Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 27, 2024

Leaf blowers??

Beautiful!

I have OLP synesthesia. It’s not as much fun as chromesthesia synesthesia.

The joke in the last panel lost me.

Most people have a primary sense through which they view the world. Most common is visual, second is auditory, third is tactile you can usually get a sense of which of those is dominant and a given person by how they say they agree with you. common phrases are I see what you mean, I hear you, and I feel you.

people with synesthesia may experience colors when listening to music, see shapes when smelling certain scents, or perceive tastes when looking at words. People who report a lifelong history of such experiences are known as synesthetes.

That joke made me see red!

“What smells purple”?

Cute!

More great Cartoon ART. And i sure like it then the Frazz Comic is outside. Maybe hard to draw, IDK, but they are always so great. So, kudos to Jef once again. Sure makes me wish I was on the North Country Trail.

He will likely never experience the Autumn scent of burning leaves. (safely)

I wonder why I had to look at today’s strip twice to see the word “Swish” written in the first panel…and I swear there is a word above the word “Crunch” that ends in “ckle” but I cannot make out the full word, though maybe it’s “Crackle”?

Almost thought that this was a prelude to “Injun Summer.” Google it if you are not familiar with the old cartoon. My description would do it a disservice.

When you hear a voice in your head because you’re reading text, that IS synaesthesia. I think.

Recent research into brain function shows that synesthesia is a constant condition of our brain function. Drugs can magnify the occurrence and make us more aware of the occurrence but every time one of your senses is active there is parallel activity in the areas of your brain that deal with other senses.

This is a large part of why your subjective view of the world is severely different from the objective reality of the world.

I experienced synesthesia briefly last night when someone set fireworks off outside my home. A brief ‘flash’ of light that looked like fire. How do you explain that to people?

Everyone’s brain is wired a bit differently than everyone else’s. Synesthesia is extremely more common in physicists and mathematicians than in the general population, something that was not realized until neurologists studying it realized they had found a goldmine in BNL. Recently, it was noticed that there is a strong correlation for aphantasia among those who have succeeded in certain other sciences. These variations likely serve functions that ease being able to navigate certain types of mental inquiry. Hyperphantasia might be the origin of court sense in sports and perhaps plays a role in group hunting.

We each of us have unique brains.

Okay, the newborn brain has a LOT of pathways in it and for while those increase, but then are clipped. It is very possible that all infants have synesthesia and hyperphantasia. Too much of that creates a very chaotic mental environment to navigate. Solution: trim. Which are clipped and to what degree may be the determining factors for what is normally consciously present and what may be in the background, sometimes well in the background. For example, people with aphantasia, despite missing the ability to form visual images at will (and even manipulate those as some people can), certainly dream with images, get visual PTSD overlays (which appear to use the same pathways as dreaming) and may even experience a “brain video” of changing images while falling asleep. So, the images are there and likely influencing the thought process but more subtly than for the majority of people who can see images at will while awake. Similarly, when we look at onomatopoeia and descriptive phrases, etc there are hints of possible inaccessible echoes of what may have been much younger synesthesia which now helps inform the brain without being an obvious and readily accessible player.

By the time they fall off the trees, the leaves are mostly brown. Not that brown isn’t a nice color.

Oh, and having an inner voice is common, but might also vary. Some of us navigate with our monologue pretty much constant.

When might another voice intrude in a health brain? Well, we each have an inner critical voice, don’t we? If you ask yourself, “Whose voice is it?” it becomes a pretty safe bet that most of us will know our own personal answer to that from our own life experiences.

There are certainly other situations, like when something reminds you strongly of a certain individual then a sound memory of that voice might happen. It is really cool how much is in the memory but just needs the right pathway found. Learning and yet learning more throughout life helps build multiple pathways and that can possibly be an important defense of function against the ravages of time and illness.

I’m a synesthete. Who else here is?

I thought it was something about Mallet putting his name on the leaf

Lennie Peterson has synesthesia. It sounds… interesting.

Synesthesia can be bad for your health. Steve Howe wanted to kill Jon Anderson when Jon told him to play something orange.