I would just as soon throw out the DSM and just use neural wiring as the basis for categorization of psychiatric conditions . To me, it is clear that psychiatric phenotypes can be categorized on the basis of column A white matter wiring, column B gray matter volume, and column C genes/chemicals/other local environmental conditions.
In a way, where neural connections define the person, everyone is sort of a synesthete.
Synesthesia is one of the more highly publicized conditions where neural cross-talk results in “cross-sensory percepts; an involuntary association of, say, colors to letters, or smells to sounds. (I’m always a bit wistful in reading about the magic lands of the synesthetes, where sounds taste like chocolate, and numbers can be girlish).
The hallmark of synesthesia is that the sensory percepts have a connection that is involuntary and consistent. Moreover, the connections are based on information already acquired: there is no delusion or confabulation. Circuits are connected to existing sockets of neurally-encoded information.
Using this framework, mis-fired wiring explains a lot. Take spouse abusers. Please. (Sorry).
I wondered about spouse abusers because their wires seem to specifically cross “person who loves me” with “red alert threat.” (See, “Wife batterers: A synesthesia subtype for domestic violence perpetrators?” ).
Now for autism. A new report details observations that high functioning autistic spectrum folks who have savant-like talents may be hyper-perceptive — they may have superhuman powers to sense things. But, not all things — just certain things. Perhaps this hyper-perception is really a hyper-wiring connection: like synesthetes.
Some kind of superhuman skill would seem plausible with certain autistic spectrum type folks who have savant-skills. Like, the 17 year old boy diagnosed with Aspergers who came extremely close to having others set up an airline for him. This is after plans fell through for booking the US tour group of “High School” musical (the money snag, bummer). You have to have a really good perception-system, systematizing brain, and really REALLY good memory. (Report from the London Times).
Another report on a “superior memorist” looks a lot to me like synesthesia connecting numbers and specific emotions. (Raz et al., “A slice of pi : An exploratory neuroimaging study of digit encoding and retrieval in a superior memorist, “ Neurocase. 2009 Jul 6:1-12; HT: NotoriousLTP at Neurotopia) The memorist could recite over 500 digits in pi, but was poor in remembering neutral faces and common events. The individual explained his way of memorizing involved emotionally charged associations. This sounds to me like a bit of Asperger’s (in that the person was not good with faces), along with the kind of synesthesia where numbers (graphenes) are associated with emotions or spatial locations.
There is another case of an individual mathematical savant with Asperger’s and number-synesthesia:
Single case: DT is a savant with exceptional abilities in numerical memory and mathematical calculations. DT also has an elaborate form of synaesthesia for visually presented digits. Further more, DT also has Asperger syndrome (AS). We carried out two preliminary investigations to establish whether these conditions may contribute to his savant abilities. Neuroimaging: In an fMRI digit span study, DT showed hyperactivity in lateral prefrontal cortex when encoding digits, compared with controls. In addition, while controls showed raised lateral prefrontal activation in response to structured (compared to unstructured) sequences of digits, DT’s neural activity did not differ between these two conditions. In addition, controls showed a significant performance advantage for structured, compared with unstructured sequences whereas no such pattern was found for DT. We suggest that this performance pattern reflects that DT focuses less on external mathematical structure, since for him all digit sequences have internal structure linked to his synaesthesia. Finally, DT did not activate extra-striate regions normally associated with synaesthesia, suggesting that he has an unusual and more abstract and conceptual form of synaesthesia. This appears to generate structured, highly-chunked content that enhances encoding of digits and aids both recall and calculation. Neuropsychology: People with AS preferentially attend to local features of stimuli. To test this in DT, we administered the Navon task. Relative to controls, DT was faster at finding a target at the local level, and was less distracted by interference from the global level. Discussion: The propensity to focus on local detail, in concert with a form of synaesthesia that provides structure to all digits, may account for DT’s exceptional numerical memory and calculation ability. This neural and cognitive pattern needs to be tested in a series of similar cases, and with more constrained control groups, to confirm the significance of this association.
Raz A, Packard MG,Alexander GM,Buhle JTZhu H,Yu S, Peterson BS. “A slice of pi : An exploratory neuroimaging study of digit encoding and retrieval in a superior memorist, “Neurocase. 2009 Jul 6:1-12
Bor D, Billington J, Baron-Cohen S., “Savant Memory for Digits in a Case of Synaesthesia and Asperger Syndrome is Related to Hyperactivity in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex,” Neurocase. 2007 Oct;13(5):311-9
Baron-Cohen S, Ashwin E, Ashwin C, Tavassoli T, Chakrabarti B., “Talent in autism: hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity,” Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 May 27;364(1522):1377-83. 10.1098/rstb.2008.0337 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 27 May 2009 vol. 364 no. 1522 1377-1383.
I often wondered if I may be autistic spectrum.
I definitely experience this sort of cross talk you describe. It is most acute when my baseline mood state is very high/energetic, at night, before bed, particularly after taking 5-htp or ambien.
