Psy3241 - User contributions [en]

Amygdala

Mwentworth — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Mwentworth: /* References */

[[Category:Brain areas]]

==What is the amygdala?==

The amygdalae (singular: amygdala) is an almond shaped cluster of neurons located deep in the medial temporal lobes of the

brain of humans and other vertibrates. The amygdalae are considered part of the Lymbic System and play an important role in the

processing of memory in terms of emotional reactions.

== Connections ==

The amygdala sends signals to the hypothalamus for activation of the sympathetic nervous system. There are also connections to

the reticular nucleus for increased reflexes and to the trigeminal nerve and facial nerve for facial expressions of fear.

Additionally, the amygdala has connections to the ventral tegmental area, locus coeruleus and latrodorsal tegmental nucleus for

the activation of the neurotransmitters of dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

The amygdala has connections with all of the sensory systems of the body, creating emotional connections with each sensory

stimulus. The cortical nucleus is part of the amygdala and receives signals from the olfactory bulb and the olfactory cortex

involving the since of smell, more specifically the processing of pheromones. Perhaps it is through these connections that

people remember a particular person or place from a familiar smell or taste.

==Role of Amygdala==

The amygdala has been found to perform primary roles in the memory of emotional events involving fear or aversive stimuli. This

connection to memory could be through long-term potentiation, when affected synapses from an aversive event are primed to act

more rapidly and readily. For example, when participants are exposed to the pairing of a loud noise and a blue circle,

participants have a fight/flight reaction. Additionally, when they are exposed to the blue circle afterwards, they still

experience the sympathetic nervous system spike. This could serve as an evolutional benefit in order to escape and avoid

situations that pose as a danger. The amygdala is also believed to play a role in the processing of rewards and the emotional

states involved in aggressive behaviors, sexual behaviors, maternal behaviors and eating/drinking behaviors.

The amygdalae are also believed to play a role in the storage of memory during the consolidation period. Emotionally aroused

events activate the amygdalae to a higher level. When the amygdalae help consolidate memory, there tends to be a stronger

retention of the event in one’s memory.

==The Amygdala's Involvement in Disorders==

Patients with borderline personality disorder tend to have significantly greater left amygdala activity than normal

controls. Additionally, patients with a bipolar and unipolar disorders and states of depression tend to have a significantly

smaller amygdala volume, perhaps shedding light onto the erratic shifts of emotion related to the disorder. There are also

neuropsychology imaging studies that have tried to tie a role in the size of the amygdala to autism.

Damage to the amygdala could pose as a danger to the individual, and anyone the person comes into contact with. While a person

with amygdala damage may have normal cognitive functions, they may completely loose their sense of fear. It could be very

possible for someone with amygdala damage to walk out into the middle of a busy road without the fear of getting hit by a car.

Since patients with amygdala damage tend to make or decisions that are risky to their lives, they typically have to be

hospitalized and watched continuously.

==References==

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/amygdala.htm

http://www.benbest.com/science/anatmind/anatmd9.html

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1749

Bechara et al (1994). Different contributions of the human amygdala and ventromedial
prefrontal cortex to decision-making. The Journal of Neuroscience. 19(13), 5473–5481

Amygdala

Mwentworth — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:22:05 GMT

Mwentworth: /* References */

Amygdala

Mwentworth — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:19:49 GMT

Mwentworth: /* References */

Amygdala

Mwentworth — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:17:57 GMT

Mwentworth: /* The Amygdala's Involvement in Disorders */

Amygdala

Mwentworth — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:12:24 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Brain areas]]

==What is the amygdala?==

The amygdalae (singular: amygdala) is an almond shaped cluster of neurons located deep in the medial temporal lobes of the

brain of humans and other vertibrates. The amygdalae are considered part of the Lymbic System and play an important role in the

processing of memory in terms of emotional reactions.

== Connections ==

The amygdala sends signals to the hypothalamus for activation of the sympathetic nervous system. There are also connections to

the reticular nucleus for increased reflexes and to the trigeminal nerve and facial nerve for facial expressions of fear.

Additionally, the amygdala has connections to the ventral tegmental area, locus coeruleus and latrodorsal tegmental nucleus for

the activation of the neurotransmitters of dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine.

