Sensory and cognitive mechanisms allow stimuli to be perceived with properties relating sight, sound, touch, etc, ensure, for example, that visual are as experiences, rather than sounds, tastes, smells, etc. Theories of normal development can informed by cases where this modularity breaks down, in a condition known synaesthesia. Conventional wisdom has held occurs extremely rarely (0.05% births) affects women more men. Here we present the first test synaesthesia prevalence sampling does not...

In this study, we describe a new form of synaesthesia in which visual perception touch elicits conscious tactile experiences the perceiver. We female subject (C) for whom observation another person being touched is experienced as stimulation on equivalent part C's own body. Apart from clearly abnormal synesthetic experience, C healthy and normal every other way. investigate whether ‘mirrored touch’ experience caused by overactivity neural system that responds to touch. A functional MRI...

This study shows that biases exist in the associations of letters with colours across individuals both and without grapheme-colour synaesthesia. A group synaesthetes were significantly more consistent over time their choice than a controls. Despite this difference, there remarkable inter-subject agreements, within participant groups (e.g., tends to be red, b blue, c yellow). suggests synaesthesia, whilst only exhibited by certain individuals, stems part from mechanisms are common us all. In...

EDITORIAL article Front. Hum. Neurosci., 03 June 2014Sec. Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 8 - 2014 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00384

Some individuals with superior memory, such as the mnemonist Shereshevskii (Luria, 1968), are known to have synaesthesia. However, extent which memory is a general characteristic of synaesthesia unknown, precise cognitive mechanism by affects memory. This study demonstrates that synaesthetes tend report subjectively better than average and these reports borne out objective testing. Synaesthetes experiencing colours for words show matched controls stimuli induce (word lists) relative do not...

It has been suggested that individuals with synaesthesia may show heightened creativity as a result of being able to form meaningful associations between disparate stimuli (e.g. colour, sound). In this study, large sample (N=82) people various kinds were given two psychometric tests (Remote Associates Test, Alternate Uses Test) and also asked about the amount time engaged in creative arts (visual art, music). There was significant tendency for synaesthetes spend more was, at least part,...

Watching someone scratch himself can induce feelings of itchiness in the perceiver. This provides a unique opportunity to characterize neural basis subjective experiences itch, independent changes peripheral inputs. In this study, we first established that social contagion itch is essentially normative response (experienced by most people), and degree related trait differences neuroticism (i.e., tendency experience negative emotions), but not empathy. video clips scratching (relative control...

Mirror-touch synesthesia (MTS) is the conscious experience of tactile sensations induced by seeing someone else touched. This paper considers two different, although not mutually exclusive, theoretical explanations and, in final section, relation between MTS and other forms also kinds vicarious perception (e.g., contagious yawning). The Threshold Theory explains terms hyper-activity within a mirror system for touch and/or pain. offers good account some evidence from fMRI) but fails to...

Abstract In hypnotic responding, expectancies arising from imaginative suggestion drive striking experiential changes (e.g., hallucinations) — which are experienced as involuntary according to a normally distributed and stable trait ability (hypnotisability). Such experiences can be triggered by implicit occur outside the context. large sample studies (of 156, 404 353 participants), we report substantial relationships between hypnotisability experimental measures of change in mirror-sensory...

People with synaesthesia show an enhanced memory relative to demographically matched controls. The most obvious explanation for this is that the ‘extra’ perceptual experiences lead richer encoding and retrieval opportunities of material induces (typically verbal material). Although there some evidence this, it unlikely be whole explanation. For instance, not all triggers better remembered (e.g., digit span) does trigger remembered. In fact, they tend have visual than memory. We suggest in...

The relative proportion of the internal features a face (the facial width‐to‐height ratio, FWH) has been shown to be related individual differences in behaviour males, specifically competitiveness and aggressiveness. In this study, we show that Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) leading UK businesses have greater FWHs than age‐ sex‐matched controls. We demonstrate perceivers, naive as nature stimuli, rate faces CEOs higher dominance or success, ratings success are themselves correlated with FWH...

Abstract Several studies have suggested that there is a link between synaesthesia and autism but the nature of remains poorly characterised. The present study considers whether atypical sensory sensitivity may be common conditions. Sensory hypersensitivity (aversion to certain sounds, touch, etc., or increased ability make discriminations) and/or hyposensitivity (desire stimulate senses , reduced response stimuli are recently introduced diagnostic feature spectrum conditions (ASC)....

People with aphantasia have impoverished visual imagery so struggle to form mental pictures in the mind's eye. By testing people and without aphantasia, we investigate relationship between sensory sensitivity (i.e., hyper- or hypo-reactivity incoming signals through sense organs). In Experiment 1 first show that report impaired across multiple domains (e.g., olfactory, gustatory etc.) rather than simply vision. Importantly, also is related sensitivity: aphantasics reported not only lower...

Misophonia is a sound sensitivity disorder characterized by strong aversion to specific sounds (e.g., chewing). Here we present the Sussex Scale for Adults ( SMS-Adult), within an online open-access portal, with automated scoring and results that can be shared ethically users professionals. Receiver operator characteristics show our questionnaire “excellent” “good-to-excellent” at classifying misophonia, both when dividing n = 501 adult participants recruitment stream (self-declared...