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Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012) 1952–1963 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews journa l homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neubiorev Review Enhanced memory ability: Insights from synaesthesia a,∗ b a Nicolas Rothen , Beat Meier , Jamie Ward a School of Psychology and Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom b Department of Psychology and Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: People with synaesthesia show an enhanced memory relative to demographically matched controls. The Received 19 February 2012 most obvious explanation for this is that the ‘extra’ perceptual experiences lead to richer encoding and Received in revised form 7 May 2012 retrieval opportunities of stimuli which induce synaesthesia (typically verbal stimuli). Although there is Accepted 15 May 2012 some evidence for this, it is unlikely to be the whole explanation. For instance, not all stimuli which trigger synaesthesia are better remembered (e.g., digit span) and some stimuli which do not trigger synaesthesia Keywords: are better remembered. In fact, synaesthetes tend to have better visual memory than verbal memory. Memory We suggest that enhanced memory in synaesthesia is linked to wider changes in cognitive systems at Synaesthesia Grapheme-colour the interface of perception and memory and link this to recent findings in the neuroscience of memory. Time-space © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Superiority Contents 1. Introduction ..... 1953 2. Key characteristics and neural basis of developmental synaesthesia . 1953 3. What factors are known to enhance memory?..... 1954 3.1. Imagery . 1954 3.2. Levels of processing (LOP)..... 1954 3.3. Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) . 1954 3.4. Structure and organisation ..... 1954 3.5. Domain expertise. 1955 3.6. Structural brain differences . 1955 4. Case studies of exceptional memory in synaesthetes . 1955 5. Group studies of memory ability in synaesthetes . 1957 5.1. Memory for verbal stimuli . 1957 5.1.1. Memory for words. 1957 5.1.2. Digit span . 1958 5.1.3. Digit matrices . 1958 5.1.4. Summary . 1958 5.2. Memory for non-verbal stimuli . 1958 5.2.1. Memory for colour. 1958 5.2.2. Memory for abstract figures . 1959 5.2.3. Memory for objects, faces, and scenes . 1959 5.2.4. Short-term visual and visuo-spatial memory . 1959 5.2.5. Summary . 1959 5.3. Memory for events . 1959 5.4. Non-declarative memory . 1959 6. Interim summary . 1960 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Rothen). 0149-7634/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.05.004 N. Rothen et al. / Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012) 1952–1963 1953 7. Explaining the memory advantage in synaesthesia . 1960 7.1. A process account: encoding versus retention. 1960 7.2. A strategies account: visualising versus verbalising and shallow versus deep . 1960 7.3. An expertise account: synaesthesia, savantism, and mnemonic strategies . 1960 7.4. A stores account: the memory systems model . ..