Coloured-Hearing Synaesthesia in Nineteenth-Century Italy

In nineteenth-century Italy, several scientists (e.g. Botta, Verga, Berti and Lussana) became interested in the coloured-hearing phenomena. They published their observations on a number of coloured-hearing cases and started a debate on the neurological features of the phenomenon. These were the first hypotheses on colour-sound localisation, influenced by Gall's theories (Phrenology). The observations were the result of important discoveries on the mechanism of hearing sound performed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Domenico Cutugno and Alfonso Corti. Like French, German and English contributions to early research on synaesthesia, these Italian scientists provided original ideas on the colour-hearing process.