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The Melbourne Synaesthesia Research Group
Synaesthesia is a phenomenon in which certain objects or categories result in highly unusual additional experiences. For example, the taste of a particular food may also elicit a distinct tactile sensation, or the appearance of a letter or digit may be accompanied by a vivid experience of colour.
Synaesthesia is not a disorder, and many people do not realise they are in any way unusual.
Research on synaesthesia provides a unique opportunity to examine how the brain represents the sensory and conceptual properties of objects, and how learning and experience shape the way the brain codes this information.
The Melbourne Synaesthesia Research Group (Australia) has been investigating synaesthesia since 1999, with the main focus being on the most common form of synaesthesia, in which letters, words and digits elicit vivid experiences of colour (often called 'grapheme-colour' or 'phoneme-colour' synaesthesia, depending on whether the letters/digits/words elicit colours when they are seen or heard). Other forms of synaesthesia seem to be much rarer, and may even reflect different underlying brain processes. Individuals with grapheme-colour or phoneme-colour synaesthesia typically report experiencing specific colours when hearing or reading (or just thinking about) letters, words and digits.
If you want a brief (two-page) overview of synaesthesia and what is known about the phenomenon, take a look at this Quick Guide by Catherine Mulvenna and Vincent Walsh of University College London. If you want to know more about the research conducted by the Melbourne Synaesthesia Research Group, see the papers below.
We are always interested to hear from people who think they may have synaesthesia. You can contact us via email: brain@unimelb.edu.au
or by post:
Prof. Jason B. Mattingley
Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
School of Behavioural Science
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010, Australia
The following links will allow you to download our relevant publications
| Paper 1 |
A review article of the empirical literature on synaesthesia |
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Rich, A. N., & Mattingley, J. B. (2002). Anomalous perception in synaesthesia: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3: 43-52. |
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| Paper 2 |
The results of a questionnaire study of 192 synaesthetes, exploring demographic and personal characteristics as well as detailed analysis of the letter/digit-colour relationships of 150 grapheme-colour synaesthetes. |
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Rich, A. N., Bradshaw, J. L., & Mattingley, J. B. (in press). A systematic, large-scale study of synaesthesia: implications for the role of early experience in lexical-colour associations. Cognition. |
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Three papers looking at the role of attention in synaesthesia. |
| Paper 3 |
Edquist, J., Rich, A. N., Brinkman, C., & Mattingley, J. B. (in press). Do synaesthetic colours act as unique features in visual search? Cortex. |
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| Paper 4 |
Mattingley, J. B., Payne, J. M., & Rich, A. N. (in press). Attentional load attenuates synaesthetic priming effects in grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Cortex. |
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| Paper 5 |
Rich, A. N., & Mattingley, J. B. (2003). The effects of stimulus competition and voluntary attention on colour-graphemic synaesthesia. NeuroReport, 14 (14), 1793-1798. |
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| Paper 6 |
A study looking at interference from synaesthesia as a way of measuring objectively the occurrence of synaesthetic colours. |
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Mattingley, J. B., Rich, A. N., Yelland, G., & Bradshaw, J. L. (2001). Unconscious priming eliminates automatic binding of colour and alphanumeric form in synaesthesia. Nature, 410: 580-582. |
Here are a few of the relevant websites. There are many other web pages about synaesthesia that you can find using your websearch engine (NB: there are two alternative spellings - synaesthesia and synesthesia, so search for both)
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