The amygdala has connections with all of the sensory systems of the body, creating emotional connections with each sensory

stimulus. The cortical nucleus is part of the amygdala and receives signals from the olfactory bulb and the olfactory cortex

involving the since of smell, more specifically the processing of pheromones. Perhaps it is through these connections that

people remember a particular person or place from a familiar smell or taste.

==Role of Amygdala==

The amygdala has been found to perform primary roles in the memory of emotional events involving fear or aversive stimuli. This

connection to memory could be through long-term potentiation, when affected synapses from an aversive event are primed to act

more rapidly and readily. For example, when participants are exposed to the pairing of a loud noise and a blue circle,

participants have a fight/flight reaction. Additionally, when they are exposed to the blue circle afterwards, they still

experience the sympathetic nervous system spike. This could serve as an evolutional benefit in order to escape and avoid

situations that pose as a danger. The amygdala is also believed to play a role in the processing of rewards and the emotional

states involved in aggressive behaviors, sexual behaviors, maternal behaviors and eating/drinking behaviors.

The amygdalae are also believed to play a role in the storage of memory during the consolidation period. Emotionally aroused

events activate the amygdalae to a higher level. When the amygdalae help consolidate memory, there tends to be a stronger

retention of the event in one’s memory.

==The Amygdala's Involvement in Disorders==

Patients with borderline personality disorder tend to have significantly greater left amygdala activity than normal controls.

Additionally, patients with a bipolar disorder tend to have a significantly smaller amygdala volume, perhaps shedding light

onto the erratic shifts of emotion related to the disorder. There are also neuropsychology imaging studies that have tried to

tie a role in the size of the amygdala to autism.

Damage to the amygdala could pose as a danger to the individual, and anyone the person comes into contact with. While a person

with amygdala damage may have normal cognitive functions, they may completely loose their sense of fear. It could be very

possible for someone with amygdala damage to walk out into the middle of a busy road without the fear of getting hit by a car.

Since patients with amygdala damage tend to make or decisions that are risky to their lives, they typically have to be

hospitalized and watched continuously.

==References==

Perceptual priming tasks

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:00:35 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Neuropsychological methods]]

== What is Perceptual Priming? ==

Perceptual priming refers to activating particular associations in memory just before a

responsive behavior takes place. In other words, it is the method used to get the mind

ready to respond in a particular manner. One important property of priming is that there

tends to be a higher positive correlation when the priming and stimulus presentation

occurs in the same sensory mode. For example, a visual priming stimulus is given, then

the presentation of a visual stimulus will produce a better performance than a auditory

stimulus.

In a sense, perceptual priming can be used to synthesize a participant to the presentation

of the same or similar stimulus at a later time. If participants read a list of words that

includes the word table and then given a list of prefixes and asked to write the first word

they think of, they will write the word table when the stimulus prefix tab is presented.

Participants may also show priming effects on the word chair when primed with the word

table due to the strong relationship between the two objects.

== Importance for neuropsychology ==

It is important to consider that amnesic and blind sight patients show signs of a

perceptual priming effect even though they have no recollection of seeing the priming

stimulus. This could also be true for normal participants if a priming stimulus is flashed

rapidly so that the participant is unaware of the priming before an actual stimulus

presentation. The fact that the visual information gets into the brain without the

conscience experience of seeing the priming stimulus hints at different pathways for

visual stimuli in the brain.

== References ==

Wiggs, et al. (1998). Properties and mechanisms of perceptual priming. Cognitive neuroscience. 8(227-233)

Bowers et al. (2003). In Search of Perceptual Priming in a Semantic Classification Task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Vol. 29, No. 6, 1248–1255.

Oliver Sacks

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:43:40 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Neuropsychological profiles]]

== Childhood ==

Oliver Wolf Sacks is a United States based neurologist who was born in London on July 9th, 1933

to a very prosperous Jewish medical family. At age 6, Sacks’ parents sent him to a boarding

school for 4 years in the Midlands where he was to be protected from World War 2. In this time,

Sacks lived with his uncle Dave and developed an interest in chemistry. This is the time period

that Sacks’ memoir Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood reflects on.

