My family and I

I CAN TASTE MY WORDS


by Jane Elliott, BBC News Online, 2006
James Wannerton lives in a house that tastes of mashed potato and is situated in a fruit gum town. He has a toffee flavoured nephew and used to have a condensed milk granny. His next door neighbours are a mixture of yoghurt, jelly beans and a subtle hint of a waxy substance. James is not mad, nor is he on a taste oriented drug trip – he has a neurological condition called synaesthesia, which mixes up his senses.
To him verbal and written words can conjure up taste sensations. “This doesn’t affect every word or sound, although I have a horrible feeling that it could if I allowed it”, he said. Say the word “safety” and James, aged 44, will imagine lightly buttered toast. When someone says, or writes the word “jail”, it sparks the taste of cold bacon. Synaesthesia is frequently based on around colours – letters of alphabet, or sounds, are associated with specific shades – and a number of artists are thought to have had the condition. It also runs in families and thought to be linked to the X-chromosome, as it is more common in women.
Less frequent is the taste-based synaethesia experienced by James, a system analyst from Blackpool. James says his condition means having conversations can be difficult. As people talk he finds his mind wandering to the taste image conjured up.
He said he was reluctant to tell people about his synaethesia because it was difficult to understand. “I don’t tell people about it because it is an odd thing. If you say you have this and this happens to me they expect you to be able to do something exceptional”.
Dr. Jamie Ward, of University College, London, who has studied the condition, said it should be seen as a genuine phenomenon in search of a psychological explanation. In his article in the Psychologist Society’s Journal, he says that if synaesthesia could be proved it would increase understanding of how the brain works. About one in 2, 000 people were affected by synaethesia and of these only 10% had the taste form, he said. Dr. Ward also said that about twice as many women than men suffered from the condition.

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