeating form (same as the months), my days continue on a timeline considering both the days of the past week (e.g. last Monday) and those in the near future (next Wednesday, a week on Thursday, etc). I've never really seen colours with the days apart from Wednesday which has always been a grass-green hill. Not sure why! I've also always seen Pancake Tuesday as being a pale sky blue but that's about the only specific day of the year which I see in colour.
As I said, I don't visualise what I've actually drawn below as it is, in the same way that you'd think of a banana and see a banana. It's not a 2D drawing in my mind, it's more a constantly changing dynamic - the steepness of the slope with the days on is determined by what day of the week it is. Also, whether I imagine myself looking at the days straight on and "flat", or if I'm doing the whole "on top of a mountain looking down" thing is determined by whether I'm thinking about the days in context of the past, present or future. The not-so-long-ago past would appear steeper than an event a few months ago which would be on a smoother line and seem a lot further away. Sunday has always been in a trough next to Monday and Monday and Tuesday along with Thursday and Friday have always been quite flat, with Wednesday as a "hump" in the middle. The weekdays are visibly separate from the weekends although Friday, Saturday and Sunday come together as a separate group, even though I also visualise Friday as a component in the weekdays, therefore there is some overlap in it.
The sequence which is the most definite for me is years. For whatever reason I've always been able to strongly imagine how different decades "look" e.g. the 1970s is on a smoother curve whereas the 1990s is quite irregular - possibly because I was born in 1992 and so associate that decade with rapid change. 2000 has always marked a significant change in the line - to approach the new century - and therefore anything after 2000 slopes considerably down to the left as it's categorised as "last century". The decade from 2000-2010 is fairly straight but 2011 is in a dip (this is always related to whatever year it is at the time) and then the years of the future rapidly increase to the right in quite a regular formation (probably because they haven't happened yet, therefore nothing distinctive has happened to influence their shape). Again, before the 1900s there is another vertical drop to the 1800s which gradually levels out into a straight line as we approach the 1700s, then the 1600s etc, moving further back in time.
One thing I also thought was quite significant when I did a bit of reading up about this was the claims that many synaesthates have photographic memories. I always thought this might be the case for me, an example being before an exam I could glimpse at a page for about ten seconds and then re-visualise the page in my mind during the exam, being able to read the words I had simply *seen* and not actually read before. I'm very good at remembering dates - birthdays in particular - and can recall insignificant memories in amazing detail such as remembering what the buttons looked like on the dress I wore for my 5th birthday party without having seen any photos of it since the day I wore it. I'm also really good at remembering things people have said to me which often surprises and freaks people out how I remember them once telling me about something completely trivial which they hadn't even remembered saying themselves.
All in all it's a very unusual but useful thing to have, and to people who don't have synaesthesia it probably does sound a bit "crazy" but I can't imagine how I'd cope without it. A few things I read presented it negatively as a "condition" and similar to autism which it's not, it's not an illness just a different way of programming information. I've always known I was a very visual person but now I think about it, I'm not sure if that was just the synaesthesia. Does every other visual learner have this? I certainly think it helps me to remember and understand things. I guess I was just interested if anyone else has synaesthesia and what kind of types you have? If anyone sees the spatial/number forms like me or gets the colour/taste associations? I think there's a lot of mystery about it because so many people probably have it and don't realise, so I'd be interested to see if anyone I know experiences similar things!
Synaesthesia is so interesting. I'm pretty sure my cousin has it, she tastes things when someone says certain words. It's probably in her best interest not to reveal what tastes of poo. Absolutely fascinating post.
ReplyDeleteTotally fascinating. My years, days of the week, numberline, etc. are of course different from yours, but reading your detailed descriptions, I can TOTALLY understand them. My laptop battery is dying but maybe I will come back later and describe my numbers, etc. if you are interested! :)
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness this is like the closest description anyone's had to how I am. I have mental maps of all these things, though they're not exactly like yours, which is almost a given anyway. Mine is a 3D map that I fly over in my mind, too. I "zoom in" to the part of the number map or map of months or whatever that I'm needing to think about. Like you, some of my maps are more distinct and I'm more sure of it than others. For instance, my number line is really hard to pin down (the more I concentrate on the map itself, the more fuzzy it gets because it's such an involuntary map), but my map of years as well as days of the week are extremely distinct. I also tend to look at most of my maps at different angles depending on where I am on the map.
ReplyDeleteI also have certain numbers/months/years that have distinct colors associated with it, some I can't figure out, and some that don't have any colors with it. Really the digits 0-9 have no colors with them, but decades and centuries do. It's really weird and I'm still trying to figure it out. The 30's and 300's and 1300's and the month of March are all this really pale yellow. The 70's and 1700's are black, and the 80's and 1800's are like a silvery grey. The 1600's (but not 60's) are brown. And then there are some that I can't for the life of me figure out. I FEEL like the 40's are a bluish-green, but they look more grey to me in the number scale. Same with 50's and red and 60's and brown. I think, with the exception of the 30's, I see the numbers 1-100 in the black-and-white version of the colors they're supposed to be.
