Have you ever been able to taste words or smell sounds ? Do you always see words in their own specific colouration ? Well , if the answer ’s yes , you might havesynaesthesia . If you have no idea what I ’m talking about , you likely do n’t have synaesthesia , but you could perhaps be mesmerise to receive something vaguely like it , according to Modern research .

Synaesthesia is a alone condition in which the foreplay of one sensory or cognitive pathway , like the ones for visual modality or olfactory modality , leads to an involuntary experience in another footpath . So , reading a word might activate the pathway that leads to taste , giving some hoi polloi the power to taste words .

It has certainly baffled scientists for some time , but they have wangle to come to   a few last . Synesthesia seems to have a genetic constituent to it , and it appears that being a woman and left - handed increases your chance of having it . estimation suggestthat anywhere between one in every 200 and one in every 20,000 people have the condition . It ’s also thought to be due to some kind of “ cross - wiring ” in the brain that happen during development .

But what if non - synesthetes could be made to experience the alone “ great power ” that synesthetic masses have   every day ? Now , scientist from the University of Skövde in Sweden and Finland ’s University of Turku have tried to do   just that , by using the power of hypnosis . Their findings , which are based only on eight   subject ( half of whom acted as mastery ) , are published in the journalScientific Reports .

First things first , only about 10 percent of   multitude are highly susceptible to hypnosis . So the researchers had to carefully select their participant . They put 61 volunteers through a spellbinding susceptibility test and found eight potential . These hoi polloi were then subject to the Stroop task , which demand naming the colors of frame in a grid . From this , four of the Volunteer were found to be hypnotically suggestible , while the other four represent as controls .

The participant were then actuate into hypnosis by the idiom “ soon I will count to three … ” that had been implant earlier on . They were then mesmerise to see all shapes as one color , even if this take issue from its   literal coloring material . The researcher record their responses , as well as   cover their eye movements with peculiar computer software .

The results showed that of the four people susceptible to hypnosis , three appeared to have attain a strong tie between symbol and colouring material , suggesting that they had developed a synaesthesia - like sentience .

“ However , the nature of this association varied widely,”notedSakari Kallio from the University of Turku . “ Two participant reported that they visually experienced the symbols as having the indicate semblance : in one case with full self - sentience of doing so and in another fount not . "

The third person was n’t aware of the prompting and did n’t experience any color change , but still had difficulty naming the existent colors of the symbols . Meanwhile , the controls go wrong to regurgitate the synaesthetic experience .

Interesting as these result are , the squad highlights that further written report are needed to specify whether synaesthesia really can be brought on by hypnosis . After all , a sampling sizing of four is far too tiny to go on .   It ’s also difficult to link the experiences from hypnotic proposition to synaesthesia itself .

Nevertheless , the findings in compounding with other field of study may help   in terms of find out more about sensing and sensation . " Perhaps most importantly , the resolution show both definite similarity and clear differences to naturally occurring synesthesia , ” said Kallio .