The artist Wasily Kandinsky imagined he could hear the tone of his paintings as he made them. Less distinguished people experience a similar tangling of the senses, some reporting that they can taste the words they speak or see the colors of certain words or numbers. This confounding of perception—called synesthesia—was thought to affect at most about 4 percent of the population, but University College London psychologist Jamie Ward has uncovered the best evidence yet that we may all have a bit of synesthesia.
Ward asked 200 random visitors at the Science Museum in London to view two musical animations. One was designed by synesthetes to accompany a piece of music; the other was designed by nonsynesthetes. When asked which animation better matched the music, volunteers overwhelmingly chose the synesthete-designed animation, indicating that even though they did not realize it, their brains were closely attuned to the synchronization of different ...