== Study of Medicine and Neurology ==

Oliver Sacks went on to obtain his medical degrees from Oxford University. In 1960, Sacks went on

vacation in Canada and decided to stay. Sacks hitch-hiked through the Rocky Mountains and ended

up in San Francisco, eventually moving to Los Angeles where he completed his residency in

neurology at UCLA. Then Sacks moved to the Bronx in New York where he still lives and helps

people with their neurological disorders.

Formerly, Sacks was a professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and an

adjunct professor at the New York School of Medicine for over 43 years. Recently, on September 1,

2007, Sacks became a professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry at the Columbia

University College of Physicians and Surgeons. To this day, Sacks is still a consultant

neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor organization and continues to practice neurology in

New York City.

== Books by Sacks ==

Oliver Sacks has a way of writing about neuropsychological disorders in layman’s terms. Sacks

uses very little clinical terms in his writing, and focuses on the experiences of the patient and

how they adapt to their disorder. By telling a story of a particular patient who exemplifies a

particular disorder, Sacks has a talent of grabbing the attention of the reader and introducing

them into a world unfamiliar to their way of life. The following are books written by Oliver Sacks

MIGRAINE (1970- revised 1992)

AWAKENINGS (1973- revised 1990)

A LEG TO STAND ON (1984)

THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT (1985)

SEEING VOICES (1989)

AN ANTHROPOLOGIST ON MARS (1995)

THE ISLAND OF THE COLORBLIND (1997)

UNCLE TUNGSTEN: MEMORIES OF A CHEMICAL BOYHOOD (2001)

OAXACA JOURNAL (2002)

MUSICOPHILIA: TALES OF MUSIC AND THE BRAIN (2007)

All of the books by Sacks are documents of his professional work in the field of neurology. He

has written from his point of view as the patient in the memoir Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a

Chemical Boyhood (2001), as well as the neurologist helping the various and interesting patients

he encounters. Additionally, Oliver Sacks also has many published essays and articles on various

neuropsychology topics aswell as a television series called The Mind Traveler.

== References ==

http://www.oliversacks.com/

Balint's syndrome

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:37:45 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Neuropsychological syndromes]]

== What is Balint’s Syndrome? ==

Rezso (Rudolf) Balint identified Balint’s syndrome in 1909 as a disjointed and paralysis

of gazing ability with haphazard scanning skills. Balint’s syndrome is characterized by

optic ataxia (uncoordinated hand and eye movement) and optic apraxia (inability to

voluntarily guide eye movements and change locations of visual fixations). Due to the

combination of optic ataxia and optic apraxia, patients with Balint’s syndrome also

display simultanagnosia or the inability to perceive more then one object at a time even

when the objects are taking up the same area of the visual field. In some cases, the patient

may behave as if they are blind.

== Characteristics of Balint's Syndrome ==

What is really interesting about Balint’s syndrome is that the simultanagnosia involved

with Balint’s syndrome is not specific to one object or spatial location. For example, the

tester could hold up two objects that intersect each other on the patient’s visual field and

ask the patient what he sees. The patient is just as likely to pick one item over the other,

while being completely blind to the second object.

Jackson et al (2006) conducted [[perceptual priming tasks]] with a Balint's patient where 2

pictures were shown (either the same or different semantic categories), and the participant was

asked to either classify one of the pictures or name both pictures. The results indicate that

there was a significant decrease in classification performance when the 2 pictures were different

in semantic category. The surprising aspect of this result is that the patient rarely indicated

that he saw more than one object. Thus, Jackson et al (2006) found results pointing to a

theory that Balint’s patients do not have a difficulty in seeing more than one item at a

time, but they have a deficit in explicitly identifying one item at any given time.

They suggest that this could be from an inability to disengage attention from one object once

that object catches the patient's attention. When given more time, the patient with Balint’s

syndrome can sometimes identify more than one stimulus when asked.

