Synesthesia: The “disorder” that truly is an EXTRAorder. | Wesley Trisnadi | TEDxJIS

[Applause] whether or not all disorders are pure disorders and cannot be gifts at all has always been controversial I mean have you ever smelled colors or perhaps tasted musical notes or has reminder for generated colors beyond the visible spectrum well if you get really tainted these you my friend have synesthesia my name is hua sutras Nadi and I a fellow sinister will be discussing this disorder synesthesia and how it proves that not all disorders are pure disorders for they could have strengths as well what is synesthesia synesthesia is when the stimulation of one sense automatically triggers another for example when a synesthete hears the sound which appeals to his or her auditory sense this synesthesia is able to taste that sound or a musical note now this is just one example another example could be maybe you smell a certain smell and colors pop up let's say you smell cherries and Brown pops up in your mind so the word sin means joint anesthesia means senses therefore together sin is synesthesia means join senses now you're probably wondering why haven't I heard about this before and where did synesthesia come from now because it's really complex and rare and only about 4% of the world has this even so today scientists don't really know where I mean what really causes synesthesia but a common theory is that the neurons in your mind's four different senses are supposed to separate like after four months so let's say this your hearing sense and this is your tasting sense they're supposed to separate but for synesthetes they always stick together that's why when you hear a sound you taste something and it's always automatic now genetics is the people think genetics is the main reason of where synesthesia came from and because most of the theories involve neurobiology and speaking of genetics when I was younger my sister and I often argued what color is the letter A what color is the number 10 and obviously we ended up in disagreement because for synesthetes it's always unique so not only a synesthesia rare but within within the four percent of the population it's unique so everyone perceives things differently now there are many types of synesthesia because synesthesia is basically like I said earlier the combination or two or more senses crossing paths together this is the most common form of synesthesia called grapheme-color synesthesia this is what I was born with and so for example as you can see there a non-synesthetes sees apple just apple butter synesthesia or she sees it with colors now it's not a hallucination you don't actually like in your master so you don't actually see number five with red for example but in your mind when you think of five you think of red so if you're wondering this is how I view the alphabetical letters and numbers as you can see it's really cultural and to tell you the truth I can't fully describe what what like texture or even color it is because sometimes my mind generates its own color and so as much as I want to explain to it I can't let's see gee looks like a green there but to be honest it's it've a gray a bit of a green like I just can't explain it and sometimes it's also about texture opacity and thickness so it's not all about colors and it's always the same so for me a is always a red B is always a blue s is always school bus yellow never anything else now this is how we view my own name and as you can see it down there only the capital letters are colorized sometimes only like the dominant letter comes up which is like the capital letter in names and that's why sometimes I see the whole name in colors sometimes I just see the first capital letters so they're two like yeah about two types of grapheme-color synesthetes sometimes you can actually see the the colors on like let's say you're a Baptist and sometimes it's just in your mind so this can actually help you can easily identify what's - and what's five there because of grapheme-color synesthesia sometimes your mind it sort of gives identity towards numbers and letters so for example for me the number nine is always a female because for me it's the color pink and pink is like a feminine color that's why 9 is always a pink for me and w like my own name is always light blue in my mind so whenever I think of myself or anybody with the name W or just a letter W itself I think of youth now this is because of a reason the graph color synesthesia but what if you just sort of like have like your mind just randomly gives personalities or identity number this is called ordinal linguistic first sonification so this is basically when your mind like let's say number five is a little boy who likes to wear your caps for no reason it's just how your mind works now another rare form is called lexical gustatory synesthesia this is when you hear a sound or word and you're able to taste it somewhat so for example maybe the word dog tastes sour in your mouth or I can say sweet depending on who you are now an even rare form and a little creepy form honestly it's called mirror-touch synesthesia this is when you actually let's say you see a person getting touched on the shoulder and you feel the exact sense a same sensation on your shoulder isn't that kind of creepy and I'm actually glad I don't actually have this one so yeah a an even cooler form and rare form is called spatial sequence synesthesia this is when your mind like like that guy over there you project like a timeline around you so that guy he sees January all the way till December so this can actually really a key in memorization and yeah and even a rare form and really interesting form is called time-space synesthesia this is when your minds this one's really really hard to explain for example like it's basically your mental calendar game is pretty strong like time is all over your mind let's say up here there's like a bird flying from 1981 and over here is there a cup of coffee from 2001 and there's like your desk from 1700s whatever you know and because synesthesia is like living your life through extraordinary ways there are always advantages and disadvantages and I'm going to talk about some from from various types of synesthesia so let start with a disadvantages first so one of the most common forms of common disadvantages is mind versus reality comple so let's say this guy here sees would say a and blue but he's like way no that doesn't make sense in my mind it's array so he knows it's blue but he argues it's red which doesn't make much sense but that's true another well another disadvantage that synesthetes tends to be bad at math which might explain why underperforming math sometimes of it for example two plus three equals two five and four since t if this could be like pink plus three equals red and pink listener a pink was blue equals red and pink was blue is not red and maybe if he knows the color theory red is a primary color and you cannot form