Hey!! A quick question for fellow systems with synesthesia,
Does it effect each of you in a different way? Like, do you all get something different from it, and do some experience it in a lessened degree or higher degree than others??
We have synesthesia, but we've never thought about this, and I obviously can't remember or know what the others in our system experience. We were going to try and document it within our own system, and probably still will, but I'm curious about others as well!! Reblog or comment your responses please, preferably a reblog for further reach! 🩵
projective (?) synesthesia culture is not even being able to tell if your synesthesia is projective because you see the colors in front of you? but like, you’re seeing the colors with your brain, not your eyes??
Difference Between Projective and Associative Synesthesia
Okay, this confuses the stuffing out of people sometimes (at least, it used to for me), so I decided to write a post on it.
There are two umbrellas that someone’s synesthesia can fall under: projective and associative.
Projective synesthesia is likely the first kind you’ll hear of when you stumble across the topic of synesthesia. This is where your pairings are projected outward into your peripheral vision. Someone with grapheme-color synesthesia (projective) would see words/letters/numbers/etc. in their “proper” colors. For example, if they saw the word “kite” as purple, the word “kite” would literally appear to be purple, even though it may be written in black text. For someone with ticker tape synesthesia (projective), they literally see “subtitles” in their peripheral vision spelling out everything that someone is saying. These subtitles can be located anywhere in their peripheral vision. Someone with lexical gustatory synesthesia (projective), which is sight to taste, will literally taste the words/numbers/letters they see/hear.
Associative synesthesia is where you see your pairings only in your mind, rather than in your peripheral vision. You know how when you remember something--an event, a person, etc.--and you see it in your mind, but not in the world around you? That’s the same place that associative synesthetes see their pairings. For lack of a better term, I call this the mental realm. I believe I’m the only one that really uses that term to describe it, but I could be wrong. Regardless, people with associative synesthesia see their pairings in their mental realm or have a very strong association between two things. For someone with lexical-gustatory synesthesia (associative), the letter Y may very obviously taste like watermelon without them physically tasting watermelon. For those with chromesthesia/sound-color synesthesia, perhaps “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles is clearly blue and brown (which they see in their mental realm).
Every single type of synesthesia (as far as I know) has the capability of being either projective or associative in a synesthete. Associative synesthesia is every bit as legitimate as projective synesthesia, but tends to be a bit harder to discover since it’s more subtle.
I’m currently open for asks, so let me know if you have any questions!
(I use colour-grapheme synaesthesia as an example here because that's what I experience) I don't get the difference between projective and associative synaesthesia. Does projective mean you see the colours in your mind's eye, or is it more like a hallucination? When I look at letters, I subconsciously imagine colours (Seeing them in your mind's eye), so it feels like I'm seeing the colours in my brain without actually seeing them in real life. I thought associative synaesthesia was when you associate letters with colours, but don't see them in your mind's eye. Like you just think of the colour without seeing the colour in your brain. Sorry if this doesn't make sense or has an obvious answer ;w;
I think I understand what you're saying. I'll try and make my answer as clear as possible, but when describing "seeing" in terms of synesthesia, it does get difficult to distinguish between what one sees physically, versus what one sees in their mind's eye.
With projective synesthesia, a grapheme-color synesthete would physically see the colors that they associate with symbols (I'll just use letters as my example). This means that it isn't just in their mind's eye - when they look at letters, they see the colors of those letters in real life.
With associative synesthesia, a grapheme-color synesthete would either see the colors in their mind's eye, or merely know that they associate colors with certain letters. So they wouldn't actually see colors anywhere beyond their imagination / consciousness; and some would not 'see' the colors anywhere, yet they would have an instinctive knowledge that, say, 'E' is yellow, because it just feels that way.
I believe this is the specific difference, but if anybody knows better please tell me so. I hope this helps, anon.
Since this is my first synesthesia post, I figured I should start off with talking about some misconceptions about synesthesia that I frequently run into. I can understand the reasoning behind believing most of these (I used to believe a few of them myself before really getting into researching synesthesia), so I wanted to clarify them.
Misconception #1: Synesthesia isn’t a real thing. You’re hallucinating/using your imagination/faking it for attention.
Scientists started accepting it as a real thing in the 1980s with American neurologist Richard E. Cytowic’s research on it. Cytowic has written some books on the topic that can probably explain things a lot better than I can, if anyone is interested enough in the topic to read them.
The hallucinating/using my imagination thing gets annoying to hear too, but I understand where the people who say that are coming from. Synesthesia is a weird concept. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s not just my imagination though. If it was just my imagination, I’d be able to change my perceptions (like changing the color I involuntarily see for a number or letter). I can’t change my perceptions. The letter D is green to me. If I started hating the color green for some reason, I still wouldn’t be able to change it to something like pink. D is green to me and always will be, whether I like it or not.
