Whether we're listening to Bach or the blues¹, our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, Mozart's jaunty² Flute³ Concerto⁴ No. 1 in G major is most often associated with bright yellow and orange, whereas his dour⁵（严厉的，阴沉的） Requiem⁶ in D minor⁷ is more likely to be linked to dark, bluish（有点蓝的） gray. Moreover, people in both the United States and Mexico linked the same pieces of classical orchestral music（管弦乐） with the same colors. This suggests that humans share a common emotional palette -- when it comes to music and color -- that appears to be intuitive and can cross cultural barriers, UC Berkeley researchers said.

 

"The results were remarkably⁸ strong and consistent across individuals and cultures and clearly pointed⁹ to the powerful role that emotions play in how the human brain maps from hearing music to seeing colors," said UC Berkeley vision scientist Stephen Palmer, lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings¹⁰ of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

Using a 37-color palette, the UC Berkeley study found that people tend to pair faster-paced music in a major key with lighter¹¹, more vivid, yellow colors, whereas slower-paced music in a minor key is more likely to be teamed up with darker, grayer, bluer colors.

 

"Surprisingly, we can predict with 95 percent accuracy how happy or sad the colors people pick will be based on how happy or sad the music is that they are listening to," said Palmer, who will present these and related findings at the International Association of Colour conference at the University of Newcastle in the U.K. on July 8. At the conference, a color light show will accompany a performance by the Northern Sinfonia orchestra to demonstrate "the patterns aroused by music and color converging¹² on the neural¹³ circuits that register emotion," he said.

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