Synesthesia: The 6th Sense 

As someone who has synesthesia (the most common kind of seeing/associating music with color), it was something I never understood other people didn’t also perceive until I was in high school. So thank you so much for covering the topic, it’s always fascinating to listen to!

I think I lost my synesthesia when I got older. Because when I was a kid I would be lying in bed and when I closed my eyes, it was almost like I could feel, hear, smell, even taste the color orange. It was very strange to me back then and I kinda just thought it was normal. Now that i'm older I don't feel that was anymore and haven't for a long time. This video just reminded me of that memory.

My thing is... Smells have colours. I told a friend she smelled different one day. She used to smell light blue, but one day she changed perfume and smelled brown-ish. Then I realized, it wasn't everybody who had that.

I see everyone is sharing their experiences so why not share mine :) Since like 1st grade, when doing math i would always see numbers to have these personalities; like 2 would have a crush on 4 while 5 is a girl and is siblings with 9. Other than seeing words, letters and numbers as distinctive colors, listening to music was always so fascinating - different parts or verses of a song would be colored differently so at the end of each song i would be left with this colorful picture in my mind. And the funny thing is some really nice songs would look so ugly and vice versa bad songs in my opinion looking really nice. Once i had a conversation with my dad about it and he related to me, he said that whenever he feels pain, he feels/sees it in 3D objects, a bruise would feel like a sphere while a headache would be a cube. This condition is really a cool wonder in this universe Also if youre still here thank you for actually caring and taking your time to read this whole paragraph i really appreciate it

Having audio tactile synesthesia in a loud city is sensorial hell. But, my cat's meowing is the sweetest thing in the whole world. I love the velvet feeeling in my skin when i hear they meowing.

I honestly thought everyone did this until long into my adulthood. Numbers have colors, which also makes it a lot easier to remember them. I also have emotions that are associated with numbers. Certain numbers make me feel good, while others give me a little anxiety.

This is crazy I never thought you would cover this. My synesthesia allows me to see colors in all kinds of configurations my favorite part are the landscapes of dancing color and texture. This varies from song to song and whether its a happy or sad song. Every song has its own, unique, “landscape”. I love music so much that I can listen to the same song for hours sometimes and if I go back to listen to a specific song years later I can remember everything I was going through/feeling

I "feel" music as 3d objects and fractal thingies and have mirror touch synesthesia/ empathy synesthesia. I feel as I'm the person I'm talking to. Took me years to solidify my ego enough to control this type of synesthesia. So. There's a very wide range. Each person has different consciousness. It enhances immensely when I take shrooms. I think there are more types of synesthesia we don't even perceive as ones nowadays

Once I had a terrible fever during my school days. Having little to no energy to do anything, i used to lie in my bed and play Call of Duty Modern Warfare for hours. Suprisingly now after 5 years whenever I replay that particular game, the sound and visuals of that game give me an illusion that I have fever. I sense the same feverish smell and my taste buds feel like they are not working anymore. I know it sounds absurd but its true. Well ig for me it is.

Thank you for this video! Until few years ago I thought I was just crazy, but I've discovered that many people I know have had similar experiences with sensory overlap in this way. Numbers don't have strong colors to me, but letters very much do and the letter A is always red, and the letter g (especially the lower case) is always a strange greenish burnt yellow - maybe curry like? Music has colors too, and emotions have sounds - and sometimes color. Stress is a repeated slow yet complex drum beat that changes in intensity - and the sound refuses to go away until stress is relieved. Pain is rasping high pitched noise and it is blinding white - it can leave a metallic taste in my mouth, even when I know I'm not bleeding anywhere. I have observed that most of the people I know who actually recognizes synesthesia are smart and creative - and all of them have a psychiatric diagnose, but are well functioning in general. I'm a computer scientist, a hobby astrophotographer and I have ADHD. The human mind is fascinating ....

when I was a kid I could feel/hear electricity. I knew which one of my neighbors had their TV on even if they were on mute, behind a closed door and a wall. it was like a humming in my years. I think I still feel it now but since the wifi networks are everywhere, this humming is everywhere as well. And I got used to it.My brain chooses to ignore it and I become aware of it only when I think about it.

I have synesthesia (Chromesthesia, Auditory Tactile, Mirror Touch, Ordinal Linguistic Personification, and Olfactory Visual) (yea I know that’s a lot) where it feels as if my entire body turns into the color I’m perceiving. For the most common example, when I start to make or listen to music, it feels like my body has turned into a rainbow disco ball and I feel the different energies flowing through my body and I can manipulate it around with my will. When I look at people I can read them like a book and I see their colors. Every experience I’m involved in I experience through a 4d perspective.

