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Have you ever looked at the number four and decided that it must, logically, be a red number? Or heard a person's name and instantly associated them with the color blue before even meeting them?
If so, you might have synesthesia, a condition in which
the brain color-codes random stimuli in an arbitrary but consistent fashion. People with synesthesia will often tie various senses together, creating colorful images in their heads spontaneously based solely on otherwise intangible concepts ranging from musical notes to emotions.
As far as mental abnormalities go, synesthesia is pretty cool. There aren't any real downsides (beyond the social stigma of course), and you always have something to talk about at parties.
(If you're unsure whether you have synesthesia,
it's possible to take an online test, but this can be easily defeated if you have a decent memory for your choices as all the test does is check whether you'll give the same answer multiple times.)
Because synesthesia is so difficult to pin down, scientists have a hard time figuring out exactly what causes it. The condition seems to appear a lot within the same family, which has led to genetic research that has attempted to explain what's going on in a person's brain.
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