Macquarie University/The Lighthouse Cutting-edge research at Macquarie University has thrown long-awaited light on the strange sensory phenomenon of synaesthesia. Macquarie researchers have gained groundbreaking insights into the rare condition of synaesthesia by recording the magnetic brain signals of people who see colours where the rest of us do not. In a world-first, the PhD research established that a synaesthete’s brain shows an overlapping neural pattern whether it is registering a ‘real’ colour, or one that is evoked by a non-coloured object, such as a letter or number. “I am pretty excited we have found an objective measure in the neural signals of synaesthetes for these purely internal experiences,” says Director of Macquarie University’s Perception in Action Research Centre Professor Anina Rich, who supervised PhD candidate and the study lead author Lina Teichmann,