Synaesthesia, migraines and creativity

Interesting piece by Doug Belshaw on the topic.

“It was only about two weeks ago that I found out I’m a bit weird. I was listening to an episode of BBC Radio 4′s All In The Mind (listen), part of which was dedicated to synaesthesia. I didn’t realise that something I experience all the time actually qualifies as a mild form of the condition!

But what is synaesthesia? Nature defines it in the following way:

An unusual ‘mixing of the senses’ in which a stimulus in one sensory modality (for example, a sound) elicits a percept in another modality (such as visual perception of a colour).

All In The Mind explained that this definition can be widened to include something both I and my mother experience: conceiving of time as being physically and spatially located. It’s difficult to explain this in words, and my perspective and view on time changes depending on the period I’m ‘looking at’. ”

Read more at: http://dougbelshaw.com/blog/2008/07/17/synaesthesia-migraines-and-creativity/#.T5zuDquJQ0E (Accessed 29/04/2012).

Related articles

• Synaesthesia and the Drummer (darkmuseministry.com)
• Synaesthesia: Smells like Beethoven via The Economist (stoweboyd.com)
• NeuroScience: Synaesthesia (taxi-dog.com)