synaesthesia
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: art
arts
human-sciences
literature
media
medicine
neurology
neuroscience
psychology
publishing
sciences
Etymology: From Ancient Greek σύν (sún, “with”) + αἴσθησις (aísthēsis, “sensation”), modelled after anaesthesia. It is analysable as syn- + -aesthesia.
Affixes: syn-
-aesthesia
Inflected forms:
form: synaesthesiae
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: synaesthesias
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: synæsthesia
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: synesthesia
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A neurological or psychological phenomenon whereby a particular sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: M. [Théodore] Flournoy includes all the phenomena of "Colored Hearing" and of "Mental Forms" under the convenient and adequate name Synæsthesia—in place of which, to be sure, he himself usually employs the less defensible term Synopsie. […] The phenomena of synæsthesia are divided into three main groups: "photisms," among which are included, as by [Eugen] Bleuler and Lehmann, all the varieties of pseudo-chromesthesia; "Schemes," comprising not only "forms" (diagrammes) associated with series of words or numbers, but "symbols," or particular figures associated with single letters, numerals, colors and the like; and "personifications," in which the associated factor is no mere color or form, but has become richer and more concrete.
Probably in all of us, though in some men much more distinctly than in others, there exist certain synæsthesiæ or concomitances of sense-impression, which are at any rate not dependent on any recognisable link of association.
[…] R. H. Gault's case of synesthesia in a deaf and blind girl, who could distinguish colors by the sense of smell, […]
Now just as normal perceptions in terms of sense organs different from those stimulated can be interpreted through common past experiences, so it is likely that synæsthesias may be partly explicable in terms of individual experiences.
Into her darkness, a churning synaesthesia, where her pain was the taste of old iron, scent of melon, wings of a moth brushing her cheek.
For example, I myself have a type of synaesthesia: The sounds of musical instruments will sometimes make me see colors, about a yard in front of me, each color specific and consistent with the particular instrument playing.
Colour is the most commonly induced synaesthetic percept and it can be invoked not only by auditory stimuli, but also by smells, tastes and touch sensations[…]. Other synaesthesiae include musical taste and smell, visual smell, perceptions of shaped or auditory pain, and polymodal synaesthesiae.
For me Saturday was a bright red color, just as the other days of the week were chromatically coded. […] This wasn't the true synæsthesia which is such a fascinating mystical hint, a loose thread in the fabric of perception left a-dangle, an unravelling which suggests that we could dissolve all our unreal categories.
Synaesthesia can occur particularly powerfully during mescalin and LSD intoxication, and is often given mystical significance.
[S]ynesthetes themselves can provide the indispensable cues to design a structured qualitative questionnaire: color synesthesias and their variations during sexual arousal, direct physical stimulation, and orgasm […] can help scientists differentiate the specific triggers and their characteristics.
gloss: The association of one sensory perception with, or description of it in terms of, a different perception that is not experienced at the same time.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
countable
uncountable
examples: On a phonemic level, phenomena of synesthesia have often been described and studied. Practically all children and a good many adults—though for the most part adults will deny it—spontaneously associate sounds, whether phonemes or the timbre of musical instruments, with colors and forms.
For one of the enigmatic features of synaesthesia is that, within a given cultural group, the kinds of associations made by different subjects occur according to statistically verifiable recurring patterns. As Jakobson explains, ‘when we ask whether /i/ or /u/ is darker, testing such phonic oppositions as grave vs. acute, some of the subjects may respond that this question makes no sense to them, but hardly one will respond that /i/ is the darker of the two’[…].
gloss: A literary or artistic device whereby one kind of sensation is described in the terms of another.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Linking moods with colours is one example of synaesthesia. […] As a tool for improving writing, the idea of synaesthesia is versatile and innovative. Why use only visual references to describe visual impressions? Why just describe sounds using sound-related words? Play with cross-matching the senses.
[I]t may be stated that the concept of synaesthesia is instrumental for understanding music videos, since videos are based on the soundtrack's visual associations. Yet to discuss associations here may cause some problems. […] [Nicholas Cook] seems to be relying on a rather normative conception of synaesthesia, which for its part supports the idea of absolute, nonrepresentational music. The implication of his discussion is that the "true" forms of music–image synaesthesia come only in the forms of perception of color or light when hearing a certain musical sound.
Related words: aesthesia
chromesthesia
grapheme-color
hyperchromatopsia
ideasthesia
metaphor
phonaesthesia
pseudo-chromesthesia
synchresis
Derived words: synaesthete
Translations: