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In synaesthesia, one sensation automatically brings another with it: a letter may always appear in a particular colour, or a sound may bring a taste. About 4 per cent of people have some form of it, and their pairings stay remarkably stable over the years.

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The word comes from the Greek syn, ‘together’, and aisthesis, ‘sensation’. The most studied type is grapheme-colour synaesthesia, in which letters and numbers (graphemes) have colours. Other forms link sounds with colours or words with tastes, or place sequences such as the months of the year at fixed points in space around the body. Researchers check it by testing people again: synaesthetes give the same colour for about 90 per cent of letters, even years later, while other people manage only 30 to 40 per cent after a few weeks, even when warned. It often runs in families. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov described his coloured alphabet in his memoir Speak, Memory, and the composer Olivier Messiaen saw colours when he heard chords and built them into his music.

Türkçe oku
Sinestezide bir duyum, kendiliğinden başka bir duyumu da beraberinde getirir: Bir harf kişiye hep aynı renkte görünebilir, bir ses ağızda bir tat bırakabilir. İnsanların yaklaşık yüzde 4'ünde sinestezinin bir türü görülür ve bu eşleşmeler yıllar geçse de şaşırtıcı biçimde değişmez.

Sinestezi sözcüğü, Yunanca “birlikte” anlamına gelen syn ile “duyum” anlamına gelen aisthesis'ten türemiştir. En çok incelenen türü, harflerin ve rakamların renkli algılandığı grafem-renk sinestezisidir; grafem, yazıdaki harf ya da rakam demektir. Başka türlerde sesler renklerle, sözcükler tatlarla eşleşir ya da ayların sırası gibi diziler kişinin çevresinde belirli noktalara yerleşir. Araştırmacılar bunu kişileri yeniden sınayarak doğrular: Sinestezisi olanlar, aradan yıllar geçse bile harflerin yaklaşık yüzde 90'ı için aynı rengi söyler; öteki insanlar ise yeniden sınanacaklarını bilseler bile birkaç hafta sonra ancak yüzde 30-40'ını tutturabilir. Sinestezi çoğu zaman aynı ailede birden fazla kişide görülür. Romancı Vladimir Nabokov, anı kitabı Konuş, Hafıza'da her harfin onun gözünde hangi renkte olduğunu uzun uzun anlatır; besteci Olivier Messiaen ise akorları duyduğunda renkler görür ve bu renkleri müziğine yansıtırdı.

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