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It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child, said Picasso. A study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests why. Infants perceive the world in a fundamentally different way than typical adults, in which the senses are joined.

The authors of the study, Katie Wagner and Karen R. Dobkins, observe that early childhood development is characterized by "a period of exuberant neural connectivity" that may facilitate "arbitrary sensory experiences in infants that are unlike anything experienced by typical adults." These experiences are similar to the condition found in some adults that is known as synesthesia, a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are merged.

The study found this sensory phenomenon is most pronounced in infants that are between two and three months old. By eight months, it has vanished altogether.