Not quite. Anaesthetic - No sensation, synaesthetic - crossed or mixed sensation. Basically the reception of one sense triggers others, so hearing music might cause you to see colours or shapes or movement. You ever hear the Hendrix song Purple Haze? Under every mention of the word 'purple', he plays an E7#9 chord, because he said that chord gave him a really strong sense of the colour purple. That's kinda borderline synaesthesia.
This is the explanation of it I did, it's a little more detailed:
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Between 0.5% and 3% of the population have a ?gift? that enables them to mix these senses and parts of the body together, creating almost limitless combinations of further sense. This condition is known as Synaesthesia, which literally means, ?Joined Sensation.? In ?Synaesthetes?, the use of one sense triggers neurological mechanisms, causing another sense to be activated as well. For example, some synaesthetes are able to ?feel? sounds, colours, smells and tastes. Others see letters, number or shapes, and automatically see them in certain colours. They may describe the tone of someone?s voice as a shape, or they may say that something ?smells? blue. There are almost limitless combinations and forms of synaesthesia, although the most common involve seeing colours.
Although the same effects may be created by the use of hallucinogenic drugs, such as mescaline or LSD, and it may be triggered by cannabis use, synaesthesia is completely involuntary. It is not at all metaphorical, despite many artists and writers either pretending to be synaesthetic, or using synaesthetic metaphors; the individual is not imagining the second sense, nor knowingly associating one sense with the other. They can genuinely see, smell, taste, hear or feel the primary sense. For synaesthetes who see colours or shapes because of another sensory input, the pictures they see are very geometric and uncomplicated. Some see them in their minds eye, but some actually see the colour projected onto the surface itself. Some synaesthetes even describe ?seeing? the shapes/colours emanating from the source of the prime sense, such as speakers or a piece of fruit.
Some synaesthetes are able to suppress their sensory impressions, and it may be weakened by certain emotional or physical circumstances (such as fatigue, illness or stress), but they can never get rid of it, just as true synaesthesia can never be created by those who do not have it. However, many children with synaesthesia learn to suppress it until they are no longer aware of it, when they discover that other people do not perceive the world in the way that they do. Despite there being some small correlation between synaesthetes in the most common forms of synaesthesia, the same letter, or sound may trigger completely different colours in different people. It is, however, consistent within each person; a sound that appears as a purple circle will always appear as a purple circle to them. They may also find correlation between their triggered senses, for example the intensity of a colour may increase as the pitch of the sound increases.
Although it is most common for only two sense to be involved, some synaesthetes may have a third or fourth sense included. Many different forms of synaesthesia are likely to be present in one individual, also; the vast majority of synaesthetes have at least two forms of synaesthesia. It is twice as likely in women than in men, and is genetic.
Scientists have not yet been able to explain the details of synaesthesia, and details of it vary vastly: some say that only 1 in 25000 people have it, others say as many as 1 in 10, though this would indicate that it was not true synaesthesia that the people were encountering, but sensory association.
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I REALLY wish I had it. It sounds so cool. Imagine liking a song not just because it sounded nice but because it had a really good look to it. You'd be like a human abstract art music video generator.
Post Edited (04-19-06 06:18)
~ Sofi ~
"And so tomorrow there will be another number for the one who had a name."
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