What color is Tuesday? Exploring synesthesia - Richard E. Cytowic 

Okay, this is just a really cute story ( it's really long though): So I work with a voice coach named Jillian. She knows I have sound-color synesthesia, and I even wrote a really REALLY bad song about it called music to my eyes. So she was teaching her 8 or 9 year old niece a song a little bit ago, and her niece (we'll call her Mia) could not, for the life of her, remember the chords to this song. So Jillian tells Mia to think of a word or something to remember the chord. Like, a lyric or something. So Mia pauses for a second, then says "Can it be a color?" So she writes down the color for each chord, while Jillian is starting to make the connection. The next time she plays the song, less than five minutes later, she doesn't miss a single chord. Jillian asks her if she sees colors when she hears music, and she gets really quiet and suddenly says "I thought everyone did..." So Jillian let me talk to Mia and she just asked questions and told me about her favorite songs and how all of her best friends have the prettiest colored voices and that's why they're so close to her. It was one of the cutest and more pure interactions I've ever had. Thanks if you're still reading. This is totally pointless, but I thought it was cute.

I've legit done this since I was like 4 I thought everyone did it

The true synesthete experience is finding out your friends also have it, and constantly arguing with them about the colors of everything, while the other people around us give us really weird looks. All jokes aside, I really appreciate having friends who perceive the world similarly to me, and I really wish I would have came out about my synesthesia to them earlier. If you're all the way down here, thanks for reading and happy summer

When I was a child I saw the days of the week as various colours. This had faded from my memory until I recently read an item about this subject. Thursday was very strong blue & Saturday red. Sunday yellow, Monday orange, Tuesday a very weak yellow & Wedsnesday a brighter yellow. Fascinating subject.

Every month has a color, every day, music, even my feelings are described as color. I thought everyone described color.

after reading the comments.. my world feels so dull now :(

"hello welcome to chili's how may I take your order?" "uh yeah can I get your voice, I think that would taste pretty good!" ok comin' right up

I thought everyone could see that. One day, I just realized that no one around me also associated the school subjects and the seven days of the week with specific colors. Additionally, digits/numbers, letters/words, months, people, geometric figures, tastes have colors... Most abstract things have colors in my head. This is so intriguing and interesting that I'm sure I would be very sad if I couldn't see it, so I'm very proud to be synaesthetic.

yooo anyone else feel hella left out because they don’t have synesthesia?

The worst part about being a synesthete is getting annoyed while watching videos like this, thinking, "NO, "Denise" is ///CLEARLY/// YELLOW, not green!" Totally feel them on 9 being a vain, elitist girl though.

I have this, but it was more intense when I was younger. I used to be able to taste music, but only songs that really connected with me. But now, when I listen to songs from my childhood it triggers such nostalgia that I can taste them again. It's amazing.

I'm color blind and having synesthesia is something i find difficult yet unique

i always had colors for my school subjects so when i got binders or folders i would buy the corresponding color for the subject so i didnt even need to label them

“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”

Your voice sound like purple/blue, like thursday, december and 8. It's profound, calm and wise.

One day I was like "who was that girl with yellow name again" and my friends were like confuse af

I remember hearing a door slam and saying to my parents: "Wow, that was really bright white!" That was the moment I realised not everyone sees sounds 😅

It's so cool having it, but I confuse capital F and 4 all the time since they're the same color to me. I've written "4or" so many times it's ridiculous.

Imagine being like “Hold on, need to clean my palette, AIRPLANE... aight we good.”

Very informative. My wife described our daughter as having this trait so I had to investigate. Her associations use color and shapes/ motion for things like specific people and their voices, events and words. She also has an amazing ability to remember things from as early as age late two (she is now 14).

I have synesthesia and I told my math teacher and she was so interested she gave personalized tests/work so I would have an easier time with math because my synesthesia would give me anxiety with the negative signs disappearing and all the numbers being close together so I didn't know were to look. I also have ADHD so that made things even harder

I'm just discovering this whole new world i didn't know i was part of.

when you meet someone but their name isn't the same color as your perception of them

I see. I've always asked my friends if they also feel music as a physical sensation when they listen to it and I feel sad every time they tell me they don't understand. I'm happy there are people out there who do.

FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT!!!!! so many people have given me weird looks when i comment on how the number 4 is blue!

My name does NOT taste like earwax!!

It’s so amazing seeing people with synesthesia like me

omg that's what it's called I have a grapheme synesthesia! numbers, letters, punctuation, days, months, years are all colours

I have synesthesia. I associate painful feelings with colors or patterns. For example, I sometimes get a painful feeling in my foot that I identify as red and black fuzz. The feeling of being punched in the chest is yellow. The feeling of a metal bar being hit on my arm is light blue. It's weird.

