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Colors, tastes, numbers?: synesthesia in a Spanish sample

H. Melero, A. Peña-Melián, M. Ríos-Lago [REV NEUROL 2015;60:145-150] PMID: 25670043 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33588/rn.6004.2014345

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Volumen 60 | Number 04 | Nº of views of the article 11.342 | Nº of PDF downloads 1.116 | Article publication date 16/02/2015

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ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION Synesthesia is a neural phenomenon in which stimulation in one sensory or cognitive stream leads to associated experiences in a second, unstimulated stream. These activations occur involuntarily, automatically and consistently over time.

AIM To estimate the relative frequency of the different modalities of the phenomenon in a Spanish sample.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS Study performed in educational (55.04%), labor (20.54%) and digital contexts (24.4%) using the Synesthesia Questionnaire created by Artecittá Foundation.

RESULTS The analysis of the responses given by 803 participants suggests that 13.95% of the sample experience any synesthesia. The analysis of the relative frequencies shows that the most frequent modality is spatial sequence synesthesia (44.6%). 33.9% see colors when listening to sounds and/or music, 25.9% associate colors to temporal concepts, 20.5% assign gender and personality to letters and numbers, 10.7% experience grapheme-color synesthesia and 5.4% feel a specific flavor when hearing words.

CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that the presence of synesthesia in the Spanish sample under study is high, and that the investigation of the phenomenon and its different modalities needs to be approached on the basis of the current knowledge about its phenomenological variability and its genetic and neurophysiologic characteristics. Likewise, the results are useful to adjust the questionnaire items and increase their discriminative power. KeywordsConceptual synesthesias Multimodal synesthesias Spanish sample Synesthesia Unimodal synesthesias

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Colors, tastes, numbers?: synesthesia in a Spanish sample