Wenn Farben schmecken...

Seeing things differently by Fiona Godlee, editor, BMJ

fgodlee@bmj.com

Synaesthesia is a harmless condition for which patients almost never seek medical help. So why have we got an article and an editorial about it? Because as well as being fascinating, it turns out to be common—one in a hundred of us is a synaesthete. And if you don’t know what it is, you might mistake it for something serious. As David Eagleman beautifully evokes in his editorial (doi:10.1136/bmj.b4616), synaesthesia is "a fusion of different sensory perceptions: the feeling of sandpaper might evoke an F sharp, a symphony might be experienced in blues and golds, or the concept of February might be experienced above the right shoulder."

Most synaesthetes accept the reality presented to them as entirely normal, as we all do. But Eagleman says that doctors, parents, and educators need to be aware of the condition so they don’t show inappropriate concern when hearing someone give what seems to be an unusual description of the world. The author of our Patient Journey (doi:10.1136/bmj.b3191) sought medical help for depression and had an MRI scan after reporting difficulty recognising words, which she described as visual loss. As a child she had stopped telling people that she saw numbers as colours after a friend called her weird. Luckily her psychiatrist, who writes an accompanying commentary, understood the difference between her symptoms and schizophrenia. "Had I been diagnosed with schizophrenia, my life would have changed greatly," writes the patient.

Cite this as: BMJ 2010;340:c545