Synaesthesia: Is This Really The Sixth Sense We Desire?

The idea of a owning a sixth sense may seem surreal to you, but have you ever wondered that there was always a biological term for it? For a long time, has this extraordinary phenomenon called synaesthesia been known to involve a cross-wiring between senses, but not until now did scientists finally observed the cause of this special trait to be a genetic trait run only in the family.

Despite the rarity for people to understand what synaesthesia is there are actually over 60 types of synaesthesia but only a few of them are actually analyzed through scientific research. Synaesthesia is a neurologically linked stimulation in which the exposition of one or more stimulus to one sensory organ would automatically be linked to a secondary sensory organ. Examples would be to see colours where perceiving different letters or numbers or when numbers begin to form mentally as a map if the person is experiencing any activities correlating to numbers. Although it may sound problematic to experience life with such traits, the synesthetes or the people who are diagnosed with synaesthesia interviewed say that such experience in their life is not as troublesome as many would think. However, it does increase the difficulty to learn and work hard when a synesthetes is sitting inside a noisy classroom. Yet despite the distraction, research shows that synaesthesia could improve memory, meaning if the patient is diagnosed with synaesthesia at an early stage it could be beneficial in terms of academic learning.

To investigate this distracting yet beneficial phenomenon, scientists from the Imperial College London and Oxford University took genetic samples from 196 individuals of 43 families. The result shows that 121 individuals were diagnosed with synaesthesia which enables them to see colours when sound is stimulated into their ears. Furthermore, the scientists performed a genetic analysis and found common sets of base pairs that are repeated throughout their genome. Their parents are then undergo a comparison for markers within their genome and were able to recognize which region of the genome was responsible for that particular trait. Daniel Tammat, a patient undergoing scientific analyzing for synaesthesia research, was found to have a particularly strong link with synaesthesia in a region of his chromosome 2, which is associated with autism. The region also brought about epilepsy, which Tammat has experienced when he was a kid, and thus led to a conclusion that autism, epilepsy and inheritable trait all share a common link in terms of neurological mechanisms. Furthermore, chromosomes 5, 6 and 12 are found to potentially cause synaesthesia as these regions are known to control neuronal activity.

Although the investigation reports that synaesthesia is indeed an inheritable trait, other findings shows that individual who undertook or are currently undertaking psychedelic drugs, after a stroke, during a temporal lobe epilepsy seize are also diagnosed synaesthesia. Even though their parents are not found to have any common markers within their genomes, the external factors in which the patient lives in can also cause synaesthesia to occur in them.

And so the final question is remains the same. Is this the sixth sense that we all desire?

by Jeffrey Leung (s42004213)

References:
1.http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16537-genetic-roots-of-synaesthesia-unearthed.html
2.http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-27-baron_cohen.html