Perception: Synaesthesia Flashcards
What evidence is there suggesting the physical world is not the same as the perceived world?
- perception illusion = visual, auditory illusion
- Rubrics cube = showing a shadow even tho there isnt one :O
What is multi-sensory perception?
Process by which information from difference sense is brought together
What are the advantages of Mulit-sensory perception?
- more efficient + accurate vs processing each sense separately
- enables us to establish a single coherent perspective of the world
What are some examples of multi-sensory perception - gone wrong?
- Colour influence taste
- red wine = fruity - Sounds influence hardness
- crunchy sound = more hard - Vision influences sound
- let me put my glasses on
- McGurk Illusion
What is the McGurk illusion?
“ba” = ears
“Ga” = eyes
= “da”
- superimposition of the 2 sounds
When there is ambiguity between what the eyes and ears hear, what does the brain do?
- fuck it up
- but in a sophisticated way
What did Calvert et al in 1997 find suggesting a link between vision and auditory mulitsensory perception?
- fMRI
- showed silently looking at moving lips activated the auditory part of the brain
What is synaesthesia?
- concrete perceptual xp
= not imagined/ memory association - Elicited by stimuli in the external environment or by internal thoughts
= not hallucinations which occur spontaneously - automatic and cannot be suppressed
= unlike thinking/ imagining
What are 3 explanations for what potentially causes synaesthesia?
- Developmental synaesthisia
- Increased interactivity of the different brain regions
- Acquired synesthesia
What did Baron-Cohen et al in 1996 find about developmental synaesthesia?
- runs in families
- has a genetic component
- equally common in m + f
- present throughout the lifespan
- often triggered bu linguistic stimuli (letters, numbers, words etc)
What did they find similar across people with synesthesia?
- a natural propensity for hyper connectivity
- eg colour + letter perceptions
What did Hanggi et al in 2011 find challenging the idea of synesthesia being caused due to hyper connectivity?
- there seems to be greater connectivity in most regions of the brain vs just the synesthesia areas
In what ways can synesthesia be acquired?
- sensory deprivation
- pharmacologically triggered
- effects are temporary
What are the different ways in which science can prove synesthesia is real?
- look for high internal consistency
- Functional imaging studies
- Synesthesia stroop task
How can looking for high internal consistency prove synesthesia exist?
- “what colour is c”
- should be consistent over time is synesthesic
