Distinct neural processes in grapheme-colour synaesthetes and semantic controls

European Journal of Neuroscience

Volumn 36, Issue 11, 2012, Pages 3593-3601

  Niccolai, Valentina ^a   Wascher, Edmund ^b   Stoerig, Petra ^a  

^a HEINRICH HEINE UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

^b LEIBNIZ RESEARCH CENTRE FOR WORKING ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN FACTORS   (Germany)

Author keywords

Bidirectionality; ERP; N170; N400; P300; Training

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; COGNITION; COLOR VISION; CONTROLLED STUDY; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAM; EVENT RELATED POTENTIAL; EVOKED AUDITORY RESPONSE; FEMALE; GRAPHEME COLOR; HUMAN; NEUROMODULATION; PERCEPTION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; REACTION TIME; SEMANTICS; SENSORY STIMULATION; STROOP TEST; VISUAL STIMULATION;

ADULT; CASE-CONTROL STUDIES; COGNITION; COLOR PERCEPTION; EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS, P300; EVOKED POTENTIALS, VISUAL; HUMANS; MIDDLE AGED; PERCEPTUAL DISORDERS; SEMANTICS; SPEECH PERCEPTION;

EID: 84870500083     PISSN: 0953816X     EISSN: 14609568     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2012.08270.x     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Barnett, K.J., Foxe, J.J., Molholm, S., Kelly, S.P., Shalgi, S., Mitchell, K.J. & Newell, F.N. (2008) Differences in early sensory-perceptual processing in synesthesia: a visual evoked potential study. NeuroImage, 43, 605-613.
2. Baron-Cohen, S., Harrison, J., Goldstein, L.H. & Wyke, M. (1993) Coloured speech perception: is synaesthesia what happens when modularity breaks down?Perception, 22, 419-426.
3. Barrett, S.E., Rugg, M.D. & Perrett, D.I. (1988) Event-related potentials and the matching of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Neuropsychologia, 26, 105-117.
4. Beeli, G., Esslen, M. & Jancke, L. (2008) Time course of neural activity correlated with colored-hearing synesthesia. Cereb. Cortex, 18, 379-385.
5. Brang, D., Kanai, S., Ramachandran, V.S. & Coulson, S. (2011) Contextual priming in grapheme-color synesthetes and yoked controls: 400msec in the life of a synesthete. J. Cogn. Neurosci., 23, 1681-1696.
6. Cohen Kadosh, R., Cohen Kadosh, K. & Henik, A. (2007) The neuronal correlate of bidirectional synesthesia: a combined event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging study. J. Cogn. Neurosci., 19, 2050-2059.
7. Cornejo, C., Simonetti, F., Ibanez, A., Aldunate, N., Ceric, F., Lopez, V. & Nunez, R.E. (2009) Gesture and metaphor comprehension: electrophysiological evidence of cross-modal coordination by audiovisual stimulation. Brain Cogn., 70, 42-52.
8. Dixon, M.J., Smilek, D., Cudahy, C. & Merikle, P.M. (2000) Five plus two equals yellow. Nature, 406, 365.
9. Dixon, M.J., Smilek, D. & Merikle, P.M. (2004) Not all synaesthetes are created equal: projector versus associator synaesthetes. Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci., 4, 335-343.
10. Eagleman, D.M., Kagan, A.D., Nelson, S.N., Sagaram, D. & Sarma, A.K. (2007) A standardized test battery for the study of synesthesia. J. Neurosci. Methods, 159, 139-145.
11. Franklin, A., Drivonikou, G.V., Bevis, L., Davies, I.R., Kay, P. & Regier, T. (2008) Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 105, 3221-3225.
12. Franklin, M.S., Dien, J., Neely, J.H., Huber, E. & Waterson, L.D. (2007) Semantic priming modulates the N400, N300, and N400RP. Clin. Neurophysiol., 118, 1053-1068.
13. Gebuis, T., Nijboer, T.C. & Van der Smagt, M.J. (2009) Multiple dimensions in bi-directional synesthesia. Eur. J. Neurosci., 29, 1703-1710.
14. Gilbert, A.L., Regier, T., Kay, P. & Ivry, R.B. (2005) Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 103, 489-494.
15. Gratton, G., Coles, M.G. & Donchin, E. (1983) A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact. Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol., 55, 468-484.
16. Greenhouse, S.W. & Geisser, S. (1959) On methods in the analysis of profile data. Psychometrika, 24, 95-112.
17. Groppe, D.M., Choi, M., Huang, T., Schilz, J., Topkins, B., Urbach, T.P. & Kutas, M. (2010) The phonemic restoration effect reveals pre-N400 effect of supportive sentence context in speech perception. Brain Res., 1361, 54-66.
18. Grossenbacher, P.G. & Lovelace, C.T. (2001) Mechanisms of synesthesia: cognitive and physiological constraints. Trends Cogn. Sci., 5, 36-41.
19. Hamm, J.P., Johnson, B.W. & Kirk, I.J. (2002) Comparison of the N300 and N400 ERPs to picture stimuli in congruent and incongruent contexts. Clin. Neurophysiol., 113, 1339-1350.
20. Hubbard, E.M. (2007) Neurophysiology of synesthesia. Curr. Psychiatry Rep., 9, 193-199.
21. Hubbard, E.M., Brang, D. & Ramachandran, V.S. (2011) The cross-activation theory at 10. J. Neuropsychol., 5, 152-177.
22. Jäncke, L. & Langer, N. (2011) A strong parietal hub in the small-world network of coloured-hearing synaesthetes during resting state EEG. J. Neuropsychol, 5, 178-202.
23. Knoch, D., Gianotti, L.R., Mohr, C. & Brugger, P. (2005) Synesthesia: when colors count. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res., 25, 372-374.
24. Kok, A. (2001) On the utility of P3 amplitude as a measure of processing capacity. Psychophysiology, 38, 557-577.
25. Kutas, M. & Federmeier, K.D. (2011) Thirty years and counting: finding meaning in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP). Annu. Rev. Psychol., 62, 621-647.
26. Kutas, M. & Hillyard, S.A. (1984) Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association. Nature, 307, 161-163.
27. MacLeod, C.M. & Dunbar, K. (1988) Training and Stroop-like interference: evidence for a continuum of automaticity. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn., 14, 126-135.
28. Mattingley, J.B., Rich, A.N., Yelland, G. & Bradshaw, J.L. (2001) Unconscious priming eliminates automatic binding of colour and alphanumeric form in synaesthesia. Nature, 410, 580-582.
29. McPherson, W.B. & Holcomb, P.J. (1999) An electrophysiological investigation of semantic priming with pictures of real objects. Psychophysiology, 36, 53-65.
30. Meier, B. & Rothen, N. (2009) Training grapheme-colour associations produces a synaesthetic Stroop effect, but not a conditioned synaesthetic response. Neuropsychologia, 47, 1208-1211.
31. Mills, C.B., Boteler, E.H. & Oliver, G.K. (1999) Digit synaesthesia: a case study using a Stroop-type test. Cogn. Neuropsychol., 16, 181-191.
32. Niccolai, V., Van Leeuwen, T.M., Jennes, J. & Stoerig, P. (2012a) Modality and variability of synesthetic experience. Am. J. Psychol., 125, 81-94.
33. Niccolai, V., Van Leeuwen, T.M., Blakemore, C. & Stoerig, P. (2012b) Synaesthetic perception of colour and visual space in a blind subject: an fMRI case study. Conscious. Cogn., 21, 889-899.
34. Nikolic, D., Lichti, P. & Singer, W. (2007) Color opponency in synaesthetic experiences. Psychol. Sci., 18, 481-486.
35. Orgs, G., Lange, K., Dombrowski, J.H. & Heil, M. (2008) N400-effects to task-irrelevant environmental sounds: further evidence for obligatory conceptual processing. Neurosci. Lett., 436, 133-137.
36. Palmeri, T.J., Blake, R., Marois, R., Flanery, M.A. & Whetsell, W. Jr (2002) The perceptual reality of synesthetic colors. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 99, 4127-4131.
37. Proverbio, A.M. & Riva, F. (2009) RP and N400 ERP components reflect semantic violations in visual processing of human actions. Neurosci. Lett., 459, 142-146.
38. Ramachandran, V.S. & Hubbard, E.M. (2001) Psychophysical investigations into the neural basis of synaesthesia. Proc. Biol. Sci., 268, 979-983.
39. Rich, A.N. & Mattingley, J.B. (2002) Anomalous perception in synaesthesia: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Nat. Rev. Neurosci., 3, 43-52.
40. Rich, A.N., Williams, M.A., Puce, A., Syngeniotis, A., Howard, M.A., McGlone, F. & Mattingley, J.B. (2006) Neural correlates of imagined and synaesthetic colours. Neuropsychologia, 44, 2918-2925.
41. Rouw, R. & Scholte, H.S. (2007) Increased structural connectivity in grapheme-color synesthesia. Nat. Neurosci., 10, 792-797.
42. Rouw, R. & Scholte, H.S. (2010) Neural basis of individual differences in synesthetic experiences. J. Neurosci., 30, 6205-6213.
43. Sagiv, N. & Ward, J. (2006) Crossmodal interactions: lessons from synesthesia. Prog. Brain Res., 155, 259-271.
44. Schiltz, K., Trocha, K., Wieringa, B.M., Emrich, H.M., Johannes, S. & Munte, T.F. (1999) Neurophysiological aspects of synesthetic experience. J. Neuropsychiatry Clin. Neurosci., 11, 58-65.
45. Sitnikova, T., Holcomb, P.J., Kiyonaga, K.A. & Kuperberg, G.R. (2008) Two neurocognitive mechanisms of semantic integration during the comprehension of visual real-world events. J. Cogn. Neurosci., 20, 2037-2057.
46. Smilek, D., Dixon, M.J., Cudahy, C. & Merikle, P.M. (2001) Synaesthetic photisms influence visual perception. J. Cogn. Neurosci., 13, 930-936.
47. Smilek, D., Dixon, M.J., Cudahy, C. & Merikle, P.M. (2002) Concept driven color experiences in digit-color synesthesia. Brain Cogn., 48, 570-573.
48. Van Leeuwen, T.M., Petersson, K.M. & Hagoort, P. (2010) Synaesthetic colour in the brain: beyond colour areas. A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of synaesthetes and matched controls. PLoS One, 5, e12074.
49. Van Leeuwen, T.M., den Ouden, H.E. & Hagoort, P. (2011) Effective connectivity determines the nature of subjective experience in grapheme-color synesthesia. J. Neurosci., 31, 9879-9884.
50. Wascher, E., Hoffmann, S., Sänger, J. & Grosjean, M. (2009) Visuo-spatial processing and the N1 component of the ERP. Psychophysiology, 46, 1270-1277.
51. Weiss, P.H., Kalckert, A. & Fink, G.R. (2009) Priming letters by colors: evidence for the bidirectionality of grapheme-color synesthesia. J. Cogn. Neurosci., 21, 2019-2026.
52. Wollen, K.A. & Ruggiero, F.T. (1983) Coloured-letter synesthesia. J. Ment. Imagery, 7, 83-86.