Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Color Vision

Color Vision

Color perception begins in the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye. Two main theories explain how colors are seen: the trichromatic theory and the opponent-process theory. The trichromatic theory, proposed by Thomas Young in 1802 and extended by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1852, suggests that color vision is based on three types of cone receptors in the retina. These cones are sensitive to different but overlapping ranges of wavelengths corresponding to red, blue, and green.

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...

Gustation

Gustation

Gustation is a chemical sense that, along with olfaction (smell), contributes to our perception of taste. It starts with the activation of receptors by chemical compounds (tastants) dissolved in the saliva. The saliva and filiform papillae on the tongue distribute the tastants and increase their exposure to the taste receptors.

Photoreceptors and Visual Pathways

Photoreceptors and Visual Pathways

At the molecular level, visual signals trigger transformations in photopigment molecules, resulting in changes in the photoreceptor cell's membrane potential. The photon's energy level is denoted by its wavelength, with each specific wavelength of visible light associated with a distinct color. The spectral range of visible light, classified as electromagnetic radiation, spans from 380 to 720 nm. Electromagnetic radiation wavelengths exceeding 720 nm fall under the infrared category,...

Taste Buds and Receptors

Taste Buds and Receptors

Gustation, or the sense of taste, is intrinsically linked to the anatomical structures located on the tongue. This organ's surface, along with the entirety of the oral cavity, is adorned with stratified squamous epithelium. Evident on the tongue are elevated structures known as papillae (singular = papilla), which house the mechanisms for the transduction of gustatory stimuli. Four distinct types of papillae exist, each identified by their unique morphological attributes: the circumvallate,...

Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect

While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Supercomplexity: bridging the gap between aesthetics and cognition.

Frontiers in neuroscience·2025

Same author

Tracing Visual Expertise in ECG Interpretation: An Eye-Tracking Pilot Study.

Annals of noninvasive electrocardiology : the official journal of the International Society for Holter and Noninvasive Electrocardiology, Inc·2025

Same author

Imagination vs. routines: festive time, weekly time, and the predictive brain.

Frontiers in human neuroscience·2024

Same author

Colored valence in a lexical decision task.

Acta psychologica·2024

Same author

Bored with boredom? Trait boredom predicts internet addiction through the mediating role of attentional bias toward social networks.

Frontiers in human neuroscience·2023

Same author

Synergistic Combination of Visual Features in Vision-Taste Crossmodal Correspondences.

Multisensory research·2023

Same journal

MRI correlates of emotion recognition in vascular dementia: An empty systematic review.

Acta psychologica·2026

Same journal

The core symptoms of elementary school students' fear of negative evaluation and its network relationship with self-confidence and family atmosphere.

Acta psychologica·2026

Same journal

Examining the moderating role of psychological hardiness in the relation between job demands and teachers' emotional exhaustion.

Acta psychologica·2026

Same journal

Counter-Empathy Scale: Adapting and developing psychometric properties in Northeast India.

Acta psychologica·2026

Same journal

When AI creates: Creative self-efficacy as a mediator in design professionals' adoption of AI image generators.

Acta psychologica·2026

Same journal

Effects of multimodal feedback on L2 English learners' lexical stress error correction: The role of learning style and feedback preference.

Acta psychologica·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 27, 2025

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Published on: February 20, 2014

Color-taste correspondences influence visual binding errors.

Alessandro Bortolotti¹, Na Chen², Charles Spence³

¹Department of Neuroscience e Imaging University of Chieti, Italy.

Acta Psychologica

|February 15, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Color-taste associations influence visual binding. Congruent color-taste pairings reduced visual binding errors (illusory conjunctions), while incongruent pairings increased them, showing top-down effects on perception.

Keywords:

Binding error Color–taste correspondence Congruency effect Illusory conjunction

More Related Videos

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Published on: April 24, 2017

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Published on: November 30, 2018

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 27, 2025

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Training Synesthetic Letter-color Associations by Reading in Color

Published on: February 20, 2014

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Visualizing Visual Adaptation

Published on: April 24, 2017

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Published on: November 30, 2018

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Visual Perception
Sensory Integration

Background:

Cross-modal correspondences between senses, such as taste and color, are common (e.g., sweet-red).
These associations may influence how the brain processes sensory information.
Visual feature binding, the process of integrating visual elements, can be prone to errors known as illusory conjunctions.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether the congruency of color-taste correspondences affects unimodal visual feature binding.
To examine the impact of congruent versus incongruent color-taste pairings on illusory conjunctions.

Main Methods:

Participants viewed pairs of food words (associated with sweet, sour, or salty tastes) presented in congruent or incongruent colored fonts (red, yellow, or blue).
A divided spatial attention task required participants to report the font color of one word.
The frequency of illusory conjunctions (binding errors) was measured under both congruent and incongruent conditions.

Main Results:

A significantly higher rate of illusory conjunctions was observed when color-taste correspondences were incongruent (e.g., sweet-yellow, sour-red).
Conversely, fewer illusory conjunctions occurred when color-taste correspondences were congruent (e.g., sweet-red, sour-yellow).
This indicates that the congruency of learned associations impacts visual binding.

Conclusions:

The congruency of color-taste correspondences can bias unimodal visual binding errors.
These findings suggest a top-down influence of learned sensory associations on visual perception and feature integration.
This research highlights the role of prior knowledge in shaping perceptual experiences.