Synesthesia - tasting colors?

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all,

Found this web page on my smart phone some time ago and meant to post it, concerning Vincent Van Gogh and Synthesia

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tas ... synesthete

Supposedly people on the spectrum sometimes have this. I don't, but it sure sounds cool.

Somewhere here posted something like that .. I would have to search to find it.

If I drink too much alcohol my ears ring, but I ... don't ... think ... that ... is ... quite ... the ... same.

gee, I wonder what chartreuse tastes like? or what periwinkle and orange sound like? I wonder what a low C on a pipe organ looks like? I am not sure if this qualifies as synesthesia but ever since I was a little boy I always "saw" faces of people in the analog clock face, depending upon the juxtaposition of the hour and minute hands.

When I have a migraine bright lights cause a metallic taste in my mouth.

I taste colors. The effect was much more vivid when I was younger, but it still happens. When I was in middle school, a particular color actually made me nauseous from the "taste." That particular color is not quite so popular these days, thankfully.

I also see music. Human voices tend to have textures or sensations like say stretchy rubber, stone, wood, water, razor blades, etc.

I have a few types of synesthesia, but nothing to do with taste.

Fascinating you should post this; I had moments before been searching for a synesthesia forum to explore, but they're all dead and have one or two posts from years ago. I have grapheme-colour synesthesia, and all my letters, numbers, words and shapes have distinct individual colours. I'm envious of those who have sound-colour synesthesia, it sounds really pretty, and it would probably make me enjoy classical and other non-lyrical music more.

I'm colors and numbers/names/letters myself

1. Grapheme-color
2. Object personification
3. Ordinal linguistic personification (or grapheme personification)

Oh yeah, I have numbers -> gender, but I barely think about it. It was a big help in learning how to do mental arithmetic, though.

I bet it's a version of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
That's an article on how people recognize images in random data. We're hard-wired to recognize and focus on faces; so when you see something vaguely face-like in an analog clock, you associate it with a face.

Besides, you can't be the only one who does this:

Disney's Cogsworth, Beauty and the Beast.

Synesthetic experiences are different from person to person; there's no way to tell what one person's chartreuse tastes like from having another person tell you about theirs. It seems to be personal. Maybe there are trends, though, especially with numbers; synesthesia starts awfully early in life, and we are probably born knowing the difference between "few" and "many", but I don't think we have a concept of things like "seven" versus "eight" until we're toddlers. That's enough time for some culture to have trickled into our baby brains.

it would be fun to trade bodies with a synesthete for a bit.