Thursday, July 25, 2013

How Color Affects Taste and Smell


This question pertains to the condition known as synaesthesia. This condition describes how our senses work together. For example - with respect to sight, taste and smell - seeing a color may evoke any number of other sensations. Green may be evocative of the smell of grass, lemon yellow may evoke a sour taste.

Sensory input is best understood by the fact that each sense has a pathway to the brain. These paths are parallel to each other

However, in some situations, a cross over from one pathway to the other occurs. Seeing the color yellow-green may evoke taste sensations of sourness; pink may evoke sweetness. Seeing the color grey may evoke olefactory (smell) sensations of smokiness.

We all have some degree of synaesthesia. However, a person with a strong sense of synaesthesia senses stimuli different from a "normal" person. For example, to the person with synaesthesia, a color might have a "taste", a sound might be "felt", and a food might be "heard".

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