The problem for me is that I usually don't associate words with the color of their first letter but with a mixture of all of their letters (and sometimes an outside color influenced by the actual color of the word, if it is a physical thing) - for example, D is brown, E is yellow, N is brown, I is white, S is green, and E is yellow again. The result is a yellowish brown - but more so than a mixture of the colors, I see bits of each color interspersed together. So when someone asks me what color a word is, it's often too difficult to describe.

I’ve done this forever. Since I was a kid, I would associate numbers with certain colors or days of the week with certain colors. Growing up I would also identify people and their personalities with certain colors. Now as I am a musician, I now associate sounds more often with colors too. Crazy stuff.

Really cool! I always saw single characters as having colors, but only some of them for some reason. For example A is always red, B is blue, C is colorless, D is green etc. Edit: Lately I've been noticing that some of the colorless characters I mentioned do have a color, just a very soft one. C is sort of light grayish for instance. They're just less pronounced and it doesn't bother me as much to seem them in other colors.

I don't have synethesia, but i do associate the days of the weeks and certain lessons with colours.

I actually realised I had synesthesia not long ago when my Literature teacher praised me for using so many deep metaphors and explained to me that not everyone could see "the round scent of rain on the ground", feel "the rest that offered the colour red" nor "the needle created by two pieces of foam rubbed together entering their skin ". It really caught me off guard as I thought these kinds of association were something everyone had.

I used to draw math terms as gendered, personalitied characters in my sketch book haha But I always felt music was like "painting a picture" of colors, like the bass had deep undertoned colors and the fluttery instruments spotted over the deep colors. I also related them to a forest, with the fluttered instruments as budding flowers and the depth of the bass as the earth beneath it, the harmony chords of the middle instruments as a sunrise, etc. I also found food to be like "painting a picture" of colors as well.

I have synesthesia! People always ask me “how does it work?” But it’s super hard to explain. You explained it perfectly tho.

1:16 my jaw dropped it was so accurate. I’ve always associated inanimate things with colors and personalities and genders etc. and this is so cool to see that this is a real thing lol

For me, days of the week, numbers, letters, and school subjects have colours, while the bodies in our solar system had genders.

When I was in high school I had a hard time memorizing the years and events in history class - so I decided to "cheat" at exams and write combos of four colored dots on my hands representing the year numbers. So to me it was a hand with a bunch of years written on it and to the teachers I was just being artistic and had colorful dots all over my hands lol

After 18 years living here on Earth, finally know about this thing, growing up I'm always thinking why I see colors in months, like january(green), february(violet), march(red), april(blue), may(lighter pink). A whole year for me is an oval shape, a decade is a rectangle. In school, I see subjects as colors too like, Math(strong red), science (green), english(white), History(orange). THANK GOD, GROWING UP I ALWAYS THINK I AM DIFFERENT TILL FOUND THIS!

I am reading a book called A Mango Shaped Space and it's about a girl with a common form of synesthesia

wow, it sounds like to me these kind of people have a blast in everyday life, and a much more colorful and interesting life.

When I was in Elementary I started to dress up accordingly to the color of days of the week: Monday: Orange Tuesday: Blue Wednesday: Green Thursday: Grey Friday: Red Saturday: Yellow Sunday: White

I personally hate having synesthesia sometimes, and love it other times! It's such a weird thing to have, but at the same time I couldn't imagine not having it. I feel like the world would be more dull without it, but at the same time I feel like it would be more colorful. Synesthesia is so complicated, but at the same time is super simple.

Also, I know I definitely have synesthesia, but I couldn’t conclude which senses I had, to me, it’s more like feelings, textures, taste, smell, colour, images, ...... all smashing up together

When I was in orchestra, this is how I memorized the music. However the notes had different personalities and stories that would combine to make the whole piece.

Since I was a kid, every time I heard the name of the days Monday, Wednesday and Friday, immediately a yellowish color would come to my mind. For the days Tuesday and Thursday, it was more like a dark blue. For Saturday it was orange (nowadays it's orange-brown) and for Sunday it was like a pale blue. Through out my life, I studied other languages and the same pattern happened to the names of the week in Spanish, French and English (my native language is Portuguese), but not in Japanese (it's a long story). Anyways, I'm 30 now and until this day I never told anyone about this. I never thought it had a name. Now I'm watching this video and reading the comments and I know I'm not the only one!

