Speling et al. (2006)

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Neuronal Correlates of Colour-Graphemic Synaesthesia: A fMRI Study by Sperling, Prvulovic, Linden, and Stirn

The 2006 article by Sperling et al. focused on determining a neurological basis for synaesthesia (specifically color-grapheme synaesthesia, in which persons report seeing colors "superimposed" on words and letters, even if the text is not colored or is written/typed with a different color ink). Operating under the hypothesis that a synaesthete would show activation in the color processing area of the brain (V4/V8). Using an "AB boxcar design", subjects were shown sets of letters that either elicited a synaesthetic (color) response or did not. Justifying their hypothesis, letters eliciting a color response were found to correlate with increased activation of the color processing areas.