Synaesthesia

Transcript

Synaesthesia describes a condition in which a stimulus from one mode of sensation (such as sight, touch, hearing, taste, or smell) instantaneously invokes an automatic experience of a sensation from a different mode. For example, something that tastes bitter to a person with synaesthesia, otherwise known as a synesthete, may be accompanied by a particular musical pitch or sound. Common types of synesthesia include grapheme synaesthesia (in which letters or digits viewed on a page invoke simultaneous color visualizations) and time-space synaesthesia (in which time units such as hours, days, or months are accompanied by spatial visualizations). Sound-color synaesthesia is another form of synaesthesia that was brought to the broader popular imagination in 1940 by Walt Disney's (1901–66) film Fantasia.

The five general characteristics of synaesthesia are as follows:

• 1.
  The induction of one sense by another is involuntary;
• 2.
  The induction of one sense by another is automatic;
• 3.
  The correspondences between senses are stable, that is, the response to a stimulus remains unchanged over time;
• 4.
  Synaesthetic correspondences are unique to each synesthete; and
• 5.
  Synaesthetic reactions often correlate to emotional states.

The earliest known references to conditions similar to synaesthesia date from 1689 and 1710 and are found in the writings of philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) and physician Thomas Woolhouse (1650–1734). Reports of synaesthesia occasionally surfaced over the next century, with explorations of the relationship between color and music entering the broader artistic realm in response to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's (1794–1832) Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Color, 1812). The term synaesthesia, however, was not coined until the end of the 19th century by parapsychologist Théodore Flournoy (1854–1920), making its first popular appearance in the first edition of the Century Dictionaryand Cyclopedia in 1891.

Although a few composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Joachim Raff (1822–82) and André-Ernest-Modest Grétry (1741–1813), are believed to have been sound-color synesthetes, the study of this form of synaesthesia did not occur with any robust interest until the early 1900s. Interest in sound-color synaesthesia, also called sound-hearing, among psychologists appears to have been largely sparked by the 1913 performance of Alexander Scriabin's (1871/2–1915) work Prometheus: Poem of Fire. The synaesthetic experience was an intrinsic part of the performance of this work, with Scriabin's original stage directions calling for a color organ (a device that is “played” to emit specific colors of light), as well as colored lights set around the stage, and even perfumes.