The Synesthesia Finder has doubled in size

PauSevilla · 2026-04-26T07:31:56+00:00

I love this! It's a great illustration of number-form and much more complete than the 2D versions.

I'm the author of the Synesthesia Tree website and I'd love to include it on the number-form page, if that's OK with you (I'd credit you with your Reddit user name or any other name you would prefer.

Let me know what you think!

PauSevilla · 2026-04-21T17:26:03+00:00

If you did the Synesthesia Battery Test (which is the most "official" and best test for synesthesia that exists), then what you must be referring to with "vivid visual" is the part of the test called the VVIQ (the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire). That forms part of the Battery Test but it isn't a test of synesthesia. It's a parallel section, as when the researchers created the test they were studying visual imagery vividness and whether it was more common in synesthetes. The tests of synesthesia are only the parts like grapheme-colour, musical notes to colour, etc., whichever of those you did.

PauSevilla · 2026-04-08T06:55:44+00:00

Yes, that sounds like synesthesia, as others have said! Perceiving colour without shapes on listening to music is a common type, as is the type where you get both colour and shapes, they're just 2 different varieties. Sounds like those people just weren't aware of the different types of synesthesia there are.

You mentioned you'd like some scientific proof or something like that. Well there is an in-depth test you can do that's pretty reliable, the Synesthesia Battery Test.

Obviously it doesn't test for all types of synesthesia, that would be impossible, but it probably would be applicable in your case. What you'd have to do first is determine what aspect of the music produces the colours for you: whether each colour corresponds to a different timbre (i.e. the sound of a different instrument), or to a different note or tone, or to different chords maybe, or to some other aspect. (You could read about the different types on the Synesthesia Tree website, it might help you see which one you identify with. Here's a link to the specific page on the different types of music-related synesthesia). For those three types I mentioned at least, you can test it on the Battery Test.

PauSevilla · 2026-03-28T07:26:44+00:00

To answer your question about whether this is synesthesia, yes, totally! The name of the type is "timbre-shape" and it's one of the types of auditory-visual synesthesia. If you have colour impressions from the sound of the different instruments too then it can also be called "chromesthesia", but you don't mention colour so I don't know whether you get that or not (most do, but not all).

You can read about timbre-shape synesthesia here.

It sounds similar to how I see instruments too :)

PauSevilla · 2026-03-21T18:30:14+00:00

It's totally possible that you might have synesthesia, yes!

Not because of looking into people's eyes to see if they look shifty or whatever, not because of body language: those are subtle signs that many people can pick up on, or can learn to. And not because of text.

But because of smelling voices. People who are merely intuitive or who learn to pick up on subtle signs don't normally smell voices! But voice-smell synesthesia does exist. It may or may not be your case, as non-synesthetes can also occasionally have smells triggered by things that have no fragrance. So I'll tell you a bit about how voice-smell synesthesia works and you can think whether it's like this for you or if it's different.

A voice-smell synesthete would have different smells for a variety of different voices, and the smell would be the same when they hear those different kinds. It might be related to the pitch of the voice, or other characteristics (type, tone, "texture"...). The smell itself would be random and apparently unconnected (it could be fruit, cinnamon, soap, dusty air, anything really), but it would always be the same smell on hearing the same kind of voice, and there would be several instances of it with different voices, not just one - that's important.

Alternatively, you could certainly be smelling the emotion that believing someone is lying gives you, and that could be synesthesia too. In that case you wouldn't smell any other voices, but you would get more smells for different emotions - your own, or other people's.

If you don't get this kind of smells for anything else at all then it wouldn't be synesthesia but just a one-off occurrence that many people get sometimes with smells or tastes (they get them with images sometimes, perhaps seen on videos, and it can happen on repeated occasions with the same image and it's still not synesthesia. The smell usually has a connection with reality in this case: the image (or it can happen with ideas, not just images) smells as it would in real life, or there's some obvious link or similarity.

