Navigation Links
A longitudinal study of grapheme-color synaesthesia in childhood

What colour is H? Is 4 brighter than 9? For most people these questions might seem baffling, but not for people with grapheme-color synesthesia.

In the first long-term childhood study on grapheme-color synesthesia, researchers followed 80 children to determine when and how associations between graphemes and colors develop. The latest results are published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Grapheme-color synesthesia is a harmless, alternative form of perception caused by subtle differences in the brain possibly, stronger connections between centers for language and color that give letters and numbers their phantom colors. It is passed down from parent to child in around 1 to 2% of the population.

In the present study, a group of synesthete children was tested three times between 6 and 10 years old. Each child was presented with 36 graphemes the letters A to Z and digits 0 to 9 and asked to choose the 'best' of 13 colors for each.

Children with grapheme-color synesthesia had already developed strong associations for around 30% of graphemes at 6 years old. At 7 years old, the same children had associations for around 50% of graphemes, and this increased to 70% of graphemes at 10 years old. The synesthete children were consistent in their choices over this 4-year period. Three children who were synesthetes at ages 6 to 7 were no longer so at 10 years old, indicating that the condition spontaneously disappears in some children as they grow older.

"This repeated testing of child synesthetes in real time allowed us to see for the first time that synesthetic colours emerge slowly during childhood, building up an incremental inventory of colorful letters and numbers," says Dr. Simner, a cognitive neuropsychologist who specializes in synesthesia, from the University of Edinburgh, UK.

The researchers' next challenge is to determine how changes in the intensity of synesthesia - as strengthening or loss with increasing age - can be explained from changes in the organization of the brain.


Contact: Gozde Zorlu

Related biology news :

1. New study analyzes sharp rise in US drug poisoning deaths by county
2. Understanding ourselves by studying the animal kingdom
3. Low levels of blood calcium in dairy cows may affect cow health and productivity, MU study finds
4. Study shows moms may pass effects of stress to offspring via vaginal bacteria and placenta
5. Sons of cocaine-using fathers may resist addiction to drug, Penn Medicine study suggests
6. UNH, UC Davis launch network to study environmental microbes
7. MU study finds more accurate method to diagnose pancreatic cancer
8. Findings announced from landmark study on safety of adolescent bariatric surgery
9. Network to study environmental microbes
10. Health benefits of wild blueberries abound: Study
11. Clay may have been birthplace of life, new study suggests
Post Your Comments:
Breaking Biology News(10 mins):
Breaking Biology Technology: