Synesthesia

Synesthesia

Synesthesia when real information of one sense is mixed with the perception of another sense. This is involuntary and this additional perception is also regarded by the synesthesia as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. Its reality and vividness are what make synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Some form of Synesthesia occurs in roughly 1 in 200 individuals.

http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/

Grapheme-color synesthesia

Grapheme-color synesthetes perceive particular colors when seeing a letter, word or number (grapheme).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19302164

 Ordinal-linguistic personification

Oral linguistic personification is a variant of synesthesia in which the person ties numbers or words with a certain personality. “5 was a neutral “yes man”. 6 was always a good handsome guy. 7 was a pretty female, I always hated the number 8, 9 was a good guy who liked 8 but 8 liked 6. In my mind, 6 and 7 always went together.”

http://theparfaitprincey.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/ordinal-linguistic-personification/

Number-form Synesthesia

A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. studies have shown that number-form synesthetes are faster to say which of two numbers is larger when the numbers are arranged in a manner consistent with their number-form, suggesting that number forms are automatically evoked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_form

Sound-color Synesthesia

Sound - color synesthesia is  voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and simple shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound stimulus ends. It is said these people may see higher tones in lighter colors and lower tones in darker colors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

Lexical-gustatory Synesthesia

This is a case of Synesthesia in which when people associate words with a certain taste or flavor. According to James Wannerton, "Whenever I hear, read, or articulate words or word sounds, I experience an immediate and involuntary taste sensation on my tongue. These very specific taste associations never change and have remained the same for as long as I can remember." researchers have found that the Synesthetic associations are constrained by early food experiences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical-gustatory_synesthesia

Images: 

http://wearcam.org/synesthesia/synesthesia.html

http://www.manicvision.com/synethesia.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38944019@N06/4821370830/

http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=23504

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsuler/2476450293/

http://drgateau.com/?p=1644