All the types in the table are linked to their respective pages.
The percentages are very approximate and are based on the existing studies and on personal intuition in the cases for which there are no figures. They refer to the percentage of the synesthetic population that could have each type. The synesthetic population probably consists of around 4% of the general population.
The lists of types in each of the four boxes are ordered alphabetically, not from more to less common.
*Marked with an asterisk: as I have not been able to find any conclusive studies, I have taken the liberty of making an estimate based on what I have read and observed over the last few years.
**Marked with two asterisks: these are personal impressions as it is currently impossible to establish a prevalence for these types. See the note at the end of this page as to why not.
|
More than 50% |
15% – 50% |
1% – 15% |
Less than 1% |
|
Very common |
Common |
Not so common |
Uncommon |
Grapheme-colour (letters, written words, numbers) (Grapheme-colour can actually be considered a type of Coloured sequence synesthesia, making this group of synesthesias in general the most common of all)
|
Auditory-visual / chromesthesia
Coloured sequences (time units such as days and months, and other sequences)
Ordinal linguistic personification (letters and/or numbers)**
|
Auditory-gustatory (sound
or music-taste) Auditory-olfactory (sound
or music-smell) Aura (projective personality-colour synesthesia) Duality synesthesia (masculine/feminine, heavy/light, rounded/pointy etc.)* Gustatory-visual (taste-colour and taste-shape) Lexeme-colour and morpheme-colour Lexical-olfactory* Mirror touch** Motion-to-sound synesthesia (observed movement-sound) Motor (or kinetic/kinesthetic) synesthesia Olfactory-visual (smell-colour and smell-shape) Personification of days or months* Phoneme-colour Sexual (and romantic) synesthesia* Stimulus-parity (odd/even)* |
Auditory-motor (involuntary movements in response to sounds)* Grapheme-smell (numbers and letters) Grapheme-sound (numbers and letters) Grapheme-taste (numbers and letters) Grapheme-temperature (numbers and letters)* Gustatory-auditory (taste-sound)Kinetics-sound (own body movements) Mathematical concepts-vision synesthesias Perceived emotion-colour-smell-taste-touch (emotions observed in others) Personification of musical sequences Tactile-emotion (texture-emotion)
|
|
More than 50% |
15% – 50% |
1% – 15% |
Less than 1% |
|
Very common |
Common |
Not so common |
Uncommon |
Note: this table does not contain a list of all the existing types of synesthesia, it is just a route for finding information on this website. If you're interested in finding out why we can't make a list of this type, check out this page: Why is it impossible to list all the types of synesthesia that exist?
This page last updated: 8 April 2024
I have spatial sequence synesthesia and none of the other named kinds, but I have noticed a couple of linkages that I have always thought were universal. Namely 1) mood-memory. access to memories is heavily controlled by the mood you are in now (and were at the time of the memory); and 2)smells-memories-emotions.
ReplyDeleteHi Sally! Yes, smells-memories/emotions is something experienced by everyone (although there are probably big differences between people with regard to the vividness and the extent it affects us (there's a page in the Tree with what I found out about this subject, https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/smell-and-memory-taste-and-prousts.html), and I must say I hadn't heard of moods controlling access to memories before - how fascinating! What do you experience? I don't think it would be linked to synesthesia, but I'd like to know more about it!
DeleteThanks for this chart -I have “common” and “uncommon”. I participated in a study many years ago and heard about different types of synesthesia for the first time. One type I never knew was synesthesia was one’s body becoming the shape of sound, passages of music (some of this can be movement as response to auditory, but it is also feel my body becoming the actual shape of the sound . Another-My “3” is green and-if I hold up three fingers that looks green -same for White “1” one finger”2” two fingers are brown “4” red -4 fingers are red -it goes as far as 5 for fingers.
ReplyDeleteI find what you say to be very interesting! Both those things you mention. Perceiving your body as being the shape of the sound I'd say would fit in somewhere with the proprioception-related aspect of auditory-tactile, and also, as you suggest, with auditory-motor. And seeing your fingers as the colours of your numbers, I don't remember hearing of a case of this before and it's such a good example of how magnitude or numerosity and not just the symbol for the number produce the colour. Looking this up now I can see that there's actually a study on this (Ward/Sagiv), from 2007 (or was that actually the study you took part in?), this one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6270038_Synaesthesia_for_Finger_Counting_and_Dice_Patterns_A_Case_of_Higher_Synaesthesia
DeleteIn any case I'd like to include both the things you say in my descriptions here on the Tree, if that's OK by you!
