How Synesthesia Speaks to Creativity
Library of Congress
Music and the Brain lecture-concert series
October 30, 2009 Running time: 61 minutes (You Tube)
“Neurologist Richard Cytowic rediscovered the involuntary joining of different senses in 1980 and returned it to the scientific mainstream. In his recent book, Wednesday is Indigo Blue, Cytowic sums up 30 years of exploration into synesthesia’s place in both science and art. Far from a mere curiosity, it is an elevated form of the perception everyone already has. Minds that function differently are not so strange after all, and everyone can learn from them. Brains are already highly cross-wired, and with 1 in 23 people having the trait, synesthesia may hold a key to human creativity. This lecture was presented as part of the Library’s Music and the Brain series.