As a child, Constantina Makridakis, a 28-year-old jewellery designer from Greece, thought everyone could taste voices and names. Her father’s name, Nicholas, tasted like caramel-coated chocolate, while her mother’s name, Maria, was pasta with prawns. The tastes were usually pleasant; the name Paul, a rich chocolate liquor, was particularly delicious.
We talk from our mouth, so it made sense [that] we also taste names and voices … it seemed connected to me, so I didn't ask anyone about this.” That was until one day in her late teens, when her sister, Amelia, whose name tasted sweet - often in the form of syrup or jam - told her about a documentary on synaesthesia. After watching it, Makridakis realised she had a form of synaesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon in which sensory experience triggers another. The experience of synaesthesia can vary significantly.
For example, American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish experiences the names of days of the week as colours, numbers and shapes. Hungarian composer Franz Liszt is also believed to have been a synesthete, experiencing musical notes as colours. In 1842, he is said to have confused musicians in the Weimar orchestra when he instructed them, “Gentlemen, a little bluer, if you please!” Janina Neufeld, a researcher at the Centre of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet (KIND) in Sweden, said that although it may seem surprising for non-synesthetes to hear about Makridakis’s experience, most of us can relate if we think about our own internal sensory associations.
It is estimated that 2 to 4 percent of the world’s population experiences some form of synaesthesia, although the true number may be higher, Neufeld said. Like Makridakis, many do not realise they have it - or that their experiences are unusual. Neufeld herself experiences a form of spatial sequence synaesthesia, a milder variation that some people may have without realising.
At KIND’s offices in Stockholm, she explained her version by closing her eyes and outlining a circle in the air with her finger, which she described as a full year. On the circle, which she said exists in her “inner space” or mind, the year starts at the bottom of an undulating sphere, which she described as looking like a roller coaster track, and goes counterclockwise, with some months, such as December, longer than others. How synaesthesia works on a neurological level is not yet fully understood, Neufeld explained.
One leading theory suggests that synesthetes may experience less “synaptic pruning” during childhood, a process in which neurons and synapses that are not needed are removed. For example, a child may strengthen the synapses related to a parent’s voice but prune those related to strangers, reinforcing useful connections and removing redundant ones. The idea is that this pruning process is less extensive for people with synaesthesia, allowing extra cross‑sensory connections to remain.
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