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CREATIVE LINK UNCERTAIN. “While the link between synesthesia and creativity has received remarkable interest over the last decade, research has not yet directly demonstrated any causal relationship between the two and so the argument, at this point, remains seductive and compelling but not conclusive.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

DOOR TO THE MIND. “But it is precisely because synesthesia seems to occupy that mysterious boundary zone between elementary sensations on the one hand and higher level abstractions (such as gender and personality, and even emotions; e.g., sandpaper evoking the sensation of jealousy) on the other that the phenomenon intrigues us and provides an experimental lever for investigating high-level mental processes.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

SELECTION. “Synesthesia is associated with a wide variety of conceptual and perceptual benefits, suggesting that the gene(s) involved may have been selected for because of a hidden agenda. Whether this is true, and if so, what that agenda may be, beyond specific enhanced cognitive and sensory benefits, remains to be explicated.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

MISSING GENES. “However, to fully understand this relationship, identification of the genetic component involved and evidence of selection on these genes will be required to determine whether synesthesia serves to enhance normal sensory processing.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

PROCESSING UPTICK. “Taken collectively, these data suggest that synesthesia may be associated with enhanced primary sensory processing as well as the integration between the senses.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

INTERLINKING. “Others have argued that synesthesia is the direct result of enhanced communication between the senses as a logical outgrowth of the cross-modality interactions present in all individuals.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

ADDITIVE. “In addition to facilitating processes in individual sensory modalities, synesthetes also show increased communication between the senses unrelated to their synesthetic experiences, suggesting that benefits from synesthesia generalize to other modalities as well, supporting their ability to process multisensory information.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE. “These demonstrations of enhanced processing of sensory information suggest a provocative evolutionary hypothesis for synesthesia: synesthetic experiences may serve as cognitive and perceptual anchors to aid in the detection, processing, and retention of critical stimuli in the world; in terms of memory benefits, these links are akin to a method of loci association.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn

TRANSIENT MONKEY SUCCESS. "Only one brain transplant was conducted by neurosurgeon Robert J. White; he grafted the head of a monkey onto the headless body of another monkey. EEG readings showed the brain was later functioning normally. It was thought to prove that the brain was an immunologically privileged organ, as the host's immune system did not attack it at first, but immunorejection caused the monkey to die after nine days." https://lnkd.in/dPaEvxf View in LinkedIn

GREATER ACCURACY. “Individuals who experience auditory sounds evoked by visual motion process rhythmic visual stimuli more accurately than controls and in a manner similar to how non-synesthetes process auditory information.” https://lnkd.in/dfc7eju View in LinkedIn