A patient with Balint’s Syndrome, J.J., made significantly more classification errors when items

were presented sequentially in time instead of at the same time. This indicates that the priming

stimulus could have less of an influence when it is presented simultaneously with the probe item

than when it comes before the probe item. (Jackson et al, 2006)

It could be that there is a reduced amount of competition between items on a sequential

presentation in patients with Balint’s syndrome simply because when the stimuli are presented

simultaneously, the patient only consciously perceives one item instead of two, eliminating

competition between stimuli. (Jackson et al, 2006)

== Brain Areas Involved ==

Balint’s syndrome has been associated with bilateral damage to the posterior parietal

cortex with a primary cause of the syndrome being multiple strokes, Alzheimer’s,

intracranial tumors or brain injury. Only recently has Balint’s syndrome been associated

with damage to the parietal-occipital vascular boarder zone and in children.

== Refrences ==

Gillen, J.A. and Dutton, G.N. (2003). Balint's syndrome in a 10-year-old male. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 45, (349-32).

'''From class discussions:'''

Jackson et al. (2006).dorsal simultanagnosia: An impairment of visual processing or visual awareness. Cortex. 42, 740-749.

Newport et al. (2006). The role of the posterior parietal lobe in prism adaptation: Failure to adapt to optical prisms in a patient with bilateral damage to posterior parietal cortex. Cortex. (2006) 42, 720-729.

Balint's syndrome

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:37:24 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Neuropsychological syndromes]]

== What is Balint’s Syndrome? ==

Rezso (Rudolf) Balint identified Balint’s syndrome in 1909 as a disjointed and paralysis

of gazing ability with haphazard scanning skills. Balint’s syndrome is characterized by

optic ataxia (uncoordinated hand and eye movement) and optic apraxia (inability to

voluntarily guide eye movements and change locations of visual fixations). Due to the

combination of optic ataxia and optic apraxia, patients with Balint’s syndrome also

display simultanagnosia or the inability to perceive more then one object at a time even

when the objects are taking up the same area of the visual field. In some cases, the patient

may behave as if they are blind.

== Simultanagnosia in Balint's Syndrome ==

What is really interesting about Balint’s syndrome is that the simultanagnosia involved

with Balint’s syndrome is not specific to one object or spatial location. For example, the

tester could hold up two objects that intersect each other on the patient’s visual field and

ask the patient what he sees. The patient is just as likely to pick one item over the other,

while being completely blind to the second object.

Jackson et al (2006) conducted [[perceptual priming tasks]] with a Balint's patient where 2

pictures were shown (either the same or different semantic categories), and the participant was

asked to either classify one of the pictures or name both pictures. The results indicate that

there was a significant decrease in classification performance when the 2 pictures were different

in semantic category. The surprising aspect of this result is that the patient rarely indicated

that he saw more than one object. Thus, Jackson et al (2006) found results pointing to a

theory that Balint’s patients do not have a difficulty in seeing more than one item at a

time, but they have a deficit in explicitly identifying one item at any given time.

They suggest that this could be from an inability to disengage attention from one object once

that object catches the patient's attention. When given more time, the patient with Balint’s

syndrome can sometimes identify more than one stimulus when asked.

A patient with Balint’s Syndrome, J.J., made significantly more classification errors when items

were presented sequentially in time instead of at the same time. This indicates that the priming

stimulus could have less of an influence when it is presented simultaneously with the probe item

than when it comes before the probe item. (Jackson et al, 2006)

It could be that there is a reduced amount of competition between items on a sequential

presentation in patients with Balint’s syndrome simply because when the stimuli are presented

simultaneously, the patient only consciously perceives one item instead of two, eliminating

competition between stimuli. (Jackson et al, 2006)

== Brain Areas Involved ==

Balint’s syndrome has been associated with bilateral damage to the posterior parietal

cortex with a primary cause of the syndrome being multiple strokes, Alzheimer’s,

intracranial tumors or brain injury. Only recently has Balint’s syndrome been associated

with damage to the parietal-occipital vascular boarder zone and in children.

== Refrences ==

Gillen, J.A. and Dutton, G.N. (2003). Balint's syndrome in a 10-year-old male. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 45, (349-32).

'''From class discussions:'''

Jackson et al. (2006).dorsal simultanagnosia: An impairment of visual processing or visual awareness. Cortex. 42, 740-749.

Newport et al. (2006). The role of the posterior parietal lobe in prism adaptation: Failure to adapt to optical prisms in a patient with bilateral damage to posterior parietal cortex. Cortex. (2006) 42, 720-729.

