Although it is a popular catch phrase for Skittles candy, the meaning of this advertisement might be rooted in medical history. The line, "taste the rainbow," might only make sense in a Skittles advertisement, but to researchers today, it means something else.
In 1880 Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, published findings of a curious condition present among members of the human population. Certain people in the human population would associate colors with various sensory phenomena. Numbers, letters and even tones evoked color responses. More obscure instances of this condition result in words evoking taste responses.
Moreover, contrary to what might be initial reactions, none of these patients were drug addicts. They suffer from what most probably a hereditary disorder termed synesthesia. The disorder is widely researched and has been widely published. One well-known neuroscientist who has examined the disorder is Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran of the Center of Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego. His talk at the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, Calif. and publications in "Scientific American" offered the basis of this article.
Dr. Ramachandran offers the following explanation for the origin and cause of the disorder. The disease seems to run in families, indicating some genetic basis. What seems to be occurring is some cross-wiring in the brain in a region called the fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe.
At this location, areas of the brain controlling numbers and those involved with color recognition are found adjacently in normal individuals. Given the inheritance of synesthesia, cross wiring may occur as a result of some genetic mutation which causes the number and color centers to become linked.
Alternatively, it is known that our nervous systems do not start off distinctly organized, but rather, starting with a rather unspecialized whole, they slowly are trimmed down to form distinct connections, and specialized areas.
In this specialization process (differentiation) it is possible that the separation between the number and color-localized areas in the fusiform gyrus do not become separated and instead remain linked due to some hereditary condition. This can also explain tone-color synesthesia, as the result of a non-specialization between the areas which process tone and those which process color in the same region.
Dr. Ramachandran also explores what this might mean to the study of the mind in general. Among the more interesting theories he puts forth, is that synesthesia might help to explain why the disorder is seven times more common in artists, poets, and novelists.
Essentially, a byproduct of the cross wiring is the ability for individuals to engage in creative metaphorical thinking in the sense of taking two unrelated concepts, like sound and number recognition, for example, and forging a connection between them.
Ramachandran gives an example from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" of the line "it is the east, and Juliet is the sun," linking two completely unrelated objects and forming an artistic product that has stood the test of time. The act of creating metaphors is essential to much of artistic work, thereby offering an explanation for why synesthetics often turn out to be artists.
While these and other topics will continuously be researched it is obvious that synesthesia will carry on to be a source of great excitement and further analysis as its relations to other domains of knowledge and learning are explored. Already indicated by Ramachandran are the possible connections between the principles of abstraction and metaphor associated with synesthesia and the evolution of human language capacity in general. Only time will tell, but hopefully by now you have become more appreciative of phrases like "taste the rainbow."
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