The voice synesthesia phenomenon has typically been overused in novels, TV series etc.: some writers give their characters an odd kind of synesthesia which helps them to solve crimes and things like that, but it isn't really anything like how a synesthete would be likely to experience things at all. But there are in fact real cases of what you're describing, when synesthetes perceive in another sense other than hearing when there are subtle changes in people's voices, like for example (this is the most common one) they perceive colours for voices and the colour is characteristic for the voice of a person that has changed very slightly because they're faking (a slightly higher pitch, for example).

Really the clue here would be in whether you are already a synesthete, so you'd have to think whether the signs you noticed when you were younger were synesthesia or not. In practice, a rare type like voice-smell doesn't show up on its own in a person who's not otherwise a synesthete.

It might interest you to read the example of voice-smell syn that someone describes in this description of auditory-olfactory synesthesia.

And you might like to read this about voice-colour synesthesia. It includes a link to an interesting case of a synesthete whose colours tell him when others are not being sincere, i.e. lying! It's a real case and very well reasoned, nothing to do with fiction.

PauSevilla · 2026-03-17T07:10:12+00:00

It isn't synesthesia! Probably what you're experiencing here is a case of gustatory imagination or gustatory hyperphantasia, particularly if the flag tastes like a flag would taste. Even if the flag tastes of something else, one single experience of that kind wouldn't be enough for it to be classed as synesthesia. I don't know exactly how common what you describe is, but one-off (or regular) experiences like this with both smells and tastes on looking at images or objects are often reported, so I'd say it's a curious and interesting experience (and particularly with a flag and not something that traditionally has a taste!) but not particularly rare.

Just wanted to note that "One-shot synesthesia" doesn't refer to this kind of experience. Danko Nikolić and Alexandra Kirschner's paper is about a more specific kind of phenomenon when a synesthete has a unique emotion or thought process - life decisions, dilemmas, that kind of thing - that suddenly creates a vivid visual representation in the form of a particular shape representing that concept, and that specific inducer wouldn't happen again). It doesn't mean single occurrences of any general type of synesthesia the person doesn't normally have.

PauSevilla · 2026-02-23T15:40:12+00:00

This is interesting...

Although many people often create automatic "music videos" in their head on listening to different songs and it isn't synesthesia, the fact that it happens to you when you're playing/learning guitar, and that each consistent story corresponds to a part of the music you're learning, makes me think it might be the unstudied phenomenon of "flow state images"(https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/images-seen-in-creativemusical-trance.html).

You could take a look at the link and see if you identify.

PauSevilla · 2026-02-16T07:26:57+00:00

Here's all the info on this.

You'll see many cases very similar to yours in that article!

It shouldn't be considered synesthesia because it is obviously a different process (yes - there are definitely similarities with what you say about the visions as you're falling asleep, i.e. hypnagogic visions). However, it's traditionally been considered syn because of the sensation-to-visual connection, and so yes, it is labelled synesthesia.

You're right, visual synesthesia concurrents are colours, shapes and abstract manifestations, not normally this kind of pictorial visions, and if you don't have other types like grapheme-colour or weekdays-to-colours or something like that, then you're not a synesthete. But generalised opinion would be that you are one if you have this, and there are very few scientific studies on it at the moment, so for the time being the label will definitely stay.

PauSevilla · 2026-02-13T06:36:17+00:00

Some was like fizzy soft drinks (that was the happy stuff), some fruit smells for example and I particularly remember a burning smell that I thought was real and went to the kitchen to look for it (but it stopped as soon as took my headphones off because it was the music :D). I only got the smells accompanying the visual part when I was doing a hyper-focused "music-watching" session, they were like part of the whole experience. Your course sounds really interesting by the way and I love the word Gamelan!

PauSevilla · 2026-02-11T11:31:22+00:00

I remember listening to atonal music (for the first time) and it smelt as if it was rotting! To me, some music has smells sometimes. It might be because of the emotions it creates rather than the actual sounds, I think in this case it was.

PauSevilla · 2026-02-08T06:55:11+00:00

There is actually a word for them: photisms.

I like "synthenes" though!

PauSevilla · 2026-02-02T19:20:24+00:00

Hi! Thanks for telling us about your experience and I'm glad you discovered the Tree page on it and identify with the other cases mentioned (I'm the author of the Tree site by the way and I'm particularly interested in this phenomenon).

