Lois Svard

Category: Synesthesia

  • Can synesthesia be taught?

    It wasn’t so long ago that the very existence of synesthesia was questioned. (You may recall from an earlier post that there are 60+ types of synesthesia, the condition in which stimulation of one sense leads to automatic experience of a second sense.) Many scientists throughout the twentieth century scoffed at the idea of synesthesia…

  • Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part IV

    We are in a holiday season during which many of us will eat too much, so I have been quite delighted to discover that for one synesthete, a major sixth tastes like low-fat cream – as opposed to a minor sixth that tastes like regular cream, or a major third that tastes sweet.  Don’t you…

  • Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part III

    Tom tells me that my voice is yellow when he speaks to me in person, but is a bright green on the phone.  I’m not sure what I think about having a yellow voice, or even a bright green one.  While I hear voices as lighter or darker, throaty, wispy, husky, gravelly, etc., and I…

  • Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part II

    Imagine if you saw a color whenever you looked at someone’s face, and different faces were different colors.  Or tasted eggs when you heard the word “fax.”  Or saw a mental map placing any number you saw or heard in a certain location in space (as in the image at the left, called a number…

  • Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part I

    I have often asked a student “what color does this movement (or excerpt, or chord progression) suggest to you?”  Color becomes a metaphor for sound – an additional tool for accessing the emotional content of the work, because most of us (even if unaware of it) associate colors with emotions – lighter colors for happiness,…