Tomato ketchup, salty ham, elastic bands, and bakewell tart are just four of the many flavours that James Wannerton tastes during our interview. Having only agreed to speak to me because my name, Kate, tastes like a creamy bar of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate, Wannerton is repeatedly distracted by his taste buds throughout our conversation.Wannerton has a rare form of synaesthesia known as lexical-gustatory synaesthesia, meaning that his taste and hearing senses do not operate independently of each other. As a result, for Wannerton every word and every sound has a distinctive flavour. Although the words and sounds do not usually bear any relation to what they taste like, the flavours are always consistent; "speak", for example, has tasted like bacon for as long as Wannerton can remember.
"Words and sounds go 'bink, bink, bink' in my mouth all the time, like a light flickering on and off," he explained. "Some tastes are very quick but others can last for hours and make me crave that particular thing; I'll feel distracted until I actually eat it."
Wannerton believes he has been a synaesthete all his life, and that he inherited his condition from his mother who "sees days of the week as colours." Synaesthesia in general is not uncommon; it is found in roughly four percent of the population and usually takes the form of a connection between letters and colours known as grapheme-colour synaesthesia, where, for example, those with the condition innately "know" that "A" is red. Wannerton's unusual form, however, meant that it took decades before it was seriously addressed.
Wannerton at age 10. Image: James Wannerton
"When I was ten, my parents took me to a family doctor as I was getting distracted by flavours when sitting exams—the sound of pencils rolling off desks would taste like wholegrain bread with big lumps in it, and it would put me off my work," he said. "The doctor told them it was part of growing up, that I had an overactive imagination and would grow out of it. During my teenage years I was told I was just attention-seeking. I didn't even learn that synaesthesia existed until I was 20."
Eleven years later, scientists began to gain an interest in Wannerton's condition. In 1991, he was transferred to the Maudsley Hospital in London, which deals with head trauma, for testing. A few years later he received the funding to have an fMRI scan.
"I can remember feeling very apprehensive when it was first suggested that I should have a brain scan," Wannerton told me. "I had an irrational but very real fear that if I went into the machine I'd somehow lose my synaesthesia."
Image: James Wannerton
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The Man Who Tastes Sounds
Things get difficult when you're a synaesthete and the name of a friend's wife tastes like sick.