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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...
Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development01:14

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...
Association Areas of the Cortex01:21

Association Areas of the Cortex

Association areas are regions of the cerebral cortex that do not have a specific sensory or motor function. Instead, they integrate and interpret information from various sources to enable higher cognitive processes such as memory, learning, and decision-making. Some key association areas include the following:
Prefrontal Association Area: This area is located in the frontal lobe and is involved in planning, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. It connects with primary motor areas,...
Socioemotional Development during Infancy01:30

Socioemotional Development during Infancy

Socio-emotional development in infancy is primarily shaped by early emotional responses and social connections, with temperament playing a central role. Temperament refers to the consistent patterns in an individual's emotional and behavioral responses, observable even in infancy. By examining temperament, researchers can better understand an infant's unique ways of interacting with the world, influencing subsequent personality and socio-emotional growth.
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Stella Chess...
Visual Agnosia01:12

Visual Agnosia

Visual agnosia is a condition characterized by the inability to recognize visually presented objects despite having normal vision. For instance, a person with visual agnosia can describe the shape and color of an object but cannot identify or name it. This impairment does not affect their visual field, acuity, color vision, brightness discrimination, language, or memory. An example of this condition in a social setting is someone at a dinner party asking for "that silver thing with a round end"...
Olfactory Receptors: Location and Structure01:03

Olfactory Receptors: Location and Structure

The process of olfaction, also known as the sense of smell, is a sophisticated chemical response system. The specialized sensory neurons that facilitate this process, known as olfactory receptor neurons, are situated in an upper segment of the nasal cavity, known as the olfactory epithelium. Olfactory sensory neurons are bipolar, with their dendrites extending from the epithelium's apex into the mucus that lines the nasal cavity. Airborne molecules, when inhaled, traverse the olfactory...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 30, 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

Synaesthetic associations decrease during infancy.

Katie Wagner1, Karen R Dobkins

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. kdobkins@ucsd.edu

Psychological Science
|July 21, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Infant brains show early synesthesia-like sensory associations due to exuberant neural connectivity. These connections typically retract, but a failure may lead to adult synesthesia.

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Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
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Last Updated: May 30, 2026

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

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Published on: February 20, 2014

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
06:07

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory processing

Background:

  • Early brain development involves exuberant neural connectivity, followed by synaptic pruning and reweighting.
  • Synesthesia, a rare condition with arbitrary sensory associations, is hypothesized to be linked to this early neural connectivity.
  • Infants may experience synesthesia-like sensory associations due to their developing neural networks.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test the infant-synaesthesia hypothesis linking early neural connectivity to synesthetic experiences.
  • To investigate whether typical infants exhibit sensory associations not present in older children or adults.

Main Methods:

  • Examined color preferences in 2- and 3-month-old infants, 8-month-old infants, and adults.
  • Assessed the influence of specific shapes on color preferences in different age groups.

Main Results:

  • Typical 2- and 3-month-olds demonstrated shape-influenced color preferences.
  • This shape-color association was not observed in 8-month-olds or adults.
  • Results suggest transient, synesthesia-like associations in early infancy.

Conclusions:

  • Exuberant neural connectivity in infancy may facilitate transient synesthetic associations.
  • Developmental retraction of neural connections typically eliminates these associations.
  • A failure in this retraction process could potentially lead to adult synesthesia.