That they’re decidedly weaker in chromesthetes than non-chromesthetes for some emotions further suggests that chromesthetic experiences also depend on direct, non-emotional connections between the auditory and visual cortex. The fact that chromesthetes exhibit emotional effects at all suggests that music-to-color synesthesia depends, at least in part, on neural connections that include emotion-related circuits in the brain. Interestingly, the emotional effects for chromesthetes were as strong as those for non-chromesthetes on some dimensions (happy/sad, active/passive and strong/weak), but weaker on others (calm/agitated and angry/not-angry). The right side shows the color responses for slow-paced classical music in a minor key (like selection B), which tends to sound sad and weak. The left side of the image below shows the first choices of the syensethetes and non-synesthetes for fast-paced classical music in a major key (like selection A), which tends to sound happy and strong. The non-chromesthetes chose the colors that “went best” with the music (as described above), but the chromesthetes chose the colors that were “most similar to the colors they experienced while listening to the music.” To find out, we repeated the music-color association experiment with 11 chromesthetes and 11 otherwise similar non-chromesthetes. The former theory implies little or no role for emotion in determining the colors that chromesthetes experience, whereas the latter theory implies a strong role for emotion. Other theories propose that synesthesia is related to brain areas that produce emotional responses. Some theories propose that synesthesia is caused by direct connections between different sensory areas of the brain. There are many other forms of synesthesia, including chromesthesia, that affect a surprising number of different sensory domains. The most common form of synesthesia is letter-to-color synesthesia, in which the synesthete experiences color when viewing black letters and digits.
These results support the idea that music-to-color associations in most people are indeed mediated by emotion.Ĭhromesthesia is just one form of a more general condition called synesthesia, in which certain individuals experience incoming sensory information both in the appropriate sensory dimension and in some other, seemingly inappropriate, sensory dimension. (We’re currently testing this possibility in cultures, such as Turkey and India, where the traditional music differs more radically from Western music.) To our surprise, the Mexican and US results were virtually identical, which suggests that music-to-color associations might be universal. To study possible cultural differences, we repeated the very same experiment in Mexico. Meanwhile, the angriest-sounding music elicited the angriest-looking colors (dark, vivid, reddish ones).
We compared the results and found that they were almost perfectly aligned: the happiest-sounding music elicited the happiest-looking colors (bright, vivid, yellowish ones), while the saddest-sounding music elicited the saddest-looking colors (dark, grayish, bluish ones). We’ve tested our theory by having people rate each musical selection and each color on five emotional dimensions: happy to sad, angry to calm, lively to dreary, active to passive, and strong to weak. They may not know that they’re doing this, but the results corroborate this idea. If colors have similar emotional associations, people should be able to match colors and songs that contain overlapping emotional qualities. (Why this might be the case is something we’ll explore later.) C sounds angry and strong, and D sounds sad and calm. In the four clips you just heard, selection A “sounds” happy and strong, while B sounds sad and weak.
We believe that it’s because music and color have common emotional qualities. The mediating role of emotionīut why do music and colors match up in this particular way?
Meanwhile, selection D, a slow, quiet, “easy listening” piano piece, elicited selections dominated by muted, grayish colors in various shades of blue. Selection C was an excerpt from a 1990s rock song, and it caused participants to choose reds, blacks and other dark colors. Selection B, a different section of the very same Bach concerto, caused participants to pick colors that are noticeably darker, grayer and bluer. Selection A, from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number 2, caused most people to pick colors that were bright, vivid and dominated by yellows.
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