Synaetheisa

Question 1

What do receptors in the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin do?

Answer 1

They convert physical signals into neural signals.

Question 2

How does the brain perceive the world?

Answer 2

By combining information from each sense and using stored knowledge of the world.

Question 3

Why is the physical world not the same as the perceived world?

Answer 3

Because perception can be influenced by illusions, such as visual and auditory illusions.

Question 4

What is multi-sensory perception?

Answer 4

The process by which information from different senses is combined to form a coherent perspective of the world.

Question 5

What are the advantages of multi-sensory perception?

Answer 5

1. It is more efficient and accurate than processing each sense separately.
2. It enables a single coherent perspective of the world.
3. It allows us to act effectively on the world.

Question 6

What is the McGurk illusion?

Answer 6

When ‘BA’ is presented to the ears and ‘GA’ is presented to the eyes, the subject perceives ‘DA.’

Question 7

What does fMRI reveal about the McGurk illusion?

Answer 7

Silently looking at moving lips activates the auditory part of the brain (Calvert et al., 1997).

Question 8

What is synaesthesia?

Answer 8

A phenomenon where concrete perceptual experiences are elicited by external stimuli or internal thoughts, and these experiences are automatic and cannot be suppressed.

Question 9

How is synaesthesia different from hallucinations?

Answer 9

Synaesthetic experiences are triggered by stimuli and are not spontaneous like hallucinations.

Question 10

What causes developmental synaesthesia?

Answer 10

It has a genetic component, runs in families, is equally common in males and females, and is present throughout the lifespan.

Question 11

What triggers acquired synaesthesia?

Answer 11

Sensory deprivation or pharmacological factors, with effects being temporary rather than permanent.

Question 12

What evidence supports that synaesthesia is real?

Answer 12

1. High internal consistency in reports.
2. Functional imaging studies show activation of areas like V4 (colour area) in synaesthetes.
3. The synesthetic Stroop effect.

Question 13

What did Nunn et al. (2002) find in their functional imaging study of synaesthesia?

Answer 13

The colour area (left V4) was activated in synaesthetes but not in controls, even if the controls were trained to associate or imagine colour.

Question 14

How are vision and touch linked?

Answer 14

Watching someone else being touched activates the observer’s somatosensory cortex, but watching an object being touched does not (Blakemore et al., 2005).

Question 15

What is number-space synaesthesia?

Answer 15

A phenomenon where synaesthetes see numbers arranged in spatial arrays, often with small numbers on the left and large numbers on the right.

Question 16

What does Dehaene et al. (1993) suggest about number-space associations in non-synaesthetes?

Answer 16

Non-synaesthetes are faster at responding to small numbers with the left hand and large numbers with the right hand.

Question 17

Does everyone have synaesthesia?

Answer 17

While not everyone has synaesthesia, the phenomenon may shed light on general mechanisms that integrate senses and link perception to language, thought, and memory.

Question 18

What has science established about synaesthesia?

Answer 18

It is a real phenomenon where some people have different perceptual experiences, offering insights into sensory integration and connections between perception, language, and memory.