Synesthesia is a perceptual condition in which information between the senses is blended.  Our laboratory is working to understand synesthesia from three angles.  First, we have collected and rigorously verified over 10,000 synesthetes.  Second, we are performing high-throughput neuroimaging to understand the small differences in brain circuitry that cause synesthesia.  Finally, we are performing a family linkage analysis to pull the gene for synethesia.

In order to speed and standardize the study of synesthesia, we have developed a standardized battery for testing and quantifying the phenomenon at synesthete.org. This battery of questionnaires and online software is free and open to the public, and provides a rigorous, standardized scoring system. Do you think you might be a synesthete?  Go to synesthete.org to find out.  Are you a researcher?  Have your test subjects enter your email in the 'Share results with a researcher?' field, and you will be automatically emailed a link to view their results.

For the state-of-the-science in the synesthesia , please see my book on synesthesia, co-authored with Richard Cytowic: Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (MIT Press, 2009).  

Here's what Oliver Sacks writes about the book:
"Twenty years ago, synesthesia - the automatic conjoining of two or more senses - was regarded by scientists (if at all) as a rare curiosity. We now know that perhaps one person in twenty is synesthetic, and so we must regard it as an essential, and fascinating, part of the human experience. Indeed, it may well be the basis and inspiration for much of human imagination and metaphor. No one has done more than Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman to bring a careful neuroscientific attention to synesthesia, grounded in decades of research and reports from thousands of patients. Their work has changed the way we think of the human brain, and Wednesday Is Indigo Blue is a unique and indispensable guide for anyone interested in how we perceive the world." 

For a quick description on what exactly Synesthesia is, watch lab Grad Student Steffie Tomson's concise description as seen on PBS' Nova ScienceNOW

For some of our papers on synesthesia, see:

• Eagleman DM (2010). Synaesthesia. British Medical Journal. 340: b4616 [Full text]
• Eagleman DM (2009). The objectification of overlearned sequences: A large-scale analysis of spatial sequence synesthesia. Cortex. 45(10): 1266-1277. [Full text]
• Eagleman DM & Goodale MA (2009). Why color synesthesia involves more than color. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 13(7): 288-292. [Full text]
• Eagleman DM, Kagan AD, Nelson SN, Sagaram D, Sarma AK (2007). A standardized test battery for the study of Synesthesia. Journal of Neuroscience Methods. 159: 139-145. [Full text]

For a few popular articles on our research, see UT Medical Magazine [pdf], Houston Chronicle, or Seed Magazine.

In 2006, my laboratory hosted the American Synesthesia Association annual meeting in Houston. In 2010, I was the keynote speaker for the UK Synaesthesia Association annual meeting.