Have you ever wondered what your friend’s name tastes like?

For people with synesthesia, this isn’t just a strange question — it’s part of their everyday reality

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Written by Madison Emorie Hayes

Edited by Kamilla Jumayeva

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You often wake up and start your morning as you wish—rising from bed, washing your face, brushing your teeth, and applying serums to prepare for the day. Then comes the steaming cup of coffee, once just grounds and hot water, now sweetened with sugars and creamers. Breakfast follows, whether at home or out, and from there, the day unfolds as you please.

But imagine this: you wake up in the morning and genuinely feel the sound of your air conditioner fanning you. You might taste the cerulean blue of your toothpaste more than the actual flavor of its chemicals, or describe yourself as feeling like the water running down the sink as you wash your face — even tasting the color brown before taking your first sip of coffee. This phenomenon is what at least 4% of people experience across the globe – synesthesia.

Illustration by Alina Iskakova for Mergen.

What is synesthesia? 

According to the Cleveland Clinic, synesthesia occurs when the brain routes sensory information through unrelated pathways, causing a person to experience multiple senses at once. It’s like having neural wires crossed — in that person’s brain, two or more senses are activated when typically only one would be.

Inside the author’s brain 

When a writer picks up a pencil, laptop, typewriter, or other form of essentials needed to produce writing, they decide to commit to a communication with logical arguments, observations, interactions, and much more. 

Writers reach to use words for their original meaning, often committing to deep imagery and expression to create a well-rounded message for their piece of literature. 

They use their working memory to manipulate ideas and conjure sentence structures, using focus and language processing to apply accurate construction and grammar. Authors use divergent thinking, creating an array of new ideas, and convergent thinking to narrow down the best ones–creating work they’re satisfied with. 

How synesthesia shapes writers across genres

Fiction writers with synesthesia can create unique and intense descriptions of noises and dialogue (e.g., “His voice was a loud purple, like purple yam”). This can create different portrayals of characters and events within literature. Writers can also describe characters or settings as taste textures (e.g., “Her close proximity to me tasted like smoked wood and cinnamon”).

With these unusual descriptions, different emotions can be evoked from readers, allowing them to be fully immersed in that piece of writing. Visualizing mythical settings with eccentric imagery can help immensely with world building, leaving readers wishing for more. 

Magical realism, science fiction, and various other narratives can be greatly altered and manipulated by this condition. Even non-synesthetic writers can tap into this with practice and exploring their own emotional-sensory memory, but this can be efficiently accessed with synesthetic brain chemistry. 

Synesthetic nonfiction writers can also leverage the use of unusual description, portraying their life or events in history with different vocabulary, grasping on to readers’ attention. 

In their mind, the 4th of July could invoke a taste. These different perspectives and lives lived with this condition can draw in readers who might not experience it, learning about the world and others through a different lens.

Synesthesia in songwriting

And finally, synesthetic songwriters can experience an entirely different world of music. Many musicians experience chromesthesia – a condition where sounds or notes can trigger ideas of colors or emotional perceptions. 

An artist might view D major as a muddy dark brown or drum motions as hot pink. Synesthetic songwriters can feel textures or taste certain words to put forth an emotion. A song's composition can be a dry desert orange or a wavy, lavish green. They might avoid the word "never" because it tastes off or use the word "love" sparingly because it feels sharp. 

With this condition, they can create pieces of work that artists outside of the 4% of people that experience synesthesia might not be able to create on their own. 

However, despite all of these positives, synesthesia can have its downsides. The continuous crossed senses can lead to sensory overload when stimulated with certain music or crowded places. Some names can taste rotten for them to speak, avoiding aspects of life such as people, foods, or places due to these involuntary reactions. Synesthetes often struggle with sensory overload and may develop mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. They can also face social isolation, sometimes being shunned by peers for being different.

A different way to sense the world

Synesthesia is what some deem an invisible experience but is most definitely experienced by individuals around the world.

So, the next time you say a friend’s name or think of a music genre, ask yourself—what might that name taste like? Would touching that genre of music feel different, or even painful, compared to another?