by Julia Simner of University of Edinburgh
It is hard to imagine that reality could be anything other than what we see around us. The sights, sounds, tastes and smells we experience every day feel fixed and permanent, as if anybody else standing in our shoes would see the same colours, hear the same sounds, taste the same flavours, and so on. Our sensations feel unambiguous: red is red, onions taste of onion, and the sound of a piano is, well, just that. But as a neuropsychologist, I know that our perception of the world is filtered through the individuality of our brain. And because some brains differ in subtle ways, some people experience the world as a radically different place. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the experiences of people with synaesthesia.