No one: Everyone in the comments section: OmG, I hAvE SyNeStHeSiA bEcAuSe I aSsOcIaTe ThE cOlOr OrAnGe WiTh OcToBeR, i ThOuGhT EvErYoNe ElSe DiD

Wait,,,so giving numbers colors and personalities is not what everyone does?

I am kind of jealous, this is so interesting.

I dont really know if this is right but everybody thought I was weird for thinking this but numbers for me as a child I always thought that for example 6 and 7 were brother and sister 8 and 4 were together in a relationship and 1 and 2 were married and 9 and 10 where brothers. Its weird I know but I always thought that this is how everyone saw numbers and felt the same way..

i feel like i can’t fell if i have this or not. like i can imagine these worlds as feelings but i don’t actually taste them or feel them

To me some numbers have personalities. Odd ones are evil and even ones are good. I also have a weird good smell-taste conecction.

I don't have this but I always though that 8 had a huge crush on 16 and 4 just thought it was weird

I just found out today that one of my friends also sees colours in graphemes and we spent a full hour and a half arguing about which word is which colour. It was crazy how different we saw things

i have grapheme-color and time-space, and my dad has ordinal-linguistic!! the only reason i started learning about it and found out i had it was after reading the book “a mango shaped space” lol

When I was younger, I was never brave enough to say that F# sounds light green because I thought everybody else would think that I'm crazy XD

I always think of Tuesday as a something like a yellowish orange Edit: I have started a political uprise

Best explanation I have ever seen. Have the first type, graphics in colour

I have this and every letter has its own color. But does anyone else experience seeing the colors mix together when they form words? But if you read the word by letter, you see the colors individually? And I don't exactly SEE the colors, it's more of like thinking about a song in your head, it's like you hear it, it's not faint, you don't hear anything but you have the music pulsing in your head. AGGGGHHHH it's so hard to describe. 😭

When I was in 7th grade, my whole middle school read a book about a girl with synesthesia (the title had something to do with her cat, mango who she named mango because his meows make her see mango spots) and I've found synesthesia so fascinating since then

When I was younger each day of the week had a pattern. Words had color and shape and sounds moved on a line in my brain. As I got older I no longer saw the shape of 'lonely' (a thin blue line) or saw Sunday (a red square with yellow line radiating from a point on the bottom). I remembered them but no longer saw them the way I used to. Now, as I've gotten older yet again I see them again. No all of them, but I see sound now. Pitch and volume lighten and darken colors and harmony shakes the sploch in my head. I like it. The sound of a guitar, for instance, is green, like it used to be. Bumble bees form dotted zigzagging lines in my brain. I express this to friends and they don't believe me. I wanted to share this so people have a better understanding of this phenomena.

I want to get this software update

It's weird 'cause I don't have Synesthesia, but I still like to compare colors to the days of the week, numbers, or moods. Like Monday is red, Wednesday is Green. Red is odd Black is even. Or like Red is angry, Blue is sad. In Kindergarten we had a specific color for the days, & on the 100 number chart/board thingy the odd numbers were Red, Black was even. So maybe that's were I got this mind set from.... Not really sure, but I've always thought like that.

I physically winced when the letters in DNA popped up. They were all the wrong colors.

To me, 7 and 2 are both different shades of green. I used to sometimes write the number 2 instead of 7, vice versa.

When I see a photo or an image I always can smell it. So strange :)

TUESDAY IS GREEN FOR ME

I discovered that not everyone feels like this only a few months ago. My friend told me his Professor worked on a project about synesthesia, I asked him what it was, he explained it to me with the classical "words have colours" and I was like: Well, I don't see colours, but letters and numbers have a gender, characteristics and an age. He was shocked and so happy and I wondered why he reacted like that because it's the most normal thing in the world? He answered No, it isn't? Now I know it and I feel silly that it didn't cross my mind that it's something "special" :D

I just wanted to find out what colour Tuesday was.

No one: That one girl diagnosing herself in the comments: 👁👄👁

Anyone else say colours instead of numbers in class by accident and everyone looks at you weird? xD Too many times, I MEANT FOUR NOT BLUE I'M SORRY.

I never knew that I had synesthesia until fourth grade when I read the book " a mango shaped space" I thought it was normal for everyone to see letters numbers and words as different colors and have a different colored calendar always in your mind. When I started telling people they didn't quite belive me, and some still don't. But the people who do think it's really cool. It is, but it ado makes a lot of things hard like ELA and Spanish, because sometimes words just "Don't look right too me" and no one ever gets it.

