A two-year-old toddler has his mother puzzled over his claims that an ultrasound image of his unborn cousin is “too loud,” drawing a spate of synesthesia speculation.
Paige on TikTok captured the anomaly showing her son visibly distressed over three sepia images hanging from a pin board in her kitchen.
The footage has attracted a few people with the condition in which the sight of numbers and black-and-white pictures causes them to inexplicably hear, smell, and taste things.
Highlights
- Paige’s son grew upset and covered his ears whenever he passed ultrasound images on the wall.
- Followers believe the boy may have synesthesia, a condition where senses overlap.
- A study shows fetuses can hear ultrasound frequencies as loud as a subway train.
The child blocked his ears and complained about the ultrasound photos
Image credits: paige.at.cascade
“Anyone know what this means,” the video’s text overlay asks, as it follows the little man walking purposefully down the passage.
“What’s too loud?” Paige can be heard asking. “That,” the toddler says, pointing at the wall above him.
Paige responds by taking the string of ultrasound photos off the wall, holding them close to him, and asking, “Is this too loud?”
Image credits: paigeatcascade
“Yeah,” he responds, placing his hands on his ears for emphasis.
Paige writes that her son had been saying that every time he walked past the photo.
The picture had the two-year-old close to tears
Image credits: paigeatcascade
Paige shows him the image again, and stumbling over her words, tries to make sense of her son’s behavior but fails, bringing him close to tears.
“Does he remember being in the womb and the ultrasound being too loud?” she asks.
“I don’t want it,” he whimpers, before his mother slides the pictures into a drawer.
“Anyone know what’s going on in his brain?” she asked in the caption.
Paige claims her son, at two, is already musically inclined
Image credits: paigeatcascade
Paige’s followers took the anomaly seriously, saying, “There is a reason, and he is not joking.”
Another netizen, in awe of what they were seeing, commented: “I knew synesthesia existed but actually seeing it is mind blowing.”
“He has synesthesia,” wrote another commenter committing to diagnosis. “Introduce him to music, he’ll be a maestro.”
According to Paige, this follower is not far off.
“My son has always been musically inclined, loves to sing, play [with] instruments and is very in tune to all sounds around him.”
Another woman says numbers make her daughter, who is a math prodigy, see colors
The comment thread drew a few people who claim to live with the condition.
“Whenever I see the number seven, it feels like I can smell and taste it,” said one user.
Image credits: paige.at.cascade
Another talked about her daughter, who never realized that it was not normal to see numbers as color-coded until she was in high school. “She’s also a math genius.”
If the commenter’s accounts are anything to go by, hearing disconcerting noises when looking at ultrasound pictures or even anything in black and white is one of the more common forms of synesthesia.
A man with synesthesia claims he hears a “coach whistle” when he sees black and white images
Image credits: paige.at.cascade
“My Husband has it,” wrote one woman, “describes X-ray images and such [sic] like a coache's whistle.”
Another woman weighed in claiming that her daughter who is a nurse by profession cannot handle the sight of MRI’s, X-rays, or ultrasound images. “She’s now 23 and still does not like medical images,” she wrote.
According to a study published to the national library of medicine in June 2012, “fetuses can hear ultrasound and the sound is as loud as a subway train entering a station.”
An experiment using a hydrophone in a woman’s uterus detected 100 decibels of noise when subjected to ultrasound
The experiment that arrived at this conclusion involved a minuscule hydrophone being placed in a woman’s uterus when she was undergoing an ultrasound examination.
When the ultrasound was switched on and off, the noise resembled the high notes of a piano.
When pointed directly at the hydrophone, “it registered a level of 100 decibels, as loud as a subway train coming into a station.”
Image credits: paige.at.cascade
“Although the operating frequencies used in sonography are inaudible, it is possible for the pulsing rate (pulse repetition frequency, PRF) to be heard, thus falling in the audible range,” the study elaborated.
Many commenters are sure its synesthesia
