Mike Holden Profile

First Name: Mike Holden
Age: 76
Area you live or were born: English Midlands
Synaesthesia type:  Grapheme-color synaesthesia
Paragraph detailing your experience of having synaesthesia:

I have synaesthesia. No, it isn't a disease. It involves an association of one of the senses with another. Synaesthesia comes in many forms. In my case, when I think of a number, a letter or a word I imagine it coloured. But when I see a number or letter written down I see it as it is - not in my colours. Upper case letters have the same colour as their lower case versions, even though the shape may be quite different.

While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g. A is likely to be red).

My first memory of this sensation was at school when I was about six years old. When I thought of the spelling of the word cat, in my mind's eye I saw the letter 'c' coloured yellow, the letter 'a' coloured red and the letter 't' coloured cream. In the same way the letters of dog were coloured brown, black, brown.


Days of the week and months each have their own colour, usually a combination of the colours of the first few letters of the word. I find it useful remembering phone numbers. These are a combination of the number colours. Complicated you may think but I only have to associate a number colour mix with a name colour mix to aid my memory.



I won't bore you here with the colours I associate with individual letters or numbers. If you're interested you can find them at the end of the article.



The trigger for my synaesthesia



When I was three or four I had a little pull-along truck filled with cube shaped wooden blocks. Each block had a number on one face, a letter on another, a picture on a third and so on. I couldn't read or count at the time but I have always thought that the colours of my synaesthesia numbers and letters came from the coloured numbers and letters on those blocks.