14 DAY TRIAL // A paper recently published in the scientific journal Neurocase describes the struggles of a 22-year-old unnamed woman who feels both depressed and disgusted whenever her skin comes in contact with denim.
What's more, this woman reportedly experiences many other extreme emotions when touching certain fabrics.
Thus, it appears that silk makes her feel happy and content, corduroy makes her feel confused and leather triggers feelings of fear, Daily Mail details.
Neuroscientist Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran at the University of California in San Diego and fellow researcher Dr. David Brang, who authored the paper, explain that this 22-year-old is suffering with a rare medical condition dubbed synesthesia.
This conditions boils down to the fact that the woman's brain does not respond normally to sensory information.
More precisely, cues that reach the brain trigger abnormal reactions that have very little to do with what the initial sensory input is all about.
In the case of this woman, the out-of-place emotions are not brought about by fabrics alone.
On the contrary, Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran and Dr. David Brang say that multi-colored toothpaste makes her feel anxious, and that wax fosters feelings of embarrassment.
“In this subject, the strongest emotion was evoked when she touched soft leather, which made her feel extremely scared – she described the sensation as ‘making my spine crawl,’” the researchers reportedly write in their paper.
Both scientists suspect that evolution and its quirks are the best explanation for present-day cases of synesthesia.
“Our primate ancestors may have evolved unconscious mechanisms for predicting the potential of an object to cause harm.”
“Thus, tactile sensations which may be beneficial to survival (such as soft furs, for example, which provide warmth) may activate the parts of the limbic system mediating pleasure, whereas others which may be harmful (such as jagged stones) may be connected to those areas mediating aversion,” they theorize.