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Caltech neurobiologists discover individuals who 'hear' movement
Date:8/6/2008

t, a similar test was given using sequences of beeps. Both the synesthetes and the control group performed equally well when given beeps. However, with visual flashes synesthetes were much more accurate, responding correctly more than 75 percent of the time, compared to around 50 percent--the level predicted by chance--in the control group. "Synesthetes had an advantage because they not only saw but also heard the visual patterns," Saenz says.

Saenz and Koch suspect that as much as 1 percent of the population may experience auditory synesthesia. In fact, she and Koch think that the brain may normally transfer visual sensory information over to the auditory cortex, to create a prediction of the associated sound. "This translation might result in actual sound perception in synesthetes, perhaps due to stronger than normal connections, says Saenz, who has begun brain imaging experiments to study this connectivity in synesthetes and nonsynesthetes.

"We might find that motion processing centers of the visual cortex are more interconnected with auditory brain regions than previously thought, even in the 'normal' brain," Saenz says. "At this point, very little is known about how the auditory and visual processing systems of the brain work together. Understanding this interaction is important because in normal experience, our senses work together all the time."


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Contact: Kathy Svitil
ksvitil@caltech.edu
626-395-8022
California Institute of Technology
Source:Eurekalert

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