Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes

Scientific American ^ | April 13, 2003 | By Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward M. Hubbard

[TrexDogs]

Interesting article. One of the magazine shows (dateline or 60 minutes?) did a segment on synesthesia last year, and it was fascinating. One fellow tasted many, many words. I remember he said "New York" tasted like runny eggs, something else tasted like Spam. But the real kicker was that he had to break up with his girlfriend Tracy because her name tasted like flaky pastry and it was way too strong for him.

[muggs]

Like I said earlier, I haven't read the whole article yet so maybe this was answered, do these people experience this their entire life or just during certain periods? It seems like I experienced something like this during pregnancy. I could feel certain things in color at times. It was quite a strange thing.

[wideminded]

The physicist Richard Feynman also described how he recalled equations with the various letters and symbols assuming different colors.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Anyone interested in this post should read Sensory Inhibition, which describes a lot of similiar weirdness. In particular, I remember something about experiments where the taste buds on the tongue were inhibited in a certain manner (along a half-plane?), producing a sensation of the taste coming from a distant point in space.

[facedown]

bump this:

Must there be all the colors-uh

Without names, without sound, baby?

[longtermmemmory]

bump for later reader

[ladyjane]

another bflr

[Hank Rearden]

I thought your comment at the end was delicious. Tasted just like chicken.

[thatdewd]

I don't remember the synesthesia (did they look like the Fantasia ones?) sheets, but I remember watching the music notes come out of George Harrison's guitar. That was pretty cool, and they tasted blue...

[Anamensis]

I have colors for numbers and letters, and tastes for a lot of colors. I always thought it was just an oddity of mine till I met another one of "us" at a conference in Denmark. This woman said something like, "For me, 3 is pink" and I almost jumped out of my chair. I pounced on her at lunch and made her tell me all about it. There is nothing quite like finding another synaesthesic and realizing you're not a freak.

But it was weird how different our colors were and how visceral were our emotions about those colors. I remember saying "3, pink? No, no!! 3 is so obviously BLUE!! 3 is ALWAYS blue!" It's 5 that's pink (and is very sweet and tart with V or 7... just look at this: 31V5J706... my God, doesn't it just make your mouth water? Like strawberry orange blueberry SweetTarts only juicy and wet!!

[piasa]

I must have some form of this ...

When I see most liberals they look red.

[spodefly]

I tasted a purple spotlight at a Black Sabbath concert in 1978.

[capitan_refugio]

Psilocyban mushrooms could produce definite spacial distortions.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[RightField]

I first heard of this a couple of years ago, and was astounded to find that other people saw colors in letters and numbers like I do. I have tried for years to explain this to my husband, who always just gives me that patronizing look and changes the subject.

BTW, 4 is red, F is yellow, L is brown.

[weegee]

"Listen to the sound of purple and green and taste a moment of madness!" - Ad slogan for AIP's Roger Corman helmed Psych-Out (similar to his other Peter Fonda acid movie, The Trip).

[weegee]

I'll post to come back to this thread later (for a full read of the article) but I'd expect that this ties into the neumonic devices people use in remembering things (there are all sorts of associations made in the mind, it's understandable that some of them could cross over senses).

[weegee]

Maybe some people associate colors and numbers from years of painting Paint By Numbers as kids.

[Unassuaged]

Ozzy sang "Swallowing colors of the sound I feel" but that was about drug use.

[aruanan]

Synesthesia is one of the coolest things to read about. There are some nice descriptions in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales by Dr. Oliver Sacks.