aesth-, esth-, aesthe-, esthe-, aesthesio-, esthesio-, aesthesia-, -esthesia, -aesthetic, -esthetic, -aesthetical, -esthetical, -aesthetically, -esthetically +

The sense of balance controlled by the vestibular organ in the internal ear.

Reduced tactile ability to identify the form, size, weight, and texture of objects.

1. A painful sensation giving rise to a subjective one of different character.
2. A condition in which a stimulus produces pain on the affected side but no sensation or even a pleasant one on the normal side of the body.

1. Referring to a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.
2. Relating to a sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.

1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.
2. A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.
3. The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.
4. A condition in which normally separate senses are not separated.

Characteristics of synesthesia

Sight may mingle with sound, taste with touch, etc. The senses are cross-wired; for example, when a digit-color synesthete sees or just thinks of a number, the number appears with a color film over it.

A given number's color never changes; it appears every time with the number. Synesthesia can take many forms. A synesthete may sense the taste of chicken as a pointed object. Other synesthetes hear colors. Still others may have several senses cross-wired.

Estimates of the frequency of synesthesia range from 1 in 250,000 to 1 in 2,000. People with synesthesia are six times more likely to be female than male. Most synesthetes find their unusual sensory abilities enjoyable.

People with synesthesia often report that one or more of their family members also have synesthesia, so it may in at least some cases be an inherited condition.

It may be that synesthesia arises when particular senses fail to become fully independent of one another during normal development. According to this school of thought, all babies are synesthetes.

Synesthesia can be induced by certain hallucinogenic drugs and can also occur in some types of seizure disorders

The words synesthesia is a hybrid of Latin and Greek and comes from Latin syn-, "together" + -esthesia, from the Greek aisthesis, "sensation" or "perception".

One example of synesthesia

Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant. He can calculate huge sums in his head in seconds and instantaneously recognise prime numbers. One of fewer than fifty such people living worldwide, Daniel is unique in his ability to articulate his savant experience.

He describes his visual experience of numbers as complex synaesthetic shapes with colour, texture, and motion. Thirty-seven is lumpy like porridge, while eighty-nine reminds him of falling snow. Sequences of digits form visual landscapes in his mind.

The feeling of sensation in one part of the body when another part is stimulated.

Someone who experiences synesthesia, as by having a secondary sensation of sound as color or of color as sound.

The recognition of intermittency of illumination; flicker perception.

A reduced perception of touch.

1. Perception at a distance; direct sensation or perception of objects or conditions independently of the recognized channels of the senses.
2. Extrasensory perception of distant objects, events, etc.

1. Relating to a supposed perception of phenomena or events considered beyond the range of the normal senses.
2. A reference to a response to, or perception of, distant stimuli by extrasensory means.

1. Sensitivity to heat.
2. The ability to distinguish differences of temperature.
3. Feeling in the body which recognizes heat and cold sensations.

1. The inability to distinguish between heat and cold.
2. Absence or loss of heat-perception; insensibility to heat.

An instrument for measuring sensibility to heat.

Excessive sensitiveness to high temperatures.