On the memory thing, I have an extremely good short term memory. Usually when I study, knowing where something was located on a page helps just as much as actually reading what it was. Knowing things spatially is easier than actually memorizing it. I honestly don't know if this is photographic memory or not (I don't think so). But unfortunately, I have the world's worst long term memory, but I think that's something inherited from my mom anyway lol.
Both me and my Mum have what I would call "diagrammatic" ideas of the weekdays, months etc in our heads, but they are different from each others' (naturally) - this is quite exciting as I have spent many fruitless hours over the past few years searching various terms to try and see if anyone else does...finally I found your blog post!
ReplyDeleteIf you are still reading/writing this blog then please make contact if you like.
My week goes in a circuit, but it is uneven (to attempt a description, Monday thru Friday down a straight edge, then saturday and sunday (must be 'longer' days) take the opposite side of the loop, back to monday.
Months of year go like an athletics track, August and December are at the opposing curve ends (again, uneven, as the 'autumn term' if you like is represented by a length of track equal to spring and summer together).
Numbers are too complicated to explain by words!!!
Thanks for posting your blog entry!
I am 53 and just today realizing that have spatial sequence synesthia. My brother has color synesthia in which he sees numbers, letters, words and names in specific colors. I had no idea that the timelines I envision are a form of synesthia. For me, my memories and knowledge associated with time are files in a timeline in front of me and stretching off to the left. If I am thinking about current and recent time, I see the days of the week as a row of boxes, with the weekends demarkated. Today is in front of me, yesterday to the right (and so the past extends to the right) and tomorrow and future weeks to the left. However, when I am remembering my life or past history. I envision a ribbon of time marked by decades, centuries and millenia, with the past stretching far off to my left -- the blank future is to my right. When I remember a specific expereince, or want to remember what I was doing at a certain time in my life, I can zoom in so that the decades stretch out to blocks of years, and then zoom in to a year to see it as months and even weeks. All of my years are envisioned as academic years divided into fall, spring, and summer blocks of time. I am an academic so my entire life has followed this type of schedule. I need to try to draw this out so that I can better explain it to others.
ReplyDeleteI have known for several years that I have number-form synesthesia, but, like everyone else, I was astounded to find out that not everyone sees the numberline and days and centuries as I do, because isn't their location just a matter of objective reality? Nope!
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I find interesting is that the form of my weeks has changed since I was younger (I'm now 60). From childhood, the weeks went in a circle, starting with Monday at about the 10:00 position, down to Tuesday, curving rightward at Wednesday, starting upward with Thursday, and Saturday and Sunday closing the circle at the top. But at some point--I don't know when, maybe between 15 and 20 years ago--I began visualizing the weeks as they appear on a calendar, in a straight line perhaps somewhat in front of me--although the days already past (starting with Sunday) are to my left and the remaining days to my right. I'm guessing this is because as an adult, I was more and more obsessed with looking at the calendar to keep track of what was going on.
The months have always appeared somewhat like a hanging wall calendar in front of me, January at the top, December at the bottom.
My timeline starts back in ancient Greek/Roman times, several feet to the "northwest" of me. The earliest centuries are indistinct, but by the late Middle Ages they are forming distinct blocks lined up adjacent to one another, the century starting at the bottom (farthest left of me and "down") and rising up to the last year of the century. Time then returns to the bottom position of the next century. The 18th and 19th centuries feel closer to me, taking up more space than previous ones. The 1890s are only about a foot away to the northwest. The 20th century starts almost directly left of me (maybe a couple of inches forward) and starting "down" as far as the other centuries. It rises in decades up to meet me, although if I focus on a particular decade, the individual years appear as a series of adjacent blocks, looking like the hanging wall calendar (January at the top) except "reclined" somewhat, not almost straight up and down like the current year. Interestingly, the year 2000 did not return to the bottom; it just tacked itself onto 1999. Future years stretch to my right, the nearest two or three in "wall calendar" form.
My numberline starts out somewhat like a clock, with 1 being down to my right (when I look at my numberline to describe it, I always want to "stand" at 6) and rising with a slight curve up to 5, turning up to the left at 7 (like a clock does, except there's a third dimension involved), and proceeding to 12 straight up. 13 to 20 head straight up/outward, then the numbers take a 90-degree left turn (if I'm looking at them from the teens) and continue in a straight line to 29. There is a slight drop-off at 30, then the numbers continue upward (with a kind of leftward trend) to 100. Then there's an indistinct hairpin turn rightward, and the numbers shoot off completely indistinctly with no further form. If I'm thinking of a particular number or run of numbers, I am "at" that number and look backward or forward from there.
What I find especially interesting is that different types of numbers have different locations/lines. If I'm thinking of my (or someone else's) age, everything is the same as my regular numberline up to 100, then 101 plunges downward to the same position where my 19th century starts. If I'm thinking of air temperature, the numbers are all in a straight up-down line somewhere in front of me, with numbers over 100 making a rightward turn. For body temperature (like a fever), the 90s are like my regular numberline, but 100 and up curve around rightward like a clock.
My numbers have no association with colors, textures, etc., and I have no other types of synesthesia (which I first learned about when reading Nabokov's autobiography--he associated colors with letters, I believe).