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Essay on What Is Synesthesia?

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Does this number 5 appear as a color? Or does the word “calm” give the taste of something soothing? No? That is ok; all that means is a rare Neurological disease known as Synesthesia is not present. Synesthesia is Greek for “syn=together and aisthesis=perception” (Cytowic, 1995) and by definition means “joined sensations” (Ciccarelli & White, 2012, p.88), meaning that two of peoples 5 senses are connected together. Normally this is a fusion of sound and sight, but this can also include taste, touch, and smell for some people. Let’s delve deeper and learn more about what Synesthesia is exactly.
Synesthesia was first discovered in 1812 and at the time was thought to be a mental disorder or a type of insanity (Than, 2011). This of course was …show more content…

Or see the letter “F” as a confident letter. It is important to understand that whatever form of Synesthesia a person may have that they perceive that certain number or letter to be the same every time it appears. Meaning if a person perceives the letter A as red or F as confident, that will always be the case for that person concerning those letters. This is what separates true Synaesthetes from a person who can achieve a Falsetto effect via hallucinogenic drugs. Leaving scientist to wonder, how exactly do people end up with this condition?
Scientists haven’t quite figured out how it is inherited, but this is what’s known for sure. More than 40% of Synaesthetes have a first degree family member with this Neurological condition (Mo, 2009). Meaning that most Synaesthetes inherit the condition from their parents, and at the time when this was first discovered they noticed that Synesthesia was more common in women. The fact scientist saw this disease affecting women more than men, interfered with their idea of Synesthesia being an X-linked condition. Leading scientist to the conclusion that most men were lying during the survey as they were afraid that having this condition was a sign of weakness. Eventually scientist were able to prove men were lying about their abilities later on when technology developed to actually test people for this condition rather than taking their word. On the other hand,

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