I have chromatic-lexical synesthesia! And so does a good part of my family. I've known since I was a little kid, but thanks for making a video on it. It always makes me feel special to know people are fascinated by the condition.

The booba kiki thing fucked me all the way up because I answered the same thing

As a physician I see the human anatomy and pathology and how to treat them in colours. I didn’t know why in medical specialist exams answers to a question would come to me so quickly and easily because the medical pathologies in each question would present in colours. For example Myasthenia Gravis would appear to me as dark green and everything and anything to do it would flag up in my brain. I only learnt I had it when a very experienced life coach made me aware what I experienced was called synesthesia

I don't know about synesthesia, but probably for the buba kiki effect, I see the subject math as the color green. Physics is red. Social studies is orange. Reading as blue. It goes back to grade school when I would have folders for different subjects like an ocd, I just had to have these colors of folders at the start of the semester.

Sometimes synesthesia is a little curse tho. It has been happening to me every so often that I can’t adapt to a change because it means the creation of the whole new visual map. Thus, every time I play with the new skin in League of Legends my performance is getting worse for a week or so. I remember once Caitlynn got new legendary skin (sound effects changed) and I couldn’t help but perceive my shooting as extremely thin, thus, getting anxious about not being precise enough (even though the mechanics of the game never changed)

If you want to test yourself on color&sound synesthesia, the beginning of the song Drown by Atmosphere has really strong colors for me. Like, I see purple dots and one cyan.

The bouba-kiki effect is most likely due to the fact that the letters in the first word all have curves while the second has only straight lines. So we visualise the letters to the shapes.

"Even with the 5 senses most of us are able to use; we sometimes feel over whelmed by the world around us; so to be over stimulated all the time with a barrage of sensory inputs would be pretty uncomfortable!" You just explained my experience with Asperger's.

The reply relates to me

This kind of videos always give me a boost, and this was needed today. We cannot thank you enough for these!

This explains so many things in my "imagination". I put numbers to colors and equations have different blends of colors based on what numbers are in them.

I see words, numbers, and music as color. I remember telling this to my mother in the car when I was about five years old and she thought it was very bizarre and still brings it up sometimes. Thank you for explaining it to me.

I only have achieved synesthesia with psychedelics, I could see with my eyes closed and taste the different colors of the water I was drinking (clean water), also could feel myself inside Jimi Hendrix and Tame Impala music, I could "see" the songs too. It was the most magical feeling of my entire existence.

This video has given me more goosebumps and self realization than any other before. This is awe-inspiring, thank you so much.

Man, your voice is great and you somehow can make everything way more interesting. It’s truly wonderful

When i am depressed i listen to a certain song with meaningful lyrics and beautiful instruments, and when i close my eyes i can create an imaginary world or like questioning and going beyond the universe like floating in space with the descent speed(it's all happen in my mind). I often recreate a past event and fix it as i thought: gosh what if i did this. and experience that event with a new perception within my mind. It's just amazing to create and feel those experience and then suddenly open my eyes as i know i was just imagining it all. This behaviour also sometimes reduces the Anxiety and mental pain for a couple of hours.

I always kind of wished I had this ability, but I am gifted in other areas, so I am content. While most people find math challenging, I'm able to grasp concepts such as multivariable calculus and differential equations very easily with little to no studying. On the other hand, when I try to play guitar or try to make art, I find it incredibly difficult even though I know people who can draw the first thing they think of in a matter of minutes. I think this just goes to show that each of us has our different gifts and talents. I find it very interesting learning about what makes other people unique and in what way they have an upper-hand over other people.

You can literaly live in 6th sense when you close your eyes, visualise etc etc thats how you manifest things in life. Even Nevile Goddart speaks how "Imagination creates reality" if you can live in ur imagination long enough it will manifest it self also in real life

been looking at your channel 5+ times a day the past week to wait for your upload, always a banger.

Been waiting since forever for your post……

I think I have the most common one (where u see letters as colors) and also see numbers the same way. For example, I always see A as a light green, B as a somewhat dark red, C as a brighter lime green, and D as blue

I can still feel colors, feel pain while watching someone in pain, taste things without tasting. it's really cool!

