Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Chromesthesia
Summary
Chromesthesia or sound-to-color synesthesia is a type of synesthesia in which sound involuntarily evokes an experience of color, shape, and movement. Individuals with sound-color synesthesia are consciously aware of their synesthetic color associations/perceptions in daily life. Synesthetes that perceive color while listening to music experience the colors in addition to the normal auditory sensations. The synesthetic color experience supplements, but does not obscure real, modality-specific perceptions. As with other forms of synesthesia, individuals with sound-color synesthesia perceive it spontaneously, without effort, and as their normal realm of experience. Chromesthesia can be induced by different auditory experiences, such as music, phonemes, speech, and/or everyday sounds.
The color associations, that is, which color is associated to which sound, tone, pitch, or timbre is highly idiosyncratic, but in most cases, consistent over time. Individuals with synesthesia have unique color pairings. However, studies to date have reported that synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike associate high pitched sounds with lighter or brighter colors and low pitched sounds with darker colors, indicating that a common mechanism may underlie those associations in normal adult brains. There are forms of pseudo-chromesthesia that may be explained by associations synesthetes have made and forgotten from childhood.
As with other types of synesthesia, sound-color synesthesia can be divided into groups based on the way the colors are experienced. Those that 'see' or perceive the color in external space are called projectors, and those that perceive the color in the mind's eye are often called associators, but these terms can be misleading to understanding the nature of the experience. For most synesthetes, the condition is not wholly sensory/perceptual.
For some individuals, chromesthesia is only triggered by speech sounds, while others' chromesthesia can be triggered by any auditory stimuli.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.