Reduced perceptual narrowing in synesthesia.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Maurer D
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7211996 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Individual differences in perception are widespread. Considering inter-individual variability, synesthetes experience stable additional sensations; schizophrenia patients suffer perceptual deficits in, eg, perceptual organization (alongside hallucinations and delusions). Is there a unifying principle explaining inter-individual variability in perception? There is good reason to believe perceptual experience results from inferential processes whereby sensory evidence is weighted by prior knowledge about the world. Perceptual variability may result from different precision weighting of sensory evidence and prior knowledge. We tested this hypothesis by comparing visibility thresholds in a perceptual hysteresis task across medicated schizophrenia patients (N = 20), synesthetes (N = 20), and controls (N = 26). Participants rated the subjective visibility of stimuli embedded in noise while we parametrically manipulated the availability of sensory evidence. Additionally, precise long-term priors in synesthetes were leveraged by presenting either synesthesia-inducing or neutral stimuli. Schizophrenia patients showed increased visibility thresholds, consistent with overreliance on sensory evidence. In contrast, synesthetes exhibited lowered thresholds exclusively for synesthesia-inducing stimuli suggesting high-precision long-term priors. Additionally, in both synesthetes and schizophrenia patients explicit, short-term priors-introduced during the hysteresis experiment-lowered thresholds but did not normalize perception. Our results imply that perceptual variability might result from differences in the precision afforded to prior beliefs and sensory evidence, respectively.
| S-EPMC8084450 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Grapheme-colour synesthesia occurs when letters or numbers elicit an abnormal colour sensation (e.g., printed black letters are perceived as coloured). This phenomenon is typically reported following explicit presentation of graphemes. Very few studies have investigated colour sensations in synesthesia in the absence of visual awareness. We took advantage of the dichoptic flash suppression paradigm to temporarily render a stimulus presented to one eye invisible. Synesthetic alphanumeric and non-synesthetic stimuli were presented to 21 participants (11 synesthetes) in achromatic and chromatic experimental conditions. The test stimulus was first displayed to one eye and then masked by a sudden presentation of visual noise in the other eye (flash suppression). The time for an image to be re-perceived following the onset of the suppressive noise was calculated. Trials where there was no flash suppression performed but instead mimicked the perceptual suppression of the flash were also tested. Results showed that target detection by synesthetes was significantly better than by controls in the absence of flash suppression. No difference was found between the groups in the flash suppression condition. Our findings suggest that synesthesia is associated with enhanced perception for overt recognition, but does not provide an advantage in recovering from a perceptual suppression. Further studies are needed to investigate synesthesia in relation to visual awareness.
| S-EPMC8027846 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The amplitude of prestimulus alpha oscillations over parieto-occipital cortex has been shown to predict visual detection of masked and threshold-level stimuli. Whether alpha activity similarly predicts target visibility in perceptual suppression paradigms, another type of illusion commonly used to investigate visual awareness, is presently unclear. Here, we examined prestimulus alpha activity in the electroencephalogram (EEG) of healthy participants in the context of a generalized flash suppression (GFS) task during which salient target stimuli are rendered subjectively invisible in a subset of trials following the onset of a full-field motion stimulus. Unlike for masking or threshold paradigms, alpha (8-12 Hz) amplitude prior to motion onset was significantly higher when targets remained subjectively visible compared to trials during which the targets became perceptually suppressed. Furthermore, individual prestimulus alpha amplitudes strongly correlated with the individual trial-to-trial variability quenching following motion stimulus onset, indicating that variability quenching in visual cortex is closely linked to prestimulus alpha activity. We conclude that predictive correlates of conscious perception derived from perceptual suppression paradigms differ substantially from those obtained with "near threshold paradigms", possibly reflecting the effectiveness of the suppressor stimulus.
| S-EPMC8219776 | biostudies-literature
Project description:People with color-grapheme synesthesia experience color when viewing written letters or numerals, usually with a particular color evoked by each grapheme. Here, we report on data from 11 color-grapheme synesthetes who had startlingly similar color-grapheme pairings traceable to childhood toys containing colored letters. These are the first and only data to show learned synesthesia of this kind in more than a single individual. Whereas some researchers have focused on genetic and perceptual aspects of synesthesia, our results indicate that a complete explanation of synesthesia must also incorporate a central role for learning and memory. We argue that these two positions can be reconciled by thinking of synesthesia as the automatic retrieval of highly specific mnemonic associations, in which perceptual contents are brought to mind in a manner akin to mental imagery or the perceptual-reinstatement effects found in memory studies.
