awash in hues and tones that evade the average person. Those extraordinary individuals, known as synesthetes, encounter interactions among their senses daily: They see colors when they hear musical ...

To be a synesthete is to need a sense of humor at times—including tolerating others’ comical observations on the traits. In my world, one non-synesthetic friend quipped, “I bet your favorite Christmas ...

When Carol Steen first learned the alphabet in elementary school, she was smitten with the very first letter. "'A' was the prettiest pink I'd ever seen," she remembers telling her best friend on their ...

Being able to identify a smell or flavor appears to be the most important factor in how some synesthetes 'see' them, according to a new study. Being able to identify a smell or flavour appears to be ...

For most of us, the boundaries between our bodily senses are clear-cut and rigid. But for a few rare individuals, the demarcation between vision and hearing, or between taste and touch, are less solid ...

Some people hear colors, see flavors and are generally prone to a mixing-and-matching of typically disparate perceptual domains. Those people are called synesthetes, and were the topic of a World ...

The letter "c" is light blue, "a" evokes a sense of "weathered wood," and "r" feels like "a sooty rag being ripped." So wrote the novelist Vladimir Nabokov -- and he wasn't simply being poetic. He was ...

If you ask Emma Anders about the number five, she’ll tell you that it’s red. She’ll also tell you that five is a mischievous, self-centered brat — like a kid throwing a temper tantrum at a party. “Two ...

Welcome to part 2 of my series on synesthesia, a harmless quirk in some brains — mine included — where one “sees” colors associated with letters, numbers, tastes, or sounds. Post 1 introduced what ...

For most of us, the boundaries between our bodily senses are clear-cut and rigid. But for a few rare individuals, the demarcation between vision and hearing, or between taste and touch, are less solid ...

It sounds like something out of an X-Men movie: people who can “hear” colors. But according to researchers, up to 15 percent of the population hears colors, tastes sounds, and experiences various ...