Synaesthesia for reading and playing musical notes

Neurocase
Jamie WardAlice Bray

Abstract

This study reports three cases of synaesthesia who experience colors in response to written musical notation, graphemes and heard music. The synaesthetes show Stroop-like interference when asked to name the colour of graphemes but not for written musical notes. However, reliable interference is found in two further studies that require deeper processing of the musical notation (namely playing music from colored notation, and naming the synaesthetic color of the notes whilst suppressing the veridical color). This is the first empirical demonstration of synaesthesia for musical notation. The fact that synaesthetic color influences music playing/reading (a sensory-motor transformation) but not verbal color naming suggests that synaesthetic Stroop effects can arise from processing the meaning of a stimulus and not just as a result of verbal response interference. However, it is likely that the color associations themselves have a developmental origin in the names assigned to them. In all three cases, the colors of the written notes are related to the graphemes that arbitrarily denote them (e.g., 'A' may be "red" both as a letter and when written in musical notation). The results suggest that synaesthetic associations may migrate fr...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Feb 26, 2010·Journal of the History of the Neurosciences·Jörg JewanskiJamie Ward
Apr 25, 2007·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·Caroline Yaro, Jamie Ward
Dec 21, 2006·European Neurology·J M S Pearce
Jul 4, 2012·Annual Review of Psychology·Jamie Ward
Mar 16, 2011·Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior·Danko NikolićAleksandra Mroczko
Jun 16, 2009·Trends in Cognitive Sciences·David M Eagleman, Melvyn A Goodale
Jan 16, 2007·Neuropsychologia·Neil MuggletonJamie Ward
Sep 20, 2011·Journal of Neuropsychology·Scott NovichDavid M Eagleman
Jul 16, 2014·Consciousness and Cognition·Lilach Akiva-KabiriAvishai Henik
Sep 6, 2014·Frontiers in Human Neuroscience·Aleksandra Mroczko-Wąsowicz, Danko Nikolić
Oct 23, 2016·Perception·Liliana AlbertazziIacopo Hachen
Feb 12, 2015·Perception·Liliana AlbertazziRocco Micciolo

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