Ayyyy Synesthesia rep! It's also quite common with autistic people for some reason, it's very interesting. I have many different types of synesthesia but it's helped me the most in feeling bodily pains and associating them with colour, so every time I have a pain that is blue, it means it's nerve related like in the past etc :)

I don't have synesthesia but I have experienced it chemically through psychedelics when making music with my uncle and our friend John. It was the craziest, coolest thing ever and we were so in the moment we hardly noticed. Having tinnitus helps a bit too because the visual snow mixes shockingly well with the colors and patterns (something you see regardless of music when you're tripping 😅)

I have synesthesia. I associate sounds, music, words, letters, and ideas with pictures- but not just a picture of the thing. For instance, my brain produces abstract images to go with certain synthesisers I might hear in music and words. The word “dog” looks like a long wooden piece on top of a red block in a bright but blurry environment. It’s usually very realistic looking, these pictures. The word “bill” looks like a red baseball cap, but the word “cap” looks like the blue garbage bin outside my grandparents’ house. These pictures also help me remember words and sounds. It doesn’t matter if the picture doesn’t look like the actual thing, because my brain puts them together automatically. Thanks to my synesthesia, I compose music better and I use it in my drawings too. And most of the pictures stay the same forever. My brain made pictures when I was a small child and they’re still the same now for the most part. And until relatively recently, I thought all this was normal. So anyway this is a very interesting video because it conveys well what it’s like to have this. Well done :>

This one was really interesting you should also make a video how people with aspergers see the world

when I hear a voice of a singer mostly I feel a fabric or something else my mind connects the two instantly and it's like I can touch the voice of the singer, it's so beautiful to be able to feel that way, I thought that all people feel that way about voices The other day I saw a colour when I smelled my friends new perfume which was also awesome, as an artist I really love seeing colours It's so fascinating

I memorized pi using synesthesia connections, and make music based on what imagery the rhythms evoke, and I used to think everyone perceived things similarly.

Been subbed since you had around 600 subs! You've always made great content! Keep it up dude!

When I was a kid, my favorite people had colors. Only thing is, it went away very shortly after and everytime I try to replicate this feeling by closing my eyes and thinking of them, the colors are now random. This happen to anyone else?

The first time I came to know about synesthesia was in David Eaglemans's documentary and book "Brain : The Story Of You".

Beautiful video. Nearly made me cry it was so awesome learning about such a beautiful human aspect

Love that you have covered this. I have it with music and colours. I’m a musician by trade. People used to think i was crazy when i explained it. One doctor tried to diagnose me with mental health issues. Rightly so as its mind bending stuff at times. I use it to my advantage when writing music as I can create a nice sounding picture and synergy between the colours and music. However it can also be a curse as it can be hard to work with ugly colours/sounds and there’s always a tendency to lean towards pretty colours/sounds. I prefer a blank plain white wall in a studio as colours can influence me and cause confusion creatively.

very interesting topic, i have always believe music was never meant to listen rather to feel and express your deepest thoughts and feelings. Being a cook for the past 5 years it is true every time i taste something it associates with a color or a feeling of sum sort stimulating sensation based upon my recollective memories.

This video gave me a sense of peace and interest. Good video.

I have synesthesia and it's really cool to see this topic getting covered more! To me numbers, letters, days of the week and months all have colors, genders, personalities, and interactions with one another. When playing the piano, the physical notes on the keyboard also have colors, gender and personalities and when playing a piece, the order the notes are played in will have the notes interact with each other and therefore create stories, so for example often G will be a bit of a bully and whenever I play this note a lot it will make me feel quite anxious. Music will also have colors and shapes, although i can't really see them, it's more of a strong sensation that THIS is the color and it's so obvious, and I see the shape in my mind's eye. When people speak, I also visualize their words in my mind, so whenever there's a word I don't know the spelling of, it gets real annoying haha.

This is such a great channel

I swear Aperture can hear me on my day-to-day life. Just today, we were doing poetry and the mention of synathesia was there.

Human mind potentials is extremely enormous...🧠 But once unlocked.. you do the extraordinary 💯

was waiting for your videos

Now that I think about it get this thing were I can sometimes feel ideas and feel sounds. Unpleasant, sounds give me an an unpleasant tingling feeling can best equate to an odd vibratory and prickly sensation, and ideas that I "resonate" with actually come with an odd, but pleasant tactile sensations at the front of my head and around my face and revelations send "chills down my spine". Maybe it's related, but I couldn't say because I am not an expert on the matter.

