Abstract
Grapheme-color synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which viewing achromatic letters/numbers leads to automatic and involuntary color experiences. In this study, voxel-based morphometry analyses were performed on T1 images and fractional anisotropy measures to examine the whole brain in associator grapheme-color synesthetes. These analyses provide new evidence of variations in emotional areas (both at the cortical and subcortical levels), findings that help understand the emotional component as a relevant aspect of the synesthetic experience. Additionally, this study replicates previous findings in the left intraparietal sulcus and, for the first time, reports the existence of anatomical differences in subcortical gray nuclei of developmental grapheme-color synesthetes, providing a link between acquired and developmental synesthesia. This empirical evidence, which goes beyond modality-specific areas, could lead to a better understanding of grapheme-color synesthesia as well as of other modalities of the phenomenon.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 343-353 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Experimental Brain Research |
| Volume | 227 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgments We thank the participants and the technical staff at the 3T scanner facility of Fundación Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Neurológicas for their indispensable collaboration in this study. Financial support was provided by Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Fundación Centro de Investigación de Enfermedades Neurológicas and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PSI2009-14415-C03-03. The authors declare that they have no competing interests. This work conforms to Standard 8 of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologist and Code of Conduct.