"If you ask synesthetes if they'd wish to be rid of it, they almost always say no. For them, it feels like that's what normal experience is like. To have that taken away would make them feel like they were being deprived of one sense."
-- Simon Baron-Cohen, synesthesia researcher at the University of Cambridge

clipped from www.livescience.com Rare but Real: People Who Feel, Taste and Hear Color clipped from www.livescience.com clipped from www.livescience.com Colors in Carey's world have properties that most of us would never dream of: red is solid, powerful and consistent, while yellow is pliable, brilliant and intense. Chocolate is rich purple and makes Carey's breath smell dark blue. Confusion is orange She can also taste them, and hear them, and smell them has synesthesia, a rare neurological condition in which two or more of the senses entwine. Numbers and letters, sensations and emotions, days and months are all associated with colors for Carey According to one idea, irregular sprouting of new neural connections within the brain leads to a breakdown of the boundaries that normally exist between the senses. In this view, synesthesia is the collective chatter of sensory neighbors once confined to isolation Another theory suggests all infants may begin life as synesthetes Connections between different sensory parts of the brain exists that later become pruned or blocked as an organism matures