Tuesday is acid green, Wednesday is a deep purple-y darkish color. And for some reason the days of the week just instantly had strong color associations. In an interview, Rush said his synesthesia goes back to his toddler days: “When I was in school, in the very early days, we would learn the days of the week. Geoffrey Rush arrives at the 4th AACTA Awards Ceremony at The Star on Januin Sydney, Australia. Nabokov even mentions the moment he and his mother learned of their shared synesthesia, writing, “We discovered that some of her letters had the same tint as mine, and that, besides, she was optically affected by music notes.” 2. Some are aural, others are optical, and by none have I profited much … In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h … among the red, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with ‘Rose Quartz’ in Maerz and Paul’s Dictionary of Color.”
Nabokov’s descriptions of his condition are as captivating and well-written as any of his works, and in his memoir Speak, Memory, he describes his condition: “As far back as I remember … I have been subject to mild hallucinations. Image Credit: Keystone/Getty ImagesĪ writer of novels, poems, and short stories, Nabokov was not the only one in his family to experience synesthesia-his mother and son, Dmitri, also had chromesthesia. Vladimir Nabokov (right) and his son Dmitri (center) dine out with an unidentified woman after Dmitri's debut as an opera singer at the Communale Theatre, Reggio Emilia, northern Italy, on May 2, 1961. Unsurprisingly, synesthetes are eight times more likely to work in a creative capacity-and quite a few talented artists through history have had it. Though it can manifest in many ways, the most common are grapheme-color, in which numbers or letters produce colors, and chromesthesia (sound-color), in which sounds produce colors or shapes. Some studies reveal unusual connections in synesthetes' adjacent brain regions, similar to those in babies in fact, it is believed that all babies have synesthesia until they are about four months old, when the synaptic pruning process normally severs those neural connections.The condition, which occurs in about 4 percent of the population, is more common in women than in men, and appears to be genetic.
Some claim it is a series of learned responses, but most point to a neurological foundation.
Scientists still disagree as to what causes synesthesia. For example, someone who sees "1" as burnt orange will always see "1" as burnt orange-unlike, say, someone who hallucinates colors while on LSD. Those who experience synesthesia “hear colors, feel sounds, and taste shapes” in a remarkably consistent fashion. People with synesthesia, for example, might see a certain color in response to a certain letter of the alphabet. Is a condition in which the brain links a person's senses together in a rare manner, prompting unusual sensory responses to stimuli.