Balint's syndrome

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:03:59 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Neuropsychological syndromes]]

== What is Balint’s Syndrome? ==

Rezso (Rudolf) Balint identified Balint’s syndrome in 1909 as a disjointed and paralysis

of gazing ability with haphazard scanning skills. Balint’s syndrome is characterized by

optic ataxia (uncoordinated hand and eye movement) and optic apraxia (inability to

voluntarily guide eye movements and change locations of visual fixations). Due to the

combination of optic ataxia and optic apraxia, patients with Balint’s syndrome also

display simultanagnosia or the inability to perceive more then one object at a time even

when the objects are taking up the same area of the visual field. In some cases, the patient

may behave as if they are blind.

== Simultanagnosia in Balint's Syndrome ==

What is really interesting about Balint’s syndrome is that the simultanagnosia involved

with Balint’s syndrome is not specific to one object or spatial location. For example, the

tester could hold up two objects that intersect each other on the patient’s visual field and

ask the patient what he sees. The patient is just as likely to pick one item over the other,

while being completely blind to the second object.

Jackson et al (2006) conducted [[perceptual priming tasks]] with a Balint's patient where 2

pictures were shown (either the same or different semantic categories), and the participant was

asked to either classify one of the pictures or name both pictures. The results indicate that

there was a significant decrease in classification performance when the 2 pictures were different

in semantic category. The surprising aspect of this result is that the patient rarely indicated

that he saw more than one object. Thus, Jackson et al (2006) found results pointing to a

theory that Balint’s patients do not have a difficulty in seeing more than one item at a

time, but they have a deficit in explicitly identifying one item at any given time.

== Brain Areas Involved and Coping Stratigies ==

Balint’s syndrome has been associated with bilateral damage to the posterior parietal

cortex with a primary cause of the syndrome being multiple strokes, Alzheimer’s,

intracranial tumors or brain injury. Only recently has Balint’s syndrome been associated

with damage to the parietal-occipital vascular boarder zone and in children.

While the brain damage is irreversible in most cases, there are adaptation strategies

involving a functional approach. In this approach, the individual’s abilities are accounted

for and are utilized to address the difficulties.

== Refrences ==

Gillen, J.A. and Dutton, G.N. (2003). Balint's syndrome in a 10-year-old male. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 45, (349-32).

'''From class discussions:'''

Jackson et al. (2006).dorsal simultanagnosia: An impairment of visual processing or visual awareness. Cortex. 42, 740-749.

Newport et al. (2006). The role of the posterior parietal lobe in prism adaptation: Failure to adapt to optical prisms in a patient with bilateral damage to posterior parietal cortex. Cortex. (2006) 42, 720-729.

Balint's syndrome

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:33:40 GMT

Mwentworth:

Balint's syndrome

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:32:04 GMT

Mwentworth:

Balint's syndrome

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:29:57 GMT

Mwentworth:

Perceptual priming tasks

Mwentworth — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:16 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Neuropsychological methods]]

== What is Perceptual Priming? ==

Perceptual priming refers to activating particular associations in memory just before a

responsive behavior takes place. In other words, it is the method used to get the mind

ready to respond in a particular manner. One important property of priming is that there

tends to be a higher positive correlation when the priming and stimulus presentation

occurs in the same sensory mode. For example, a visual priming stimulus is given, then

the presentation of a visual stimulus will produce a better performance than a auditory

stimulus.

In a sense, perceptual priming can be used to synthesize a participant to the presentation

of the same or similar stimulus at a later time. If participants read a list of words that

includes the word table and then given a list of prefixes and asked to write the first word

they think of, they will write the word table when the stimulus prefix tab is presented.

Participants may also show priming effects on the word chair when primed with the word

table due to the strong relationship between the two objects.

== Importance for neuropsychology ==

It is important to consider that amnesic and blind sight patients show signs of a

perceptual priming effect even though they have no recollection of seeing the priming

stimulus. This could also be true for normal participants if a priming stimulus is flashed

rapidly so that the participant is unaware of the priming before an actual stimulus

presentation. The fact that the visual information gets into the brain without the

conscience experience of seeing the priming stimulus hints at different pathways for

visual stimuli in the brain.

