by Joelle Steele
The hemispheres of the brains of ambidextrous and left-handed people, like me, are almost symmetric, which is the same as it is for people with synesthesia. But among synesthetes, ambidexterity is higher than in the general population. I‘m ambidextrous but I didn’t even know what synesthesia was until about 1998 when I saw it being described on a TV show. The person who was talking about it saw colors associated with words. So, out of curiosity, I studied up on synesthesia to find out more about it.
I had always thought that everyone’s brain worked like mine did, that they had these cross-sensory perceptions. But my form of synesthesia, like my brother’s, was not about colors associated with words. Instead, what I learned we have is called spacial sequence synesthesia. We have calendars in our heads, although from our descriptions, they seem to look decidedly different. I can’t really describe my brother’s since I don’t exactly live inside his head, but he says his takes the form of a ribbon.
My in-head calendar is a lot different than my brother’s. First of all, I have two different kinds of calendars, one for each year and another that shows decades and centuries. I can open up a decade and look at individual years in the form of a fly-out drop-down type of menu like you would find on a computer. (I wonder if the person who invented drop-down menus had this form of synesthesia?) Many of those years have specific events listed on them that I apparently felt were worthy of remembering. I made some computerized drawings of what they look like and how they work.
A synesthete can generally reference their spatial visualization to remember things, as I do with my in-head calendars that highlight historic events. And I do have an extremely good memory. But I have always attributed my good memory to the fact that I practice astrology and genealogy, and both require a lot of documentation of one’s life events. Also, from early childhood up until about 2016, I kept extensive journals about my life which I entered into the computer (with some major editing and deletions). I then made it into a book, a memoir of my life.
Synesthesia is an interesting aspect of what’s happening in my brain, but it doesn’t really serve much purpose outside of my being able to remember a lot of things from my life.
