Do you see coloured numbers?

Look at this picture. What do you see?

An ordinary person will notice the presence of two black numbers: 2 and 5. After about twenty seconds, someone will also begin to distinguish the triangle formed by the 2s. Some of you, however, have special qualities. They will be able to see the triangle immediately thanks to a vision that allows them to see the two numbers of different colours.

Yes, you read that correctly. There are those who see the 2 and 5 as different colours, although most of you see them as black. These people do not suffer from a neurological disorder, much less are they crazy. I like to say that they are special, because "they experience the ordinary world in an extraordinary way".

They suffer from synesthesia, and it is caused by a simple genetic mutation in the brain. No disease, therefore, and the most common type of synesthesia is the number-colour synesthesia. It is much more widespread than one might believe, so much so that it affects one person in two hundred. Yesterday we did a small test that demonstrated what was just said by making some people discover that they are not the only ones to have this type of experience (someone had never talked about it with others because he thought he was strange).

The test just proposed demonstrates that it is an authentic sensory phenomenon and not the result of fantasies or memories such as the colours of the rulers we used when we were children, because in this case the subject would not be able to see immediately. the geometric figure present in the image (an example of how synaesthetics see it is in the comments). When black and white numbers are shown, the colour area in the fusiform gyrus is activated in synesthetic subjects (an area of the brain that in ordinary people is activated when they look at coloured numbers).

Not all synesthetics see the same number with the same colour. These people, however, when they see, for example, the red 5, they really see it red. They don't see it in their mind's eye or anything like that. “It's not like imagining a pumpkin when you look at a picture of Cinderella or hear Cinderella speak.” It is an involuntary process that leads synesthetes to actually see a coloured number.

In other words, it is a sensory phenomenon caused by the number and not by its concept. This is demonstrated by the fact that this phenomenon does not work with Roman numerals (for example VII).

A peculiarity of synesthesia is its distribution which is seven times more frequent among painters, poets and novelists, in short among the most extravagant and creative types.

There are different forms of synesthesia. Among the most common is the number-colour one (also called grapheme-colour), but subjects to which the days of the week, or even the months also evoke colours. Monday is red, Tuesday is green etc. Then there are also those who see sounds or hear shapes. In short, our brain manifests synesthesia in a myriad of different and extraordinary combinations.

Source: Quora.com