I’ve heard of people faking synesthesia for attention, but I honestly don’t understand that. Any time it comes up in conversation with someone who isn’t a synesthete (meaning someone who has synesthesia, for those who aren’t familiar with the term), I get the good ol’ you’re-absolutely-bonkers-and-I’m-worried-about-your-mental-health look. I absolutely hate getting that look, so I usually don’t bring it up with people I don’t know very well. I can’t imagine someone wanting to deal with that if they didn’t actually have synesthesia.
Misconception #2: Synesthesia is a disorder/You have to get a diagnosis.
It’s actually not classified as a disorder by neurologists. It’s a perceptual phenomenon. While some things that are sometimes classified under the umbrella of synesthesia (such as misophonia) are disorders, synesthesia itself isn’t.
This also goes hand-in-hand with the belief that you have to have someone diagnose you with synesthesia. Since it isn’t a disorder, it’s not necessarily something you need to be diagnosed with. You can go to a neurologist and have them tell you whether or not you have it, but it isn’t something you have to do. Most synesthetes are self-diagnosed or take a test at The Synesthesia Battery to confirm whether or not they have some of the more common types. From what I understand, there isn’t a lot of gray area on whether or not you have it (unless you have a more rare type that not a lot of research has been done on). You either have the type or you don’t. Usually, things go something like this:
*while researching a type of synesthesia, such as grapheme-color*
Non-synesthete: Wow, this sounds cool! (or “Wow, this is so weird! What even is this?” depending on who it is)
Synesthete: Wait, this isn’t...normal? (or “No, you idiot! D is pink, not green!”)
So yeah, it’s usually pretty easy figuring out if you have it or not. There are also a bunch of different types (about 80, last I checked) and to my knowledge, no one has all of them.
Misconception #3: You can only have one type.
I’ve heard of someone having as many as 12 different types. Synesthetes can have more than one type. I have multiple types myself, and you’re actually likely to have multiple types if you discover having one.
Misconception #4: Synesthetic pairings (meaning pairs such as my “D is green” example from earlier) are entirely determined by environmental factors.
While environmental factors can influence synesthetic pairings on occasion, they rarely determine them. There have been cases where grapheme-color synesthetes have pairings that match up with refrigerator magnets they played with as children, but (according to what research has found so far anyway) those seem to be the exception rather than the rule. No one is sure why most synesthetes don’t associate the exact same things with each other (like why some of the colors I see for my alphabet are different from how my friend sees hers).
Misconception #5: The only kind of synesthesia is what’s known as “projective synesthesia”.
Projective synesthesia is where the synesthete’s pairings are projected into the world around them. They may literally see any written D as green or see orange swirls dancing around their living room for their favorite song. (This is probably why some people assume synesthetes are hallucinating.) There’s also something called associative synesthesia, which is where the synesthete’s pairings exist only in the synesthete’s mind’s eye or as a very strong, involuntary association between two things.
I have associative synesthesia personally. I don’t literally see D as green, but in my mind’s eye, it is. If it’s any other color, it feels wrong. I don’t literally see ticker tape in my peripheral vision subtitling my life, but I see it in my mind’s eye even when I don’t want to. (That type of synesthesia is called ticker tape, in case anyone was curious. I know it’s not talked about as much as some of the other types).
Anyway, I hope that was helpful for someone. These aren’t the only misconceptions I’ve heard, but the post was getting long so I’m leaving it at this.
Hi all! I have two announcements I'd like to make. First, I'm in the process of relocating my old synesthesia simulation videos to a new channel. I made 13 of these from 2017-2022 and posted them on my main music channel, which harmed both their performance and the rest of my music's reach. These videos were made with After Effects and the Trapcode suite, which I no longer use because of Adobe's predatory terms of service and the disconnect between actual synesthetic qualia and what I'm capable of rendering in a 2.5D format.
To this day, the tools available to depict my experiences with are insufficient. Which brings me to my second announcement:
I am in the process of creating a real-time competitive synesthesia simulator for VR that will enable you to see, feel, and touch music; as well as craft your own song experiences (for those of you who can see music yourself). I've been working with another developer on this and we've made good progress already! The simulator will be paired with a study that will evaluate players on their experiences in hopes of answering questions I've been wanting answered for years. I have a hypothesis about what might come about because of this simulator, but still no solid research to back it up. I'm not sure if it will be possible to get this study published in a journal as someone with no degree, but I will be collaborating with researchers to formulate the study in a way that is empirically sound. At the moment, I'm seeking funding through Unreal Megagrants to get it produced within ~1-2 years. If that is a dead end, we may do a Kickstarter instead.
If this interests you, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube and ring the bell there so you don't miss news on this. Some time after all the old simulations have been uploaded, I'll be posting previews of the current prototype, as well as prototypical song simulations created with it.
Until then, you can watch one of the first synesthesia simulations I made back in 2017 on my new channel here:
