Synesthesia When words taste people

Synesthesia: Some people can taste words

01/06/2012

People who "can taste words and see sounds" call science "synesthetes." Linking certain brain regions leads to this phenomenon, which scientists have now come to grips with. Concerned are therefore by no means crazy but have very active networks in the brain. The current study was published in the journal "Journal of Neuroscience".

Synesthetes have several perceptions of a sensory stimulus
Goethe and List are said to have been synesthetes. The pianist Hélène Grimaud is also one of the people with this special ability. Synesthesia is the coupling of various sensory impressions, so that synaesthetes are not only able to hear sounds, but also perceive shapes and colors, for example. Frequently, letters or numbers are also assigned to specific colors. In some cases, synesthesia also occurs due to illness. This may be the case, for example, with schizophrenia or drug abuse by heliocarriers. As a rule, synaesthesia occurs frequently in the family, so that only a synaesthet within a relationship seldom occurs.

It is already known from previous MRI studies that synaesthetes show greater activity in a particular brain area when processing visual stimuli. However, until recently, it was not clear how the increased links between individual senses arise. Recently, neuroscientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich discovered that the increased coupled activity between the brain regions mediates synaesthetic connections.

Linked networks in the brain cause synesthesia
The human brain has various networks of linked brain regions that perform specific tasks. These structures are coupled even in the resting state, for example in subjects who lie with their eyes closed in the magnetic resonance tomograph. In order to find out how the coupled resting networks in people with synesthesia show, psychological tests were performed on different aspects of individual perception with 12 synaesthetes. In addition, the scientists examined the resting state of the subject's brain during a ten-minute measurement using functional magnetic resonance imaging. They came to the conclusion that the networks at rest are much more closely related to synaesthetes than to other people. The more stable the synaesthetic perception, the stronger the coupling is pronounced. (Ag)