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Seeing smells and hearing colors: Cool things a synesthete like me may experience

Here's what yellow tastes like.

Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash
multicolored hallway

Here’s what yellow tastes like to me

For people with synesthesia (which in ancient Greek translates to "together sensation"), they experience a neural crossing of the senses, and it can happen in a variety of ways. Some might associate letters or numbers with colors. Others can "feel" the taste of chocolate. Still, someone else might hear a D minor chord and taste pastrami.

Psychology Today estimates that only three to five percent of the population experiences this, with women more likely than men. They explain, "Synesthesia is a neurological condition. Simply put, when one sense is activated, another unrelated sense is activated at the same time."

I can attest it’s a lot of fun! When I was in high school, someone asked what day our Algebra exam was. I meant to say Wednesday, but instead answered, "Pink." Obviously, this was met with an intense stare, followed by the questions, "What are you on? Who is your dealer and how do I get some?"

The truth is, Wednesdays have always been a pale bubblegum pink for as long as I can remember. Tuesdays are emerald green, as is London. Fridays are purple. New York is blue. Dallas and Saturdays are white, and so on. If specific days of the week or cities are mentioned or even thought about, it’s as if my mind gets dipped into a certain color like an Easter egg. I think of Thursday and my brain swims in turquoise. (Oh, and yellow tastes like apple juice.)

In the subreddit group "Synesthesia," others exemplify how it manifests for them.

Does Your Sonata Glow Pink?


Evolving Get Together GIF by Barbara PozziGiphy

A Reddit user shares, "All my life I’ve seen shapes and stuff when I listen to music. Except it’s never been only shapes. Whenever I listen to a song, I see a line I’m following, it’s usually a light pink color and glowing. Then the line will create shapes or patterns based on the beat or sound of the song. It’s all different patterns depending on what song it is."

This sounds like a mix between timbre-shape synesthesia and color-coded sounds, known as chromesthesia. Many famous musicians and composers have reported this phenomenon, including Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Itzhak Perlman, the latter once saying, "If I play a B-flat on the G string, I would say that the color for me is probably deep forest green. And if I play an A on the E string, that would be red."

The Loudness of Your Hands


Tea Relaxing GIFGiphy

Another Redditor associates touch with sound. "I've always been able to hear touch…but only when the touch is stroking (prodding/poking doesn’t yield the same result). I hear a hissing noise, and it’s very different from just the sound of the contact on my skin – the noise feels like it is coming from 'inside' my head, and I hear it completely unchanged even with noise-canceling earphones or industrial-strength earplugs in! Apparent volume is also proportional to pressure applied."

When Your Spoon is Friendly


eat chinese GIF by Maria TranGiphy

Grapheme-color synesthesia is the most commonly reported type, in which synesthetes assign colors to alphabet letters and/or numbers.

But this Redditor takes it to the next level. "Not only do I associate numbers, letters, days, and months with colors and personalities, but also seemingly random everyday things and places. For example, a certain road in my hometown seems brown-ish orange. And strangely, kitchen utensils. A fork is blue and a young, introverted guy. A spoon is pink/orange and a middle-aged, friendly woman. A knife is green and is a middle-aged man who has a great sense of humor and is bald."

Jealousy, in B-flat

Streaming Pop Art GIF by XinanimodelacraGiphy

For some synesthetes, feelings have sound. A commenter shares, "Every emotion of mine has a chord. Every taste has a chord. Every physical touch has a chord. Hot and cold have chords. I can tell you the exact notes of my heart on a keyboard. Exactly what I’m feeling."

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How do people who are blind learn to read braille? Here's a cool new way.

Braille Bricks may be the key to helping raise literacy among those who are blind.

As a baby, Anny struggled to meet her mother's eyes as she breastfed — the first sign that something was amiss.

Janete, Anny's mother, came to learn that her daughter had a very strong nystagmus, a condition which results in uncontrolled movement of the eye. As a result, Anny would spend her life struggling to see, functionally blind.

"When Anny was first brought to be breastfed, I noticed her eyes wouldn't fix on mine." All images and GIFs via Braille Bricks.

Janete did all she could for Anny, even sending her to school with a braille typewriter. Unfortunately for both of them, Anny's teachers simply didn't know how to use it and therefore couldn't teach her how to teach to read.

"When she went to school, I told the teacher she would bring the braille typewriter."

According to the National Federation of the Blind, just 10% of blind children in the U.S. are learning braille.

Most of the time, as was the case for Anny, it's an issue of teachers not having the skills or resources to teach children with visual impairments to read. As the NFB writes, "America would never accept a 10% literacy rate among sighted children." So why is that rate acceptable for children with visual challenges?

There needs to be a better way to teach children to learn braille — and now there is. They're called Braille Bricks.

And at their core, Braille Bricks are basically modified Legos. Letters in the braille alphabet are represented in a series of dots across a 2x3 area, making the 2x3 Lego brick the perfect canvas for this project. The idea came from a Brazilian nonprofit called the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind.

"Small modifications to toy building bricks found at any kids store and voila: we have a full braille alphabet."

As you can see, it's simply a matter of which dots of the bricks are left raised that determine the letter:

"A, B, C, D... ." You get the idea.

It's pretty simple, right? See, here's how you'd write "Upworthy" using Braille Bricks:

You can make your own saying over at the Braille Bricks website.

The best part is that Braille Bricks are not only educational — they're fun, too.

Whether students are blind or have low vision or not, Braille Bricks serve as an educational toy all children can have fun playing with...


Children play with Braille Bricks.

...which is why teacher Camila Ferreria describes the impact these bricks have had on her students like this:

"It helps not only with braille literacy, but also aids in integration with the other kids."

So no longer do students who are blind need to be separated from their classmates; it can be an inclusive learning experience for all.

As for Anny, she loves her Braille Bricks, and in a world so seemingly eager to ignore her needs, they are definitely a welcome development.

Finding new ways to accommodate individuals with disabilities is so important. Having empathy for others is such a key element in life, and this is just one example of how thinking creatively can produce simple, effective solutions that bring people with different life experiences and opportunities together through compassion.

"The experience was great for me, because having another way to learn braille is much better."

Currently, Braille Bricks are available on a very small scale, with somewhere around 300 students having access to them.

That's why the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind is asking for help. Their hope is that someone in the toy industry will take interest in their project and produce these learning tools on a mass scale. (Hello, Lego?) What they're asking of people around the world is to raise awareness of the product by using the hashtag #BrailleBricksForAll.

Will it work? Only time will tell. But does this seem like a cool, fun, and simple solution to encouraging literacy and inclusion among blind students and their sighted friends? Absolutely.

It's awesome that Braille Bricks are working out for Anny and other students at the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind. Here's hoping that the helpers of the world continue to develop new ways to make our world a more accessible place.

For more information about Braille Bricks, check out this video below:

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