Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia

biologist in Singapore? Singapore is an extremely attractive place to live and work for both Asians and non-Asians. English is spoken by everyone and it has become a very appealing place for Asian (typically, but not exclusively, Chinese and Indian) and non-Asian (from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand) researchers trained elsewhere to move to. For the Asians, this is home or clo...

Running Head: Redefining Synaesthesia? Redefining Synaesthesia?

Defining synaesthesia.

Studies investigating developmental synaesthesia have sought to describe a number of qualities that might capture in behavioural terms the defining characteristics of this unusual phenomenon. The task of generating a definition is made more difficult by the fact that any description of synaesthesia must be broad enough to capture the 61 different variants of the condition already reported to da...

Correcting misconceptions about synaesthesia.

In the annals of cognitive neuroscience there are examples of fantastic memory abilities (e.g., Luria, 1968) that befuddle the vast majority of us with normal mnemonic skills. Although such feats have yet to be demonstrated in other species, extraordinary memory may not be unique to humans. One possible example comes from a study by Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007), which showed that following extens...

Synaesthesia: supernormal integration?

Synaesthesia has been known to scientific research for over 100 years but has undergone something of a renaissance recently as new investigations begin to uncover its neurological basis. Rather than being an anomaly, it might offer beneficial insights into the basis of normal perception. A new study by Esterman et al. epitomises this current trend and claims to show that the posterior parietal ...