== External links (studies that focus of perceptual priming)==

Oliver Sacks

Mwentworth — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:43:00 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:01:56 GMT

Mwentworth: /* Discussion */

[[Category:Synesthesia Symposium]]

== Synesthetic Colors Detirmined by Having Colored Refrigerator Magnets in Childhood==
Presentation by: Mandy French

== Introduction ==

• Inducer- stimulus that produces synesthesia

• Concurrent- the synesthesia itself

• The relationship between inducer and concurrent arises from pre-existing mappings between sensory areas that are overactive or fail to be pruned during development.

• One theory suggests that all infants are innately synesthetic with sensory differentiation only coming with development and the pruning of connections. Another theory indicates that synesthesia is learned through particular inducer and concurrent pairings from sensory information in the environment.

• Word-taste synesthesia involves the semantics and phonology of speech influence the relationship between inducer and concurrent. The phoneme K tends to elicit the taste of foods with the same phoneme (cake).

== Main Study ==

• The participant AED has color grapheme synesthesia where the letters of the alphabet had colors learned from refrigerator magnets.

• Moved to Russia at age 3, so synesthesia transferred to the Russian alphabet, Cyrillic.

• Reports all achromatic, or non-color, text as having colors overlaid on the surfaces of letter or numbers.

• Transfer from English to Cyrillic letters showed consistency in color when there were phonemic or visual similarities.

== Methods ==

• Testing was done on 2 separate occasions, 21 days apart.

• Graphemes appeared in Grey and AED adjusted the hue, brightness and saturation by using controls on the screen. There were 360 possible hues, 100 levels of saturation and 128 levels of brightness.

• Consistency was measured by individually correlating the hue, brightness and saturation of each letter.

• Each matching session (unlimited time) consisted of the digits 0-9 and all letters of the alphabet, both upper and lowercase, were presented in random order

== Results==

'''EXPERIMENT 1- CONSISTANCY OVER TIME'''

• AED completed task in 15 minutes on each test

• Fulfills criteria for this measure of synesthesia

• Hues of individual letter from both tests were highly correlated

• Saturation and brightness were more variable

'''EXPERIMENT 2- TRANSFER TO CYRILLIC'''

• Significant correlations for hue and saturation but not brightness were found

• Near perfect correlation for hue with Cyrillic letters that have phonetic similarity to English letters but not for saturation or brightness

'''EXPERIMENT 3- LEVEL OF REPRESENTATION OF THE INDUCER'''

• Importance of visual similarity of upper to lowercase letters on saturation and brightness was looked at

• No significant effects for brightness were found

• Main effect for case and font in English letters; uppercase letters were more saturated than lowercase letters and times new roman was more saturated than cursive.

• The main effect for Cyrillic letters were much greater in uppercase letters than lowercase letters, and only for the Cyrillic letters that are visually similar to the English counterparts.

• The times new roman font led to more saturation than the cursive font. This could be due to the fact that the refrigerator magnets were more similar to times new roman.

'''EXPERIEMNT 4- LEVEL OF REPRESENTATION IN THE CONCURRENT'''

• Examine if the concurrent synesthesia is affected by a lightness constancy illusion.

• Achromatic letters appear embedded in one of the two lightness illusions checker-shadow or snakes illusion.

• AED showed a highly significant effect in both the checker-shadow and snakes illusions, which demonstrates that her concurrent synesthesia occurs before computing lightness in visual processing.

== Discussion ==
• DNA may be a predictor for synesthesia, but it does not determine the acquisition of synesthesia. As Withoft and Winawer (2006) display in their experiment, synesthesia can be learned from early childhood experiences with environmental stimuli such as colored refrigerator magnets.

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:53:57 GMT

Mwentworth: /* Results */

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:39:57 GMT

Mwentworth: /* Results */

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:53:05 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:36:53 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:26:16 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:19:52 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:13:04 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:53:49 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:45:30 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:52:43 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:46:17 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:44:37 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:41:33 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:41:08 GMT

Mwentworth:

Witthoft and Winawer (2006)

Mwentworth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:10:48 GMT

Mwentworth:

[[Category:Synesthesia Symposium]]

== Synesthetic Colors Detirmined by Having Colored Refrigerator Magnets in Childhood==
Presentation by: Mandy French