[bksvol-discuss] O_T Synesthesia: The Man Who Tastes Shapes

"Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> · Fri, 04 Mar 2005 23:01:31 -0500

Since this was a hot topic on here a while back, and has a book possible for 
the collection in it, guess it is relevent.

Plebius Press
Friday, March 04, 2005

Synesthesia: The Man Who Tastes Shapes

By Keith Varnum

Some people see, taste, hear and feel things the rest of us don' t. James 
Wannerton tastes words: "New York is runny eggs. London is extremely lumpy 
mashed potatoes." Carol Steen sees every letter with a color: "Z is the 
color of beer, a light ale."

For Carol Crane, music is felt: "I always feel guitars on my ankles and 
violins on my face." Other people experience smells when exposed to shapes, 
or hear sounds inside taste. And for some, numbers have color, sounds have 
smell, and words have flavor. Music is not only heard, it's seen and 
tasted--the list goes on.

Neurologist Richard Cytowic explores this surreal world of " synesthesia" in 
his book, The Man Who Tasted Shapes. " Synesthesia means joined sensation, 
and some people are born with two or more of their senses hooked together," 
explains Cytowic.

The most common form of synesthesia is when a person see letters in 
different colors instead of seeing black ink letters as black. Although 
people differ from each other in what colors the letters are, the colors 
usually remain the same for each individual throughout their life.

Depending on what food they taste, other synesthetes experience taste as a 
shape, like a triangle or circle. Another person sees orange when feeling 
pain.

For New York artist Carol Steen, synesthesia is inspiration. She sees shapes 
and colors when listening to music or receiving acupuncture-images that she 
transforms into works of art. "It's like putting on sunglasses and being 
able to see the world through the sunglasses," she says. Once, when Steen 
injured her leg while hiking, all she saw was a world bathed in orange.

And, Carol Crane does more than simply hear a concert. She physically 
experiences each instrument within a different part of her body.

Still another person hears a sound that tastes like pickles. For as long as 
he can recall, words have triggered the part of Wannerton's brain that 
responds to tastes and flavors. "I can remember being in a big school 
assembly hall listening to the Lords Prayer," he says, "and it was while 
listening to that, I used to get flavor after flavor coming in. It was 
mostly bacon."

Wannerton says his synesthesia causes him some discomfort in his personal 
life. "I've had girlfriends with names I couldn't stand saying. Tracey is a 
very strong flavored name and it's flaky- pastry. Whenever I was in her 
company, that's what I thought of constantly." And at the end of the day, he 
suffers from sensory overload. But still he doesn't want a cure. "I've had 
it since I can remember, and taking it away--I wouldn't like the thought of 
that," he says.

What's going on inside the synesthete's brain?

Dr. Vilyanur Ramachandran, a neurologist who studies quirks of the brain, 
was scanning the brain of McAllister, a man who sees music. During the 
imaging, the music being played stimulates not only McAllister's audio 
cortex, but also his visual cortex. "The visual area lit up in him," says 
Ramachandran, "so you know there was neurological activity in the visual 
region of his brain even though he was only listening to music." McAllister 
describes it as a "Fantasia-like experience: explosions of color all over 
the place. A bright flash of lavender getting dimmer and dimmer; now we're 
going over a pink staircase, some lavender violins. It looks very 
beautiful."

This is all the more surprising since McAllister is blind! He lost his sight 
when he was 12, the result of a degenerative eye disease. But he never lost 
his synesthesia.

Are we all born with joined sensation?

Though scientists can prove synesthesia exists physiologically, they still 
don't know what causes it. Some researchers think cross-wiring in the brain 
produces the phenomenon. Another theory is that everyone is born with 
synesthesia-that we, as infants, experience the world as a jumble of 
interwoven sensations. Then, as most of us mature, our physical senses 
slowly become distinct and sharply defined, like images being brought into 
focus by a camera lens. With synesthetes this doesn' t happen.

For some, synesthetic perceptions seem to exist outside the body. Carrie 
Schultz describes how she sees electric guitar riffs in purple swirls that 
envelop her.

For others, the awareness is internal, in their "mind's eye." When Glenda 
Larcombe hears a truck backing up--making a beep- beep-beep sound--she sees 
the beeps as a series of red dots. The mingling of senses is often difficult 
for synesthetes to describe. Larcombe, for instance, said the red dots she 
sees when she hears beeping are not part of her actual vision. "It's not 
like I would see a red dot right in front of me-it's in my mind's eye" she 
says in an interview. She also reports feeling her interviewer's voice, 
"like a wave, like water, with yellow and orange."

Ex-journalist, Page Getz says "God is blue." She describes headache pain as 
a kind of greenish-orange, music by the rock group Nirvana as having the 
taste or sensation of Dr Pepper, and the color after sex as static silver. 
She quit her job as a journalist because her editors' word changes often 
disrupted what she saw as a sentence's natural chromatic progression.

Everyone's got blended senses to a degree

Psychologist Carol Mills says this sensory-blending ability might be a 
normal part of all adult brains. "It may go on in all of us even if we don't 
have synesthesia," said Mills. "For example, if I give you a very 
high-pitched note and a series of colors and ask you to match one, you are 
going to pick a light color. If I give you a low bass note, you are probably 
going to pick a dark color. The difference is when a synesthete hears a low 
note, they see dark. When they hear a high note, they see a light color."

No firm figures exist for how common synesthesia is. The best estimates 
range from 1 in 200 to 1 in 20,000.

About the author:
Drawing from the wisdom of native and ancient spiritual traditions, Keith 
Varnum shares his 30 years of practical success as an author, personal 
coach, acupuncturist, filmmaker, radio host, restaurateur, vision quest 
guide and international seminar leader (The Dream Workshops). Keith helps 
people get the love, money and health they want with his FREE "Prosperity 
Ezine" at www.TheDream.com.

http://psychology.plebius.org/print.php?sid=765

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