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The sweet taste of music
March 2, 2005
Special to World Science
People with a bizarre condition called synaesthesia have brains wired so that they “mix up” their perceptions: they hear colors or see sounds, for example.
Now, scientists have identified a particularly interesting case of the condition.
A synaesthetic musician, who ‘tastes’ sounds, has a scale of flavor experiences depending on the tone interval of the music being played—and she makes use of these associations in her profession, the researchers say.
This extraordinary sensory crosslink, described in this week’s issue of the research journal Nature, shows that synaesthesia may be useful in solving cognitive problems, the researchers said.
The musician studied by Lutz Jäncke and colleagues at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, not only ‘sees’ notes as different colours, which is not unusual among synaesthetes, but also associates different tone intervals with specific tastes, which is exceptional.
The 27-year-old Swiss musician applies her odd abilities to the process of identifying tone intervals, a difficult task for many musicians.
A tone interval is the distance between two pitches on a scale. For instance, on traditional scale that begins with do-re-mi, the distance between “mi” and “si” on this scale is a fifth, because five notes up or down the scale must be counted to get between them.
Some intervals come in two varieties known as “major” or “minor,” reflecting the fact that the distance is slightly larger or smaller depending on the type of scale and the particular notes. Thus, there exist major thirds and minor thirds.
Even experienced musicians sometimes have trouble identifying intervals. But the musician studied by the University of Zurich group consistently associated the taste of pure water with the fifth, of cream with the minor sixth, and so on. This enables the musician, who is of approximately average intelligence (I.Q. 115) to use her extraordinary type of synaesthesia to her advantage, they wrote.
Her “application of her synaesthetic sensations in identifying tone intervals — a complex task that requires formal musical training — demonstrates that synaesthesias may be used to solve cognitive problems,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers demonstrated this by applying solutions tasting sour, bitter, salty or sweet to her tongue and asking her to identify tone intervals that would normally induce either the same or another taste. She responded significantly faster than non-synaesthetic musicians when
the applied tastes were the ‘correct’ ones.
—EJL
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