An awesome disease?

Hello internet. Today I will be talking about a disease that is more like a superpower; a disease that I actually want to have. Hmm. Never thought I'd want a disease. But this here is an exceptional exception. This disease is known as Synesthesia.

This is a mental disorder (not in my book, more like a mental enhancer). Now, synesthesia is kind of hard to explain without taking up a whole lot of space, so I'm going to explain it in a bit simpler terms.

Imagine if the brain is a computer. Imagine if the senses are just cables plugged into ports. In a healthy individual, the cables are plugged into the right ports. (e.g. hearing into ears, seeing into eyes, etc.). However, in an individual that has synesthesia, the cables are plugged into the wrong ports, or vice versa. That means that they might "smell songs" or "hear sights". Or they can experience two or more simultaneously. Like my favorite symptom, "seeing and hearing music". However, they can't actually control the symptoms. Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.

Although synesthesia is considered to be a "neurological condition/disorder", this condition isn't actually even in the DMV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder) nor the
ICD (International Statistical Classification of Diseases) because this condition usually does not interfere with the brain's normal daily functioning. In fact, people with synesthesia recall past memories far more vividly than a person without synesthesia.

Here are some of the symptoms of it.

• Grapheme-color symptom.

In this form of synesthesia, individual letters and numbers are shaded or tinted differently from its original color. For example, the letter "A" which is black might appear red to a synesthesia sufferer.

• Sound-color symptom.

This form is one of the most brilliant one. In this form, a certain sound can produce a wide range of colors, from just little polka dots to bright and luminous fireworks.

• Linguistic personification.

This form is quite unusual. It gives the person the ability to "identify the 'personalities' of letters and numbers." For example, a real person with this form said "T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous creatures. 4 is honest, but 3, I cannot trust. 9 is a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his suavity." So yeah.

• Lexical-gustatory symptom.

This is a rare and unique form. In this form, the pronunciation of certain words makes the sufferer perceive a certain taste. I once met a guy the has this form, and whenever I say "starch", he gets a taste of potatoes in his mouth. Kind of makes sense, if you think about it.

• Auditory-tactile symptom.

This is actually the rarest form (as of February 2013) of synesthesia. In this form, sufferers, after hearing a certain tone, will cause numbness/tingling in a limb.

• Mirror touch symptom.

This form is the second rarest form of synesthesia (as of February 2013, again) and one of the weirdest. When sufferers see other people getting touched, the sufferer will also perceive that touch in the same region, with the same force. The downside is when the sufferer sees people receive pain, they are likely to receive pain too.

Well, that's that. See you all later!

Interesting fact of the day: "Four" is the only number that has the same amount of letters in its value.
[That means that the word "four" has four letters, and no other number is. "One" has three letters. "Two" has three letters. "Five" has four letters. However, "four" has four letters.]