Is it just my imagination or do I have synesthesia?

Synesthesia is the neurological condition where a person experiences one stimulus (a letter, a sound, a concept) which automatically and involuntarily elicits a different and unrelated response (a color, a touch, a shape). The possibilities are endless, from perceiving letters as having color to music as having shape to months of the year having personalities. Below is a detail-less table of general syn-types a person might have. For a more detailed list of possible types of synesthetic triggers and responses, follow this link to the Mixed Signals website. Some of my syn-types are:

• Graphemes (letters and numbers) -> color
• Sounds -> color, shape
• Pain -> color, shape
• For a complete list and more on my own synesthesia, see my other two Hubs: here and here

If any of these sound familiar, you just might have synesthesia. What's more, you might have more than one type!

Side-note: Please know that you can have only a few responses out of hundreds and still have a type of synesthesia. For example, in my synesthetic alphabet, every letter has a color, thus I have grapheme-syn. However, I only sometimes notice my sound-syn, so I only know that a few sounds have colors. Even then I can't tell what they are or how often I perceive them. I do know that every time I hear Stellar Kart's song "Eyes", I see the same basic shapes and colors. This means that, despite my few random, weak responses, I have sound-syn. Moral of the story: don't get discouraged if only a handful of letters have color or tastes have shapes. You could still have synesthesia.

So, whether you are just discovering your first syn-type or you are unsure about your fifth, here are some questions to ask yourself to see if your responses could be synethetic.  And just for fun, at the end of this Hub is a short quiz I made based off the following questions.

• Is your synesthetic response involuntary? By that, I mean do you perceive that same response automatically, without having to think about it, every time you are exposed to that certain stimulus? This is a must. For example, every time I see the letter E, I automatically and involuntarily perceive it as yellow. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to run through a list of colors that it could be. The color automatically comes to me when I see the letter. E is yellow.
• Is your synesthetic response consistent? Do you perceive the same response every time you are exposed to a certain stimulus? This is also a must. Going back to my letter E, I always perceive it as yellow. I always have, and I always will. Note: over time, especially when you are just discovering a type of synesthesia that you may have, a few colors may shift or become more specific. My letter I changed from ice blue to grey by the time I pinned it down. My letter V became more specific: it went from grey to dark green at the bottom fading into grey at the top. Overall, though, my responses have been the same.
• Are your responses influenced by outside sources? On the Nexus we call this "SUI" or "syn-under-influence". Synesthetic responses, for the most part, do not correlate in any way to their stimuli. The smell of apples will not look red, the taste of chocolate will not be brown, and the letter O will not be orange. Of course, one or two responses may happen to correlate in these types of ways, but if all or a great majority of your responses can match up with outside influences, chances are they aren't true synesthetic responses. They could be associations you've picked up through school or toy blocks. Let me be a little more specific. If all the colors of your alphabet match with the colors on the toy blocks you had as a child, chances are you're simply remembering the colors on the blocks and associating them with the letters on the page in front of you. This is NOT synesthesia. A synesthetic response is most often unrelated. A person smelling apples might see a purple blob; a person tasting chocolate might see little green triangles; and someone looking at the letter O might see it as black. These are synesthetic responses.

"Alright, 'Lisha," I hear you call out. "I've answered the questions, but I'm still unsure. What if I'm just wanting to have synesthesia so badly that I'm imagining it all?" Rest assured, dear reader, there are ways of telling whether you are a synesthete. What are they? Well, I'm glad you asked. The good news is you have options, and, for your convenience, I've listed and explained these in a nifty little numbered list.

1. The first thing I would recommend doing is registering on Synesthete.org and taking the Synesthesia Battery test. This test lets you select the types of synesthesia you think you have, then provides a battery of tests and questions for you to answer. At the end of the tests, you will receive your results. A score below 1.0 is ranked as synesthetic. For more information and a preview/demo, visit Synesthete.org. Be warned! This test is long and, honestly, becomes very repetitive very quickly. Luckily, you can stop and save your place whenever you want to, then login and come back to continue where you left off. In my opinion, too, that is more helpful than taking the test all at once. If your responses are consistent over a span of a month or so, then chances are good that you weren't just lucky at remembering the first color you chose and selecting it again and again.
2. Another way of self-testing is to make a list or a drawing, depending on the response and how best you can record it. There are three simple steps here. We'll use the alphabet as an example. (1) Get a friend to write or draw what you dictate or write/draw it yourself. Look at a list of the letters or have your friend call them out. Look at A. Write whatever response you perceive it as having (color, personality, and so on). Repeat for B, C, D, all the way to Z. Don't force yourself to think of a response for everything. Some people only have part of their alphabet colored or only have a few sounds with shapes. If a letter is hard to pin down, don't stress. Write out possible responses then see what you write a month or so later. (2) Put the list away somewhere where you aren't going to look at it for a month or so. If you can, give it to someone else to hold on to. (3) After about a month, repeat step one without looking at the first list or drawing. Once you've finished, and only once you've finished, get the original list or drawing back out. Compare them. If the majority of your colors changed completely (ex. A is red -> A is ice blue), then your responses were probably not synesthetic. If, however, only a few changed and the rest were almost exactly the same, chances are good that you have synesthesia.
3. Don't forget my short, 6-question quiz at the end of this Hub. Note that it's meant to be very informal and should only be used as a very, very, very rough guideline. I strongly encourage you not to base your decision off of my little quiz alone. You are the best judge of your own synesthesia. Take as many tests as you can think of, and trust yourself.  Happy huntings!