as small as a world and as large as alone

4:48am October 12, 2014

neurowonderful:

aspiegirlspeaks:

how many people with autism can do math so well is because they have the ability to associate large sums, numbers or equations to shapes…this is considered a type of synesthesia. In autistic terms, if we can see it, we can do it. that is why some autistic people like me struggle so much with learning new languages or algebra…because we can’t picture such things in our minds, and we are visual thinkers.

Synesthetes represent! My discovering Synesthesia was what led me to discovering that I have SPD, which in turn led me to figuring out that I am autistic. I think Synesthesia is neurowonderful!

I’m an associator with my coloured graphemes and most tactile feelings. I’m a projector with my coloured sounds/voices/music, my coloured smells and tastes, and with some tactile feelings.

I’m both an associator and a projector depending on the type of synesthesia. Also not all synesthesia is conceptual, there’s also perceptual synesthesia. Not sure it mentioned that. Perceptual synesthesia is when a stimulus in one sense gets instantly translated to a stimulus in another. Most people think of only conceptual synesthesia like colored letters, where a concept, such as a letter, is given visual or other sensory attributes. Not all synesthesia involves vision.

Some things I picked up on a synesthesia mailing list eons ago, that you won’t find in the literature:

Not all synesthesia is immediately noticeable to the synesthete. It does not all carry an emotional charge.

Sometimes synesthesia does change. This can happen due to the effects of drugs, or even during autistic overload.

For instance when I get overloaded, my colored numbers all stay the same color, but I get all my senses bleeding over into all my other senses in ways that are not consistent over time and leave me completely disoriented and unable to navigate the world at all. I’ve heard this from other autistic people too.

Some drugs can give non synesthetes temporary synesthesia.

Not all synesthesia is consistent over time.

So basically Richard Cytowic wrote up his own criteria for synesthesia, and it’s true for most synesthesia, but talking amongst ourselves,synesthetes have discovered that many of us have at least some synesthesia experiences that don’t fit the Cytowic mold. If your synesthesia doesn’t fit the mold, it’s not because there’s some thing wrong with you or that you’re lying. It means that the diagnostic criteria don’t cover every type of synesthesia, just most of them.

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