Grapheme-tactile synesthesia

It could also be called grapheme-touch synesthesia

This is an uncommon type of synesthesia, with very few cases reported. It consists of tactile sensations being perceived in the body, head, hands, etc. when looking at or thinking about specific letters of the alphabet or numbers. These tactile sensations would occur regularly, rather than being just a one-off occurrence, and the same tactile perception would always correspond to the same symbol.

If these touch sensations occur in response to whole words rather than individual letters, it would be a case of lexical-tactile synesthesia.

Go to the page on lexical-tactile synesthesia

Lexical-tactile and grapheme-tactile synesthesia can occur together in the same person, if some of their consistent tactile sensations are induced by the letters in a word while others only happen in response to the word as a whole.

Here is an interesting description by a person who has both grapheme-tactile and lexical-tactile synesthesia:

“When i read the word lily or other taller and thinner words or letters like typing 'l' consecutively 'lllll' its a vibration bzzzing at the top of my head,

Basically different letters and words give different sensations on different parts of my head and back.

It happens for non-English words too, my second language is Chinese, so i feel associated touches and sensations for those too. (…)

Anyways, I guess I could categorise the main 'touches' that I get from reading as a either a head, back, or spine related touch.

On the head, there's generally 5 sensations that I can sort of categorise them into - tug, weighted, brush past, tilt and buzz. (…) On the back it's mainly just brushing past on the shoulder blades for certain words and on the spine it's more tingly.”

(Source: This post and comments on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2025)

Go to the page on lexical-tactile synesthesia

This page first published: 29 June 2025