Synesthesia and release phenomena in sensory and motor grounding. Cases of disinhibited embodiment?

Frontiers in Psychology

Brian F. Gray¹ 

关键词: synesthesia;    embodiment;    embodied cognition;    grounding;    perception-cognition interface;    motor release;    alien hand sign;    anarchic hand syndrome;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00054

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Synesthesia is an unusual condition occurring in at least 4% of the population (Simner et al., 2006) in which certain stimuli trigger unusual perceptions which the physical properties of the stimulus alone are not sufficient to account for. For instance, in grapheme-color synesthesia, the sight of black-and-white printed letters or numbers triggers the experience of consistent and specific colors (e.g., A might be red, 7 yellow: Smilek et al., 2001). The associations reported by any given synesthete tend to be remarkably consistent over time (e.g., Simner et al., 2005). Hence if A is red for a certain synesthete, it will tend to always be red. There is evidence for a genetic component to the condition (Ward and Simner, 2005; Asher et al., 2009; Tomson et al., 2011), and evidence too that the brains of synesthetes are structurally and functionally different to those of non-synesthetes. For example, in a sound-color and sound-taste synesthete, Hänggi et al. (2008) found altered patters of brain volume and functional anisotrophy (FA) values (indicative of greater white matter coherence). These included increased FA values in primary auditory cortex, as well as increased gray and white matter volumes in the same region, and also structural differences in gray and white matter in visual and gustatory regions, i.e., increases in occipital regions, and increases and decreases in insular cortex (for review see Hubbard, 2012; Rouw, 2012).

【 授权许可】

CC BY