Instant Genius Podcast: Do you have synaesthesia? Why some of us can taste words

Do you experience sounds or music visually as certain shapes? Or 'hear' colours?

Photo credit: BBC Science Focus

Published: March 22, 2024 at 10:48 am

Do you experience sounds or music visually as certain shapes? Or perhaps you are able to ‘taste’ words or ‘hear’ colours.

If so, it sounds like you have synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon that leads to some of us experiencing a merging of different senses that are not typically connected.

In this episode, we catch up with Prof Jamie Ward, a psychologist and synaesthesia researcher based at the University of Sussex.

He tells us about the varying forms synaesthetic experiences can take, what we know about their impacts on cognition and creativity and how it’s likely that you’ve met a synaesthete without even realising it.

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