Synaesthesia and savant syndrome: are we all superhuman?

Richard Feynman, Vladimir Nabokov, David Hockney. What do these famous figures have in common? They are all synaesthetes. Feynman and Nabokov linked letters and numbers to colours, while Hockney perceives music in terms of colour and shape. Synaesthesia is condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive stream somehow interacts with another sensory or cognitive stream in a way that it normally would not.

While most cases of synaesthesia are developmental and hereditary, it can be acquired later in life as a result of, for example, traumatic brain injury. Far from being disabling or disadvantageous, many people with synaesthesia have reported that these phenomena simply form a part of everyday life or even confer unexpected benefits.


One of the first cases studied at the St Louis Synesthesia Lab was that of Jason Padgett. He was working as a salesperson in a furniture store in 2002 when he was beaten up and suffered injuries to the head. He fell unconscious and his muggers continued to beat him.

"After the attack, Jason was able to see things in terms of mathematics," said Professor Brogaard. "Looking at moving or static objects, he would see complex geometrical shapes and figures with fragmented boundaries. He started drawing some of the things he was seeing and since then he’s won several prizes for his artwork.



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Prime number vectors by Jason Padgett


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