I can close my eyes and listen to poetry, and each word spoken appears in my mind eye with specific colors and scenery… like each word has a personality attached to it, there is a whole “scene” there. It’s neat. It’s like watching a show playing in my head.
More ordinarily, at night before bed random images, scenes will jump into my mind and sort of morph… colors, contrast, texture, depth, sounds, space, temperature… all different properties will sort of meld and shift. One minute I have an idea of something being lilac, soft, floral, dew, bright light at 2 oclock… then it morphs to blue/seafoam, shimmery, neon on darkness, hollow, stale air, chilly, light and insubstantial mass.
Two dimensional things morph to three dimensional. The change in space perception is very interesting.
Then, things can seem conceptual one minute and then shift to a completely real environment, often nature.
At these times, I have the most profound feeling like there are additional ways of sensing reality that are just out of my grasp.
It’s very frustrating because I feel quite excited at these times, but I can’t satisfy that quest to understand/see/perceive because I can’t figure out how to access these “additional senses” that my brain is telling me exist.
It did not even occur to me to consider that my brain was misfiring “cross talk” between senses. That would explain the idea that there are numerous other senses that I am close to accessing. Perhaps when sight/sound/smell/taste/touch mix up in your brain, your brain deals with that by conjuring the idea that well over 5 senses must exist.
Hey ITW –
Interesting — I don’t know if that would be autism or just connections that you happen to notice when you don’t have any distractions.
I wonder if there’s sort of a one-two punch, with natural variations in dopamine or whatever. If you get both synapses on turbo charge as well as extra dendrites, then you’d get excitement as well as hyper-sensory perceptions. Sounds like fun.
I don’t think what I described is autism. I call it just “pre bed weirdness’. It usually happens when I’ve been rather energetic a few days.
I think I may have at least a few brain stuffs common in autism because I have major social deficits, and I obsessively fixate on subjects of interest, I am preoccupied with the organization of things. I don’t think I am truly autistic but I think there may be some brain-based commonality between these traits I have and autism.
Perhaps dopamine (maybe serotonin too) levels are a better explanation. After all, this only happens when I have been very hyper and energetic. If I’ve been in a depressed slump nothing at all like that will occur.
I don’t think it is purely connections I didn’t notice… it happens so fast, it’s like all these sensory impressions filling my mind. It’s rapid. It feels more like watching a trippy art movie rather than consciously trying to think of something (“thinking” for me is slower and more organized and the time it takes to get from point a to point b is longer… this is like point a to point z with all weird stops in between).
ITW, I’ll see if there’s any sleep research on this – I’ve been meaning to update that anyway.
Autism is a disorder of neural development that is characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old.[1] Autism involves many parts of the brain; how this occurs is not well understood.[2] The two other autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are Asperger syndrome, which lacks delays in cognitive development and language, and PDD-NOS, diagnosed when full criteria for the other two disorders are not met.[3]
Autism is not a form of synaesthesia, but synaesthesia is more likely to be present with Autism. Also, how do you feel about the fact that Neurotypicality is a psychiatric phenotype and that you are a Neurotypical?
JD, thank you for your observation, and we appreciate that we are in no position to put value judgments on any biological condition, and to us, neurotypical is a moving target.
My point is that Autism is not a psychiatric condition nor a disorder of any kind. The D in ASD actually stands for Difference.
autistic spectrum difference? Sounds good to me.
ITW, what you describe as happening to you every so often goes on in my head constantly. It has its advantages & disadvantages. Everything has a picture or scene associated with it, and it is great sometimes, but sometimes it drives me crazy as my brain is always going ninety miles an hour. Also, it restricts me ability to understand complicated maths, such as complex algebra, calculus, etc. Anything abstract is very difficult for me to grasp as my brain relies on being able to visualize everything before processing.
I came across this page after seeing a presentation by Dr. Temple Grandin at UCDavis MIND Institute. I am a synesthete. So is darn near everyone else in my family. My older son is AS, and I am inclined to believe my brother is as well. This being said, I did notice quite a few parallels between Dr. Grandin’s explanation of her visually-based thinking, and the way I think and behave as a synesthete. My brother and son also display many synesthetic qualities. I see the connections, but I am curious if I would be considered AS as well as a synesthete.
….And I forgot to mention this- I am AWFUL at abstract thinking so math is beyond me. Chemistry and physics come easily, yet I cannot verbally describe the processes. On top of this, I can pick up reading and writing of foreign languages, of which I am up to 8 in working knowledge. So, I am verbal/visual. Any insight?
Jen, thank you for your comment. We don’t know about any diagnosis, but the common biology seems to be the neural wiring, white matter connections. There are some new studies pointing to white matter deficits with autistic spectrum, whereas, to me, synthnesthesia seems to be super-connected white matter. What kind of synesthete are you, ( if that is the proper way to ask the question)? Or perhaps the more accurate way is to ask what are the synesthete connections you experience?
