Synesthesia

* Sound-color synesthetes, as a group, tend to see lighter colors for higher sounds

* Some grapheme → color synesthetes report that the colors seem to be “projected” out into the world (called “projectors”), while most report that the colors are experienced in their “mind’s eye” (called “associators”).^[24] It is estimated that approximately one or two per hundred grapheme-color synesthetes are projectors; the rest are associator.

* According to Richard Cytowic, sound → color synesthesia is “something like fireworks”: 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.^[3] For some, the stimulus type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia.

* Sound often changes the perceived hue, brightness, scintillation, and directional movement. Some individuals see music on a “screen” in front of their face. Deni Simon, for whom music produces waving lines “like oscilloscope configurations—lines moving in color, often metallic with height, width and, most importantly, depth. My favorite music has lines that extend horizontally beyond the ‘screen’ area.”^[3]

* Individuals rarely agree on what color a given sound is (composers Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov famously disagreed on the colors of music keys); however, synesthetes show the same trends as non-synesthetes do. For example, both groups say that loud tones are brighter than soft tones and that lower tones are darker than higher tones.

via huiyan