Developing Synaesthesia
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DEVELOPING SYNAESTHESIA EDITED BY : Nicolas Rothen, Julia Simner and Beat Meier PUBLISHED IN : Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | downloaded: 13.3.2017 http://boris.unibe.ch/71349/ source: Frontiers Copyright Statement About Frontiers © Copyright 2007-2015 Frontiers Media SA. All rights reserved. Frontiers is more than just an open-access publisher of scholarly articles: it is a pioneering All content included on this site, approach to the world of academia, radically improving the way scholarly research such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, video/audio clips, is managed. The grand vision of Frontiers is a world where all people have an equal downloads, data compilations and software, is the property of or is opportunity to seek, share and generate knowledge. Frontiers provides immediate and licensed to Frontiers Media SA permanent online open access to all its publications, but this alone is not enough to (“Frontiers”) or its licensees and/or subcontractors. 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With their The above represents a summary unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers only. For the full conditions see the Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical Conditions for Authors and the Conditions for Website Use. advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers ISSN 1664-8714 Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial ISBN 978-2-88919-579-4 DOI 10.3389/978-2-88919-579-4 Office:[email protected] Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 1 July 2015 | Developing Synaesthesia DEVELOPING SYNAESTHESIA Topic Editors: Nicolas Rothen, University of Sussex, UK Julia Simner, University of Edinburgh, UK Beat Meier, University of Bern, Switzerland Synaesthesia is a condition in which a stimulus elicits an additional subjective experience. For example, the letter E printed in black (the inducer) may trigger an additional colour experience as a concurrent (e.g., blue). Synaesthesia tends to run in families and thus, a genetic component is likely. However, given that the stimuli that typically induce synaesthesia are cultural artefacts, a learning component must also be involved. Moreover, there is evidence that synaesthetic experiences not only activate brain areas typically involved in processing sensory input of the concurrent modality; synaesthesia seems to cause a structural reorganisation of the brain. Attempts to train non-synaesthetes with synaesthetic associations have been successful in mimicking certain behavioural aspects and posthypnotic Developing synaesthesia: a subset of the figures induction of synaesthetic experiences from the different contributions in this Research in non-synaesthetes has even led to the Topic according phenomenological reports. Copyright: Mroczko-Wa˛ sowicz and Nikolić, 2014; These latter findings suggest that Terhune at al., 2014; Sinke et al., 2014; Asano and Yokosawa, 2013 structural brain reorganization may not be a critical precondition, but rather a consequence of the sustained coupling of inducers and concurrents. Interestingly, synaesthetes seem to be able to easily transfer synaesthetic experiences to novel stimuli. Beyond this, certain drugs (e.g., LSD) can lead to synaesthesia-like experiences and may provide additional insights into the neurobiological basis of the condition. Furthermore, brain damage can both lead to a sudden presence of synaesthetic experiences in previously Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2 July 2015 | Developing Synaesthesia non-synaesthetic individuals and a sudden absence of synaesthesia in previously synaesthetic individuals. Moreover, enduring sensory substitution has been effective in inducing a kind of acquired synaesthesia. Besides informing us about the cognitive mechanisms of synaesthesia, synaesthesia research is relevant for more general questions, for example about consciousness such as the binding problem, about crossmodal correspondences and about how individual differences in perceiving and experiencing the world develop. Hence the aim of the current Research Topic is to provide novel insights into the development of synaesthesia both in its genuine and acquired form. We welcome novel experimental work and theoretical contributions (e.g., review and opinion articles) focussing on factors such as brain maturation, learning, training, hypnosis, drugs, sensory substitution and brain damage and their relation to the development of any form of synaesthesia. Nicolas Rothen and Beat Meier initiated and managed the research topic. Nicolas Rothen, Beat Meier, and Julia Simner edited articles of the research topic. Citation: Rothen, N., Simner, J., Meier, B., eds. (2015). Developing Synaesthesia. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88919-579-4 Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 3 July 2015 | Developing Synaesthesia Table of Contents 06 Developing synaesthesia: a primer Beat Meier and Nicolas Rothen 08 The immune hypothesis of synesthesia Duncan A. Carmichael and Julia Simner 11 Is synesthesia more common in patients with Asperger syndrome? Janina Neufeld, Mandy Roy, Antonia Zapf, Christopher Sinke, Hinderk M. Emrich, Vanessa Prox-Vagedes, Wolfgang Dillo and Markus Zedler 23 Serotonergic hyperactivity as a potential factor in developmental, acquired and drug-induced synesthesia Berit Brogaard 36 Probing the neurochemical basis of synaesthesia using psychophysics Devin B. Terhune, Seoho M. Song, Mihaela D. Duta and Roi Cohen Kadosh 45 N1 enhancement in synesthesia during visual and audio–visual perception in semantic cross-modal conflict situations: an ERP study Christopher Sinke, Janina Neufeld, Daniel Wiswede, Hinderk M. Emrich, Stefan Bleich, Thomas F. Münte and Gregor R. Szycik 55 Impaired acquisition of novel grapheme-color correspondences in synesthesia David Brang, Michael Ghiam and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran 61 Grapheme learning and grapheme-color synesthesia: toward a comprehensive model of grapheme-color association Michiko Asano and Kazuhiko Yokosawa 72 Semantic mechanisms may be responsible for developing synesthesia Aleksandra Mroczko-Wa˛sowicz and Danko Nikolić 85 Toward a visuospatial developmental account of sequence-space synesthesia Mark C. Price and David G. Pearson 91 An extended case study on the phenomenology of sequence-space synesthesia Cassandra Gould, Tom Froese, Adam B. Barrett, Jamie Ward and Anil K. Seth 107 Insights from introspection: a commentary on Gould et al. (2014), “An extended case study on the phenomenology of spatial form synaesthesia” Mark C. Price 109 Synesthesia and learning: a critical review and novel theory Marcus R. Watson, Kathleen A. Akins,