PEOPLE with synaesthesia really are more creative, a small study suggests. Synaesthetes experience a 鈥渕ixing鈥� of the senses, so they can see colours when they read or feel touch when hearing sounds, for instance. Famous examples such as Vladimir Nabokov and Richard Feynman have prompted speculation that the condition is linked to creativity, but the idea has never been tested.
So Catherine Mulvenna of the University of Glasgow in the UK compared creativity in four people with number-colour synaesthesia with four volunteers without the condition. The synaesthetes scored higher in all measures of creative thinking, she reported at the recent Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in San Francisco.
The findings support the 鈥渉yperconnectivity鈥� theory of synaesthesia, says Ed Hubbard of the University of California, San Diego, who collaborated with Mulvenna. The theory suggests the crossover between sensations occurs because brain areas are connected more extensively than normal, allowing synaesthetes to make links other people cannot.
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