I'm a musician and I see blurry colorful things on soft sounds and weird patterns on loud sounds. Specially when I close my eyes. I noticed this when my mom shouts at me to wake up (typical asian parents) and when a fruit bangs our roof from the mango tree.

As someone who has synesthesia and many variations of it, this is awesome thank you.😃

as someone with synesthesia, it actually helps my remember sums but can make me forget and mix up stuff like when I was reading romeo and juliet for the first time their colours were red and blue but not the right way round so I constantly said the wrong one

i havent even watched the video yet, and you have already made my day. Thank you.

your voice makes me so calm lol

I'm not sure if it's synesthesia, but I can sometimes "feel" music/ "see" music/ "taste" certain colours or associate certain tastes with colour. I don't know, maybe I just haven't outgrown my overactive imagination

I have synesthesia! I am able to see facial expressions, genders and personalities in all things -including letters, numbers and blank walls/paper. When I was a child I would only place with a piece of string. I would make it an upside-down U shape and to me that looked like a pretty pegasus. I also have a very strange thing whereby the sight of seeing someone picking their nails, using nails clippers, or creating that disgusting brittle snapping noise of fingernails, makes me white with fury. Even the site of an exposed nailbed makes me very “frightened” (its not fear, I cannot explain it). I often end up subconsciously hitting the person who does it . I finally found out it is a type of misaphonia but so far this condition only really revolves around chewing noises.

Another very interesting topic man!

I have taste synesthesia, I've always been able to FEEL the taste of different words or even weird things like poop that I have never tasted and they're almost accurate in description. I can too feel the pain synesthesia especially when I see foot injuries. Unreal.

Pretty sure i have multiple types of synesthesia, but never researched specifically what each are called. I have the one where i associate colors strongly to numbers, a bit less to letters but still present. I hear sound in colours too, so if i listen to a violin piece each vibration/tone is a different hue. Its like a graph of colors moving from warm to cold. I also associate colors with people, and by extension numbers to people aswell. These rarely change per person, only if something major happened to them that'd change their behaviour etc. I also haven't known it was not normal until secondary level education, i always thought everyone just saw others in colours. Really enjoyed the video!

one of the most beautiful channels on yt

I've experienced this. Truly a phenomena to behold.

only ever experienced this while on like 150-200 UG of acid, and its beautiful. I was seeing and feeling the music I was listening to, even though I dont know musical notes at all my brain was being flooded with what looked to be notes that changed when the music changed. It was beautiful, and I loved it.

Thank you

Reminds me of the Netflix series "Sense 8"... So beautiful!!!

I have synesthesia (several kinds, all associated with colour), and only recently have I come to understand that people don’t “see” things the way I “see” them. I also have SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder, a problem with how the brain processes sensory input), and I often struggle due to it, but I would just like to make it known that, in my eyes, synesthesia is both very similar to and the direct opposite of SPD. One is a gift, and one is not

Technically, not everyone is capable of imagination. Those who cannot imagine have aphantasia. Many of those who have aphantasia also have no inner monologue because they're disconnected from the intrapersonal communication layer (the minds voice) in the brain. I have a learning disability that stems from an executive function disorder which has left me with aphantasia and no inner monologue. By complete chance back in 2012, I was able to access the intrapersonal communication layer for the first time, and on a few occasions I reversed aphantasia and visually recalled memories I had no idea were even stored in my brain. I'm able to do this on demand, but have refrained from doing it regularly to preserve my mind and body in case I'm able to have this studied and possibly corrected. I've spent countless hours e-mailing and messaging "specialists" to see if anyone else has done this, but nobody thinks this is a big deal, so I gave up. The inner monologue is interesting, it's a "voice" you cannot hear, the first time I "heard" it, I started to worry because it started teaching me how and why things worked the way they do. I've sat and thought about how our Universe formed, it would trip me out reading headlines for recent scientific journals confirming what the inner monologue taught me was correct. The instant intuition was an incredible and special experience. When I'm in this state, my head is flowing full of information, I usually just sit and write everything down because when it wears off and I slip back to my normal limited state, the layers disconnect and the voice is gone, it becomes hard to think deeply, form and recall memories, I fall out of sync with the world.

