Nobody Medicates for Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a harmless brain quirk, and it's one I happen to have, and apparently its very harmlessness is scientifically useful!

This article from the Los Angeles Times documents how scientists are starting to study synesthetes in order to learn more about neurological disorders like autism and schizophrenia. The theory is that synesthesia is a form of hyper-connectivity in the brain and that so are disorders like autism. Since synesthesia is harmless, synesthetes aren't medicated, and so scientists can study their hyper-connectivity without that extra variable skewing the results. Also, compared to complex neurological disorders, synesthesia tends to be simple (it's just one bit of extra-cross wiring, and it's comparatively easy to tell which bit).

Anyway, I just think that's fascinating! On a societal level, I think it's awesome that there's such a handy way for scientists to study such damaging disorders, and I hope they make all kinds of progress. On a personal level, it's just odd to think that brain managed to have an extra quirk and it didn't end up harming me (as far as I know - I think it made it higher for me to get into the higher maths - I just can't make my brain do abstract where numbers are concerned).

And this, golly, just makes me feel all sorts of sympathy for people with SPD:

The prevailing idea is that people with SPD experience certain stimuli as louder or more intense than normal. But Eagleman's studies of synesthesia have caused him to look at individuals with SPD in a different way.

"I think that what they're experiencing is a form of synesthesia where instead of some sense connecting to their color area, it's connecting to an area involving pain or aversion or nausea," Eagleman says. "If that's true, what we're doing in synesthesia will give us an actual molecular target for helping that."

Isn't that just an awful theory? I mean, experientially awful. I hope, in a way, that he's right and that understanding it better leads to better treatment.

I also think it's interesting, in a not-disinterested sense, that depression is one of the disorders they list as possibly falling into the "hyper-connectivity" area. I wonder what sort of "abnormal communication between brain regions" they think causes it?

Anyway, I have nowhere near enough training to do anything more than speculate after reading this article. (Please take all my commentary only as the speculation of an interested layman!) But I found this article a fascinating read, and wanted to pass it along, and ask all y'all if you have any thoughts on it.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell