The man who could taste words

[Arkan]

James Wannerton (right), an IT contractor from Blackpool, has synaesthesia, a condition which means two senses are stimulated at once. For James, 49, hearing or seeing words stimulates his sense of taste.

 

He says: 'When I hear a word, I actually taste it. Some words taste really nice and some really unpleasant. It's something I can't switch it off. I even dream with the sense of taste strong in my mouth.

 

'It can be quite distracting, like having ringing in your ears. I've always had it - one of my earliest memories is saying The Lord's Prayer during assemblies when I was four or five and getting loads of different tastes, such as bacon, entering my mouth.

 

'When I was younger, I would pick my friends on the basis of the way their names tasted.

 

'For example. I would like people called Robert because the name tasted like strawberry jam sandwiches, whereas the name Gordon made me taste dirt.

'Until my teens, I presumed everyone was the same as me. It was only when I started opening up to girlfriends that I realised I was a bit different.

 

'In my late teens, my mum admitted she had a far less invasive version than mine. However, she seemed to be really embarrassed talking about it, so I just dropped the subject and I presumed it was just a family trait.

 

'It wasn't until the mid-Nineties while holidaying in America, that I saw a TV documentary about people like me realised I had a medical condition.

 

'I then found out about some into synaesthesia at the Maudsley Hospital in London and contacted them ten years ago.

 

'A brain scan showed that the area processing taste lit up not only when I ate something, as it does for everyone, but also unusually, when I heard words and word sounds.

 

'When I was at university I found it quite hard to concentrate as the words of lecturers would flood my mouth with flavours.

 

'That's why I choose to work in information technology, a quiet profession which does not require me to talk or interact much with other people.

 

'This condition has also affected the types of women I go out with.

 

'Whereas Barbara or Helen are nice juicy flavours to me, a friend married a women whose name, Colleen, makes me nauseous. I find it hard to say or hear her name as a result.

 

'Food names don't necessarily bring the taste of the food. For example, the word oyster triggers the taste of chocolate.

 

'I have actually stopped eating out with other people because their conversation creates so many different tastes in my mouth that it ruins my enjoyment of the food.

 

'Sometimes my synaesthesia has proved useful - at school it helped me memorise things because I could remember flavours.

 

'A good example would be the kings and queens of England which were a list of tastes.

 

'I wouldn't want to be without synaesthesia, but I would like to be without it briefly, so I could understand what other people's lives are like. I imagine it wouldn't be as interesting.'

 

 

 

Link with other stories of rewired brains

 

 

 

Cool

[Trenitay]

I wish I could taste words.

[Killian Kalthorne]

If I could taste words I would probably avoid the forums.

[Calax]

I never thought I'd hear about a symptom from the TV show House anywhere else (well the weird symptoms anyway)

 

In the first episode of last season he had an astronaut with synesthesia of being able to hear with her eyes.

[Killian Kalthorne]

I never thought I'd hear about a symptom from the TV show House anywhere else (well the weird symptoms anyway)

 

In the first episode of last season he had an astronaut with synesthesia of being able to hear with her eyes.

 

She would have been fun at a Pink Floyd concert.

[Pop]

Synaesthesia is common. Most people have it in some form or another (most people would say that a K sound is jagged and an O sound is round, despite sounds not having shape in actuality), but a few experience it more vividly than others. I've known several people personally who do. It's generally much more complex than "seeing sounds" or "tasting shapes". One of my friends feels time as an irregular shape, with a certain time of day at a certain day of the week at a certain spot on the loop, as well as each day having a color and a name. My first name is dark green to her, my full name powder blue. Some people feel numbers as a zig-zagging line rather than a sequential set of variables. A synaesthate with that particular condition can memorize several million digits of pi just by virtue of the way his brain handles numbers.

Edited December 10, 2008 by Pop

[Kaftan Barlast]

I wonder if words taste the same to all Synaesthesiacs or if its individual. It would be cool if someone compiled a dictionary of wordtastes

[Rosbjerg]

Amazing what the brain is able to do...

 

She would have been fun at a Pink Floyd concert.

 

Funny you should say that, I actually had a really wierd experience at a Roger Waters concert. I started feeling a physical reaction to the sounds, like the different tunes were pushing me and depending on the instrument they would come at different speed too.. It was a really surreal experience..

[Gorth]

Amazing what the brain is able to do...

 

She would have been fun at a Pink Floyd concert.

 

Funny you should say that, I actually had a really wierd experience at a Roger Waters concert. I started feeling a physical reaction to the sounds, like the different tunes were pushing me and depending on the instrument they would come at different speed too.. It was a really surreal experience..

You really need to lay off those mushrooms Rosbjerg

 

I wonder if Gorth is a yummy word

[Rosbjerg]

Well it was at Roskilde Festival..

 

But mushroom are probably a little too extreme, thruth be told I wasn't under any influence other than alcohol, which is why it was surreal.

[Checkpoint]

He can't go out with friends and his buddy's wife makes him wanna vomit, yet he doesn't want to live without it?

[Rosbjerg]

He can't go out with friends and his buddy's wife makes him wanna vomit, yet he doesn't want to live without it?

 

Some severely handicapped people don't want to be "normal" either.. My guess it has something to do with comfort and identity, he knows the condition, in fact he can't imagine being without it and if he did lose it I imagine he would feel like a big part of his personlity was missing.

[tarna]

Synaesthesia is common. Most people have it in some form or another (most people would say that a K sound is jagged and an O sound is round, despite sounds not having shape in actuality), but a few experience it more vividly than others. I've known several people personally who do. It's generally much more complex than "seeing sounds" or "tasting shapes". One of my friends feels time as an irregular shape, with a certain time of day at a certain day of the week at a certain spot on the loop, as well as each day having a color and a name. My first name is dark green to her, my full name powder blue. Some people feel numbers as a zig-zagging line rather than a sequential set of variables. A synaesthate with that particular condition can memorize several million digits of pi just by virtue of the way his brain handles numbers.

 

He can't go out with friends and his buddy's wife makes him wanna vomit, yet he doesn't want to live without it?

 

Some severely handicapped people don't want to be "normal" either.. My guess it has something to do with comfort and identity, he knows the condition, in fact he can't imagine being without it and if he did lose it I imagine he would feel like a big part of his personlity was missing.

I have a girl-friend from high school that I still talk to on occasion that has this 'ability'. Hers is that she 'sees' sound as colours. In her case, it's called "perfect pitch". She used to 'tune' band members better that the instructor could and he accepted it as it was. At one time she even used 'Synaesthesia' as her screen-name. I caught her one time because of her posting style on a board that I was on. She had never regretted having the ability but, in her case, it never really had the same impact that taste would have. The next time I talk to her, I'll ask what she thinks of this particular 'affliction'. I can't imagine that 'tasting' a person's name or words would be appealing.

Politics, Bush, Obama. ( you get the drill )

[Gorgon]

Remember that math whiz who could recite phi to the umpteenth digit, or was that a movie.

 

In any case the reason it was so easy for him is that he saw numbers as having distinctive shapes, colours and even textures, to him he was merely describing a strange landscape.

[tarna]

He can't go out with friends and his buddy's wife makes him wanna vomit, yet he doesn't want to live without it?

 

Some severely handicapped people don't want to be "normal" either.. My guess it has something to do with comfort and identity, he knows the condition, in fact he can't imagine being without it and if he did lose it I imagine he would feel like a big part of his personlity was missing.

Much as I hate to admit it, I been doing a great deal of thinking about this very thing since Krezack's thread concerning ADHD. Having realized that I'm about as F'ed up as a football bat, I still am unwilling to give up the few 'perks' that come along will being ADHD. That being the ability to hyper-focus. Much of what I blurt out at work would be a firing offence in most places but with my work ( I work heavily with machinery ), I can get away with it. Since they have known me for over 20 years and know my abilities, they generally ignore my little 'quirks' and just pray that I don't limber up my vocabulary where it might get them into trouble. They now know that I am ADHD since they are used to me, it doesn't really make any difference in that they know better than to put me in a position that might bring me into the public eye. Since I am more likely to blurt out something like "Lick me where I S**t" than not, the company does not put me on speaker-phone because it isn't really safe. :wink:

 

They found this out when a customer lied about something and called in about it..."He's a MF'en Liar!! I never said a GD thing about that! He's a rotten MF'en liar and I hope his MF'en b**ls fall off for being a F**ken liar" et cet, you get the drift. The dispatcher had the customer on speaker-phone when she called me on the radio.

 

Oops

 

Impulse control can be a bitch at times. :wink:

[Walsingham]

If I could taste words I would probably avoid the forums.

 

 

I can see him sitting down in front of the television witha bib on, when Steven Fry appears.

[Petay]

This sounds fantastic though a bit crazy. I