Abstract

Over the past decade, the number of studies of synaesthesia using neuroimaging methods has increased dramatically. This is due both to the development of testable neurophysiological models of synaesthesia and sophisticated methods for analysing functional neuroimaging data. Although results from different imaging methods generally converge, this chapter focuses specifically on findings from functional neuroimaging as other chapters in this section focus on electrophysiological and anatomical methods. Functional neuroimaging studies support the conclusion that synaesthesia is a consequence of increased communication between cortical brain regions, as suggested by the cross-activation theory. However, a large number of open questions remain, and alternative theories have only begun to be tested with functional neuroimaging methods. I discuss the methodological developments that have allowed more direct tests of other models, and suggest future directions for functional neuroimaging research in synaesthesia.