Was recently asked some tea-tasting questions that led me to consider synesthesia, specifically flavor/shape synesthesia.
Synesthesia is the brain capacity that allows some of us (about 1 in 27 or so) to experience one sensation in terms of another. For example, a common form of synesthesia is the perception of letters or numbers as having specific colors. Each synesthete has his or her own panoply of dual or triple perceptions triggered by a stimulus reaching only a single sensory modality.
In my personal case, numbers have colors, and so do letters, though the latter associations have faded as I get older. Numbers, however, are a real problem, because I have to actively turn off the associations to do calculations. Some sums kinda work, like 5 (bubble gum pink) plus 2 (a rich dark blue) equals 7 (a hideous very dark poison green color)—I can sort of imagine mixing the color for 5 and the color for 2 to get that hideous color. But for most combinations, combining the colors is hard because I don’t get the right answer. Fact is, I don’t bother combining the colors, but instead have in my head a progression through space of numbers (with their individual colors turned off), and when I calculate, I have to go through the individual steps of the progression to go from one number to the other. Slooooooow….
These colors are all wrong to me, so I don't even see the written numbers without effort...
Fortunately, synesthesia can bring a lot of joy, too, and richness to everyday experience, especially to the rare person for whom flavors have shapes. When the person who asked the question described a tea as having a “hooky” aroma, I knew exactly what he meant, as many teas have that quality for me too. But for me, a strange and more important characteristic of flavors is their location and movement through space and time. Hard to explain, but very real to me.
A couple of years back, NPR had an article about synesthetes and taste, that will give you a better idea of what this is all about:
More to come!
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