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[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Yeah I think that's common for people with Synesthesia to feel that way. It's like being an x-men character :) Not everyone likes your oddities, but you have super powers other people don't have :)

I actually have a theory that language itself is based on synesthesia, a crossover between spoken (or written) labels, and the meaning of the idea itself. Animals seem to have trouble with this past a few hundred words, but the unique folds and layout of the human brain give it the ability to store tens of thousands of words. This is like a form of synesthesia that animals do not possess. So even though others might see it as odd, I think you yourself should regard it as a unique superpower you have :) My 2 cents

[–][deleted]  (6 children)

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    [–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

    That's a beautiful thought, thank you for taking the time to write that out. I agree with what you're saying, and see what you mean.

    I suppose the one thing about human language is how specific it can be. You can never communicate the concept of a red sweater to a cow, unless there is one physically present. This "de-localization" of ideas is the main thing that sets human language apart, it seems. And if you look at a human brain, it has many more folds than a typical mammal brain. The intersection of folds on parts of the brain that are far in data/connectivity space, but close in physical proximity, results in neurons that fire together in patterns that don't necessarily go together. I think this is a useful tool that is the basis for language. But some people have extra physical overlap between brain sectors, and that results in synesthesia. Because if you look at a picture of a cat brain, it doesn't have the folds in the same way that overlap, so it can never truly make the mapping between a spoken phrase like "red sweater" and the actual red sweater. In that sense I think the cortex crossover is a bit of a superpower, and I think every human has it to some extent, and that's where the ability for language comes from. Specifically where the green part (temporal lobe, where language is stored) touches the pink part (frontal lobe) on this diagram, because those two lobes are mostly separate in function and operation but they do touch and overlap somewhat, and no other animal has that lobe-overlapping brain design feature: http://slideplayer.com/slide/4280537/14/images/1/Parietal+Lobe.jpg

    Just a theory I have about synesthesia and language that I've been thinking about for a long time. I think this is the physical basis for it.

    [–][deleted]  (4 children)

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      [–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

      I agree with everything you said! I have a cat that clearly knows quite a few words as well. But they can never know thousands of words like humans can, unfortunately due to their limited brains. My cat tries to talk too, but her annunciation is terrible because of her cat mouth lol.

      I agree with what you say about "taste" in music probably being caused by this same overlap mechanism.

      Here's a cat brain picture btw: https://www.catster.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/600px-Catbrain.jpg

      You'll notice it doesn't have all the cortex space, so there's no lobes that can overlap in the same way like a human brain. Same goes for almost every other animal. We're lucky to have brains like this, or else we would only be able to know like 1000 words, like a gorilla. Instead we can know tens of thousands, so people can write very detailed descriptions of things that are useful long after the person who wrote them dies. Other animals can't do anything like this. I would love it if cats or dogs developed a reading/writing system, that'd be amazing.

      [–][deleted]  (2 children)

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        [–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

        any other non-human animal knows thousands of things to communicate with that the humans aren't even aware of most of the tim

        Ehhh I would argue that's not really true. They know the things, but they cant communicate them, that's the whole point.

        I do believe that different languages are a fact on this planet,

        I could agree with that though.