According to one study, this type of synesthesia may actually be more common than we once thought it affected 22 percent of a group of 40 synesthetes. Those with this type of synesthesia hear faint sounds in response to movements or visual flashes. This fascinating phenomenon is called mirror-touch synesthesia, in which a person experiences the sensation of another. Alternatively, imagine you watch someone get punched in the stomach, and at that same time, you feel a blow to your own gut. As their finger makes contact with their nose, you simultaneously feel a touch on your own nose-even though you haven’t moved a muscle.

The person in front of you reaches up and touches their nose with the tip of their finger. Imagine that you’re standing face-to-face with another person. To explain how this works, when one of the five senses has been put to use, that triggers another sense to work together with that sense. Some, however, are more common than others. All 5 senses are intertwined so there are more than 20 types of Synesthesia. Like those with grapheme-color synesthesia, some may literally see these colors, whereas others will just see them in their heads. Synesthesia is Latin meaning senses colliding or coming together. In any case, when sound-to-color synesthetes hear certain things, they see specific colors, often in the shape of simple, geometric figures like circles or squares. For some, it’s triggered by general noises, whereas for others, it’s specifically triggered by musical notes. For example, many grapheme-color synesthetes see “A” as being red.Īlso called chromesthesia, this one is also common and pretty self-explanatory. The colors for each figure vary by person, but it’s not uncommon for there to be some similarities. Some will literally see each letter and number as a specific color, whereas others will see the figures as black and white on paper but will have individual colors assigned to each one in their minds. Grapheme-color synesthesia can be further broken down into two types. And Monday? Well…īy far the most common type of synesthesia, affecting more than 60 percent of synesthetes, grapheme-color is a condition in which letters of the alphabet or numbers have a distinct color to them. For example, the letter “A” may be really sweet and even-tempered, whereas “B” is rude and curmudgeonly. PersonificationĪlso called ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP), a person with this fascinating type of synesthesia sees ordered sequences-such as numbers, the alphabet, days of the week, or months of the year-as having their own appearance or personality.

Types of synthesia