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Related Concept Videos

Synesthesia01:27

Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a remarkable condition where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People with synesthesia experience a blending or crossing of their senses, such as sight and sound, leading to cross-modal sensations. In this condition, the stimulation of one sense, such as hearing a number or musical note, triggers an experience of another sense, like sensing a specific color, taste, or smell. People...
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Wave summation
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Subliminal perception refers to the processing of sensory information that occurs below the level of conscious awareness. Researchers study subliminal perception by presenting a stimulus, such as a word or image, very quickly, typically around 50 milliseconds. This rapid presentation is often followed by another stimulus, such as a pattern of dots or lines, which blocks further mental processing of the initial stimulus. As a result, if participants cannot identify the initial stimulus better...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color
10:27

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Published on: February 20, 2014

Swimming-style synesthesia.

Danko Nikolić1, Uta M Jürgens, Nicolas Rothen

  • 1Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany. danko.nikolic@gmail.com

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior
|March 16, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Synesthesia can be triggered by concepts, not just sensory input. For two swimmers, swimming styles evoked colors, even without physical swimming, demonstrating semantic-level synesthesia.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Sensory Perception

Background:

  • Synesthesia traditionally involves sensory input in one modality eliciting experiences in another.
  • Emerging research highlights the role of semantic representations in synesthetic experiences.

Observation:

  • Two individuals with synesthesia, who are experienced swimmers, reported that each swimming style evoked a distinct color.
  • Crucially, synesthetic colors were evoked even without direct sensory stimulation, such as during physical swimming.

Findings:

  • Evoking the concept of a swimming style (e.g., via a photograph) was sufficient to trigger associated synesthetic colors.
  • Color-consistency and Stroop-type tests confirmed the authenticity of the synesthetic experiences.

Implications:

  • Synesthetic inducers may operate at the semantic level, activating concepts rather than solely relying on modality-specific sensations.
  • This suggests that "ideas" or abstract concepts, not just raw sensory data, can serve as triggers for synesthesia.