Affiliation:
1. 1University of Sussex
2. 2University College London
Abstract
Abstract
In auditory–visual synesthesia, sounds automatically elicit conscious and reliable visual experiences. It is presently unknown whether this reflects early or late processes in the brain. It is also unknown whether adult audiovisual synesthesia resembles auditory-induced visual illusions that can sometimes occur in the general population or whether it resembles the electrophysiological deflection over occipital sites that has been noted in infancy and has been likened to synesthesia. Electrical brain activity was recorded from adult synesthetes and control participants who were played brief tones and required to monitor for an infrequent auditory target. The synesthetes were instructed to attend either to the auditory or to the visual (i.e., synesthetic) dimension of the tone, whereas the controls attended to the auditory dimension alone. There were clear differences between synesthetes and controls that emerged early (100 msec after tone onset). These differences tended to lie in deflections of the auditory-evoked potential (e.g., the auditory N1, P2, and N2) rather than the presence of an additional posterior deflection. The differences occurred irrespective of what the synesthetes attended to (although attention had a late effect). The results suggest that differences between synesthetes and others occur early in time, and that synesthesia is qualitatively different from similar effects found in infants and certain auditory-induced visual illusions in adults. In addition, we report two novel cases of synesthesia in which colors elicit sounds, and vice versa.
Reference52 articles.
1. “Mirror-touch” synaesthesia is associated with enhanced tactile discrimination.;Banissy,2008
2. Is there a normal phase of synaesthesia in development?;Baron-Cohen;Psyche,1996
3. Synaesthesia: Prevalence and familiality.;Baron-Cohen;Perception,1996
4. Colored speech perception: Is synaesthesia what happens when modularity breaks down?;Baron-Cohen;Perception,1993
5. Time course of neural activity correlated with colored-hearing synesthesia.;Beeli;Cerebral Cortex,2008
Cited by
55 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献