Evaluating Bodily Self-Consciousness and the Brain Using Multisensory Perturbation and fMRI (Advance Article)
Source:Page Count 13In this article, we consider the usefulness of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and perturbation in evaluating causal relationships between bodily self-consciousness and the brain. We argue that fMRI research is not always restricted to correlational statements when it is combined with perturbation techniques and can sometimes permit some degree of causal inferencing, such as when bodily illusions are examined with fMRI. In these instances, one is changing a participant ’s conscious bodily self by experimentally perturbing mechanisms that are involved in multisensory integration. (Source: ...
Source: Multisensory research - April 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Philippe A. Chouinard, Joshua A. Sherman, Amy Siobhan Millard and Irene Sperandio Source Type: research
Musical-Space Synaesthesia: Visualisation of Musical Texture
Source:Page Count 7I, Svetlana Rudenko, am a concert pianist. I am also a synaesthete and for me, sound is visual. It has shape. According to recent research (Akiva-Kabiriet al., 2014, pp. 17 –29): “In musical-space synaesthesia, …unlike the vertical and horizontal representation of musical pitch tones in the general population, synaesthetes describe a linear diagonal organisation of pitch tones.” Different piano sounds have aroma and texture. The forms I have lived with since ch ildhood are what I call ‘sound landscapes’. I am not alone. Composers such as Liszt, Scriabin, Gubaidulina and Messiaen, as well as a...
Source: Multisensory research - April 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Svetlana Rudenko and Maria Jos é de Córdoba Serrano Source Type: research
Individual Differences in Sensory Substitution (Advance Article)
Source:Page Count 22Sensory substitution devices were developed in the context of perceptual rehabilitation and they aim at compensating one or several functions of a deficient sensory modality by converting stimuli that are normally accessed through this deficient sensory modality into stimuli accessible by another sensory modality. For instance, they can convert visual information into sounds or tactile stimuli. In this article, we review those studies that investigated the individual differences at the behavioural, neural, and phenomenological levels when using a sensory substitution device. We highlight how taking into...
Source: Multisensory research - April 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Gabriel Arnold, Jacques Pesnot-Lerousseau and Malika Auvray Source Type: research
Cognitive Styles Differentiate Crossmodal Correspondences Between Pitch Glide and Visual Apparent Motion (Advance Article)
We examined the audiovisual correspondences between the visual Ternus movement directions (upward or downward) and the changes of pitches of concurrent glides (ascending frequency or descending frequency). Moreover, we measured the cognitive styles (with the Embedded Figure Test) for each participant. The results showed that congruent correspondence between pitch-ascending (d ecreasing) glides and moving upward (downward) visual directions led to a more dominant percept of ‘element motion’, and such an effect was typically observed in the field-independent group. Importantly, field-independent participants demonstrated...
Source: Multisensory research - April 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Lu Guo, Ming Bao, Luyang Guan and Lihan Chen Source Type: research
Serotonergic Modulation of Sensory and Multisensory Processing in Superior Colliculus (Advance Article)
Source:Page Count 38The ability to integrate information across the senses is vital for coherent perception of and interaction with the world. While much is known regarding the organization and function of multisensory neurons within the mammalian superior colliculus (SC), very little is understood at a mechanistic level. One open question in this regard is the role of neuromodulatory networks in shaping multisensory responses. While the SC receives substantial serotonergic projections from the raphe nuclei, and serotonergic receptors are distributed throughout the SC, the potential role of serotonin (5-HT) signaling in mu...
Source: Multisensory research - April 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: LeAnne R. Kurela and Mark T. Wallace Source Type: research
Mirror-Sensory Synaesthesia and the Practice of Manual Therapy (Advance Article)
Source:Page Count 4Mirror-touch synaesthesia can provide a distinct advantage for the healthcare worker who experiences this form of cross-modal perception. While several studies and presentations have focused on synaesthesia as a tool for augmenting artistic endeavours and cultivating creative opportunity, a massage therapist with mirror touch may have an edge over her non-synaesthete peers. (Source: Multisensory research)
Source: Multisensory research - April 21, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Carolyn Hart Source Type: research
A Is for Apple: the Role of Letter –Word Associations in the Development of Grapheme–Colour Synaesthesia (Advance Article)
This study investigates the origins of specific letter –colour associations experienced by people with grapheme–colour synaesthesia. We present novel evidence that frequently observed trends in synaesthesia (e.g.,A is typically red) can be tied to orthographic associations between letters and words (e.g., ‘A is for apple ’), which are typically formed during literacy acquisition. In our experiments, we first tested members of the general population to show that certain words are consistently associated with letters of the alphabet (e.g.,A is forapple), which we namedindex words. Sampling from the same population, w...
Source: Multisensory research - April 12, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Jennifer L. Mankin and Julia Simner Source Type: research
Similarities in Autistic and Neurotypical Visual –Haptic Perception When Making Judgements About Conflicting Sensory Stimuli
A number of studies have shown that multisensory performance is well predicted by a statistically optimal maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) model. Under this model unisensory estimates are combined additively and weighted according to relative reliability. Recent theories have proposed that atypical sensation and perception commonly reported in autism spectrum condition (ASC) may result from differences in the use of reliability information. Furthermore, experimental studies have indicated that multisensory processing is less effective in those with the condition in comparison to neurotypical (NT) controls. In the presen...
