Do you have synaesthesia?

Question

If so, do you think a person could "unlearn" their associations by being exposed to new associations?

Example: If a person always sees a 'C' note in music as yellow - if they are placed in a lab and bombarded with 'blue' C notes, would it wipe out their previous association?

(for those who are unfamiliar with synaesthesia - it is when two different senses blend. Example: 'tasting' certain music notes - example: B flat tastes like bacon. Or 'seeing' certain colors with letters or numbers - example: 9 is blue. )

Answer 1

Yes, I think I have synaesthesia.  C is red, but the way!  Yellow is clearly wrong!  (Just kidding).

If you played a C and showed me a blue flash card, I'd just keep them separate in my mind.  I'd hear the red note and see a blue card and I'd think, how nice: a red sound with a blue picture.  And I'd fail all the tests that invited me to pair C with blue, just like I fail all the tests that show me the word 'red' in a blue font and expect me to respond to the colour instead of the word.

Mind you, if you deprived me of sleep and kept me in solitary confinement you could probably mess with my brain enough to get the result you wanted.

I imagine it is possibly to unlearn some of the associations, but it's just such a clear association to me that I can't quite imagine it.

Answer 2

No I don't have it.

But I'm curious, how would one "send" blue C notes?  How do you make a C note blue?

Answer 3

That's a good question. I've only just discovered that I have this condition. For me the number 5 is blue. 3 and 13 are green. I remember being really young and telling my mom that the number 13 looked like a really lush forest with a waterfall. When I think of zero I see white. 4 is a light pink. 8 is purple. Does anyone feel the same? I'd love to talk to someone who shares this condition.

Answer 4

I don't personally, but enough of my friends do I know quiet a bit about it and I don't think it works that way. The associations aren't "learned" they're just there. Some people with synaesthesia actually see the color that they associate the letter with projected on to the letter, and it really bothers them if the actual letter is a different color. Only about one in three synaestates have that though. Otherwise I've heard it be described as if you had a shirt, and when you bought it the shirt was blue, but you washed it so many times that it just turned white, but you still know that the shirt is blue, you know? I don't think that experiment would work at all, it would be just like somebody telling you the shirt was actually red over and over, you would probably just be like, what the h**l are you talking about?