The neural correlates of coloured music: A functional MRI investigation of auditory–visual synaesthesia

In auditory–visual synaesthesia, all kinds of sound can induce additional visual experiences. To identify the brain regions mainly involved in this form of synaesthesia, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used during non-linguistic sound perception (chords and pure tones) in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. Synaesthetes showed increased activation in the left inferior parietal cortex (IPC), an area involved in multimodal integration, feature binding and attention guidance. No significant group-differences could be detected in area V4, which is known to be related to colour vision and form processing. The results support the idea of the parietal cortex acting as sensory nexus area in auditory–visual synaesthesia, and as a common neural correlate for different types of synaesthesia.

► Brain activation of auditory–visual synaesthetes and controls during sound perception is compared using fMRI.
► Synaesthetes show significantly more brain activation in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC).
► This area is involved also in normal multi-modal integration.
► No group difference was detected in the colour-area V4.