Synesthesia is when a stimulus not only induces the typical percept, but it also induces another automatic percept that is often in a different sensory modality (Spector & Maurer, 2009). For example, a particular sound may induce color. The pitch or tone of this sound may induce a more specific color. A stimulus that triggers the synesthesia is called the inducer. The modality in which the synesthesia is encountered is called the concurrent (Ward & Simner, 2003). There are at least 54 different types of synesthesia (Spector & Maurer, 2009), mixing different aspects of our senses. Synesthesia can manifest its behavioral markers in children as young as six years old. There are over 170,000 grapheme-color synesthetes ages 0-17 in the UK and over 930,000 grapheme-color synesthetes ages 0-17 in the USA (Simner et. al., 2009). There are two main developmental theories of synesthesia and this paper will explore both perspectives; the neonatal synesthesia theory and the disinhibited feedback theory.
Developmental Theories of Synesthesia
There are two predominant theories in regards to the developmental origins of synesthesia. One theory is called the neonatal synesthesia theory. It posits that synesthesia arises when the pruning of synapses is not completed between some contiguous brain areas (Spector & Maurer, 2009). Essentially all neonates are synesthetes until the appropriate pruning and apoptosis occurs. The other theory is called the disinhibited feedback theory. This theory posits “synesthesia arises when the reentrant feedback that develops postnatally from higher cortical areas onto lower sensory cortical areas is not strong enough to inhibit effects from connections between primary sensory cortical areas” (Grossenbacher & Love...
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...eory, the connections between these areas may remain but are typically inhibited. Synesthesia will also change and evolve over time through childhood. Their associations may begin rather chaotically and become more consistent. Synesthesia has many individual differences and many studies focus on the performance of a single synesthete or small sample of synesthetes. Thus, it is hard to generalize such studies to all synesthetes. Future research should include more fMRI’s and DTI research to fully map the neurological basis. It would also be beneficial to perform these on infants. This is difficult because infants are fussy, won’t stay still, and permission to expose infants to this type of analysis is difficult to obtain. It is also not possible to have access to another person’s subjective experiences so testing the genuineness of synesthesia can be more difficult.
The next speaker, Dr. Gottlieb investigated the hearing aspect of our senses. He investigated the interaction between our heari...
When parent and child make eye contact, they initiate a harmonic meeting of the mind. As the mother and child gaze into each other eyes, the baby will gaze into the mother’s eye with a radiant smile and the mother will automatically respond with a lot of emotion and verbal and bodily joyfulness and they smile back. The brain of the mother and child are synchronizing the neural activity in the right cortex of each brain. “The brain rhythms are getting in tune, performing a kind of mind- meld that is very pure form of intimacy” (Brown
Baillergeon, R., Spelke, E., & Wasserman, S. (Aug, 1985). Object permanence in five-month-old infants. Cognition, 20(3), 191-208.
It has been proven that a child’s early years are the peak at which the mind can bend and shape, creating the foundation for a life. We know now that even before birth, the mind is a delicate matter that if improperly taken care of could alter a person’s entire life. Nourishment and stimulation before and after the birth of a child mold’s the brain in its most malleable state. Medical and scientific institutes paired with parenting information organizations have made information readily available for parents, childcare providers, and students to advise them of the importance of childhood brain development. This information is not only critical for the child, but for the person they will become in the future.
Imagine a world where numbers, letters, tastes, and sounds have color. Imagine a world where letters and numbers have personalities. For a synesthete, this is their world. Synesthesia occurs from a cross wiring in the brain. Instead of one sense being used in a particular action, multiple senses are used. Although little medical knowledge is known about the condition, it is fascinating and continues to impact our world.
...s. Future studies on visual preference are more likely to focus on the environmental aspects surrounding the infant.
A recent neurobiological approach to understanding consciousness, at least on a perceptual level, has involved the study of the phenomenon of blindsight. Damage to areas of the visual cortex often result in complete or partial blindness. Although the eye itself is undamaged, patients report an inability to detect any light input in part of (or the entire) visual field. However, experiments regularly show that somehow, visual cues are processed. Visual inputs presented to the blind field affect the patient's response to stimulus in the normal visual field. Reaction times to stimuli are affected as well as the interpretation of the stimuli. A visual cues presented in the blind field may suggest a certain interpretation of an ambiguous stimuli. For example, the interpretation of the word "bank", presented as an auditory cue, differs depending on whether the word "river" or "money" is presented to the blind field, even though the patient does not...
This paper aims to endorse physicalism over dualism by means of Smart’s concept of identity theory. Smart’s article Sensations and the Brain provides a strong argument for identity theory and accounts for many of it primary objections. Here I plan to first discuss the main arguments for physicalism over dualism, then more specific arguments for identity theory, and finish with further criticisms of identity theory.
Subliminal or unconscious perception refers to the idea that stimuli presented below the threshold for conscious awareness can influence an individual's thoughts, feelings, or actions (2). The possibility that an individual can acquire and act on input without being aware of doing so has implications for the study of consciousness and the larger set of processes which characterize the I-function. It is generally assumed that that conscious perception of a stimulus is necessary in order to act on that stimulus, and this conscious decision to act is one of several processes which characterize the I-function.
It was determined that infants develop color vision at or around three months of age and that when final results were evaluated and compared to adult (only) measures, actually have better quality color vision (Brown et al., 1994). An interesting study by Chase (1937) made efforts to discover the identities of color in which infants that aged 2 to 10 weeks old were tested to find out what colors they could perceive. The results they came up with were that very young infants could tell the difference between the primary colors and combinations but there were numerous limitations to the study (Chase, 1937). The study had placed infants to lie down and view a screen while observing eye movements (Chase, 1937). Findings by Franklin, Pilling, and Davies (2005) explain that color categorizing occurs in four month old infants and adults alike. A study by Bornstein, Kessen, & Weiskopf (1976) has supporting evidence that color is categorized in 4 month old infants and determined the boundaries within...
Physicalism is the position that nothing can exceed past what is physically present, and what is physical is all that there can be. This idea is reductive in that it suggests there is no more to the universe than physical matters, including brain processes, sensations, and human consciousness. J.J.C. Smart explains sensations as a means of commentary on a brain process. He believes that, essentially, brain processes and what we report as sensations are essentially the same thing in that one is an account of the other. He writes in “Sensations and Brain Processes” that “…in so far as a sensation statement is a report of something, that something is in fact a brain process. Sensations are nothing over and above brain processes,” (145). Though
In the process of human infants’ development, infants start to learn how to communicate with the others at the surprising early age, for example: Newborns can follow objects to make saccades to peripheral targets (Farroni et al., 2004);Infants’ responding eye gaze behaviour increase constantly since two months old (Scaife & Bruner, 1975); Cooper and Aslin pointed out that this preference showed up as early as the infants were one month old in 1990. Infants not only can respond to eye contact, vocal cues also are used for gaining more reference information during a communication, particularly when the speech is conducted forward to the infants. It had been reported in many studies that infants show more preference to infant-directed communication
Sensory – motor · Babies and young children learn through their senses, activity and interaction with their environment. · They understand the world in terms of actions. 2. Pre – operations · Young children learn through their experiences with real objects in their immediate environment. · They use symbols e.g. words and images to make sense of their world.
With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...
A child begins to correlate motor patterns and sensory input. For example a child may unintentionally suck her thumb, if she enjoys the sensation she will do this again.