I’ve been a jazz drummer for 9 years and I now associate sounds and tambres with colors

I see musical melodies as a sort of moving graph chart. With a glowing point that moves up and down to hit each approaching note and they slide in horizontally. Almost like a guitar hero kind of thing. My memory of melodies is incredibly accurate. Even in things like guitar solos because of this kind of visualization. I’ve always seen melodies in my head like this. Even before these games existed. It also reminds me of old visual audio read outs on a computer. Where you have a little bar that jumps up or down depending on the notes or intensity of the music. Like that but with a point instead of a bar. And with the sensation of the approaching notates flowing in from the right to the to the left. I’m also a skilled guitar player, as well as a singer with accurate pitch, and this and helped me.

an amazing topic.. colors can define all abt everything

I've learned to use my color-grapheme synesthesia to help me remember things, often if i can remember the associated color I can quickly come up with the associated word. Also psychedelics can induce a similar state but the input/association is not as consistent or enduring as someone with genuine synesthesia

You have the most claming voice & videos Mr Aperture,even if you describing the end of the world

Watching sounds forming shapes in the air

Ooh so that might explain it, I have aphantasia meaning I can't picture images in my mind, my imagination is pure black, but I can kinda feel my imagination, like the motion of my thoughts. It's hard to describe but it's like there's a weight and momentum to them, they kinda flow into one another

I take music as a high, like a drug, I’ve used it before, before my swim races and it gives you a different sense of reality, everything is zoned down and you get a tingling sensation in the hands and face. It’s odd but it’s there

omgomgomgomgmog Aperture upload 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🐐🔥🔥🔥🔥

I am a synesthete. I have visual chromostesia, meaning i can see music and sound in my vision. The colors i see are similar to those that you see when you stare at the sun for a bit

My thing is there is euphoria when m too sleepy but not sleeping but just about to sleep but not sleeping. I really can't explain how much good does it feel to just delay that peaceful sleep.

I’ve missed aperture Fridays :)

i have grapheme color synesthesia! for me, every word, letter, number, etc. has it’s own color, and sometimes even personalities! i never realized it wasn’t normal until i started asking people what color each letter of the alphabet was, and they all said “what? they’re letters, they don’t have color.” for example, 5 is light blue. he (yes they have genders) is pretty nice, is really good friends with 4, but even better friends with 6. he HATES 8 and 8 HATES 5. i think that may have came from me having difficulty adding 8 and 5 together since i was little.

As someone with both aphantasia and synaesthesia (melodic audio to color visualization), we all do not visualize imagery. There does exist a neurodivergence. I literally cannot visualize and yet I persist within the artistic community. My name is Bryan and I'm a video game artist, I've worked on Prey, SimCity, Cities Skylines and I've just started my own company.

Let's pay our respect to the narrator who pronounces the word 'synesthesia' hundreds of times in this video. It was hard.

I think a more apt way of putting our sixth sense is empathy, how we communicate with emotions, facial expressions, "energy" [for lack of a better word], etc.

Synesthesia is when you feel the pain of the balls from another man from miles away

0:30 *uses music notes*

i feel like i always associate names with objects or really vivid imagery, everytime i’ve explained this to those around me they have called me crazy, either way my brain is so broad and can associate and visualise ANYTHING, my brain can be too creative at times!

Holy shit that number finding thing just answered so many things...

I have high functioning autism, and often experience sensory overload (usually to do with audiotory stimuli) but I do not think I have synesthesia. I enjoy music, and drawing/painting abstract art, and I experience asmr, usually with certain sounds or even music, and sometimes if I'm watching someone do something, without any sound. It is soothing and relaxing for me, but I'd say that is as close as I get to experiencing similar feelings as those with synesthesia. I wonder of there is a correlation between the two?

My first thought was Remy in ratatouille when eating food

I have grapheme color synesthesia and chromesthesia and I associate words with how rough or soft the word looks and sounds it’s hard to explain but it’s also associated with roughness and softness of colors. I can also know exactly what a food taste like based on its smell or the word even if I never tasted it before

I always wanted to experience what a person with synesthesia felt but I never thought I would since I thought it was a psychological condition I was able to experience it my first time with psychedelics, pretty cool

I feel that people with synesthesia have a stronger connection to the infinite consciousness.

Numbers and sound shave textures for me. I can feel them.

You are sooo underrated. Don't worry sir, everyone do not have a vision like you. 🙌🏻

I get audio tactical synesthesia before and after seizures it can be amazing or agony depending on the sound but I have to be careful what kind of music I listen to when this happens as the wrong music can be painful even make me puke I'm glad it doesn't happen all the time. However it can also be rapture. Though as a musician I find it very helpful because it really helps me convey feeling in a piece.

very interesting, thank you:))

Already excited