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Haloes are real – what colour is yours?

2 January 2013

鶹ý. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

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(Image: Alex Mary Hughes/Millennium Images, UK)

IT MAY sound like folklore, but a handful of people really can see colourful “haloes” around others.

Some people claim to experience a form of synaesthesia – a crossing of the senses – that makes them see a coloured light around other people that varies in hue with emotions.

A 23-year-old man with Asperger’s disorder, identified as T. K., says he has the condition and it helps him with emotional reciprocity. To explore this claim, at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues put a volunteer – who T. K.…

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