I can smell temperature, see sound, and see colors in numbers. the 2 latter ones are listed, but olfactory-temperature is not. I can explain more if you're curious!
ReplyDeleteThat would be interesting to hear about your experiences, yes!
ReplyDeleteI have a few types, but one I never seem to see mentioned anywhere is that, for me, words have textures. Thinking of the right word often leads to comments like ‘no that word is too furry’ or ‘no the word I’m trying to think of is spikier than that’ (much to the confusion of those around me). Sometimes it’s just an association, sometimes I can actually feel the texture as if I’m touching a surface or something.
ReplyDeleteIs there a term for that sort of word-texture synesthesia?
Hi! You’re right, I think in many cases this could definitely be considered a type of synesthesia… but no-one seems to talk about it much, as far as I know there aren’t any studies on it, and it hasn’t been given a name. I’d only really heard it talked about in conjunction with grapheme-colour synesthesia. But if the textures don’t have colour, then it would be different from grapheme-colour. Or with lexical-gustatory, when words not only have a taste but it’s also common for there to be a texture.
DeleteWith synesthesia types where a strong perception of texture is the concurrent, it often appears to be the case that the textures are perceived together with something else: colour, shape, taste (or mouthfeel), or touch. That tends to the case for sound-texture synesthesia, for example, and it seems to be equally true when it’s a concurrent for words, although of course the texture could just occur on its own. In your case, from what you say, you seem to have it either alone or with a tactile sensation. A hypothetical name for it if it comes with real touch sensations would be lexical-tactile synesthesia, or if not you could say word-texture.
I think your question makes an interesting point, and it could be worth making a page for the Tree of this when I have time!
You could look at the pages on sound-texture and musical note texture if you were interested because you might see some kind of a relationship with how you’re perceiving your textures with words.
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/sound-texture-synesthesia.html
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/05/tone-texture-synesthesia-musical-note.html
And looking for some more examples of it, I found this excellent post in Reddit with some very interesting comments, all talking about how they experience word-texture, you might like to read it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Synesthesia/comments/8mvhb8/feeling_words_and_sentences_as_texturesfabrics/
There seem to be a small but strong number of synesthetes who have this, maybe it needs revindicating!
Mine isn't very interesting. The only one I can truly say I experience is the one a lot of people refer to as "ASMR".
ReplyDeleteI first remember feeling it sometime around 4th-6th grade, but for me, while it CAN and often is related to hearing a sound--for me, it happens when I hear what sounds like someone drawing with markers or colored pencils--it still mostly occurs when someone is doing something for me that has to do with art or writing on paper.
That may sound confusing so I'll try to quickly explain via an example or two.
In 6th grade, I clearly remember, if a classmate would ask to borrow my notes, I would get a tingly sensation throughout my body (usually starting in the head) for the entire time they were copying my notes, albeit more like in waves rather than continuously.
A second instance I clearly remember is when one of my friends would be drawing a picture for me (my friends and I did this during class for some reason). Whether or not I could hear the markers they were using didn't matter except perhaps it heightened the feeling a little bit.
That's about it for me. I remember feeling weird about it, but not enough to concern me, although when I finally learned about "ASMR" (and then finally auditory-tactile synesthesia...although the "auditory" part may be a very slight misnomer for my particular...variant) it made me feel less weird to learn others experienced it too.
I have like 11 or 12 of these types lol
ReplyDeleteHello! It seems very questionable and/or unlikely that you have such a high amount. I think that what you're referring to may be the little bit of "synesthesia" we all sort of seem to have, such as how we may think of some things and associate them with others. If you truly have that many types, I'm impressed- and a bit concerned. You should possibly get that checked out.
DeleteMy experience on the other hand tells me it's relatively common to have a lot of types, many synesthetes do. It also depends on whether you count only the strongest ones you're aware of constantly or also those that are weaker. I'd never really counted up my types but if I do, I see have 10 of the ones on this list all the time or strongly, and about another 6 that are weaker or I only get strong experiences with occasionally, which I wouldn't really count, although I do experience them. I've met a lot of people, both in "real life" and online, who have numerous types, like I do. My experience has also shown me that synesthetes on the autism spectrum often have very many types, strongly expressed.
DeleteReally I don't think it's possible for many synesthetes to be able to say exactly "how many types they have". Also it all depends on how you group the types: you find some people counting up many types they consider they have, but they're breaking them down more, so for example they'd count weekdays-colour, months-colour, countries-colour as 3 different types when it probably makes more sense to count them as only one: coloured sequences.
