The impact of synaesthesia and absolute pitch on musical development

Abstract

This dissertation investigated the impact of synaesthesia and absolute pitch (AP) on musical development. Synaesthesia is a rare neurological condition in which the stimulation of one sense modality leads to an automatic, involuntary experience in a second sense modality. While synaesthesia is more prevalent among arts professionals, and is linked to enhanced memory and creativity, no studies to date have examined the impact of synaesthesia on musical development. A review of the literature uncovered that AP - the ability to label a given note in the absence of a reference note - was often reported to co-occur with synaesthesia. Synaesthesia and AP are thus two uncommon neurological conditio..