What it means to ‘feel the noise’

Scientists explore overlapping sensations of sound, touch

SEATTLE — About a year and a half after her stroke, a 36-year-old professor started to feel sounds. A radio announcer’s voice made her tingle. Background noise in a plane felt physically uncomfortable.

Now Tony Ro, a neuroscientist at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, might have figured out the cause of this synesthesia.