The Man Who Tasted Shapes - Richard E. Cytowic

[goodreads]

Title: The Man Who Tasted Shapes
Author: Richard E. Cytowic
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 182
Date read: July, 2010

The ten people in one million who are synesthetes are born into a world where one sensation (such as sound) conjures up one or more others (such as taste or color). Extensive experiments with more than 40 synesthetes led Richard Cytowic to an explanation of synesthesia and reveals the brain to be an active explorer, not just a passive receiver--a fascinating breakthrough in our understanding of what it means to be human.

Half interesting, half very dry and occasionally boring. Richard Cytowic is obviously very interested in synaesthesia - what causes it, how it is manifested in different people, whether or not you can track it by scanning the brain etc. - but his book isn't really meant for non-medical readers. I was fascinated by the experiments and the discoveries, but there was a LOT of medical babble that I had no interest in at all, and ended up just skimming.

A non-fiction that reads too much like a textbook for me to enjoy it as "casual reading".