Caroline's Projects 

Caroline’s research explores a form of synaesthesia also known as chromesthesia, or coloured hearing, that arises on hearing music. The focus of her interest is the examination of how the shapes and colours experienced by some when listening to music may be more conceptual in nature (rather than purely perceptual as has been more commonly examined) by forming a semantic mechanism for representing abstract concepts, and that they may be grounded in action similar to embodied music cognition.

Synaesthesia also presents challenges to established philosophical theories and highlights how our experiences of the world often differ somewhat from one individual to another. The cross disciplinary element of synaesthesia research offers the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the processes of general consciousness and cognition from person to person.

Caroline's Publications 

Curwen, C., Timmers, R. & Schiavio, A.  (2023). Action, emotion, and music-colour synaesthesia: An examination of sensorimotor and emotional responses in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. Psychological Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01856-2

Curwen, C. (2022). The role of synaesthesia in reading written musical key signatures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(10), 2284–2299. https://doi.org//10.1037/xge0001193

Curwen, C. (2020). Music-colour synaesthesia: A sensorimotor account. Musicae Scientiae https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864920956295

Curwen, C. (2018). Music-colour synaesthesia: Concept, context and qualia. Consciousness and Cognition, 61, 94–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2018.04.005

Recent events: 

Colourama at the Festival of the Mind, 20-27 Sept 2018 

Links

https://carolinecurwen.com/ 

Music-colour synaesthesia Podcast