Went for a walk with Henry a couple of days ago, we were just chatting about random stuff, when he mentioned that term 3 is light green.
I figured he was mentally picturing a calendar in the classroom; but I asked a few more questions and it turns out he has synesthesia. Numbers, letters, months of the year, days of the week; they each have a colour that appears in his mind when he thinks of them.
Around 1 in 20 people have it, and I'd heard of it before, so it wasn't too big a surprise. The real surprise was his; as he assumed everyone thought that way.
The most fascinating revelation was that most concepts were lighter shades, as his background consciousness is a very dark grey, almost black; and so they're lighter for contrast. Generally the darker the colour of a concept the less he wants to focus on it.
That is awesome! I didn't know it was so prevalent.
I wonder if because of it, he has more ways to process information. Do people with it have better memories and perform above averagely?
The brain is pretty incredible in the way it is able to not only process things, but discover different strategies to process, without having external direction. When I was in the midst of the stroke and couldn't remember the names of my family, my brain started running games in an attempt to recover the information - things like running through the alphabet to see what letters were familiar and thinking of scenes where names may have been used. My brain was also in a bit of an internal panic though, so it was not very effective, as while it tried, it failed over and over to find an outcome.
I wonder if your son is able to improve it even further through training?
Sounds like a full reset/reboot. Like your brain woke up and had to rediscover the most basic things about itself. I wonder how much of that happened before you (self aware you) woke up. Fascinating.
Really glad you're still with us, and recovering so well.
He said there are a couple of letters in the alphabet that don't yet have a colour, so we're trying to give R a sort of deep mahogany, just by force of will.
15 is a bright crimson, and probably always will be. (Multiples of 5 are different shades of red.)
Funnily enough, he said they usually stay constant, but the number 3 was a dull yellow when he was younger, but at some point he realised it had changed to a dull pink.
Also 3pm has a completely different colour; since the quantity and the time are in completely different categories.
Haha! I had no idea it was even a thing!