Synaesthesia is a neurological condition found to enhance memory and learning. Now, scientists say seeing in colour could help when it comes to learning a second language.

My mother's name is the colour of milk. The strings of an acoustic guitar, when strummed, play the warm yellow of honeycomb. The sound is flat, hard and smooth. And Monday is pink. These sensations are always the same, and always present. This is synaesthesia – in my case grapheme-colour synaesthesia, sound-colour synaesthesia and sound-texture synaesthesia.

Like many synaesthetes, I discovered at a young age I had a flair for both music and languages. In music, it wasn't the physical act of performing I excelled at, but composition. I went on to become a composer for short films and dance theatre, and a sound editor for television. Writing music felt a lot like a language to me, as I "saw" the colours of the sounds in a similar way. I also studied French, German, Spanish and linguistics – the colour of language helping me to remember words as well as the patterns of grammar.

Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon that causes an estimated 4.4% of people to experience the world as a cacophony of sensations. Around 60 different types of synaesthesia have been identified, but there could be more than 100, with some types experienced in clusters.

The condition is thought to be caused by genetically inherited traits that affect the structural and functional development of the brain. Increased communication between sensory regions in the brain means, for example, words can stimulate taste, sequences of numbers may be perceived in spatial arrangements, or the feel of textures might conjure emotions.

Synaesthesia is not considered to be a neurological disorder and – although it has been linked to neurodevelopmental and mental health conditions including autism, anxiety and schizophrenia – it is described as an "alternative perceptual reality" and generally thought to be beneficial.

"When I was younger I knew I saw the world in a different way, and my way of describing that to others was 'colourful'," says Smadar Frisch.

Frisch, who has grapheme-colour synaesthesia, sound-colour synaesthesia and lexical–gustatory synaesthesia – where........

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