Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: paul.fr on 24/04/2007 07:30:33
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When i eat a bar of chocolate called a twirl, i always think it tastes of purple! am i just weird? or can foods taste of colours?
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It sounds to me like you have what is known as synesthesia.
The fact that it has a name, clearly indicates that other people have similar experiences, although it is not the norm, it is not uncommon either. Synesthesia is a broad collection of experiences that mix one sense with a sensation in another sense (e.g. a hearing word or a musical note might evoke a colour or a taste). It is when the wiring of the brain has not totally separated two sensual paths. I suspect that some creative people who may use this addition cross sensual information to feed their creativity.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae or synaesthesiae)—from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), meaning "with," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), meaning "sensation"'—is a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled. In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a three-dimensional view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise).
While cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., "loud shirt", "bitter wind" or "prickly laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true neurological synesthesia is involuntary. It is estimated that synesthesia may be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of variants (Simner et al. 2006). It runs strongly in families, possibly inherited as an X-linked dominant trait. Synesthesia is also sometimes reported by individuals under the influence of psychedelic drugs, after a stroke, or as a consequence of blindness or deafness. Synesthesia that arises from such non-genetic events is referred to as adventitious synesthesia to distinguish it from the more common congenital forms of synesthesia. Adventitious synesthesia involving drugs or stroke (but not blindness or deafness) apparently only involves sensory linkings such as sound → vision or touch → hearing; there are few if any reported cases involving culture-based, learned sets such as graphemes, lexemes, days of the week, or months of the year.
Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was largely abandoned in the mid-20th century, and has only recently been rediscovered by modern researchers. Psychological research has demonstrated that synesthetic experiences can have measurable behavioral consequences, while functional neuroimaging studies have identified differences in patterns of brain activation (for a review see Hubbard & Ramachandran 2005).
Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia. Psychologists and neuroscientists study synesthesia not only for its inherent interest, but also for the insights it may give into cognitive and perceptual processes that occur in everyone, synesthete and non-synesthete alike.
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Some things with red food coloring I can tell are red , especially when they have used to much red color as it has a peculiar bitter red taste LOL..Yes Paul we are weird! LOL I must say, Purple would be interestig!
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Some things with red food coloring I can tell are red , especially when they have used to much red color as it has a peculiar bitter red taste LOL..Yes Paul we are weird! LOL I must say, Purple would be interestig!
I don't think that is exactly what Paul was referring to (certainly not what I was referring to).
Now, if every time you saw the colour red, you felt a bitter taste in your mouth; or if you thought all bitter foods gave you a sensation of seeing red (literally, not metaphorically), then that is what synesthesia is.
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Some things with red food coloring I can tell are red , especially when they have used to much red color as it has a peculiar bitter red taste LOL..Yes Paul we are weird! LOL I must say, Purple would be interestig!
I don't think that is exactly what Paul was referring to (certainly not what I was referring to).
Now, if every time you saw the colour red, you felt a bitter taste in your mouth; or if you thought all bitter foods gave you a sensation of seeing red (literally, not metaphorically), then that is what synesthesia is.
Yes, what you and i experiance are differeny Karen. That particular chocolate bar Does taste purple to me. Although i know what you mean. if i eat parma violet sweets, they are purple taste sort of violety but i know they are just purple sweets. where as the chocolate, i know is chocolate but it tastes of he colour purple...does that make sense! i know it sounds strange, even to me.
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Paul their are online Synesthesia tests which you can take
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Every time I have an Orange it takes just like Orange !!
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LOL... me too, but thanks George I think I understand what you both mean now.. LOL