Source: Multisensory research - April 5, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Daniel Poole, Ellen Poliakoff, Emma Gowen, Samuel Couth, Rebecca A. Champion and Paul A. Warren Source Type: research
The Time Course of Audio-Visual Phoneme Identification: a High Temporal Resolution Study
Source:Page Count 22Speech unfolds in time and, as a consequence, its perception requires temporal integration. Yet, studies addressing audio-visual speech processing have often overlooked this temporal aspect. Here, we address the temporal course of audio-visual speech processing in a phoneme identification task using a Gating paradigm. We created disyllabic Spanish word-like utterances (e.g., /pafa/, /pa θa/, …) from high-speed camera recordings. The stimuli differed only in the middle consonant (/f/, /θ/, /s/, /r/, /g/), which varied in visual and auditory saliency. As in classical Gating tasks, the utterances were ...
Source: Multisensory research - April 4, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Carolina S ánchez-García, Sonia Kandel, Christophe Savariaux and Salvador Soto-Faraco Source Type: research
Cue Integration for Continuous and Categorical Dimensions by Synesthetes
In this study wequantitatively evaluated the multisensory integration process of synesthetes and non-synesthetes using Bayesian principles, rather than employing multisensory illusions, to make inferences about the sensory integration process. In two studies we investigated synesthetes ’ sensory integration by comparing human behavior to that of an ideal observer. We found that synesthetes integrated cues for both continuous and categorical dimensions in a statistically optimal manner, matching the sensory integration behavior of controls. These findings suggest that synesthetes and controls utilize similar cue integrati...
Source: Multisensory research - April 4, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Kaitlyn R. Bankieris, Vikranth Rao Bejjanki and Richard N. Aslin Source Type: research
What Can Illusory Conjunctions Reveal About Synaesthetic Bindings?
We examined for the first time the occurrence of ICs in grap heme–colour synaesthesia. Experiment 1 replicated our previous finding, showing the effects of numerical distance on ICs (Arendet al.,Psychon. Bull. Rev. 2013,20, 1181 –1186). Participants viewed a display containing two centrally presented letters and two coloured numbers and were asked to report: (1) whether the letters were same/different, (2) the colour of the larger number, and (3) the level of confidence concerning the colour of the number. Experiment 2 us ed a modified version of this task. Synaesthetes (N=5) and controls (N=15) viewed number–colour ...
Source: Multisensory research - April 4, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Isabel Arend and Avishai Henik Source Type: research
Interactions Between Auditory Elevation, Auditory Pitch and Visual Elevation During Multisensory Perception
Cross-modal correspondences refer to associations between apparently unrelated stimulus features in different senses. For example, high and low auditory pitches are associated with high and low visual elevations, respectively. Here we examined how this crossmodal correspondence between visual elevation and auditory pitch relates to auditory elevation. We used audiovisual combinations of high- or low-frequency bursts of white noise and a visual stimulus comprising a white circle. Auditory and visual stimuli could each occur at high or low elevations. These multisensory stimuli could be congruent or incongruent for three cor...
Source: Multisensory research - April 4, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Yaseen Jamal, Simon Lacey, Lynne Nygaard and K. Sathian Source Type: research
Was Kandinsky a Synaesthete? Examining His Writings and Other Evidence (Advance Article)
Source:Page Count 14Wassily Kandinsky is widely regarded as one of the most prominent examples of a synaesthetic artist. However, in the scientific literature there is disagreement on the genuineness of his synaesthesia. This paper investigates whether Kandinsky had inborn synaesthesia, while acknowledging that there are also types of induced synaesthesia which he may have cultivated. As these two types of synaesthesia are seen to work additively in some synaesthetes and not to be mutually exclusive, this is not seen as an argument against the view that he was a true inborn synaesthete. Whether Kandinsky was a synaesthete ...
Source: Multisensory research - April 4, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Dyedra K. C. Just Source Type: research
Synesthetic Photisms and Hypnagogic Visions: a Comparison
Source:Page Count 7I have been a synesthete all my life and thought I understood my synesthetic perceptions rather well when, suddenly, in 2013, I began to see a new kind of internal image: hypnagogic visions. These visions, a normal state of consciousness, are known to occur somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. They appeared to me as another source of photisms, in addition to my usual synesthetic experiences. But when I described these new visions to some researchers there was a wide range of reactions, from concern, to acknowledgement of similar experiences. While hypnagogic visions are different in some ways from my...
Source: Multisensory research - April 3, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Carol Steen Source Type: research
Is Synaesthesia More Prevalent in Autism Spectrum Conditions? Only Where There Is Prodigious Talent (Advance Article)
Savant syndrome is a condition where prodigious talent co-occurs with developmental difficulties such as autism spectrum conditions (ASC). To better understand savant skills, we previously proposed a link with synaesthesia: that savant syndrome may arise in ASC individuals who also happen to have synaesthesia. A second, unrelated claim is that people with autism may have higher rates of synaesthesia. Here we ask whether synaesthesia is indeed found more often in autismper se, or only in cases where autism co-occurs with savant skills. People with autism in previous studies when tested for synaesthesia were not differe...
Source: Multisensory research - March 31, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: James E. A. Hughes, Julia Simner, Simon Baron-Cohen, Darold A. Treffert and Jamie Ward Source Type: research
