Do you see numbers as colors?  Do you hear smells?  Then congrats, you’ve got synesthesia.

Over the past 30 years… a growing body of evidence has shown that synesthesia has a physical basis—for example, the brains of synesthetes are wired differently, and the condition is highly heritable, which indicates there is a genetic component.

In fact, the study authors think it’s possible such a strange phenomenon has survived in an evolutionary sense because it offers people certain benefits to creative thinking.

[Via National Geographic]