synesthesia?

[dsgood]

For a story involving synesthesia (sensory crossovers; seeing sound is a relatively common one), I came up with the idea of tasting equations. And thought I should check to see if this exists. And if it does, get info from someone who has it.

Google found one person who mentioned having it — on a forum for ex-Christians, which presents difficulties in contacting them.

Does anyone here taste equations?

[Wandering Author]

This is something that has always interested me, and I have to tell you that – although you could literally pick anything you chose and no one would be able to prove it was impossible (the mind’s wiring is far too complex for that, at least for now) – you’ve chosen one of the more obscure possibilities. I think I’ve seen one or two people on Forward Motion who say they have some form of synesthesia, and those were all relatively common forms. You might have better luck asking this on a forum that tends to draw people who have or are interested in obscure neurological issues.

I’m curious. Why do you feel you can’t just post to the forum where you found this person, and explain your situation? (You may well be right – I’m just wondering what social cues I’m missing here that would make this such a horrible idea. If you’d rather not elaborate, sorry for pestering you.)

Edit: I did a bit of looking around, and I think the closest to what you’re trying to do is lexical —>>> gustatory synesthesia. It is, as I thought, a rare variant, but in the main Wikipedia article on the topic of synesthesia, there is a section which offers a few insights into how this works (which I think would probably apply for equations as well as for words), and if you followed up on this area, you’d probably find much more.

Further edit: This brief summary says there have only been five documented cases of this type in a century. So I think you’re going to have a very hard time finding anyone to ask about it, but I hope there might be something useful in what I dug up (and you can always try using the terms from these to perform searches for more extensive articles – I’m sorry I haven’t done more, but I need to get back to my own writing… ).

[dsgood]

Lexical-gustatory synesthesia — much thanks!

The forum was one for ex-Christians, which I am not.

[Author]

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