Like a percent or so of people, I have a form of synesthesia, a blending of senses. It’s called ticker-taping. I can see printed words scrolling somewhere in my head as I hear them. I can turn it on or off (it can be annoying), with it sometimes coming on automatically as when I’m learning a new language.
There are some more interesting cases of synesthesia, including that of the late Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman (a hero of mine). He saw mathematical symbols in different colors. It must have been like using Notepad++ while writing a program in Python.
On the other side of sensory function is face blindness, called prosopagnosia. It’s the inability to distinguish faces. Famous chimp researcher Jane Goodall has it; so does actor Brad Pitt and so did the late neurologist Oliver Sacks. This obviously challenging condition may be genetic, or from a developmental change, or an injury, variously for different people. The expression of face blindness varies, too. Dacia Reed has had it for 62 years. She says that she can remember a face but not to whom it belongs. There are treatments, some pharmaceutical, some as behavioral training. Permanent cures are elusive. Think of these people the next time you’re in a conversation and thinking to yourself, “This person knows me. Who is she? Embarrassing!”
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org.
Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/face-blindness?loggedin=true&rnd=1720036453882
