Causes Of Synesthesia

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The perception of the world of someone with synesthesia is a world unlike any other. There’s many different variations of synesthesia, causing each synesthete to experience their everyday lives differently. How does this phenomenon work? Does this interesting way of seeing the world lead to a more artistic lifestyle? Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which a person experiences “crossed” response to stimuli. It occurs when stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway (such as hearing) leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway (such as vision) (Ward, 2015). The most usual form of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia, in which seeing particular letters or numbers evokes the experience …show more content…

Bargary and Mitchell (2008) presented a review of the anatomical origins of synesthesia that considered possible molecular mechanisms for structural differences between synesthetic and non-synesthetic brains. They concluded that these structural differences are the primary cause of developmental synesthesia. But researchers by the name of Kadosh and Walsh (2008) challenge that conclusion by stating the study done by Bargary and Mitchell only shows the correlation between anatomy and synesthesia, but does not establish a casual relationship. They hypothesis that cortical disinhibition could be the primary cause of synesthesia. They stated that molecular mechanisms might affect the level of inhibition in synesthesia during early development stages. Developmentally speaking, these molecular differences can also lead to a lack of relative neuronal specialization during sensitive periods. Electroencephalography studies found that compared to non-synesthetes, synesthetes who see color when hearing tones or spoken utterences (hearing-color synesthesia) showed differences in auditory-event related potentials in response to letters, words, pseudo-words or tones (Bargary & Mitchell, 2008). The differences evoked potentials as early as 100 ms after stimulation …show more content…

However, because this claim is based on subjective reports and has never been verified with objective measures, it was Rothen and Meier’s (2010) aim to test whether there really is a higher prevalence of grapheme-color synesthesia in artists. Their sample was a group of fine-art students. Participants were individually presented with 36 graphemes (A^Z; 0^9), one at a time, in random order. Each grapheme was accompanied, on the same screen, by a palette of 13 basic colors, the same each time but randomly arranged on each trial. Participants were required to select the ‘best’ color for each grapheme. After an initial presentation, an immediate surprise retest followed, in which the graphemes were presented again in a re-randomized order. The consistency score was calculated as the number of identical grapheme-color associations. In simpler terms, they showed a number on the screen then the participants picked which color suited the number best from a palette. They were then tested again in a different order and a consistency score was calculated to verify the participant had synesthesia. They found the proportion of synesthetes was significantly higher for the art students (seven synesthetes in the art students group, two in the control) (Rothen & Meier, 2010). Ward, Thompson-Lake, Ely and Kaminski (2008) also did a study to see what the link was between art,

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