Music and odor in harmony: A case of music-odor synaesthesia
Speed, L., & Majid, A.
(2018). Music and odor in harmony: A case of music-odor synaesthesia. In C. Kalish, M. Rau, J. Zhu, & T. T. Rogers (
Eds.),
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018) (pp. 2527-2532). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
We report an individual with music-odor synaesthesia who experiences automatic and vivid odor sensations when she hears music. S’s odor associations were recorded on two days, and compared with those of two control participants. Overall, S produced longer descriptions, and her associations were of multiple odors at once, in comparison to controls who typically reported a single odor. Although odor associations were qualitatively different between S and controls, ratings of the consistency of their descriptions did not differ. This demonstrates that crossmodal associations between music and odor exist in non-synaesthetes too. We also found that S is better at discriminating between odors than control participants, and is more likely to experience emotion, memories and evaluations triggered by odors, demonstrating the broader impact of her synaesthesia.
Publication type
Proceedings paper
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