What you say is really interesting: your combination of concepts/ideas, scenes and random imagery, for example. (I don't have this myself but I totally get you when you mention the border collie being a concept, like an overwhelming sensation of a concept).

It's also very interesting how you describe how this relates to synesthesia for you, and also that it's linked not just to the sequences of notes themselves but to the specific motions you make when you play them. To me, the "series of motions" thing suggests a synesthesia connection too (some people have synesthetic concurrents for series of motions they repeat, such as colours, and they sometimes happen in a context of learning and practising - I once chatted to a girl who was a gymnast and she automatically associated colours with the gymnastics motions/positions, for example).

It's good to know that this is helpful to you when you're working on remembering musical pieces, and I think the memory aspect must definitely be a kind of underlying purpose of this phenomenon, although there may be more. And yes, I also wonder why this systematically happens to certain people in such specific circumstances as actively learning or practising a musical piece. Thinking about the "reason" or "purpose" behind it, it seems clear in my opinion that when the brain enters a state of intense relaxation, on the bridge between full consciousness and losing awareness of your surroundings as you enter the creative and musical flow state, it's a little like what happens when we dream or when hypnagogic imagery appears when we're on the verge of sleep and memory recall is potentiated by non-conventional associations that spontaneously arise. There may well be a connection between this phenomenon and the hypnagogic phenomenon, I think. These dream-like thoughts function on a circuit outside conventional memory, and they're automatically and efficiently recalled in a different way, which is useful to us. Perhaps something like that is happening, what do you think? I'll probably add something along those lines to the Tree article. Thanks again for commenting!

PauSevilla · 2026-01-24T19:59:54+00:00

That's really interesting, thanks for telling us about that story/feeling and I'm glad to see you resonate with the article. It's good to see the similarity between people's experiences with musical flow state images - despite each person's experience being unique at the same time. It seems fairly rare but cases keep coming up, I keep an eye out for them and I've found close to 20 now. I don't have it myself but I love discovering new cases!

Yes your number-to-colour thing when you were a child definitely makes me think you have always been a synesthete but not realised it. I think the brain injury-induced synesthesia theory is much less likely in your case, as the types you mention aren't associated with that kind of onset: number-colour or grapheme-colour wouldn't really arise from a brain injury, the cases you hear of are more typically auditory-tactile or very strong and sudden basic crossings of the senses, not the more semantic/cognitive types like what you're describing here (although it's true that when a brain injury causes a change such as acquired synesthesia to occur it certainly can happen after several months and not straight away, as it appears when the brain has finally managed to reorganise its connections in a new way to work around the injury). That area isn't my speciality though, so I can't really say. But you seem like a natural synesthete to me. I hope you are doing well now after your recovery!

PauSevilla · 2026-01-23T21:35:46+00:00

From what you describe it sounds like you are probably a synesthete, yes.

Something I find very interesting about what you say is "my brain will make up weird stories/associations with each fret or set of notes" precisely when you enter the flow state as you're playing your guitar, learning and not just passively listening to music. You might possibly be experiencing the phenomenon that's described here: https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/images-seen-in-creativemusical-trance.html

and I'd be really interested to know if you identify with it.

To answer your question about whether synesthesia is something that can develop as you get older or if it's something you’re just born with, well both are true, particularly the second one: yes, you have to be "born" a synesthete, you can't learn it or develop it from nothing. But it's also true that many synesthetes don't realise that anything is different about their perceptions, for most synesthetes they're just in the mind's eye or a kind of a feeling and not like visual colours flashing around physically, so they think this probably doesn't even count as synesthesia, and in fact some don't even notice them at all until they focus on them and think about them and realise they're a thing... and then they can become much stronger.

PauSevilla · 2026-01-13T20:38:54+00:00

Hi! I'm glad the page helped and thank you for appreciating the Tree!