you cannot form red out of anything because it's a primary color so this can like really make him troubled in math so he can ask to take that elimination factor first then solves it that's another disadvantage and another disadvantage is like social awkwardness you can actually start disliking people just because you don't like their names or like I don't like Valerie because their names taste horrible for example or you don't like some people because their the name gives a bad color or a bad smell in your mouth like Cooper I don't know but one of the most common disadvantages is over sensation so imagine you're in a fire alarm situation and if you have this in as the lexical gustatory synesthesia imagine a mic hearing all those noises and that triggers all those weird sensations all over your mind that can it be a problem especially when you're trying to escape a fire alarm or imagine if you're in a choir and there are lots of different sounds there like violins choirs or P or crowd singing or whatever like all those different noises trigger different sounds your mind and imagine that over sensation in your mind or maybe over sensation in your smell or taste or whatever that can be disturbing now another thing is called misophonia and don't worry this is a very rare form but this actually this is pretty bad this is where certain certain certain sounds can trigger negative emotions such as anxiety but like always there are always advantages to everything and a common stereotype is that synesthetes are good at art which is yeah sort of true I guess because synesthesia can actually really help you with areas of talent in art and to tell you the truth the advantages actually outweigh the advantages it does more good than harm which I will go through so this is an example of what synesthetes can paint so let's say you like this artist is finished Eva what can they can do is like you tell them a song like whatever Taylor Swift Bieber whatever and they can listen to it and all these colors come up in their mind and they actually draw it so these are just some examples of what since these draw based on hearing a song so this is another advantage is the ability to actually differentiate numbers and letters easily this helps you with spelling and memorization as well here's a photograph taken by Marcia's my leg so as crazy as the sound sounds she uses her synesthesia to actually help her it's like she's as it as a conscience to guide her so what she did was she just takes out her camera goes to the water finds a reflection and she waits for that perfect moment her synesthesia tells sure this is the right moment so she feels a sensation that's when she presses the her shutter and it results in clear photos perfect pitch is a common advantage of synesthesia this is if you don't know what that is perfect pitches when you're able to tell what the notes are for a song without actually looking at the sheets and for synesthetes well if your synesthesia is related to music it's really easy because let's say you hear door a me you don't know it's door in me but the color is always red blue green for example and because your - or it could be taste or it could even be shapes or so whatever whatever thing corresponds to your mind let's say dough is a circle red or whatever so because you know that you know it's doremi instead of any other things and obviously if this really helps in making music and like I said earlier composing music lots of famous artists today like Hans Zimmer you know the guy who does all those great films Pharrell Williams Lord they all said that synesthesia helps them create their music because your mine associates colors with let's say sound I'm sorry sounds with circles or shapes or colors or whatever our taste it allows you to explore the different areas easily it allows you to really be creative and experiment and discover more to your full potential no memorization is probably the most common advantages because you always associate everything with colors or anything else it's easy to memorize like for me it's easy for me to memorize like my phone number if I get a new phone number or anything like that because you can memorize it by color or by taste or by sound but there's a really extraordinary story about synesthesia and memorization and that is the story of Danielle two men so daniel cement has savant syndrome and believe it or not this guy was able to memorize twenty two thousand five hundred and fourteen digits of you know PI in mathematics in only five hours and nine minutes and he claimed that this was down to synesthesia and this guy has about at least five different forms of synesthesia and he claimed that when he sees zero to nine they have distinct distinct sizes and shapes in space and this really allows him to memorize it and I know you probably don't get what he means but this is what this is kind of what he drew to explain to us so as you can see here 53 times 131 is 69 6949 oh it's you can't calculate with your mind but somehow he's able to make that shape and if you look at the shape it actually complements each other all those curls and all those circles and this guy claims that every number he sees has an homage Ender a personality a texture a color and a size and shape and that's why it's really easy for him to help him and because of this he was able to memorize PI all the way there so what does this mean what is my point my point is that synesthesia proves that not all disorders are purely bad and in fact with synesthesia sin there's actually more good than harm and many even like for example autism there are many famous people who had autism like Albert Einstein's Charles Darwin Isaac Newton and they all end up successful and synesthetes as well like Stevie Wonder Bongo Hans Zimmer Marilyn Monroe Pharrell Williams they all had synesthesia and it really helped them with their careers especially if your careers in art now again it proves that while you may be very bad and one thing like while disorder may hold you back significantly in one thing it can provide you with a great advantage and fire you to glory in another thing because just as the great Albert Islands Einstein said everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it'll live its whole life thinking it's stupid and so I think calling synesthesia a disorder is really it's more like a paradox than an accurate depiction because it does more good than harm like all the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and so instead of calling it a disorder let's call it an extra order and who knows if synesthesia I never existed what achievements today would never have been chief my name is what sutra snidey and i hope you enjoyed my god [Applause] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 17,006

Rating: 4.9384613 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Brain, Communication, Senses

Id: 3bQUiQj8k6c

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 22 2018