Research
The exact mechanism by which synesthesia persists has yet to be identified. Given that synesthetes and non-synesthetes both match sounds to colors in a non-arbitrary way, and that the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs can induce synesthesia in under an hour, some researchers claim it is reasonable to assume that synesthetic experience uses pre-existing pathways that are present in the normal brain. The causality of synesthesia is also unclear at this time, although evidence points to a genetic predisposition. Synesthesia is known to run in families, though the condition may present idiosyncratically within a family. Additionally, synesthesia may skip a generation. However, there are cases of monozygotic twins where only one has synesthesia, indicating there may be additional factors involved.
Differences between synesthetic and non-synesthetic brains may reflect direct hard-wired connections between unimodal auditory and visual regions in the brain, or they may reflect feedback pathways from multimodal audiovisual regions to unimodal visual regions present in all brains.
Read more about this topic: Chromesthesia
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