[StriperSniper]

an artifact of drug use (LSD and mescaline can produce similar effects)

Damn! How come I never found the good stuff that did that?!?!;-)

[Herodotus]

ooooh, thanks for posting this. I don't read Scientific America, but I do have this condition!

[buffyt]

I read the whole thing twice and agree with

Although we initially thought in terms of physical cross wiring, we have come to realize that the same effect could occur if the wiring--the number of connections between regions--was fine but the balance of chemicals traveling between regions was skewed. So we now speak in terms of cross activation. For instance, neighboring brain regions often inhibit one another's activity, which serves to minimize cross talk. A chemical imbalance of some kind that reduces such inhibition--for example, by blocking the action of an inhibitory neurotransmitter or failing to produce an inhibitor--would also cause activity in one area to elicit activity in a neighbor. Such cross activation could, in theory, also occur between widely separated areas, which would account for some of the less common forms of synesthesia.

I didn't know there was a name for it, synesthesia, and I have NEVER met anyone else who had it besides me. I agree also that there are no colors for Roman Numerals. Also no colors for letters. Just numbers, and mainly I see colors for numbers 1 - 9. This is FUN. Thanks for posting it. Now I have a name for my strange condition! LOL