ASK THE DOCTORS
Dear Doctors: When our grandson first learned his colors, he sang them along with music. We thought he was copying that song for learning the ABCs. But when he got older, he started saying that he 'hears' the colors. We have been told this is called synesthesia. How and why does it happen?
Dear Reader: Synesthesia is a somewhat rare and quite fascinating phenomenon. It's a neurological condition in which sensory input gets cross-wired in the brain. The result is that incoming information that would ordinarily be interpreted by a single sense spills over and stimulates another unrelated sense. While this blending of the senses has been described and referenced throughout the centuries, the emergence of the word 'synesthesia' dates back to the late 1800s.
