Synesthesia?

“Ok Adam, lay off the big words this morning please…”

Rght you are… Synesthesia is where our senses cross over, get mixed into each other, overlap… Like tasting colours, smelling sounds, and feeling shapes… Like this morning as I gazed out across my garden, I saw a sheen of frost upon our decking area… It reminded me that I can feel cold when I see shiny white colour…

Many people may well consider synesthesia to be an unusual phenomenon… However, it is well documented that some of history’s outstandingly creative minds — artists, musicians, poets, writers etc — have often had all kinds of synaesthesia occurring within them.

Now research has shown that hypnosis can be used to create the same in anyone! Yay! Let me go on…

This hypnosis article at Medical News Today states:

Hypnosis can induce “synesthetic” experiences — where one sense triggers the involuntary use of another — within an average brain, according to a new study in the journal Psychological Science, the premiere publication of the Association for Psychological Society.

The findings suggests that people with synesthesia, contrary to popular belief, do not necessarily have extra connections in their brain; rather, their brains may simply do more ‘cross talking’ which can be induced by changing inhibitory processes in the average brain.

This cross-talking in the brain is similar to cross-dressing in real-life… Ahem… It goes on to say:

People living with synesthesia (known as synesthetes) experience abnormal interactions between the senses. Digit-color synesthesia, for instance, will experience certain numbers in specific colors (for example, they might experience the number seven as red). A possible reason put forward for this phenomenon is the existence of extra connections between brain areas in synesthesia, but this new study suggests otherwise.

To explore the alternative theory of more cross talk (disinhibition) between brain areas in synesthetes, Cohen Kadosh and colleagues used posthypnotic suggestion to show that people who are not synesthetes can be induced to have synesthetic experiences.

After inducing digit-color synesthesia, the volunteers reported similar experiences to those undergone by real synesthetes in their everyday life. For example, one participant described her experience while under posthypnotic suggestion as “When I’m walking on the street, the car registration numbers, if those numbers are on the registration, I see them in those colors.” Moreover, hypnotized participants failed a catch test which was also failed by real synesthetes: when subjects were hypnotized to experience seven as red (for example) they could not detect the number when a black seven was presented on a red background.

Cohen Kadosh explains: “Our study shows that hypnosis can induce synesthetic experiences in people, suggesting that extra brain connections are not needed to experience cross-sensory interactions and that it is a change in inhibitory processes — more cross talk within the brain — that causes these experiences. This takes us one step closer to understanding the causes of synesthesia and abnormal cross-brain interactions.”

Ok, so beneath all the academic egg-head languge, it means that you can stop taking the LSD and start using hypnosis now… Double Yay!

Hahaha… Actually, the fact that this is getting recognised on an official level could mean fabulous things for people looking to enhance creativity, or just expand the way they use their brain and their mind… I am genuinely considering putting an audio programme together for nothing more than heightened, hallucinatory-type experiences… Just showing people that the brain can deliver far more than you ever realise…

This hypnosis article at Wired Science also mentions this work and how hypnosis is used to see numbers in colours. Makes for some fascinating and insightful reading.

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