6 Recent Research Methods

While early synesthesia research dealt primarily with the question of similarities and the description of the phenomenon, recent research concentrates increasingly on the neurological foundations of synesthesia.

Motivated by the invention of imaging systems, such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography), synesthesia research has recently gained in importance (Ione and Tyler 2004). Up to now, research has mainly focused on the neurological foundations of grapheme-color synesthesia. Apart from several analogies, however, the results of these studies and the theories derived from them vary widely.