For most of us, the boundaries between our bodily senses are clear-cut and rigid. But for a few rare individuals, the demarcation between vision and hearing, or between taste and touch, are less solid, with one bleeding into the other.
These people have a condition called "synesthesia," in which two or more of the senses are crossed. Some see colours when listening to music, while others associate tastes with shapes or words with colors.
A very small number of synesthetes can "taste" words.
A new study finds that individuals with this last form of synesthesia - called "lexical-gustatory" synesthesia - can taste a word before they ever speak it, and that the word's meaning, not its sound or spelling, is what triggers this taste sensation.
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