Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Extensive Phenomenological Overlap between Induced and Naturally-Occurring Synaesthetic Experiences

View ORCID ProfileDavid. J. Schwartzman, Ales Oblak, View ORCID ProfileNicolas Rothen, View ORCID ProfileDaniel Bor, View ORCID ProfileAnil. K. Seth
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.03.228692
David. J. Schwartzman
aSackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QJ, UK
bDepartment of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QJ, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for David. J. Schwartzman
  • For correspondence: d.schwartzman@sussex.ac.uk
Ales Oblak
cCentre for Cognitive Science, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nicolas Rothen
dFaculty of Psychology, Swiss Distance University Institute, 3900 Brig, Switzerland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Nicolas Rothen
Daniel Bor
eDepartment of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Daniel Bor
Anil. K. Seth
aSackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QJ, UK
bDepartment of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QJ, UK
fCanadian Institute for Advanced Research, Azrieli Programme on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Anil. K. Seth
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Data/Code
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia (GCS) is defined by additional perceptual experiences, which are automatically and consistently triggered by specific inducing stimuli. The associative nature of GCS has motivated attempts to induce synaesthesia by means of associative learning. Two recent studies have shown that extensive associative training can generate not only behavioural (consistency and automaticity) and neurophysiological markers of GCS, but also synaesthesia-like phenomenology [1,2]. However, these studies provided only superficial descriptions regarding the training-related changes in subjective experience: they did not directly assess how closely induced synaesthetic experiences mirror those found in natural GCS. Here we report an extended qualitative analysis of the transcripts of the semi-structured interviews obtained following the completion of the associative training protocol used by [2]. In addition, we performed a comparable analysis of responses to an interview with a new population of natural occurring grapheme-colour synaesthetes (NOS), allowing us to directly compare the phenomenological dimensions of induced and naturally occurring synaesthetic experience. Our results provide an extensive addition to the description of the phenomenology of NOS experience, revealing a high degree of heterogeneity both within and across all experiential categories. Capitalising on this unique level of detail, we identified a number of shared experiential categories between NOS and induced synaesthesia-like (ISL) groups, including: stability of experience, location of colour experience, shape of co-occurring colour experience, relative strength of colour experience and automaticity of colour experience. Only the automaticity of colour experience differed significantly between the two groups: NOS experience was reported as being mostly automatic, whereas induced ISL were mostly described as being ‘wilful’. We observed three additional experiential categories relating to the automaticity of synaesthetic experience within the NOS group: contextually varied experience, semi-automatic experience and reflective association, which suggests that, as with other experiential categories, the automaticity of synaesthetic experience is also highly heterogeneous. Our results provide new evidence that that intensive training of letter-colour associations can alter conscious perceptual experiences in non-synaesthetes, and that such alterations produce synaesthesia-like phenomenology which substantially resembles similarities to natural grapheme-colour synaesthesia.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • https://osf.io/e367d/?view_only=dd61d42daa7a4c848023b89bd38789f8

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted August 04, 2020.
Download PDF
Data/Code
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Extensive Phenomenological Overlap between Induced and Naturally-Occurring Synaesthetic Experiences
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Extensive Phenomenological Overlap between Induced and Naturally-Occurring Synaesthetic Experiences
David. J. Schwartzman, Ales Oblak, Nicolas Rothen, Daniel Bor, Anil. K. Seth
bioRxiv 2020.08.03.228692; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.03.228692
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Extensive Phenomenological Overlap between Induced and Naturally-Occurring Synaesthetic Experiences
David. J. Schwartzman, Ales Oblak, Nicolas Rothen, Daniel Bor, Anil. K. Seth
bioRxiv 2020.08.03.228692; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.03.228692

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4672)
  • Biochemistry (10340)
  • Bioengineering (7658)
  • Bioinformatics (26300)
  • Biophysics (13501)
  • Cancer Biology (10672)
  • Cell Biology (15413)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8487)
  • Ecology (12806)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (16831)
  • Genetics (11382)
  • Genomics (15469)
  • Immunology (10603)
  • Microbiology (25182)
  • Molecular Biology (10210)
  • Neuroscience (54383)
  • Paleontology (399)
  • Pathology (1667)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2889)
  • Physiology (4334)
  • Plant Biology (9235)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1586)
  • Synthetic Biology (2555)
  • Systems Biology (6773)
  • Zoology (1461)