Autism and Synethesia: Strange Confluence of Sight, Sound, and Mind
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After reading a few lines in a book about something called synethesia, I got interested. Apparently, quite a few people have an odd brain wiring such that letters, numbers, and/or musical notes are linked with colors. When they see a letter or number, and/or hear a musical note, they "see" a particular color in their minds.
Apparently, this odd quality is particularly common among people with autism.
On a whim, I asked my son Tom, age 11, if he sees colors when he plays notes on the piano. Tom, who is diagnosed with high functioning autism, plays both piano and clarinet. Oh, yes, he said, he does! Here are the note/color correlations he gave me, right off the top of his head:
- C=red
- D=orange
- E=yellow
- F=green
- G=blue
- A="pink"
- B=violet
I looked up synesthesia, and found that there's a close link between synesthesia relative to music - and perfect pitch (which Tommy has).
It wasn't until today that I realized something else: the series of colors Tommy gave me is consistent with the achronym ROY G BIV. For anyone who's studied optics or astronomy, that acronym will be familiar: it's the colors of the optical light spectrum, in the order they appear in a prism, or in a rainbow. They are, of course, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
Tommy has never heard the word "indigo" which I assume is why he substituted pink - the only "off" color choice in the sequence. He has never learned anything about the light spectrum, nor has he ever heard of ROY G BIV.
Does anyone know anything more about this amazing collection of confluences? I've emailed a couple of researchers in the field of synesthesia, but nothing so far!
Comments
What is so interesting to me is the universality of the colors among the color selection of many of my friends with autism - even those (apparently) without “perfect pitch.”
One of my favorite buddies is a young adult who just appeared in my life several months ago. He has VERY few expressive language skills, but, once he started playing in a hand bell ensemble at our church, he obsessively recites the C major scale: “Red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple….DARK PINK.” He realizes that the higher octave C is inherently the same as middle C, but he apparently cannot justify calling it “red” because he knows it is different.
Whether in music therapy with individuals with autism or other challenging issues, I find it amazing to see in my work every day the separation between functional cognitive skills and musical skills. For example, people with a PhD can have very few innate music skills, and individuals who have very limited cognitive skills - whether diagnosed with autism or not - can have very sophisticated musical sense. This is not a universal phenomenon, but it does happen occasionally. I am not well-versed in the research in this area, but I do find it intriguing.
I believe that individuals with Autism see the world in a far better light than we do. I know my children with Autism have the ability to see colors in a way that I never imagined. A beautiful gift.
Jeanette
www.trusera.com
I don’t know a lot about autism or synesthesia, but I did study Linguistics. One line of reasoning is that humans have innate and/or universal tendencies; many of which are inexplicable. For instance, the first sounds babies utter are universal in cultures around the globe. Then as infants we begin to acquire sounds with meaning that are not yet words (i.e. “mmm”). These sounds are also fairly universal. Furthermore, when children are learning to speak (any language) there are universal sounds that they master before they can/will master the others (P, T, K before B, D, G, L, R). The order in which they learn these sounds is also universal. Not all languages have the same range of sounds, but all languages have at least sounds in common that are based on the universal order of acquistion. The interesting thing is that the same holds true for colors. All languages have at least the words or meaning for black and white. In some languages this is the only distinction of color. A language would never have a word for chartreuse though without haveing a word for either black or white or any of the other of the colors in the spectrum. But if a language was to make a distinction between 3 colors it would be black, white, and red; red being the first color of the spectrum; and so on. Since music also has a universal order, wouldn’t it make sense for musical notes and colors to be connected? Or language and colors or language and music?
But Carmen - the 8 note scale isn’t universal at all. Many cultures use completely different scales (or no scales at all). I’m also wondering whether the reference to “white” and “black” is actually a reference to “light” and “dark” - that is, to day and night?
Of course, there are psychologists like Jung who point to the “collective unconscious,” and the notion that we, as humans, share certain stories, characters, and ideas… Dragons are common across many disconnected cultures.
Lisa (autism.about.com)
I had the same experience with my autistic son. I had heard about synesthesia through a friend who has it (as does her son, who has ASD). I asked my son, “what color is Monday?” Immediately he answered “red”. I had him tell me all the colors for days, months and letters. I waited 3 weeks and asked him again and they were all the same. There is a researcher studying this phenomenon–Dr. Ramachandran at UC San Diego. He believes synesthesia and autism are related. “Born on a Blue Day” by Daniel Tammet describes his lifelong experience with autism and synesthesia. He also has incredible mathematic abilities related to his synesthesia.
I’ve mostly read about synesthesia in reference to psychedelic drug experiences, so maybe that’s a good place to start looking for more info.