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Synaesthesia (British spelling) appears to be an increasingly popular quirk to apply to characters in fictional stories. This revelation sent me on a quest to discover more, particularly since the trait draws so much attention within the scientific community.
Some synaesthetes regularly see colours in conjunction with sounds. Others taste words or feel the touch of drawn shapes on their skin. It is, in simple terms, a blending of sensory perception. This sudden popularity has made it a hot topic for TED talks, university circuit lectures, and even daytime TV.
In a television interview that degraded into something akin to a circus trick, a synaesthete from Blackpool, UK, was asked to explain the taste sensations evoked from hearing the London Underground Stations. He then went on to explain the taste and texture of famous peoples’ names, stating that Chris Evans ‘tasted like Spangles’.
Scientists are now busy trying to isolate genes that are responsible for this incredible phenomenon, which is thought to be the result of hyperconnected neurons, similar to the patterns that emerge in Autism. Thus far, neuroscientist Simon Fisher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, has found as many as thirty-seven genes involved in inherited synaesthesia.