Can Music Make Your Food Taste Better? Spice up your meals with some sonic seasoning. by Andrew Coletti May 20, 2024
"...Sweet and sour were matched with high pitches, bitter and umami with low pitches. Brass instruments sounded bitter, while piano sounded sweet. In a follow-up study, subjects who sampled toffee while listening to custom tracks designed to enhance specific tastes reported an increase in the targeted flavors.
Sonic seasoning is still not well-understood, but some researchers connect it with synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon where one sense activates another..."
Do you see a series of sunken rectangles or 16 circles?
This is The Coffer Illusion.
Our brains are geared toward identifying objects & here, “pixels” are grouped to form edges & contours, shapes, & objects. The image is inherently ambiguous so there is no “right” grouping.
Rectangles dominate first for most people - including me, but keep staring & the image may flip to circles.
#WritersCoffeeClub 5. Can you feel the emotions of your characters as you write them?
Yes, and it's difficult to handle sometimes. I've read speculation that there's some link to #autism and #synesthesia. It's always been like this and I wouldn't change it. I can't visualize much about my characters, but I can feel everything vividly. Sometimes, because of this, they seem more real to me than people I've known.
Experiencing the colors of #synesthesia is wild at times. Marveling at the visuals of a song that is playing can be so intense it's distracting me from what I was doing. Do you ever get used to being engulfed in purple winds and dodging lightning bolts produced by your own emotions?
Sometimes #synaesthesia is less exciting. Like when you're picking a spelling for the name of the kitten so the color of the name is closer to its coat 😹
@PessoaBrain Yes! Do this questionnaire and tell me why there is so much variability between people about how their #MentalImagery works… I wonder if it’s just different degrees of #Synesthesia ?
I didn't know that such a phenomenon exists. But it may explain, why I sometimes see an aura around people when they lie.
Happened the first time 20 years ago in a meeting. At first I couldn't place it, but over the years I have learned to pay attention to it. Even though I am a person shy of physical contact and not a good judge of character, I could always rely on this visual signal very well.
Do you experience something similar? Tell me about it.
For any here who are both multilingual and also experience synesthesia/ideasthesia -- concepts such as numbers, days of the week, educational subjects, music, etc. being felt or experienced to have a specific color, taste, smell or whatnot -- is the color, etc. of that thing different depending on which language you're thinking...
Having 4 people with synesthesia in our house makes for interesting dinner conversation, like debating what different colours taste like and what shape they are. #synesthesia
I'm an urban dweller with a dog and as such love high-density housing with plenty of public greenspace. My #urbanism ties into other beliefs I have in community building, the environment, economic justice, etc, despite living in a hostile city where your humanity is measured by the size of your car. (For my experiences as a pedestrian where I live, follow my alt account @walkipeg)
The thought of sharing my cultural tastes gives me immense anxiety, for once someone knows what music I listen to or TV I watch, my entire character will be placed on trial and I must defend myself with perfect knowledge and moral justification of my tastes. So, I'll skip on that, thanks!
Bilingual synesthesia?
For any here who are both multilingual and also experience synesthesia/ideasthesia -- concepts such as numbers, days of the week, educational subjects, music, etc. being felt or experienced to have a specific color, taste, smell or whatnot -- is the color, etc. of that thing different depending on which language you're thinking...