The Man Who Tasted Shapes, revised edition (Bradford Books)

In this medical detective adventure, Cytowic shows how synesthesia, or joined sensation, illuminates a wide swath of mental life and leads to a new view of what it means to be human.Richard Cytowics dinner host apologized, There arent enough points on the chicken! He felt flavor also as a physical shape in his hands, and the chicken had come out too round. This offbeat comment in 1980 launched Cytowics exploration into the oddity called synesthesia. He is one of the few world authorities on the subject. Sharing a root with anesthesia (no sensation), synesthesia means joined sensation, whereby a voice, for example, is not only heard but also seen, felt, or tasted. The trait is involuntary, hereditary, and fairly common. It stayed a scientific mystery for two centuries until Cytowics original experiments led to a neurological explanationand to a new concept of brain organization that accentuates emotion over reason. That chicken dinner two decades ago led Cytowic to explore a deeper reality that, he argues, exists in everyone but is often just below the surface of awareness (which is why finding meaning in our lives can be elusive). In this medical detective adventure, Cytowic shows how synesthesia, far from being a mere curiosity, illuminates a wide swath of mental life and leads to a new view of what is means to be humana view that turns upside down conventional ideas about reason, emotional knowledge, and selfunderstanding. This 2003 edition features a new afterword.