T

he world presents itself to us scant-haired apes through our senses. Our attention alights on the warm, flaking brown tactility of a sunlit bench or the gut-tugging stench of rainwet, festered trash, and these details stand out from the remaining mess of things unattended to. Later, a string of sensations can be woven together to give memory the sensible fabric of an afternoon, a first meeting, a childhood. For most people, these sensations are of a distinct qualitative sort: touch, smell, taste, etc. But a very few, synesthetes, perceive one channel of sense as entangled with another. And, if The Atlantic is to be believed, everyone may be able to develop some form of this doubled sense perception.

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