Steffie Tomson tells us about someone who thinks the word "Eric" tastes like ear wax.

I Have It Too

Steffie Tomson spells "synesthesia" in color… her colors.

30 Second Science with Steffie Tomson

We give Steffie Tomson 30 seconds to describe her science and she makes a square apple.

10 Questions for Steffie Tomson

We ask Steffie Tomson 10 questions and she disses Ernie from "Sesame Street."

It isn't just about the colors

As Steffie Tomson says in her videos, synesthesia is a harmless (and, in fact, often helpful) condition.

So why do researchers bother to study it?

Well, it’s a way to learn more about the brain. A lot more.

More synapses than there are stars in the universe.

And while Steffie is deep into studying synesthesia now, her research interests actually extend further and deeper into how our brains work:

“Even if we come up with the answer for synesthesia, we’re going to have a lot more questions to answer, because we’re going to learn more about how those particular areas [of the brain] interact. And I think one of the things that’s really exciting for me is to move away from caring about how one area does one thing and another area does another thing... and instead to care about how all these areas work together as a network in the brain. I think that’s a much more realistic model for how we really perceive our world.

“I’m really interested in the question of how a child learns. So how do these network connections, these neurons, wire themselves up in a child? And how do they de-wire? Why are some children more talented at learning one way than another? What is it about a child that makes them a visual learner, as opposed to a child who is an auditory learner? What is it about the pathways that makes it necessary to get information in that modality versus another modality? Is it a factor of that particular network caring about visual input as opposed to auditory input? Or is there another area of the brain that’s overseeing all of those areas together... and it’s just listening more to one than another? There are a lot of different ways that this can be looked at. But I think that’s really an interesting question.”

A blue “D” and some yellow bananas

By Steffie Tomson

Ya’ll have posted some really great questions!

I’d like to address one in particular that has come up several times, and that is the issue of whether or not my synesthetic colors “override” the colors I see in the real world. Specifically, if you show me a red “D,” do I actually see a blue “D”? I want to stress the important fact that synesthesia is an automatic association between a stimulus (like a letter or number) and an attribute (like a color).

There’s no “d” in banana... blue or otherwise!

If I come up to you and say the word “banana,” an image of a banana most likely pops into your head for a fraction of a second. It happens automatically, often before you can recognize it is there. If I show you a black and white line-drawing of a banana, you don’t see yellow, but you inherently know that the banana should be (and is) yellow. It’s the same type of experience for a synesthete when you say the letter “D.” For an instant, a blue “D” pops into my head in its proper location in my colored alphabet. A second later, the image is gone and I’m moving on to whatever comes to my attention next. If I see a “D” on a page, I don’t see blue, but I inherently know that letter should be blue if I had it my way. The blue is a property of “D” just like yellow is a property of bananas.

It’s critical to point out, however, that your banana and my “D”’ never obscure what we see in the world. They are fleeting associations. One difference between your banana and my “D,” however, is that your banana image might change (for example, from a banana to a banana split) depending on your most recent banana experience, and my “D” is always blue.

While I’m at it, it serves to mention that every synesthete has a different set of color associations for their alphabet. So although my “D” is blue, for another synesthete, it is turquoise, for another, it might be highlighter yellow, and yet another might be royal purple. We often disagree (as you see throughout the comments on my posts) on the “right” color for a letter/number/weekday/month, but the truth is that we each have a color palette that is right for us!

A more colorful world

Synesthesia is a truly fascinating condition. All of the synesthetes that I’ve worked with assume that everyone sees the world as they do, and they can’t understand how it could be any other way! This brings up an interesting question about a person’s internal representation of their world. How do you know what I see? And how do I know what you see?

We accept the world that is presented to us, and it is often difficult to imagine it “any other way.” Sometimes synesthetic children get teased because their colored letters sounds too fantastical to be real. But as a grown-up, it makes everyone jealous! In the end, synesthetes learn to use their colorful associations to help remember phone numbers and names, among other things, and that gives us a leg up!

That’s right... these are Steffie’s colors for “synesthesia.”

Not only do synesthetes have a more colorful world, but they also most likely have something in their genes that makes them synesthetic. We have known for years that synesthesia runs in families, but the genetic mechanism is unknown. Although many synesthetes have synesthetic siblings or parents, just as many synesthetes are the only affected person in their family, leaving the inheritance patterns unclear. In addition to our functional MRI (“Sesame Street”) research, we are also searching for the gene(s) responsible for synesthesia. We focus on one of the most common types called colored-sequence synesthesia, or CSS. So far, we’ve found a region on Chromosome 16 that might be involved, but it will be awhile before we have a definite answer. In the meantime, we’re always looking for more families! If you have synesthetes in your family, feel free to tell me about it in the comments. We’re also always looking for synesthetes in the Houston area to participate in our fMRI studies. If you are interested, let me know.

What color is your Friday?

I’m not a scientist. And I don’t even play one on TV (or the web, for that matter). So I’d never heard of synesthesia when we started doing research on Steffie Tomson.

If you’ve watched Steffie’s videos, you know that synesthesia is a “blending of the senses”—a perceptual condition where the senses cross wires a bit in our brains. So the letters of the alphabet may be associated with particular colors, sounds may be associated with particular tastes or smells, and so on.

Every day is colorful when you’re in a tree!

These connections are very specific, permanent, and unique for each synesthete—for instance, “T” may be bright green for one synesthete, carnation pink for another, and midnight blue for yet another one. The particular color is a component of the letter for the synesthete. Non-synesthetes experience “T” as a vertical line with a horizontal line on top. But a synesthete experiences “T” as a vertical line with a horizontal line on top... and it’s ALWAYS a particular color—bright green, carnation pink, midnight blue. About 1% of folks are synesthetes, and you can find out if you’re one here . Now even though synesthesia is perfectly harmless (and, in fact, most synesthetes think it’s helpful), scientists like Steffie study synesthesia because it helps them better understand other conditions that are not harmless, e.g., autism, schizophrenia, and ADHD.

And by the way, Steffie doesn’t just study synesthesia. She plays one in real life.
During our first telephone conversation, I asked Steffie what the coolest thing about being a synesthete was. And she was caught a bit off-guard: “No one’s ever asked me that...” But she sure enough did have an answer to my question. It turns out that in her version of synesthesia, Steffie also associates the days of the week with very specific colors. Steffie associates Friday with the color blue and this blue actually goes from dark blue to light blue over the course of the day. That’s part of how Steffie experiences Friday. It’s exciting for her, she said, because as the blue gets lighter, she knows that she’s moving toward the weekend:

“Imagine a blue bar going from the floor to the ceiling—it’s a gradient, and it gets lighter as it gets closer to the top. That’s part of Friday for me. And I can’t imagine how other people say ‘tomorrow’s Saturday’ and that does the trick for them. For me, the oncoming weekend is always about going from dark blue to light blue.”

Now don’t get me wrong. Steffie is very tolerant of “normals” like me.

But I admit that I am jealous of her. I want a color for my Friday, too!

An instructional film on synesthesia!

I thought I was an organized person until I met Steffie Tomson. Not only is her physical world covered in to-do lists (literally on her cup, the walls, and tabletops of her office), but her mind is the world’s best organizer. Just take a look at the instructional video in the player above and see for yourself!

Every number, day of the week, week of the month, and month of the year has its own color and location. The concepts that we know of as date and time are tangible things that have personality and shape. The rest of us have to buy iPads to experience our metaphysical world as concretely and colorfully as Steffie does. Come to think of it, if Apple could sleekly package Steffie’s brain into an iMind, I’d probably be the first in line to buy it.