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Synesthesia

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...

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

Sensory Perception: Organization of the Somatosensory System

The somatosensory system is the central and peripheral nervous system component that senses and processes touch, pressure, pain, temperature, and body position or proprioception. The process of sensation takes place at three levels:
The receptor level:
The receptor level is the first stage of sensation. It involves the detection of a stimulus by specialized sensory receptors. The stimulus must arrive within the receptor's receptive field. Next, the receptor converts the energy of the stimulus...

Electrical Synapses

Electrical Synapses

Electrical synapses found in all nervous systems play important and unique roles. In these synapses, the presynaptic and postsynaptic membranes are very close together (3.5 nm) and are actually physically connected by channel proteins forming gap junctions.
Gap junctions allow the current to pass directly from one cell to the next. In contrast, in the chemical synapse, the neurotransmitters carry the information through the synaptic cleft from one neuron to the next. They consist of two...

The Synapse

The Synapse

Neurons communicate with one another by passing on their electrical signals to other neurons. A synapse is the location where two neurons meet to exchange signals. At the synapse, the neuron that sends the signal is called the presynaptic cell, while the neuron that receives the message is called the postsynaptic cell. Note that most neurons can be both presynaptic and postsynaptic, as they both transmit and receive information.

Sensory Modalities

Sensory Modalities

Sensation typically is the process by which the sensory receptors and sense organs detect stimuli from the internal and external environment and transmit this information to the central nervous system for processing.
General senses refer to the broad category of sensory information detected by receptors in the body and can be further grouped into somatic and visceral senses. Somatic sensations include touch, pressure, temperature, and pain and are essential for navigating our environment and...

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity reflects the brain's remarkable capacity to adapt and evolve, responding dynamically to learning, experiences, or injury by reorganizing its neural circuitry. This reorganization involves creating new neural connections and refining old ones through a series of biological processes that contribute to the brain's lifelong development and adaptability.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 19, 2026

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Published on: February 20, 2014

[Synesthesia as a neuronal palimpsest].

Jean-Michel Hupé¹

¹Centre de recherche cerveau et cognition (CERCO), université de Toulouse et CNRS UMR 5549, pavillon Baudot, centre hospitalier-universitaire (CHU) Purpan, BP 25202, 31052 Toulouse Cedex 3, France. jean-michael.hupe@cerco.ups-tlse.fr

Medecine Sciences : M/S

|August 28, 2012

Summary

Synesthesia, a neurological trait, links sensory experiences like colors to letters. The palimpsest hypothesis suggests synesthetic colors stem from recycled brain networks originally for color perception.

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuroscience of Perception
Developmental Neuroscience

Context:

Synesthesia offers insights into the neural underpinnings of subjective experience in healthy individuals.
Individual differences in synesthesia are studied using methods similar to neuropsychology.
Written language acquisition is a recent cultural invention with no genetic basis.

Purpose:

To review current knowledge on synesthesia and its neural bases.
To propose the 'palimpsest hypothesis' as a new theory for synesthesia.
To explain synesthesia within the framework of the brain's recycling of regions for expertise acquisition.

Summary:

The palimpsest hypothesis posits that synesthesia arises from the recycling of brain regions.

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Dual Electrophysiological Recordings of Synaptically-evoked Astroglial and Neuronal Responses in Acute Hippocampal Slices

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Last Updated: May 19, 2026

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Specifically, it suggests that for synesthetes, these recycled networks were previously specialized for color perception.

Synesthetic experiences, such as colors for letters, are proposed to be remnants of this prior specialization.

Impact:

Provides a novel theoretical framework for understanding synesthesia.
Connects the development of reading expertise with sensory perception.
Offers new avenues for research into the neural mechanisms of subjective experience and individual differences.