Sounds — music, voices, or ambient noise — produce automatic taste experiences on the tongue or palate.
Inducer
sound
Concurrent
taste
Category
Auditory Gustatory
Sound-taste synesthesia occurs when sounds — music, voices, or ambient noise — automatically produce taste experiences on the tongue or palate. A car horn might taste like lemon, a dog's bark like custard, or a particular voice like toast. The tastes are involuntary, consistent over time, and can include complex flavors with texture and temperature components. The condition is thought to arise from atypical neural connections between auditory processing regions and the gustatory cortex (insula).
Ward, J. & Simner, J. (2003). Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia: Linguistic and conceptual factors. Cognition, 89(3).
View publication →Beeli, G. et al. (2005). Synaesthesia: When coloured sounds taste sweet. Nature, 434.
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