Man born blind has synaesthesia that makes numbers feel textured

A man born without sight has a rare form of synaesthesia in which he feels numbers, days of the week and months as different textures

By Jason Arunn Murugesu

For people with synaesthesia, hearing music may make them see a colour or feel a texture. The condition has now been reported for the first time in someone who was born blind, showing that vision isn’t necessary for synaesthesia to develop even though sight is involved in many cases of synaesthesia.

Roberto Bottini at the University of Trento in Italy and his colleagues studied a 40-year-old man who was born blind and who described his synaesthesia to them.

Bottini found …