Music-colour synaesthesia: Sensorimotor features and synaesthetic experience

The main aim and objective of this study is to highlight commonalities between mechanisms underlying music-colour synaesthesia and general music cognition, and to demonstrate some forms of music-colour synaesthesia are grounded in action.Two groups (synaesthetes/non-synaesthetes) reported their experience whilst listening to 3 sets of 4 musical excerpts presented in random order:Set 1: Excerpts played on the participant’s principal instrumentSet 2: As in Set 1 but on an instrument not played by the participant beforeSet 3: As in Set 1 but played on an electronic instrument, and with no expressionParticipants selected and rated the applicability and intensity of terms that best described their emotional, sensorimotor/multimodal, and synaesthetic experience, and strength of their motivation to move and vocalise to the music. It was expected that the intensity of listeners’ synaesthetic experience would be influenced by a change of instrument (i.e., a change from their own instrument, to one with which they have no expertise), and there would not be a significant difference between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes when rating emotional and sensorimotor factors across different listening conditions.The data were subject to four types of analysis. First, a repeated measures ANOVA tested differences in emotional and sensorimotor ratings across different listening conditions between synaesthetes and controls. Second, a principal component analysis explored clustering of sensorimotor and emotional dimensions. Third,independent t-tests explored any differences between the two groups in the interrelation. Fourth, a Pearson’s correlation analysis tested the relationship between sensorimotor and emotional responses, and for any difference between controls and synaesthetes. The most influential effect on the intensity of listeners’ multimodal, emotional or synaesthetic responses was whether or not music was performed by a human, more so than familiarity with a particular instrument. Synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes wereshown to share a relationship between the intensity of emotional and multimodal responses, yet it was multimodal/sensorimotor intensity that was shown to be fundamentally associated with the intensity of the synaesthetic response. Overall, the results highlighted commonalities between the mechanisms underlying music-colour synaesthesia and general music cognition, and demonstrated that some forms of music-colour synaesthesia are grounded in action

Action, emotion, and music-colour synaesthesia : an examination of sensorimotor and emotional responses in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes

Synaesthesia has been conceptualised as a joining of sensory experiences. Taking a holistic, embodied perspective, we investigate in this paper the role of action and emotion, testing hypotheses related to (1) changes to action-related qualities of a musical stimulus affect the resulting synaesthetic experience; (2) a comparable relationship exists between music, sensorimotor and emotional responses in synaesthetes and the general population; and (3) sensorimotor responses are more strongly associated with synaesthesia than emotion. 29 synaesthetes and 33 non-synaesthetes listened to 12 musical excerpts performed on a musical instrument they had first-hand experience playing, an instrument never played before, and a deadpan performance generated by notation software, i.e., a performance without expression. They evaluated the intensity of their experience of the music using a list of dimensions that relate to sensorimotor, emotional or synaesthetic sensations. Results demonstrated that the intensity of listeners' responses was most strongly influenced by whether or not music is performed by a human, more so than familiarity with a particular instrument. Furthermore, our findings reveal a shared relationship between emotional and sensorimotor responses among both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. Yet it was sensorimotor intensity that was shown to be fundamentally associated with the intensity of the synaesthetic response. Overall, the research argues for, and gives first evidence of a key role of action in shaping the experiences of music-colour synaesthesia

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Music-colour synaesthesia: a conceptual correspondence grounded in action

This thesis describes a radically different account of music-colour synaesthesia in four journal-style papers that develop and test the hypothesis that some forms of music-colour synaesthesia are mediated by concept and context, but grounded in sensorimotor action. Paper One illustrates the breadth of the phenomenology surrounding music-colour synaesthesia, reviews eight neuroimaging studies examining coloured hearing, and discusses the role of conceptual and semantic inducers. Paper Two presents an empirical investigation that demonstrates synaesthesia elicited by written musical key signatures is a genuine form of synaesthesia elicited from the concept, or the idea, of the key. The results also suggest an active role for the body and Paper Three sets out a theoretical framework for a sensorimotor explanation for music-colour synaesthesia. This stems from embodied and enactive accounts of typical music cognition and it is argued that the attributes of “bodiliness” and “grabbiness” might be found in a sonic environment, and that music listening might be perceived as an “act of doing”. Finally, Paper Four presents the results of an empirical investigation that examines the relationships between emotion, action, and synaesthesia and continuations with non-synaesthetic perception. Overall, the results of the project reinforce an existing argument that a single mechanism is not sufficient to explain synaesthetic experiences that arise on hearing music, and highlight the role of multimodal/sensorimotor features in music-colour synaesthesia with a particular focus on its embodied and enactive nature. Future researchers are encouraged to place synaesthesia in response to music on a continuum from “synaesthesia” to “typical music cognition” including consideration of the implications that this may have for theories of synaesthesia, rather than assuming it to be special, separate and unconnected