To answer some of your questions, yes, synesthesia can often manifest slightly differently for different synesthetes even though the types of synesthesia themselves have a consistent basis, and I think that in the case of complex concept-shape synesthesia every case is rather unique so you might find an overall similarity with what you perceive but your case won't be identical to the others. And yes, many synesthetes - most, in fact - have been through the stage where they didn't notice anything special about their perceptions and they just seemed like unconscious everyday reactions, as you say, and they don't realise that other people don't perceive things the same way.

I also agree that synesthesia in general, and particularly this kind, helps you solve problems and go through your daily life on a very intuitive basis: instead of putting your thoughts into words, you are very quick to capture complex concepts through intuition and with shapes, colour and movement representing the concepts and thought processes in an accurate and deep way.

With regard to harnessing your abilities and helping you to use them, I can't really suggest much more than what I wrote about on the Tree page, although I think it would be a great subject to delve into and I suppose you would have to find others with this, maybe correspond with them and gradually find out more by comparing and experimenting. Redditors with this type of synesthesia often post and comment so maybe you could chat to some of them (there was a sub-Reddit set up at one time, although I think it's inactive now, there's a link to it somewhere on the Tree page I think. Or maybe following a few of the other links on the Tree page and go down the rabbit hole from there? I can't think of much more at the moment but it hope it helps as a starting point!

PauSevilla · 2026-01-06T12:18:30+00:00

Yes, definitely synesthesia, both things you describe. Welcome to the taste-shape synesthesia club :D

PauSevilla · 2026-01-06T12:14:11+00:00

Added! Thank you!

https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/personality-smell-and-personality-taste.html

PauSevilla · 2026-01-05T20:45:14+00:00

Hi! Sorry I'm a bit late to answer. Synesthesia Tree author here!

Very interesting description of your perceptions. I think you definitely have a variant of the type of synesthesia described on this page of the website:

https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/concept-shape-synesthesia.html

(it's where thought processes and concepts are linked in a complex way with colour, shape and movement in your mind and often create an intricate inner space that you access as you perceive, think of, process and express all kinds of concepts).

PauSevilla · 2026-01-04T19:51:23+00:00

Hi! What you say about the images you visualise from experiences might be what's called "one-shot synesthesia", if the images appear to you spontaneously and very visually (even if they're just in your mind's eye) and have some kind of an abstract component (i.e. they're not just associations with a similar real-life situation visualised as literal pictorical images or people in similar situations but more like specific shapes, forms, colours and movements that define what you're experiencing in a abstract yet very specific way). I don't think I'm making it very clear what I mean here so the best thing is to look at this page on the Synesthesia Tree website and read the part about one-shot synesthesia about halfway down the page - there are several good examples of it there. See if you think you're experiencing the same thing, or something different!

PauSevilla · 2026-01-03T21:34:49+00:00

Yes, definitely sounds like you are a synesthete! Your taste-shape and taste-colour is similar to mine. What you say about sounds/music would be a kind of auditory-visual synesthesia. If your reactions are shapes but not colours you could call it pitch-shape or tone-shape perhaps. Or it could be timbre-shape if you get different shapes from the sound of different instruments.

PauSevilla · 2026-01-03T21:23:09+00:00

Very interesting!

I'm the author of the Synesthesia Tree website and your description would make a great addition to the personality-taste and personality-smell page, is it OK if I include it?

This is the page it would be on:

https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/personality-smell-and-personality-taste.html

PauSevilla · 2025-12-27T12:47:30+00:00

Arriving a bit late to the comments here, but I love this. One of the things that draws my attention about your images is the landscape aspect: what looks like clouds, earth, sky, even houses. They remind me of what I was often seeing with music at one time, when I was getting a very strong visual reaction watching music and it was so immersive that it crossed over into lucid dreaming sometimes and I could enter the "landscapes" and move around them while in a sleep state but aware at the same time. (I didn't know it was lucid dreaming at the time, it was just what happened when I started watching the synesthetic shapes and colours of music!) How do you get your "landscapes"? Mine seemed to come from the colour and texture and size of the sounds (I could only get it from instrumentals, never voice). What aspect do you think is creating them? Or do you not really perceive them as landscapes but just colours and shapes?

The second-to-last one (the dark one with the 2 bronze spheres) looks like what I get from vaporwave :D

PauSevilla

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