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While Nathan Witthoft was earning his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he met a woman with color-grapheme synesthesia, a neurological condition where people see letters and numbers in color. Most color-grapheme synesthetes perceive the alphabet in their own color scheme, with each letter possessing a different hue. When tested on her synesthesia, Witthoft noticed that it had reoccurring colors, as if her alphabet followed a set, repeated pattern. She mentioned that as a child she had a set of colored alphabet magnets and her letters matched the colors of the letters in the set.

Witthoft wrote a paper about her and soon others contacted him, noting that their synesthesia mimicked the colors of the magnets. He recruited 11 synesthetes to visit the lab and take some tests. First, he asked the subjects to participate in a battery of tests to determine whether they were, in fact, synesthetes (the tests come from synesthete.org; anyone can register and take them online). Then, they participated in a timed color-matching test, where they selected the shade that corresponded with their letter.

He found that all 11 subjects had a similarly colored alphabet that paralleled the childhood magnet set. All but one of the participants recalled having this toy during their childhoods. This is the first time researchers found that color-grapheme synesthetes shared common patterns.

Psychological Science

“I had been surprised by how easy it was to find people [whose synesthesia mirrors the magnetic alphabet toy],” says Witthoft, a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University in the psychology department.

Additionally, these color patterns stay constant. The woman from MIT participated in this study as well and her alphabet remained similar to what it was seven years ago. All the subjects completed the matching test twice with about 50 days in between—both times the letters possessed the same shades. These findings are consistent with researchers’ understanding of synesthesia as being specific, automatic, and constant.    

However, this research doesn’t mean that synesthesia can be learned.

“I know plenty of people who have this magnet set [who aren’t synesthetes]. The fact that we found so many people, or found it at all, is surprising. It’s a thing that was made possible [because of] a mass-produced toy,” says Witthoft.

While synesthesia is likely genetic, these findings show the influence of the environment on learning. Without the neurological underpinnings of synesthesia, people won’t simply learn to see letters in color. Yet, people who have the genetic disposition for it pick up the color scheme because of environment.  

“For most of the people who are synesthetes … they are not aware of it [until they’re teenagers]. They think everyone has it and think everyone sees the same thing they do. They are having this kind of experience from stimuli in the world; it’s just there in the world and they are not aware that it comes from them. And there is nothing about their everyday world that informs them it is [unusual],” he says.

The paper appears in the journal Psychological Science. 

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To most readers, this text looks black and white. But to a few, each letter possesses a different color, and reading becomes more than what’s in black and white.   

Those who read in color live with grapheme-color synesthesia, where the brain assigns colors to letter and numbers. Some synesthetes say words possess colors, too (someone might say truth looks gold, for example). Overall, 4 percent of the population experiences a form of synesthesia with 1 percent living with grapheme-color synesthesia.

Synesthesia gives many people a richer experience and it’s believed to be mostly harmless and fixed—people either have it or they don’t.

Until now.

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam found that people, without a history of grapheme-color synesthesia, who read books with some colored letters, associated those letters with the correlating hues. This is the first time anyone has taught synesthesia by reading books. 

“Whenever we give a talk or lecture, people ask if they can learn synesthesia,” says Olympia Colizoli, a doctoral student in the brain and cognition department at the University of Amsterdam.

“Most people would never want to give up their synesthesia and can’t imagine not having these experiences.”

To test whether people could learn grapheme-color synesthesia, Colizoli asked 15 subjects to read books that had four frequently occurring letters paired with four commonly seen colors. Each participant selected a book from Project Gutenberg and Colizoli applied color to the book (prior to the experiment she colored every letter in a book but it made it very difficult to read). Colizoli’s interest isn’t simply professional; she has "time form" synesthesia, which means she sees periods of times, such as days, weeks, or centuries, as shapes.

“Even though [synesthesia] seems to run in families and the evidences suggests it is genetic, language is learned and it comes from the environment … no one is born with the letter a in their brain,” she says. Yet, there seems to be little understanding of the role of environment and synesthesia. 

Prior to reading the colored book, Colizoli asked the participants to take a modified Stroop test, which detects grapheme-color synesthesia, to assure none of the subjects had it. In a modified Stroop test, people look at the words printed in different colored ink. Grapheme-color synethetes have delayed responses when identifying the letters’ colors.

After completing the book, the subjects re-took the Stroop test and showed behavioral signs of synesthesia. Colizoli does not believe these effects are permanent, noting more research needs to be conducted. She and her colleagues also replicated the results with participants who read in Dutch.

“We are bombarded by colored letters all the time,” Colizoli says. “It is interesting to see how adaptive [synesthesia] may be.”

Colizoli also asked the subjects if they noticed any differences since the experiment and they gave a variety of subjective responses (much like synesthetes would). One person claimed to dislike orange until reading in color, while two subjects say they now read faster. Another woman, a musician, enjoyed reading in color so much she asked if Colizoli could print all her sheet music in color for her. (This is not uncommon; artists frequently claim to be synesthetes. Vladimir Nabokov saw the alphabet in rainbow colors with each letter appearing the same shade each time he saw it.)   

