Synthetic Space: Binding Errors In Synesthesia

Some people experience an intermingling of the senses, known as synaesthesia, in which certain shapes become combined or "bound with" certain colors, or that certain colors are strongly associated with certain sounds. Of course, in healthy normal adults, color and shape become bound together only when visible shapes really are visibly colored -- a process which is itself still a mystery of neuroscience. Yet similar mechanisms may be involved in both these kinds of "binding," but are merely more active in synaesthetes than in normal adults.

Based on Patient RM, we know that binding between color and shape relies on the parietal lobes -- without them, the sense of space dissolves and the visual world disintegrates into individual and unconnected sensations. If the parietal lobes are important for binding, one might expect them to also be critical for synaesthetes tightly integrated sensations. To test this idea, Esterman et al temporarily disabled the parietal lobes of two synaesthetes who reliably associated particular letters with particular colors.

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What color is letter 'A' in your mind?

Hello everyone! You should check this: www.tukan.extra.hu ! There is a great synesthesia test - you can vote what color is 'A' and each letter or number, and see the statistics. Really interesting.