Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 21, 2025
10:27
Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color
Published on: February 20, 2014
22.9K
A single case neuroimaging study of tickertape synesthesia.
Fabien Hauw1,2, Mohamed El Soudany3, Charlotte Rosso3,4
1Inserm U 1127, CNRS UMR 7225, Sorbonne Universités, Institut du Cerveau, ICM, Paris, France. fabien.hauw@orange.fr.
Scientific Reports
|July 27, 2023
Summary
Ticker-tape synesthesia (TTS) involves mentally seeing words as print when hearing speech. This study reveals TTS uses brain areas similar to reading, suggesting an "upended reading" process involving top-down speech-to-print visualization.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Psychology
Background:
- Reading acquisition involves significant brain plasticity in visual and language networks.
- Developmental dyslexia arises from disruptions in these plastic processes.
- Ticker-tape synesthesia (TTS) is a rare condition where spoken words are perceived as internal print.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural underpinnings of ticker-tape synesthesia (TTS).
- To explore the relationship between TTS and the brain mechanisms of reading.
- To understand TTS as a potential 'upended reading' phenomenon.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study an individual with TTS (MK).
- MK's brain activity was compared to controls during auditory speech perception.
- Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) analyzed information flow during TTS.
Main Results:
- MK exhibited heightened activity in left-hemispheric areas, including speech processing regions and the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), compared to controls.
- These activated areas overlap with those involved in reading, supporting the 'upended reading' hypothesis.
- DCM indicated TTS relies on top-down information flow via distinct lexical and phonological routes.
Conclusions:
- Ticker-tape synesthesia (TTS) demonstrates a functional overlap with reading mechanisms.
- TTS represents a top-down conversion of speech into visualized print, akin to reversed reading.
- Further research into TTS can illuminate reading acquisition, its variations, and disorders.
