https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Have you ever tasted a word, or seen colors while listening to music? If you have, you may be among the 1% to 4% of people who have a fascinating trait known as synesthesia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-04-words-neuroscience-synesthesia.html Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:00:08 EDT news695282102 I have a form of time–space synesthesia, so the new year arrives for me in a very physical way. I feel myself move around the year, almost like I'm traveling along a structure. December sits low and to my left; January lifts and slides forward. The transition has a weight to it, as though the calendar itself shifts in space. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-space-synesthesia-affects-year.html Fri, 02 Jan 2026 09:47:19 EST news686569621 If you have ever watched a frightening movie which seemed so real, you felt a physical sensation in your own body if the characters on screen were hurt, you could be experiencing a phenomenon known as vicarious pain. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-vicarious-common-previously-thought-implications.html Thu, 23 Oct 2025 10:27:04 EDT news680434021 Remembering past events in minute detail, revisiting them methodically, and reliving past emotions—this is the peculiarity of people with an exceptional memory of their own lives, known as autobiographical hypermnesia, or hyperthymesia. This fascinating condition remains poorly understood, and each new case contributes to our understanding. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-mental-case-autobiographical-hypermnesia.html Thu, 28 Aug 2025 08:55:20 EDT news675590115 It's hard to pinpoint when synesthesia, the rare neurological condition where a stimulus that affects one sense prompts a response in a different sense, was first documented. Scientific literature marks its beginning in 1812, when it appeared as an aside in a Bavarian medical student's dissertation. Toward the end, there's a small section where he detailed how he associated musical tones and letters with colors. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-vowels-synesthesia.html Thu, 03 Apr 2025 11:47:52 EDT news662899667 Why have males been overrepresented among geniuses in STEM fields so far? A popular biological psychological explanation is the "Extreme Male Brain Theory" (EMB), which suggests that an overdose of prenatal androgen (male hormone) leads to the hyper-masculine brain type, characterized by a strong geek tendency and insensitivity to others' feelings. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-01-exploring-gender-neurodiversity-androgen-linked.html Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:48:03 EST news655577281 Synesthesia, hallucinations, euphoria. The documented effects of classic psychedelic substances such as psilocybin (magic mushrooms) or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) are vast. With their usage common and their effects profound, a team of speech and psychology researchers explored the impact of psychedelics on people who stutter, finding evidence that users see some benefits. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-psychedelics-stutterers.html Wed, 29 May 2024 13:33:03 EDT news636208381 For most of us, creating mental images based on speech or memory is very easy. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-newborn-chicks-centuries-debate-cognition.html Mon, 20 May 2024 11:48:04 EDT news635424482 A team of epidemiologists and neurologists from Karolinska Institutet, Tilburg University and the University of Gothenburg has found a possible genetic link between synesthesia and autism. In their study, reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the group studied the genes of identical twins to learn more about the roots of synesthesia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-genetic-link-autism-synesthesia.html Wed, 25 Oct 2023 10:20:02 EDT news617447357 Cambridge scientists are today launching a search to find people who have exceptional memory, as they attempt to understand why some people are much better at remembering than others. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-super-scientists-secrets-memory.html Wed, 03 May 2023 09:29:31 EDT news602324968 When you hear someone talk, do you see the words in your mind's eye? Or do you see what they're saying as a movie? It's easy to assume that the way you perceive the world is the same for everyone. But recent studies have revealed that there is a wide spectrum of how people visualize things in their mind's eye. The vividness of your inner visual imagery can even change throughout your life. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-spectrum-people-mentally-visualize.html Tue, 28 Feb 2023 12:08:04 EST news596808481 The acquisition of reading and writing are complex mechanisms whose subtleties we do not yet understand. Fabien Hauw and Laurent Cohen (Inserm, CNRS, Sorbonne University, AP-HP), neurologists at Paris Brain Institute, hope to uncover how we connect sounds, words, letters, and their meanings. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-subtitled-world-uncovering-secrets-tickertape.html Wed, 01 Feb 2023 15:03:04 EST news594486181 Among tall Douglas fir and oak trees, surrounded by a winding creek that feeds into the Clackamas River, a new kind of therapist is being minted in Oregon. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-psychedelic-therapy-pros.html Fri, 09 Dec 2022 12:00:02 EST news589807726 About one in fifty people has it: mirror-sensory synesthesia. This means they can feel it in their own bodies when they see others get hurt or touched, like seeing someone cut one's finger or getting a hug. New research by Radboud cognitive neuroscientists shows that these synesthetes show more empathic and altruistic behaviour. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-11-mirror-sensory-synesthetes-empathic-altruistic-behaviour.html Thu, 21 Nov 2019 10:12:09 EST news493553526 People with autism often have enhanced sensory sensitivity. They are, for example, much more likely to be affected by bright light and loud noises. They also have a better eye for detail. In a new paper, which was published earlier this week in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, researchers at Radboud University show that synesthetes also often have enhanced sensory sensitivity and that they have similar social skills to individuals with autism. