Synaesthesia shows possible cognitive advantages
Synaesthesia is a term many are familiar with, but many are not completely aware of its definition. The word synaesthesia derives from the Greek “syn” meaning together (as in synthesis) while "asthenia" refers to sensations. A neurological condition that is known to affect one in twenty-three people, synaesthesia usually runs in families (however, the mechanisms responsible for its transmission are still unknown). Synaesthesia is a mixing of the senses that happens when an activated sensory/cognitive pathway involuntarily triggers the activation of another sensory/cognitive pathway. An example of this would be an individual who perceives numbers as having specific colours, or tactile sensations which evoke certain emotions.
There are actually around sixty types of synaesthesia which people can experience, each of which varies in intensity as well as the individuals own awareness of their ability. For example, colour-grapheme synaesthesia causes the individual to perceive numbers or letters as having an inherent colour; ordinal-linguistic personification synaesthesia means days, numbers, weeks, or months of the year can evoke different personalities. As well, number-form synaesthesia means one will perceive numbers, days of the week, months of the year, etc. as having precise locations in space.
It happens that only very few of these types of synaesthesia have actually been the subject of scientific research. Recently, modern science has seen a renewed interest in synaesthesia due to the potential insights the disorder could lend to our understanding of cognitive and perceptual processes.
A recent study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition illuminated a particular type of this condition, known as "time-space synaesthesia." Led by David Brang and colleagues at the University of California, the study showed that affected individuals experience time as a spatial construct. These individuals can experience time as a variety of possible shapes; many of these synaesthetes can perceive the calendar as projected onto the real world. One of Brang’s subjects reported that she perceived the year as a circular ring rotating clockwise around her body throughout the year. The current month would always be inside her chest, while the previous one would be right in front of her.
The study itself involved 183 students asked to visualize the months of the year in their head and then construct that visualization on a computer screen. Then, four months later, they would be shown a blank screen, and asked to select a position for each month. Each participant would be prompted by a “cue month” -- a dot on the screen from a random month placed where the student had originally placed it. The results showed that four of the students placed their months according to a distinct spatial arrangement (that is, a circle), which was shown to be consistent throughout the trials. Brang and his colleagues called these people time-space synaesthetes. In a secondary test, the researchers compared the students' ability to memorize and reproduce an unfamiliar spatial calendar. As it turned out, the time-space synaesthetes showed far better recall abilities than the non-synaesthetes.
Brang reports that he has a suspicion that time-space synaesthesia occurs when the neural activity underlying spatial processing becomes unusually active. The result of this enhanced processing leads to overlap in other areas of spatial functioning, such as mental rotation, map navigation, and spatial manipulation. Perhaps synaesthesia will come to be viewed as a cognitive advantage rather than an unusual condition.
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