I have the classical color-grapheme type, as well as gustal-lingual (taste, sometimes smell words), sensation-color, color-auditory (see music), spatial placement of days/months. I can occasionally taste sensations and colors, especially if they are intense. I can honestly say that most of my synesthesia is NOT triggered by emotional events, but sometimes the synesthesia triggers emotion.
I’m curious. I see scenes or movement when listening to certain pieces of music, but this isn’t described in any synaesthesia articles. Is it still synaesthesia?
Jiheishou, I can’t be certain, but you do seem to lean toward a few of the characteristics. Can you describe what it is you see when you listen to music?
As an example, violin music ranges between red and brown waves, depending on the note being played. It also tastes slightly sweet and reminiscent of bitter chocolate. Piano is like drops of glowing blue and green rain on a black puddle.
One tune on The Sims 2 is bouncy, and Silver Inches by Enya makes me ‘see’ a storm with rainfall that is neither heavy nor light.
Jen, synesthesia is involuntary, apparently, and it is interesting that your synesthesia can trigger emotion. I wonder if the baseline case for most people is for a sensory stimulus to trigger an emotion. Maybe we’re all synthetes at a basic level, but some are more advanced in sensory connections. Readers think about this for 5 seconds: what if everytime you heard a word, you tasted a taste, or when you thought of a time period, it evoked a place.
Question: Are you left handed or can you use both hands (sides of your body) equally? Do you do crossword puzzles/programming/translations/play music on demand/or some other task that requires immediate connection of one concept to another?
We ask because we originally noticed that those who do crosswords at high levels seem to pull information across brain hemispheres with ease, indicating really strong white matter connections (to oversimplify). And , we wonder if this similarly is related to synthesia.
(Due apologies for the time delays in responding to your kind comments).
JD and Jen, synesthesia is shows how much biology is actually involved in everything we do.
We wonder about the broader implications: If hearing music evokes an entire sensory experience (like, a rain shower), then perhaps seeing someone who is “different” evokes an experience of being threatened or other non-rational, purely emotional feeling.
I would be interested in understanding if there are sensory experiences when you see/are around/think about people.
(About the closest think we can think of is that we immediately think of first grade when we smell Crayolas, but the point is similar, an involuntary sensation. )
When you say “seeing someone who is ‘different’ evokes an experience of being threatened or other non-rational, purely emotional feeling,” do you mean that creepy feeling where the hairs stand up on your neck and you won’t touch the person, look them in the eye, or be near them? I get that.
Oh, sorry, and I didn’t mean people who are “different” in race, gender, etc. My experience is different types of energy and intentional force, like someone who I feel is “evil.”
J: understood.
What I’m getting at: if synesthesia is a physical condition of having white matter connections in particular places (an assumption) such that stimulus A evokes sensory perception B, then isn’t racial prejudice (say) a form of synesthesia (I hope you understand I’m getting very high level here, and not saying synesthetes are bigots or anything of the sort).
We considered this also in male batterers of females. The point is that the sensory stimulus is viewing another person, and the result is an autonomic response of some kind of emotion — regardless of rationale.
I wouldnt say Autism is a difference. I have AS and i see shapes and colours when i hear sounds, especialy music. I’ve had many an experience with taking MDMA and my Autism goes away when i am on it. So i wouldnt say its a difference, the wiring is all there, its just not working.
Again with this synesthesia/autism…TED had this last month. I have been his way all of my life, numbers & letters as colors, days of the week as colors. Streets with smells & location confusion. People I instantly like or dislike because their penumbra/aura/color (NOT skin) is too sharp or shrill or smells is wrong. Joni Mitchell & Laura Nyro are impossible to listen to because the color & sound & smell is wrong. Confusion or fantasized memory. No disco balls (stayed home then) or box fans or light diffused overhead. No swings or merry-go-rounds. No sharing this either, no one would understand. Mitchell Parish’s lyrics are exquisite in sound/color, indigo blue, nocturne, deep purple, stardust, night, cobalt blue northwest coast twilight. Periwinkle Brazil. Shall I get my genome settled? Do a fMRI? And, yes, as wistful as it may seem, pink is not always a female, young or otherwise.
Mena
Mena – interesting! Thank you for the explanation. The sensory overload does sound close to what is described in some ASD individuals, but yours is selective sensory overload, that is, the sensory perception is unpleasant sometimes, but not always. I was wondering if autistic spectrum conditions involving sensory overload was a form of channelopathy, that is, the channels that permit neural crosstalk are open too much of the time. But that would be more of a global issue, I would think, and you are describing selective sensory perception.
By selective do you mean it’s just me? Each one of us has different colors/sounds/smells?
F –
If synesthesia relates to brain connectivity (that is, nerve cells connected to other nerve cells, to oversimplify), then wouldn’t each individual have their own selective connections?
Steve, if your Autism goes away because of a certain drug, then it isn’t true Autism, but something with similar signs. Either that or you’re a shill for curebies.