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Related Experiment Videos

When conditioned responses "fire back": bidirectional cross-activation creates learning opportunities in synesthesia.

B Meier1, N Rothen

  • 1University of Bern, Institute of Psychology, Bern 9, Switzerland. beat.meier@psy.unibe.ch

Neuroscience
|June 16, 2007
PubMed
Summary
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Grapheme-color synesthesia typically involves unidirectional color experiences. This study reveals implicit bidirectional cross-activation in synesthesia using a novel conditioning method, suggesting parietal lobe involvement.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Sensory Perception

Background:

  • Grapheme-color synesthesia usually presents unidirectional subjective experiences (e.g., letters evoking colors).
  • Prior research hinted at implicit bidirectional cross-activation in digit-color synesthesia.
  • Investigating bidirectionality in other synesthesia types requires new methodologies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate implicit bidirectional cross-activation in grapheme-color synesthesia.
  • To introduce a novel method for assessing synesthetic bidirectionality.
  • To explore the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon.

Main Methods:

  • A conditioning paradigm was employed, associating a startle response with a specific color.
  • Grapheme-color synesthetes and a control group were tested.

Related Experiment Videos

  • The generalization of conditioned startle responses to color-inducing graphemes was measured.

    • Main Results:

    • Synesthetes, unlike controls, exhibited a conditioned startle response to a grapheme after conditioning to its corresponding color.
    • This indicates an implicit association between the grapheme and the shock, generalizing from the real color.
    • The findings support bidirectional cross-activation at an implicit level.

    Conclusions:

    • Bidirectional cross-activation is not limited to digit-color synesthesia but occurs in grapheme-color synesthesia.
    • Implicit cross-activation may occur via associations established through conditioning.
    • Parietal brain regions are implicated in this neural 'backfiring' mechanism.