Mirror touch synesthesia

Synesthesia is a sort of blending of the senses. For example, people with this condition often perceive letters or numbers as having certain colors. Or they may experience sounds as colors or colors as scents. Some people even experience certain tastes when hearing words: the word basketball might taste like waffles. Quite a few artists, musicians, and writers are synesthetes of various types. These include Vladimir Nabokov, Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, David Hockney, and Itzhak Perlman.

A rare form of synesthesia is called mirror touch. It’s kind of an extreme form of empathy. That is, people with this type of synesthesia can feel what another person feels. For example, one woman with this trait says she witnessed a man punch another man. “I felt it. I felt punched. I passed out.” Another says, “Just walking around every day I feel strangers hurting, and I feel it so thoroughly and completely. Crowds are overwhelming sometimes.” Kind of a tough way to live.

Two mirror touch people that I’ve read about both went into medicine; one a pediatric nurse, another a psychiatrist. Having mirror touch synesthesia when treating people can be helpful, but can also make for a tough day at work. For example, the nurse tells of caring for a child of an opioid-addicted mother: “One time when the child was really cranky, I started feeling panicky, shaky, and wanting to throw up all at once. And I thought, Oh, this is what withdrawal feels like.” 

Researchers hypothesize that mirror touch synesthesia is an exaggerated form of the mirror neuron  system we all possess. The system is a subset of our normal motor command neurons, but the mirror neurons fire when we watch another person. They perform a sort of virtual reality simulation of another person’s physical experience. It’s why watching a person fall off a bike will make us flinch or cringe as if it were happening to us. 

Empathy is a good thing, but I’m glad I have the ordinary variety.

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