It can also be called hearing motion or visually-induced auditory synesthesia
It can be called kinetics-to-sound if it refers to hearing one’s own body movements
1. Hearing GIFs and animations
When is it not synesthesia?
An informal study carried out via Twitter by a researcher from Glasgow University received thousands of responses from readers and determined that almost 70% of people were able to hear the skipping (and thumping) electricity pylon.
And when can it be considered synesthesia?
However,
there is a small percentage of people who consistently hear all kinds of GIFs,
including abstract forms in movement that cannot be associated with any
real-life sounds at all. It is possible that automatically and consistently
hearing this kind of GIFs is a type of synesthesia. Here’s an example:
2. Hearing the movements of the elements around us
3. Hearing your own body movements
When is it not synesthesia?
Some people
have auditory sensitivity to certain biological processes, such as their
heartbeat or the blood flowing through their veins. Some of them hear their
eyes blink or hear their neck when they turn their head. There are physical
causes for these phenomena that are not related to synesthesia.
And when can it be considered synesthesia?
Here are
some descriptions written by people with these possible types of synesthesia:
“I watch my cat walk across the floor. His legs “schwoot” and his paws “top top” and his tail “hums” from side to side. Example 2: I am in yoga class, we are doing shoulder rolls. My neighbor’s motion sounds like like an industrial machine of some kind... “WoooOOO... woooOOO.” Most sounds are machine-like in fact.”
(Source: This post on the online debate platform Reddit/Synesthesia. 2020.)
"Strobe light, deafening, if they’re going fast enough the noise is going to get loud enough to blind me, it’s like a fuzzy white out when it happens.”
(Source: This comment on the online debate platform Reddit/Synesthesia. 2020.)
"For the longest time I’ve heard sounds to seeing and feeling movement. This is especially true for my own moving body but can be heard mentally watching other people or things move.
For
instance, if I take a step to grab a cup from a cupboard, I hear my leg, body,
arm and fingers as they twist extend and contract. Almost as if I was a robot
with rusty joints. And depending on the movement/speed/and limb it’s a
different pitch that rises and falls. As different parts are moving I hear them
simultaneously. (...)
I’ve always been a bit fascinated with dancers. Not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s because the sound of their movements matches the actual sound and it’s like a strange reverb effect where everything is in sync.”
(Source: This post and comment on the online debate platform Reddit/Synesthesia. 2020.)
“I can hear touch (...).
Well, "hear" in a sense. I can’t actually hear it as if the sound were playing in real life, but the sound plays in the back of my head. I knew about this my entire life, but I really started to think about it recently. For example, every time I touch one of my fingers to my thumb it plays a high or low pitch sound, depending on which finger. Almost like a piano. But it's more noticeable with movement. When I see something move but it makes no noise, my brain fills in the silence with a sound. Everything has its own sound, but it's usually not the sound it'd make if it wasn’t silent.”
(Source: This post on the online debate platform Reddit/Do I Have Synesthesia. 2021.)
Some links:
Here’s an interesting article on the “visually evoked auditory response” (VEAR) and the skipping and thumping electricity pylon phenomenon.
Here’s an ongoing research study on hearing GIFs you can participate in.
Concept-sound synesthesia
Another
type of synesthesia, much less common but possibly related, involves perceiving
sounds, pitches or musical notes in response to concepts that do not necessarily
move but which form part of a group, series or sequence. Some synesthetes report
auditory reactions to different shapes, time units, graphemes, colours, people or even hairstyles!
Go to the page on Concept-sound synesthesia
This page last updated: 08 December 2022
what if it´s vice versa? I can feel sound like movements but visual... this is strange to explain. closing eyes, hear sound and than it s like seeing the sounds in waves and forms, but more like touching or feeling them.... hope it s enough as base info
ReplyDeleteI believe that what you describe would be classified as belonging to auditory-visual synesthesia, as for many synesthetes the "visual" experience is actually somewhere between "seeing" and "feeling", movement and direction can be an important part of the perception, and waves and shapes/lines (without colour) are certainly a possible concurrent. There is a lot of variety in auditory-visual, with different synesthetes having quite different experiences. https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/auditory-visual-synesthesia.html
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