“She could remember the music better and fell in love with it. Some people were really sensitive to it.”  

The paper appears in the online journal PLoS ONE. If you want to try reading like a grapheme-color synsethete, check out this link.

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This post originally appeared on the blog Persephone Magazine.

By Teri Floyd

In my head, the letter "N" is green. The number 5 is blackish gray, and in his early 20s. The month of February is lavender colored and covered in ice.

So in case you haven’t guessed, I have synesthesia.

I’ve had it all my life, I suppose. People who are experts on such things say that we are born with it, that it is a brain disorder. The wires in your brain get crossed, and you experience all five senses simultaneously. They overlap where they should be separate.

Everybody who has it has a different form of synesthesia with minor undertones of other kinds. Mine mainly exists with letters and numbers. I see numbers, letters, words, etc in color. All of my letters and numbers have different colors, personalities, textures, ages and gender. I literally see them as living beings. Colors themselves also have gender. When I was a child often I’d play ‘house’ with my crayons instead of dolls. Seriously, I’d have red and blue get married or green and orange have a sordid affair. My grandma used to think it was so funny. It was just normal to me. Words have colors – for instance, my son’s name, Callum, is a bright, sunny yellow with flecks of baby blue, particularly in the L’s.

The inside of my head kind of feels like a Jackson Pollock painting. All splotches and globs of brightly colored paint, roads leading nowhere, just an explosion of thick, goopy color with a nonsensical message. Convergence, 1952 by Jackson Pollock is my favorite painting. Probably because it’s the colors of my name. Yellows, a hint of orange, lots of black, and a little fleck of blue peeking out; all of it streaked into oblivion. My name looks just like that; it did long before I ever saw a Pollock painting.

I also have synesthesia with regard to music. Certain songs bring vivid colors into my head. If I listen to "Happiness is a Warm Gun," by the Beatles, my head fills with alternating flashes of mustard-yellow and bright, silvery white. It has a distinct pulse and a gritty, sandpapery feel. David Bowie’s voice always invokes a bright sky blue that sometimes turns darker, or has shades of gray, depending on the mood of the song. Rap music invokes a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes all spiraling through my head at warp speed. I prefer one sole theme, which is why I think I don’t usually care for rap music unless it’s really unique or exceptional (for instance, Lil Wayne’s voice is a silvery gray with purple undertones that I find really pleasing). Classical music takes me through a landscape of color, shape and feeling. Usually I close my eyes when listening. It’s like having my own personal DVD of "Fantasia" playing through my head whenever I listen.

Usually when I tell people about my synesthestic experiences they look at me like I’m some crazed hippie. I probably am a crazed hippie in reality, but what I experience is more than just psychedelic. It’s spiritual. My synesthesia is so ingrained into me that if I lost my ability tomorrow, I would feel as if I’d been blinded or deafened.

Occasionally I experience the other types of synesthesia that have to do with taste, sensation and smell, but only occasionally. Smells and tastes definitely invoke a distinct color in my brain. For instance, the smell and taste of fresh garlic makes my head fill with bright, vibrant green. Diet drinks with their saccharine sweetness always appear in my head as being a shimmering, blinding silver.

It can be strange, having synesthesia. If I’m out to dinner with a friend, and they scrape their fork on their teeth, my brain fills with unnamed metallic colors, and my ears roar with the sound of it. I can’t stand it. I can taste the metal on my own tongue and it is unbearable. It can cause obsessive compulsive behavior sometimes. Occasionally the sound and taste of silverware is so loud in my brain that I have to use plastic cutlery when I eat.

Synesthesia certainly enriches my life as an avid reader and a writer. It always helped my poetry and as I become better at essays and stories I find that it enriches them, too. Certainly F. Scott Fitzgerald was synesthetic. No one can read "The Great Gatsby" and tell me that he wasn’t. I think that is why I feel so decadent and wistful when I read his books. I’ve read "Gatsby" dozens of times and never tire of the language and the way his words flow in an endless barrage of color. Many artists and celebrities are synesthestes, including Tori Amos, Eddie Van Halen, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stevie Wonder, Vladimir Nabokov and many, many others.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful to have synesthesia. I have had it so long that it is like second nature to me now. I often forget that I do have it, and just go through life assuming that people are experiencing the same sensations as I do. I see the months of the year like a giant Rolodex, spiraling through an open space. They all have colors, genders, ages and personalities. I also benefit from having a somewhat photographic memory with directions, phone numbers, addresses and names, because I see them as a pattern of colors.

It all tastes blue to me.

More from Persephone Magazine:

A day in the life of a 14-year-old boy with autism 

Ableism: Get it  |  Another view of ableism 

An introduction to chemotherapy

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