PIXABAY, GERALTSynesthesia, the linking of two or more separate senses such as taste and hearing, is thought to arise from hyperconnectivity in the brain. But how those connections come about has been unclear. Now, researchers in Europe have identified a handful of rare genetic variants in multiple families with the condition. The findings, published yesterday (March 5) in PNAS, lend support to the idea that synesthesia is at least partly determined by genes influencing brain development.
“It’s very exciting,” Romke Rouw, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved in the work, tells Science. “It provides a fascinating suggestion of a link between particular genetic variations and hyperconnectivity in the synesthetic brain.”
Synesthesia is thought to affect around 4 percent of the population and comes in many flavors: some synesthetes hear music when they taste food, others see colors associated with words or emotions. To narrow in on the contribution of genetic variation to the condition, the researchers focused on three families with a type of synesthesia that caused them to experience colors while listening to sounds.
Using whole-genome sequencing, the team identified 37 genes that harbored variants predictive of whether a person had synesthesia or not, ...
