During the 2019 Christmas holiday, a short interview was taken with        Dr. Chaiyos Khongkhatithum, Medical Doctor, Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University. Back then, the research scope was uncertain. This interview's objective was to explore possibilities from a medical/scientific perspective, which is crucial to the topic.


The interview questions aimed to investigate the possibility of creating a multisensory experience cooperating with two stimuli: gustatory and auditory. Also, the brain's functionality and segments of the brain associated with the two stimuli were addressed. The topic of synesthesia was mentioned in a small part of this interview.

It was an excellent opportunity to have this interview. The author would like to thank Dr.Chaiyos Khongkhatithum for his kind help, support, and cooperation in giving lots of helpful and relevant information pertaining to the research. The interview results provided a clear path on how the research should be conducted and what to look for in the following research period.

 

The first crucial point from this interview is: knowing that it is nearly impossible to modify the sensation of one sense by using other senses because each sense has its individual pathway that is not related to the others. However, there is a correlation between senses since all senses have to go through the same processing system located in the same region. Before the interview, the idea of modifying the sound by using taste or flavour was preferable. For example, it was interesting if audiences could sense a pitch-bending slightly higher by eating sour stimulus. Nevertheless, after the interview, the idea might be too extreme at the moment. According to this fact, instead of modifying the sound physically (neurologically), an attempt to change the audience's perception, psychologically, would be a more reasonable choice. To accomplish this, many tests were needed to justify which taste could pair well with the sound; or the other way around, which kind of sound could fit well with the tastes. To have a stable statistic, it took lots of time to invent the experiment and collect data, which was an excessive workload over the limitation of time. Learning from the experiments done by a professional neurologist or psychologist might be a wiser way to go.

 

The topic of synesthesia, which is closely related to a multisensory experience, was addressed during the interview. Synesthesia has been a topic observed by scientists and researchers for a long time, longer than the topic of multisensory. Synesthesia has many variations; for example, the standard type that occurs to many musicians including Russian composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin, who has a Chromesthesia that evokes an experience of colour. The topic of synesthesia will be elaborated later in this research.

 

In one part of the interview, Dr.Chaiyos gave an example of the individuality of multisensory experience. Specifically, in this sentence, "It needs several tests. On a small group of people, it might be hard to tell because it is a variation, but on a large group, it might be able to find that this chocolate is well-matched with Mozart's piece, or the flavour of orange is well-matched with a song that has a high tone, that is possible". Consciously or unconsciously, Dr, Chaiyos hypothesized that orange is well-matched with a song with a high tone, which is concurrent with many results in scientific papers. It is fascinating to see that humans are consistently mapping senses together on the psychological level.