Henry Gray, 23, tells Newsweek of his extremely rare neurological condition that makes him experience the sensation of certain tastes, smells, or feelings. When he was eight years old, his mother was told that he had been making unusual comments to other children, like: "Oh, I don't want to play with you, Fergus, your name is too itchy," or saying that the name Martin tastes like the candy Smarties.
He thought that it was just a normal thing and that everyone was like him. That is why he could not understand how nobody else thought the name Martin tasted like Smarties. Due to his condition, he would choose specific friends based on how nice their names tasted or refuse to play with kids with unpleasant feelings.
The Man Who Tastes Names
Gray's rare neurological condition is called lexical-gustatory synesthesia, and although he did not struggle while growing up because of the condition, it has influenced his choices with friends. He was still happy as a kid and did not want to see any more medical professionals, although he was given the option to return if there were any problems.
He could also experience the same sensation with other words, but names cause the most severe reaction. Even reading names gave him that sensation, so he quickly reads them to make it stop. Gray also noted that he could smell the names of some people as he learned to associate them with how their names taste.
However, the sensation could be intrusive. For example, the credit sequence shown on TV sparks a strong reaction as it sometimes becomes background noise while he is talking to someone.
He thinks that the taste he feels with certain names, like Alice or Andrew, has something to do with how they are spelled. But others seem to not correlate with how they taste, such as Megan and Noah, which taste like ham and coconut respectively.
As he got older, he learned to live with his condition and hide it. Whenever he meets someone whose name has a certain sensation, he would not show it on the outside. Gray said that he rarely come across names that he dislikes as most of the names he encounters give pleasant sensation.
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What is Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia
Synesthesia is typically seeing shapes when hearing music. But its gustatory forms are like Gray's case. According to a paper in Frontiers in Psychology, gustatory forms of synesthesia involve an automatic and consistent experience of tastes triggered by non-taste-related inducers.
The person may hear, read, speak, or think of words and experience the sense of taste. Some people with particularly strong lexical-gustatory synesthesia are constantly assailed by taste impressions due to a number of words, per The Synesthesia Tree.
Each word has its corresponding flavor that is consistent, and the person perceives them whenever they remember that word, or names in Gray's case. Synesthetic flavors for words are usually a temporary sensation felt in the mouth, although they could learn strong associations induced by perceiving specific words.
Lexical-gustatory is a rare type of synesthesia, and its real prevalence is unknown. A 2006 study suggests that it is less than 0.2%, although it does not make it the rarest type of synesthesia. However, it is a well-known type, as many studies have been conducted on people with this condition.
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