In synesthesia, sights can have sounds, sounds can have tastes and, more commonly, black-and-white numbers and letters can appear colored

Read this MSNBC article on synesthetes. A synesthete is a person with the rare ability to be able to see sound in varying colors or taste music. The article entitled, “Real Rhapsody in Blue” written by Anne Underwood of Newsweek, describes the experiences of Julian Asher. “In Asher’s ever-shifting vision, violins appear as a rich burgundy, pianos a deep royal purple and cellos ‘the mellow gold of liquid honey.'” Different black and white numbers can even have a color. For Asher, five plus two equals the color green. Only recently have scientists proved that these experiences are not the result of an overly active imagination. Shown above on the left part of the picture is a type of test that was used to prove that a synesthete’s ability is real. The average person would be hard pressed to quickly identify all the number twos in the picture, but for a synesthete, the task is easy as the numbers take on different colors. When scientists noted that synesthetes completed the task significantly faster than others, they new that this remarkable conceptual ability did exist. Brain scans are verifying these results.

The interesting thing is that: “A new survey by Grossenbacher found that out of 84 synesthetes, 26 were professional artists, writers or musicians, and 44, serious amateurs.”

Even more intriguing is that a synesthete who has been blind for 10 years says that he sees colors when he hears certain words. And, brain scans confirm that key color-processing areas of the brain are being activated.

Discovery.com has a story entitled “The Truth About Color-Seers,” talks about synesthetes also. They describe an experiment in which a large mess of numbers with the number two forming a picture was shown to synesthetes and non-synesthetes. Synesthetes immediately recognized the picture because it stuck out as a different color.