But what is synaesthesia? Nature defines it in the following way:

An unusual ‘mixing of the senses’ in which a stimulus in one sensory modality (for example, a sound) elicits a percept in another modality (such as visual perception of a colour).

All In The Mind explained that this definition can be widened to include something both I and my mother experience: conceiving of time as being physically and spatially located. It’s difficult to explain this in words, and my perspective and view on time changes depending on the period I’m ‘looking at’. To give you some idea, however, here’s something like what I ‘see’ when I think of the period of human history:

The above is a very quick and rough sketch – what I actually see is a lot ‘thicker’ and 3D. As you can imagine, this has its benefits and is probably one reason why I’m a History teacher! :-p

I didn’t think anything more about this until I listened to one of the series of TED Talks entitled A Journey to the Center of the Mind by Vilayanur Ramachandaran. Towards the end of his (fascinating) talk, he mentioned that ‘creative’ people (artists, poets, etc.) are eight times more likely to experience synaesthesia than ‘normal’ people. He explained the condition as probably being due to a malfunction in the gene that ‘trims’ ‘the connections that exist initially between all parts of the brain.

So I wondered… perhaps there’s a link between synaesthesia and migraines? After all, I experience ‘aura’ when I have a migraine – something like a less extreme version of the picture below, usually starting with patches of coloured light:

Sure enough, when I looked it up I found several references, including this one. Now I’m no painter or poet, but I am fairly good at metaphors and making links between (often fairly diverse) subjects.

I’m firmly of the belief that, especially when it comes to the brain, things cannot be studied or considered in isolation. Although I want to do further research, I’m fascinated at the possible link between synaesthesia, migraines and creativity (in the form of associationism). Perhaps, like autistic people who are fantastic mathematicians or artists, migraines have their associated upsides…

Do you experience synaesthesia? Perhaps you see numbers or days of the week as being certain colours or, like me, conceive of time in a sensory way. Do you also get migraines? I’d love it if you could share your experiences!

(Image credit: My Brain on MRI by CaptPiper @ Flickr)

Alec Couros tagged me, so I’d better respond. I’m doing it here rather than on my teaching blog because I feel this is a more appropriate home.

1. Post these rules before you give your facts
2. List 8 random facts about yourself
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

Here goes (without, of course, me mentioning anything about how impossible it is for human beings to do anything truly random…)

1. My first pet was a fish called Banjo that spent more time swimming backwards than forwards.
2. I was brought up in Ashington, at one time the largest mining village in the world.
3. I bite my fingernails.
4. My political views swing wildly from fairly right-wing to quasi-communism.
5. I know every line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
6. I get really bad migraines from the colour annatto (and related orangey food colours), which can be found in Coca-Cola, coloured cheeses, etc.
7. As an undergraduate student I worked in HMV and developed quite an eclectic taste in music.
8. To my shame, my wife Hannah beats me at almost every game under the sun. Except cards.

Like Alec, I’m not going to bother commenting on the following people’s blogs to let them know they’ve been ‘tagged’. Instead I’ll leave it to the power of WordPress and Technorati! I’ll just go with those in my ‘edublogs – must reads’ folder in Google Reader:

• Chris Sessums
• Doug Noon
• Karyn Romeis has already posted hers
• Wes Fryer has already posted his
• George Siemens
• Clarence Fisher
• Karl Fisch
• Jeff Utecht
• Will Richardson