A woman has revealed the extraordinary details of her life with a neurological condition that causes her to experience tastes when she hears or says certain words.
The 30-year-old Sarah Gann from Fort Smith, Arkansas, is living with an intriguing sensory phenomenon known as synesthesia. It stimulates her taste buds unexpectedly when particular words are spoken or read.
Strikingly, for Sarah, her boyfriend Jakob Clayton, 27, conjures the taste of paper, while the word ‘blue’ brings her the flavour of chocolate, and ‘concrete’ prompts a sensation akin to milk dipped in cookies. She doesn’t limit her unusual gustatory experiences to these phrases alone; ‘teacher’ evokes a Skittle-like tang, and ‘think’ triggers the sweetness of chocolate milk on her palate.
Gann, who balances her life as a mother of two with her career as a primary school teacher, doesn’t have associations for every word but has a significant number that do trigger tastes. She explained: “I have always tasted words, but when I brought it up to a friend in middle school, she didn’t understand it.”
Describing the intensity of her experiences, she said: “I can’t physically taste the words but I can clearly imagine the taste in my mouth. It’s not always words I like – the word ‘clock’ tastes like milk to me, and I’m not a fan of milk, so that’s not pleasant.”
While she felt isolated with her condition during her younger years, she now embraces it, saying: “I used to feel super weird about it when I was younger because nobody else had synesthesia – but now I find it pretty fun. It’s definitely something to talk about with people – they always want to know what their name tastes like.”
Sarah explained that she experiences a stronger taste of words when she speaks them herself compared to hearing others say them. The sensation is most pronounced for her when the words are both seen in print and spoken aloud, reports the Daily Star.
Interestingly, Sarah’s own name and those of her children, Sailor, aged six, and four year old Skip, do not evoke any particular flavour. However, her partner’s surname ‘Clayton’ triggers a distinct taste. She described: “The word ‘clay’ tastes like clay, but when it’s ‘Clayton’ it tastes like paper.”
She also noted that the flavours associated with specific words are consistent every time she encounters them, and this synesthetic experience occurs most frequently with nouns. Sarah added: “I also get it a lot with names. My favourite is Brandon – it tastes like a chocolate candy bar.”
