>Humans are the same, my neurotransmitters work the same as yours, usually
for similar reasons, I am build pretty close
>to the same as you or anyone else.
" I sat nearby while Michael whisked the sauce he had made for the roast
chickens. "Oh, dear," he said, slurping a spoonful, "there aren't enough
points on the chicken."
"Aren't enough what?" I asked.
He froze and turned red, betraying a realization that his first
impession had been as awkward as that of a debutante falling down the
stairs.
"You're a neurologist, maybe it will make sense to you. I know it
sounds crazy, but I have this thing, see, where I taste by shape." He
looked away. "How can I explain?" he asked himself.
"Flavors have shape," he started, frowning into the depths of the
roasting pan. "I wanted the taste of this chichen to be a pointed shape,
but it came out all round." He looked up at me, still blushing. "Well, I
mean it's nearly spherical," he emphasized, trying to keep the volume down.
"I can't serve this if it doesn't have points."
An old-fashioned and odd diagnosis came to mind, but I wanted to hear
more in Michael's own words to be sure. "It sounds like nobody understands
what you're talking about," I finally said.
"That's the problem," sighed Michael. "Nobody's ever heard of this.
They think I'm on drugs or that I'm making it up. That's why I never
intentionally tell people about my shapes. Only when it slips out. It's so
perfectly logical that I thought everybody felt shapes when they ate. If
there's no shape, there's no flavor."
I tried not to regester any surprise. "Where do you feel these
shapes?" I asked.
"All over," he said, straightening up, "but mostly I feel things rubbed
against my face or sitting in my hands."
I kept my poker face and said nothing.
"When I taste something with intense flavor," Michael continued, "the
feeling sweeps down my arm into my fingertips. I feel it--its weight, its
texture, whether it's warm or cold, everything. I feel it like I'm actually
grasping something." He held his palms up. "Of couse, there's nothing
really there," he said, staring at his hands. "But it's not an illusion
because I feel it."
One more question to be certain. "How long have you tasted shapes?"
"All my life," he said. "But nobody ever understands." He shrugged
and carved up the chickens. "Am I a hopeless case, Doc?" " [1]
The above is by the former Chief Resident in neurology at George Washington
University. It is an example of a person with /synesthesia/, a condition
that had been known about since the 1700s, but which was not understood
until someone entertained the odd proposition that perhaps we are *not* all
wired-up the same after all.
" Michael Watson and I first approached the puzzle of synesthesia as
analysts expecting an objective answer, possibly a tangle of neurons, a
short circut that we could point to and say, "Ah ha, here's the culprit."
We could not possibly have realized at the time how deep we were in an
adventure that increasingly laid bare the neurological evidence for seeing
the primacy of emotion over reason; the impossibility of a purely
"objective" point of view; the force of intuitive knowledge; and why
affirming personal experience yields a more satisfying understanding than
analyzing what something "means." " [2]
[1] Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. 1993. _The Man Who Tasted Shapes; A Bizarre
Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning, and
Consciousness_ (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Book.)
[2] ibid.
-Prof. Tim