Blind people can experience mirror pain synaesthesia...

Although synaesthesia might be due to idiosyncratic, aberrant corticocortical connectivity established during early development, it can persist for very long periods with little or no natural experience in the referred modality and therefore ...

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According to recent estimates, the vast majority of the reported cases of synesthesia involve a visual experience. Purely non-visual synesthesia is extremely rare and to date there is no reported case of a congenitally blind synesthete.

Intriguingly, individual differences in empathic abilities, assessed with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index [3], drive the activity of the SI when nonsynesthetes witness others’ tactile sensations. This evidence implies that, under normal conditions, touch observation activates the SI below the threshold for perceptual awareness [4]; through the visual-dependent tuning of SI activity by ppTMS, what is seen becomes felt, namely, mirror-touch synesthesia.

The fact that different levels of intensity of touch or pain, respectively, may or may not induce a mirrored experience has more to do with the associated characteristics of the specific stimulus than actually representing different stimuli (but see, Fitzgibbon et al., 2012b). The lack of variability (and consequentially lack of categorical organization) in mirrored sensory experiences prevents individual forms of mirrored sensory experiences from sharing with established forms of synesthesia the core criterion of idiosyncratic inducer-concurrent pairings.

She says (a little coyly) that seeing the combination of “people touching” and the “movements of sex” can be intense for her - “in kind of a nice way”. However wacky it may sound, Dr Banissy believes there are logical explanations for mirror-touch synesthesia.

feeling pain in the opposite side of the body when another person feels pain · feeling a sensation of touch when you see another person being touched · experiencing different sensations of touch when another person is touched, such as: ... Most people with the condition report having it since childhood. Doctors haven’t identified specific tests that can diagnose mirror touch synesthesia.