14 DAY TRIAL // For as far as he can remember, Englishman James Wannerton cannot listen to music, watch movies or talk to people without having each and every of the sounds he hears leave a distinct taste in his mouth.
This is due to a rare medical condition that he has been suffering from ever since he was a child but that he was diagnosed with only in his 20s. This condition is known as synesthesia and affects only a handful of people.
In the UK, about 4% of the country's population is affected by a mingling of the senses of this kind. The form of synesthesia that James Wannerton was diagnosed with years ago is called lexical gustatory synesthesia.
“Words and sounds go ‘bink, bink, bink’ in my mouth all the time, like a light flickering on and off. Some tastes are very quick but others can last for hours,” the man explains.
The condition is caused by a brain abnormality
James Wannerton says that, when he first complained about sounds making him experience all sorts of tastes in his mouth, doctors told his parents that these occurrences were only due to the fact that he had a vivid imagination.
The thing is that, contrary to the predictions of the doctors who examined him as a child, James Wannerton didn't get rid of these sensations as he grew older.
When he was 20 years old, medical experts scanned his brain and found that two of his brain regions - the one in charge of processing sounds and the one dealing with taste perception - were oddly well connected.
Shortly after the discovery of this anatomical quirk, the man was diagnosed with synesthesia. His parents figured out that he wasn't just imagining things to get their attention and everything settled.
Thus, after diagnosis, James Wannerton finally understood why, as a child, the names of his schoolmates made him taste strawberry jam or potatoes and why the sound made by falling pencils tasted like wholegrain bread.
“Brains of synesthetes have extra clusters of connectivity and there are differences in the grey matter of the brain - an extra thickness is seen in certain areas,” said Edinburgh University specialist Julia Simner, as cited by Oddity Central.
The man says he wouldn't want to be cured
Experiencing various tastes when hearing sounds might sound like a hassle, but James Wannerton has grown accustomed to his condition. In fact, he says that he chooses his dates depending on the taste of their name.
Apparently, synesthesia has come to be such a huge part of this life that, even if this were possible, he says he would not want to have doctors try and cure him. “It would be like someone asking you if you wanted to switch off your sight for 20 minutes,” he says.
