Synaesthesia: Cross-modal mechanisms and the role of visual imagery

Kylie J. Barnett, Trinity CollegeDublin

Abstract
Synaesthesia has been defined as an involuntary sensory cross-activation whereby a stimulus in one modality elicits a perceptual experience in another modality. The most commonly reported forms involve the perception of colour in response to linguistic stimuli, but synaesthesia may also involve cross-activation between other modalities. Concepts can induce synaesthesia and colour in linguistic-chromatic synaesthesia is induced via the auditory or visual modality. We aimed to find out whether synaesthesia can be induced via a non-visual modality and to assess whether mental imagery might mediate synaesthesia. We tested the recognition of letters of the alphabet by touch in 5 synaesthetes using a virtual-tactile device. We also tested a further 38 synaesthetes using the Vividness of Visual Mental Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). We found that colour was evoked in synaesthetes upon recognition of a letter by touch, showing that synaesthesia can be induced via an alternative unfamiliar modality. We also found that synaesthetes report experiencing more vivid mental images. This strongly suggests that synaesthesia is associated with the propensity to form cross-modal associations and that such processes are mediated by enhanced mental imagery.

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