Awareness and self-reported synesthesia related experiences among undergraduate medical students: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Synesthesia refers to a neurological condition in which stimuli from one sensory pathway induce perception via another sensory pathway. This study evaluated self-reported synesthesia related experiences, awareness of such experiences, and other associated demographic and clinical attributes among undergraduate medical students. METHODS: This cross-sectional online survey targeted 617 medical students aged 18-25 years during the 2024-2025 academic year. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire on demographics, awareness of synesthesia-related experiences, selected medical and psychological factors, and their possible relevance to education. All analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (version 25.0). RESULTS: Among the 617 participants, 53.5% were female, and 46.5% were male. Only 31.8% of the participants reported previous familiarity with synesthesia-like associations. Self-reported experiences compatible with synesthesia-related subtypes varied across chromesthesia-related, grapheme-color-related, lexical-gustatory-related, time-space-related, and numerical-form-related items. Differences were also established based on gender for some items. Female participants more frequently reported headaches and synesthesia-related experiences, whereas male participants more often selected responses indicating no such experiences and more frequently endorsed numerical form-related items (p < 0.001). Age did not show any significant differences. Significant correlations also existed among the synesthetic subtypes, with chromesthesia exhibiting a positive correlation with grapheme-color, lexical-gustatory, time-space, and numerical form synesthetics (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Awareness of synesthesia was low among the medical students in this study. Although some participants reported experiences compatible with synesthesia-related phenomena, these results do not confirm the prevalence of synesthesia. Instead, they described patterns of self-reported synesthesia-related experiences in an undergraduate medical student sample. Future studies using validated diagnostic and consistency-based tools are needed to determine the true frequency and educational relevance of confirmed synesthesia among medical students.