I have Ordinal linguistics personification and grapheme color synesthesia i actually discovered it last year when i read this book called “a mango shaped space” which talks about a girl also discovering her synesthesia after that i did some research and I realized not everyone assigns colors and genders and personalities to numbers, letters, days of the week and months lol

I see the title "what color is Tuesday?" And my mind literally yelled "ORANGE"

I've always felt like letters and numbers had genders and personalities, but I never said that 'cause I thought everyone felt that way. Then I tried to explain to my mom how I think that 2 is a teenage girl who's not easily daunted and that A is a thirty year old womanizer, and she thought I was crazy. At least, now I know I'm not.

I think everyone has some form of synesthesia.. others are just so developed while others arent

I definitely want to learn more!

I see songs, months, people and days of the week as colours or personalities, I don't associate certain letters with colours (like Denise. I wouldn't remember her as a name starting with D because I don't associate things like that.) but I do see people's personalities as colours. Tuesday is green.

Blue, of course. (You were asking what color Tuesday is.)

I found out about this today in neuroscience, I had thought that everyone associated words, subjects, objects, and letters with colors.

I had a real hard time understanding this concept until I found this video. The brain is fascinating

Hello. I am a musician who sees a color-shape for each note. When I was in music school I got into an argument online with Richard Cytowic. This was the late 90's I guess, when there was no uTube or FaceBook or Twitter, etc. They were very fixed, boxy text fourms. I was expalined to Cytowic on his forum that there is an actually consitency in what i see in the notes and shape that parallels the color spectrum. For example, C is one of the most robust, warmest sounding notes. And therefore people naturally (and constantly) write love songs in C. Further, there are 64 squares on a chess board to make up one giant square. Well, 64 hertz frequency is actually a low C (in A-432/C256 scientific tuning). So I explained all of these things to him. How the cold distance of A-flat is spherical and blue. Etc. etc. Richard Cytowic would absoutely NOT hear it. He became very angry in his replies. That dialogue was lost by the time I moved back home from NYC to New Meixco. It is strange to see the man, years later, on TED-X. To see the face of who I was actually talking to. The problem with Cytowic (and i'm not dismissing his work) is that he does not offer any real insights to the condition. Like a good nerd, he merely documents things. I am not saying that synesthiea is intrinsically metaphorical, i'm sayiing that often times IT IS. And there is a pattern in neurology and perception that Cytowic's research shockingly ignores, denies and dismisses. Here is an example on my uTube channel of a visual representation of a song i the key of B major (magenta). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-om_h5rbZeb8.html

I associated numbers with gender Like 1,3,5,7 and 10 were the brothers youngest to oldest,respectively, and 9 and 8 were the gossipy sisters while 2 and 4 were the goody two shoes and 6 always hung out with bad people,woke up in a different bed every night ,had a Mohawk even though her mother 60 didn't approve All my numbers had a backstory and I still remember it to this day

I blame this for why I fail in math classes. I'm too busy thinking of how nine is going to get back at eight for dating ten! XD

synesthesia definitely improves my memory! I can remember numbers easily because I remember the colors that I associate with them

I knew about this - I don't have it, but I always thought it must be wonderful -

I remember talking to my friends about the gender and personalities of numbers in elementary school, I assumed everybody just had that feeling

that animation was everything

Like a cotton candy faygo soda tastes like a perfect childhood lmao

When I was a kid I used to associate words with colors. Writing the word "Math/Mathematics" in color green always brings me pleasure. I don't think any other color would fit to that word.

I memorized the time table with numbers as people with personalities.. like 6 and 7 are close relatives...

I have synesthesia. Letters, words, and numbers have color, and numbers and letters have personality.

Damn ted ed is really my favorite. A friend of mine recently said she wanted to take the psychology course, and i told them to check you guys out to get a grip--but they refused. It's their loss! But i still feel bitter about it, lol.

"Derek tastes like earwax" ew no he tastes like granny smith apples.... could've worded that different. 9 and 8 are the siblings that fight alot. Stranded Lullaby sounds purple and white, even though the mans voice is orange. And if you tell me something random, I'll try my best to reply with a color, personality or taste!

Tuesday is definitely yellow for me.. so is the letter "T"..🙂

with piano, music notes have always had personalities and colours, when i was young i would get sad because re and do were always seperate and re wanted to be with do but mi always stole him.

so i have the sound to color bit, but I thought i was the only person who came up with narratives for the numbers, that was always consistent over the years

Mine is words with color. I do that to take notes and stuff, or maybe in lettering.

I think I have this except it's with smell. Like when I smell something, I am instantly reminded of a memory. Or when I remember something, I can smell it, but no one else seems to smell it. And then the smell goes away as soon as I stop thinking about it.