And also, as you say, some people count any vague experience with "sensory crossovers" as having a type of synesthesia when they perhaps aren't talking about the same thing and their experience doesn't fit into the exact description of how it manifests, so that shouldn't be counted as a type. That happens in some general questionnaires about synesthetic experiences, when there are no follow-up tests to see if the person really has those types of synesthesia or not, and can even lead to the mistake of thinking there are a huge percentage of synesthetes in the population, when there aren't!
This is just a few general personal reflections on this discussion, which I thought was interesting. Thank you both for commenting!
I feel very special to belong to the synesthetic club! I take part in research at the University of Sussex too on the condition. I have several types of synesthesia, from the common to the not so common. I'm so glad to have these experiences and live in a world of so much colour.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHello, I am Aman from India. I am working as a Writer and a Director. Currently I am working on a story which is about Synesthesia and Synesthete. I am looking for someone who can help me in research and share his/her experience of being a synesthete and their world view. My aim is to spread awareness and make the people aware about this subject as many of the people haven’t even heard about this yet. So, if anyone is interested then please reach at my mail id imbansalaman2004@gmail.com
Thank you for your work on this website. It is amazing. This is very useful, but at the same time, very confusing for me. ahah Basically, because I see letters, poepl's names, numbers, days of the week, months, idk, school subjects with collors. And I always thought it was grapheme colour, but it happens that the colour of the letter can change depending of if it, for example, an open A or a flat A and so on for the vowels. So, it might also be related with sound. Also, I see gradients of colours if I pay enough attention. So, it is not only one colour per word. In the end, I really do not know what type do I have. I am not sure if I understnad spatial sequence, but at the same time, I can easily see a queue of letters in my head with differente colours, if I focus enough. I am also pretty sure that, romantic/sex type is there, as I found out recently that normal people to not see colours during orgasm. But I do not always see that. Also for food, I am pretty sure that some flavours can show a colour, but that does not work for the generality of them. So, I never really paid enough attention to know. I also have some kind of misophonia because some sounds really push my buttons. But, there is another gradient to that one that is differente from misophonia: some musics really make me feel uncomfortable, like if my tummy gets tense and they make me anxious and I have to turn them off. Would that be synaesthesia as well?
ReplyDeleteFinally, I am not sure if I have the mirror touch type. Or some type related with empathy because I do not feel it always, but for example, I do not like to see those funny videos of people falling because it is as if I could feel their pain. The same for situations I can imagine in my head, like idk, a broken nail. It hurts even if I am just imagining it. That is worse though with emotional distress. I can watch a movie like Anne Frank or Australia and cry like no other person in the room because I get to imagine the suffering of thouse people and it is unbearable to me. It makes me sad for so long. It really hurts. So, idk if this would be synaesthesia or not. I am very confused about myself right now. ahah
Thank you though.
Hi and thank you for appreciating the Tree!
DeleteYes, the colour of letters can be related to their sound, in which case technically that could be phoneme-colour synesthesia. And two types of A would have different colours in that case, if they’re pronounced differently.
They can have gradients of colour too, that’s perfectly possible. Or combinations, or two colours at the same time, or patterns, or textures, or they might be multi-coloured: there are many possibilities.
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/03/phoneme-colour-synesthesia.html
If you see weekdays, months and school subjects with their own particular colours that don’t correspond to the colours of the letters in them, then that might be coloured sequence synesthesia for those series of concepts and not grapheme-colour/phoneme-colour. The two can coexist though.
https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/coloured-sequence-synesthesia.html
As to your queue of letters, if you really have to focus very hard to see them and it’s not at all automatic, then it probably wouldn’t be considered spatial sequence (alphabet form). Although most who have it say they visualise the alphabet with its different colours, so perhaps.
With sexual and romantic synesthesia, I don’t think anyone has colours every single time!
For taste-colour, if you perceive some tastes with colour then you should focus on it and see if you are getting consistent colour perceptions. Sometimes if this type is weak it can be there but it just seems normal or you hardly notice. If the colours just coincide with the colour of the food and it’s only an occasional experience, or if they’re not at all consistent, then it probably wouldn’t be that.
The music that makes you feel uncomfortable, that could be for a variety of reasons, but I don’t think any of them would be synesthesia.
The last thing you describe would be empathy or pain empathy but very unlikely it’s mirror touch.