Synaesthesia

On the last season of Heroes, Emma was a young deaf woman who sees shapes and colors when she encounters sounds. It's the sensation of the vibration that triggers the colors for her; and yes, it is possible for a deaf person to experience this. Of course for the series her ability is enhanced, but the basic ability is not something out of fiction: I have had a friend who saw cathedral spires when he heard music; I feel everything I see on my skin, and sometimes taste what I see as well!

The simultaneous reaction to a single stimulus with two or more senses is called synaesthesia. It is now usually spelled without the first "a," but I will continue to use the scientific spelling in this lens.

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I was performing at the Georgia Renaissance Festival when I saw a woman having difficulty with her child, the moment a trumpet started playing. The child covered his eyes and started pulling away from something he saw that disturbed him. I watched for a few minutes, and with each new sound in the area, the child turned and wanted to pull away, but the body language didn't tell me he was reacting to hearing the sound - he was seeing something.

The mother, in the middle of dealing with the frenzy, said, "he just does that. It doesn't mean anything." Then I told her I thought it might be more. I knew that autistic children lack certain "walls" between activities going on inside the brain. As a synaesthesic, I lack such walls between my vision and my touch. What if sounds made him see things that scared him?

She had never thought of that. We watched for a few moments, and suddenly, with that in mind, his actions made sense for the first time.

I hope she followed up on that idea with his doctors, and I hope it helped...