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My Synesthesia Map: Grapheme-color synesthesia

My Synesthesia Map: Grapheme-color synesthesia by Dee Adams.
I have a condition called Synesthesia that some define as a sort of autism or a condition where your brain experiences correspondences between sound, colour, letter or numbers. My particular case is one in which my brain maps certain colours to certain numbers and letters. Several famous artists both musical, visual arts, and even literary geniuses have documented cases or even written about their experiences. As a kid I had an incredibly difficult time being made to learn using those magnetic plastic letters and numbers. The colour of the plastic never properly corresponded to the right letter or number so I gave up using them as early learning devices.

I included the inversion of the colour map because interestingly enough, blue is a difficult color for me to work with whether in painting or design. It never ever looks quite right to me no matter how it is being used although I consider it a beautiful colour. The inversion has many more tones of blue than my original set. 

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nokapixel  Pro User  says:

Fascinating!!
Posted 11 months ago. ( permalink )

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sillypucci  Pro User  says:

I've always been fascinated by synesthesia.
Posted 11 months ago. ( permalink )

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Hector Garcia  Pro User  says:

Is it the same map for everybody who experiences synesthesia or each individual has their own?
Posted 11 months ago. ( permalink )

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Dee Adams  Pro User  says:

Each individual always has their own. What I've always been curious about is how before I could read, my brain had already mapped color to letters. But I didn't know what a letter was, I just knew this particular "figure or shape" had a colour assigned to it. And font style obviously doesn't matter.
Posted 11 months ago. ( permalink )

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mroth  Pro User  says:

I wrote a quick hack to generate these: mroth.info/code/dees-colors/
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

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LetTheCardsFall  Pro User  says:

Nice. In my version I "see" sounds. Sudden noises make big flashes of colors or patterns in my head, especially when I'm falling asleep.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

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Dee Adams  Pro User  says:

Wow... I wish I could experience yours as mine seems to be the more common type. Any particular music, artist, genre or key really strike your fancy?
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

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LetTheCardsFall  Pro User  says:

Used to go to sleep a lot listening to Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song". I get very interesting visuals from that one. Watch the middle instrumental part of System of a Down's "Hypnotize" video to see what kind of thing I'm talking about.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

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adrienne alair says:

I have your kind of synesthesia too!
Do you also visualize spatial relationships? (i.e., my numbers progress along a winding trail and my calendar year is a circle)
Posted 7 months ago. ( permalink )

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justme4Him  Pro User  says:

What are you numbers like? Are they in color, also?
Posted 6 months ago. ( permalink )

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Dee Adams  Pro User  says:

My numbers are in colour also but numbers run vertically for me they spatially feel like tall thin rectangles while letters are short perfect squares.
Posted 6 months ago. ( permalink )

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jewelfulgals says:

I have synesthesia! I see sounds - all my friend's voices have different colors and patterns, and when I listen to music I see my own private light show.
Posted 4 months ago. ( permalink )

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reneeeguia says:

is it wrong that i want to have this?
do you guys like it?
im sure there's no way to induce synesthesia, except maybe LSD, which im NOT going to try haha :)

im sorry, i get really sad because i cant see those things.
like im missing out on something in life.
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

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nokapixel  Pro User  says:

@reneeeguia Yeah, I'm pretty confident that LSD has very similar effects as synesthesia. But there's that whole "losing your mind for 6 hours" bit that you get as well - not really the awesome-ist side effect.
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

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Dee Adams  Pro User  says:

the funny part is renee, there are times I'd just like to be able to see things as is. The grass is always greener I think. I do wonder how it is my brain came to wire itself in such a way as to make these connections. I still don't know enough about it but something must be going on when a child is developing.
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )

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chrisdlugosz  Pro User  says:

i have never been diagnosed with anything, but i have absolute correlations where each musical instrument's sound is a color. [for the record, i have been a pianist since age 3]. almost all of my instruments are in the red-yellow-tan area, no blues. only does the sound of an 80s electric tom trigger a very rare green-indigo. this happens to me in the phil collins song "in the air tonight"
Posted 4 weeks ago. ( permalink )

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Color and Colors (Pool)

Diagram Diaries (Pool)

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Info Graphics (Pool)

Typophile // typography, lettering and design (Pool)

Communication Studies (Pool)

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