Modality and Variability of Synesthetic Experience

Abstract

In synesthesia, stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to additional, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. We here review previous surveys on this neurologically based phenomenon and report the results of 63 synesthetes who completed our Internet and paper questionnaire on synesthesia. In addition to asking for personal data and information on the participant's synesthesia, the questionnaire focused on the components of the inducer that elicit or modulate synesthesia. Synesthesia was most often developmental (92%) and of the grapheme-color type (86%). Sixty-two percent of the participants perceived time-related words in a spatial configuration. Music-color synesthesia was common (41%), and synesthesia for natural and artificial sounds (33%) was higher than in previous estimates. Eighty-one percent of participants experienced more than one form of synesthesia. Multimodal synesthesia, in which inducer and concurrent belong to 2 different sensory modalities, occurred in 92% of the participants. Overall, auditory stimuli were most often reported as inducers, and visual concurrents were most common. Modulations of the synesthetic experiences such as changes of the concurrent color, expansion within the same or to a different sensory modality, or reduction of the number of inducers over time were reported by 17% of participants. This challenges the presumed consistency of synesthesia and the adequacy of the test-retest consistency score still most commonly used to assess the veracity of reported synesthesia. Implications of the high prevalence of cross-modal synesthesia and the variability of synesthesia are discussed.

Enhanced dimension-specific visual working memory in grapheme–color synesthesia

“…Superior coding of colors may also be reflected in better color perceptual memory and thereby contribute to consolidation, and greater consistency, of extant inducer–color pairs (Yaro & Ward, 2007). However, a challenge for this account will be to determine the mechanisms underlying the specificity of synesthesia, that is, why an individual will develop grapheme–color, but not sound–color, associations, both of which are frequently reported by synesthetes (e.g., Niccolai, Jennes, Stoerig, & Van Leeuwen, 2012). …”

Creativity and involvement in art in different types of synaesthesia

“…As there are many famous artists who are also synaesthetes, synaesthesia has been assumed to benefit creativity. Although there is, in fact, a higher prevalence of grapheme‐colour synaesthesia among art students, and synaesthetes are more likely to be involved in artistic professions or activities, group studies did not find a consistent benefit in psychometric tests of creativity (Chun & Hupé, ; Domino, ; Niccolai, Jennes, Stoerig, & Van Leeuwen, ; Rich, Bradshaw, & Mattingley, ; Rothen & Meier, ; Ward, Thompson‐Lake, Ely, & Kaminski, ). However, previous studies did not differentiate between different types of synaesthesia although it is known that different types of synaesthesia vary in cognitive style and creativity patterns (Chun & Hupé, ; Meier & Rothen, 2013a; Ward, Thompson‐Lake et al ., ).…”

Training, hypnosis, and drugs: artificial synaesthesia, or artificial paradises?

“…Synaesthetes have been shown to exhibit significantly different performance, as a group, in a series of behavioral tests, such as the speeded congruency test presented by Eagleman et al (2007), designed to capture the involuntary and robust elicitation of conscious concurrents by specific inducers. The repertoire of inducer-concurrent pairings—for instance, the precise shade of color elicited by different musical notes—is usually not determined before an individual reaches the age of 9 years of age, after which time it appears to remain surprisingly consistent over the rest of the individual's lifetime (e.g., Simner et al, 2009; Niccolai et al, 2012a). Some individuals claim to have lost their synaesthesia after their teenage years, but, of all the adult synaesthetes who have been tested in contemporary research, most remember having it since childhood.…”