Music-colour synaesthesia: Concept, context and qualia

Curwen, Caroline

Abstract

This review provides a commentary on coloured-hearing arising on hearing music: music-colour synaesthesia. Although traditionally explained by the hyperconnectivity theory (Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001a) and the disinhibited feedback theory (Grossenbacher & Lovelace, 2001) as a purely perceptual phenomenon, the review of eight coloured-hearing neuroimaging studies shows that it may not be assumed that these explanations are directly translatable to music-colour synaesthesia. The concept of 'ideaesthesia' (Nikolić, 2009) and the role of conceptual and semantic inducers challenge the likelihood of a single mechanism underlying the cause of sy-naesthesia and argue for a move away from a purely sensory to sensory explanation. Finally, music-colour synaesthesia forms a challenge for established philosophical theories and the position of synaesthesia is considered within the larger context of musical qualia.

Citation

Curwen, C. (2018). Music-colour synaesthesia: Concept, context and qualia. Consciousness and Cognition, 61, 94-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.04.005

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2018-05
• Deposit Date: Oct 11, 2024
• Journal: Consciousness and Cognition
• Print ISSN: 1053-8100
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 61
• Pages: 94-106
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.04.005
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2954047
• Related Public URLs: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/129726/
• Other Repo URL: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/129726/