synesthesia

This is a word I just learned a few days ago, and it refers to a condition in which a sensation is produced in one sense through the stimulus of another. Some with this condition report that letters and numbers have distinct colors, some that certain musical notes induce perception of certain colors, etc. Many have a mental map of numbers that appears in their mind whenever they think about numbers, which the excellent wikipedia article on the subject distinguishes from the standard mental number line. The reason I chose to do this word today is that personification of linguistic entities (letters, words, etc.) is one form of the condition, and I happened to personify the letter "a" in my post on the word "wroth." (Coincidentally, of course. I'm certainly not a synesthete.) According to the article, approximately 1 in 23 have some form of synesthesia and these associations can occur between any two senses or modalities. It makes you wonder what kind of associations, images, and even tastes are produced in those beside us each day by stimuli that inspire in most of us a much blander flavor.