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-11-link-synesthesia-insight-autism.html Fri, 01 Nov 2019 10:40:23 EDT news491823615 "When I see equations, I see the letters in colors. I don't know why," wrote Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. "I see vague pictures of Bessel functions with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around." https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-psychologists-language-synesthetes.html Wed, 15 May 2019 09:54:41 EDT news477132875 Does [a:] as in baa sound more green or more red? And is [i:] as in beet light or dark in colour? Even though we perceive speech and colour are perceived with different sensory organs, nearly everyone has an idea about what colours and vowels fit with each other. And a large number of us have a particular system for doing so. This is shown in research by linguists from Radboud University and the University of Edinburgh on similarities in the vowel-colour associations perceived by over 1,000 people. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-04-associating-colours-vowels.html Thu, 04 Apr 2019 10:00:01 EDT news473588260 One in 25 people have synesthesia, in which an experience involving one sense is associated with perception in another sense—for example, seeing colors when listening to music. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the University of Cambridge report clues into the biological origins of such variations in human perception. They studied families with synesthesia, and describe genetic changes that might contribute to their differences in sensory experience. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-uncover-molecular-clues-synesthesia.html Mon, 05 Mar 2018 15:00:05 EST news439461291 Hypnosis can alter the way certain individuals information process information. A new phenomenon has been identified by researchers from the University of Skövde in Sweden and the University of Turku in Finland. They have successfully used hypnosis to induce a functional analogue of synaesthesia. The discovery opens a window into the previously unexplored domains of cognitive neuroscience. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-synesthesia-hypnosis.html Thu, 14 Dec 2017 06:09:50 EST news432454177 Concrete links between the symptoms of autism and synaesthesia have been discovered and clarified for the first time, according to new research by psychologists at the University of Sussex. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-scientists-sensory-links-autism-synesthesia.html Tue, 07 Mar 2017 08:20:01 EST news408095189 When a student in a University of Delaware study watched a video of someone else's hand being touched, she felt the touch on her own hand. While that may seem a little eerie to most of us, she's not alone. About two in 100 people have this condition called mirror-touch synesthesia, or MTS. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-02-unusual-condition-mirror-touch-synesthesia.html Mon, 06 Feb 2017 12:19:01 EST news405605924 Sight, touch and hearing are our windows to the world: these sensory channels send a constant flow of information to the brain, which acts to sort out and integrate these signals, allowing us to perceive the world and interact with our environment. But how do these sensory pathways emerge during development? Do they share a common structure, or, on the contrary, do they emerge independently, each with its specific features? By identifying gene expression signatures common to sight, touch and hearing, neuroscientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, discovered a sensory "lingua franca" which facilitates the brain's interpretation and integration of sensory input. These results, to be read in Nature, pave the way towards a better understanding of perception and communication disorders. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-09-language.html Mon, 26 Sep 2016 11:40:54 EDT news394108850 Neuroscientists at Emory University have found that people who experience a mixing of the senses, known as synesthesia, are more sensitive to associations everyone has between the sounds of words and visual shapes. The results are published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-09-sensory-synesthesia.html Tue, 13 Sep 2016 06:42:30 EDT news392967735 A busy kitchen is a place where all of the senses are on high alert—your brain is processing the sound of sizzling oil, the aroma of spices, the visual aesthetic of food arranged on a plate, the feel and taste of taking a bite. While these signals may seem distinct and independent, they actually interact and integrate together within the brain's network of sensory neurons. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-10-intrinsic-neural-environment.html Tue, 27 Oct 2015 09:10:05 EDT news365154733 Being able to identify a smell or flavour appears to be the most important factor in how some synesthetes 'see' them, according to a study just published in the journal Cognitive Neuroscience. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-10-chocolate-pink-stripy-exploring-synesthetes.html Thu, 15 Oct 2015 07:55:42 EDT news364114531 Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have shed new light on synesthesia - the effect of hearing colours, seeing sounds and other cross-sensory phenomena. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-04-people-colour.html Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:40:25 EDT news347787616 Developmental psychologist Daphne Maurer has spent more than four decades studying the complexities of the human mind. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-developmental-psychologist-life-mysteries-mind.html Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:01:04 EDT news323089245 What colour is H? Is 4 brighter than 9? For most people these questions might seem baffling, but not for people with grapheme-color synesthesia. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-11-longitudinal-grapheme-color-synaesthesia-childhood.html Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:00:03 EST news303456950 Find a space with total darkness and slowly move your hand from side to side in front of your face. What do you see? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-dark-people-body-movement-absence.html Wed, 30 Oct 2013 23:40:02 EDT news302364224 About nine months after suffering a stroke, the patient noticed that words written in a certain shade of blue evoked a strong feeling of disgust. Yellow was only slightly better. Raspberries, which he never used to eat very often, now tasted like blue – and blue tasted like raspberries. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-07-st-michael-case-patient-synesthesia.html Tue, 30 Jul 2013 09:37:22 EDT news294395831