| S-EPMC3648671 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundAccurate perception of visual contours is essential for seeing and differentiating objects in the environment. Both the ability to detect visual contours and the influence of perceptual context created by surrounding stimuli are diminished in people with schizophrenia (SCZ). The central aim of the present study was to better understand the biological underpinnings of impaired contour integration and weakened effects of perceptual context. Additionally, we sought to determine whether visual perceptual abnormalities reflect genetic factors in SCZ and are present in other severe mental disorders.MethodsWe examined behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs) collected during the perception of simple linear contours embedded in similar background stimuli in 27 patients with SCZ, 23 patients with bipolar disorder (BP), 23 first-degree relatives of SCZ, and 37 controls.ResultsSCZ exhibited impaired visual contour detection while BP exhibited intermediate performance. The orientation of neighboring stimuli (i.e. flankers) relative to the contour modulated perception across all groups, but SCZ exhibited weakened suppression by the perceptual context created by flankers. Late visual (occipital P2) and cognitive (centroparietal P3) neural responses showed group differences and flanker orientation effects, unlike earlier ERPs (occipital P1 and N1). Moreover, behavioral effects of flanker context on contour perception were correlated with modulation in P2 & P3 amplitudes.ConclusionIn addition to replicating and extending findings of abnormal contour integration and visual context modulation in SCZ, we provide novel evidence that the abnormal use of perceptual context is associated with higher-order sensory and cognitive processes.
| S-EPMC7444089 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Fast and slow decisions exhibit distinct behavioral properties, such as the presence of decision bias in faster but not slower responses. This dichotomy is currently explained by assuming that distinct cognitive processes map to separate brain mechanisms. Here, we suggest an alternative single-process account based on the stochastic properties of decision processes. Our experimental results show perceptual biases in a variety of tasks (specifically: learned priors, tilt aftereffect, and tilt illusion) that are much reduced with increasing reaction time. To account for this, we consider a simple yet general explanation: prior and noisy decision-related evidence are integrated serially, with evidence and noise accumulating over time (as in the standard drift diffusion model). With time, owing to noise accumulation, the prior effect is predicted to diminish. This illustrates that a clear behavioral separation-presence vs. absence of bias-may reflect a simple stochastic mechanism.
| S-EPMC7010686 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent results suggest that autistic individuals exhibit reduced accuracy compared to non-autistic peers in temporally coordinating their actions with predictable external cues, e.g., synchronizing finger taps to an auditory metronome. However, it is not yet clear whether these difficulties are driven primarily by motor differences or extend into perceptual rhythmic timing tasks. We recruited autistic and non-autistic participants for an online study testing both finger tapping synchronization and continuation as well as rhythmic time perception (anisochrony detection). We fractionated each participant's synchronization results into parameters representing error correction, motor noise, and internal time-keeper noise, and also investigated error-correcting responses to small metronome timing perturbations. Contrary to previous work, we did not find strong evidence for reduced synchronization error correction. However, we found compelling evidence for noisier internal rhythmic timekeeping in the synchronization, continuation, and perceptual components of the experiment. These results suggest that noisier internal rhythmic timing processes underlie some sensorimotor coordination challenges in autism.
| S-EPMC11284439 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Objective: Patients with visual snow syndrome (VSS) suffer from continuous ("TV snow-like") visual disturbance of unknown pathoetiology. In VSS, changes in cortical excitability in the primary visual cortex and the visual association cortex are discussed, with recent imaging studies tending to point to higher-order visual areas. Migraine, especially migraine with aura, is a common comorbidity. In chronic migraine and episodic migraine with aura but not in episodic migraine without aura, a reduced magnetic suppression of perceptual accuracy (MSPA) reflects a probably reduced inhibition of the primary visual cortex. Here we investigated the inhibition of the primary visual cortex using MSPA in patients with VSS, comparing that with MSPA in controls matched for episodic migraine. Methods: Seventeen patients with VSS were compared to 17 age- and migraine-matched controls. Visual accuracy was assessed by letter recognition and modulated by transcranial magnetic stimulation delivered to the occipital cortex at different intervals with respect to the letter presentation (40, 100, and 190 ms). Results: Suppression of visual accuracy at the 100-ms interval was present without significant differences between VSS patients and age- and migraine-matched controls (percentage of correctly recognized trigrams, control: 46.4 ± 34.3; VSS: 52.5 ± 25.4, p = 0.56). Conclusions: In contrast to migraine with aura, occipital cortex inhibition, as assessed with MSPA, may not be affected in VSS.
| S-EPMC8129492 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Over the past decade, extensive studies of the brain regions that support face, object, and scene recognition suggest that these regions have a hierarchically organized architecture that spans the occipital and temporal lobes [1-14], where visual categorizations unfold over the first 250 ms of processing [15-19]. This same architecture is flexibly involved in multiple tasks that require task-specific representations-e.g. categorizing the same object as "a car" or "a Porsche." While we partly understand where and when these categorizations happen in the occipito-ventral pathway, the next challenge is to unravel how these categorizations happen. That is, how does high-dimensional input collapse in the occipito-ventral pathway to become low dimensional representations that guide behavior? To address this, we investigated what information the brain processes in a visual perception task and visualized the dynamic representation of this information in brain activity. To do so, we developed stimulus information representation (SIR), an information theoretic framework, to tease apart stimulus information that supports behavior from that which does not. We then tracked the dynamic representations of both in magneto-encephalographic (MEG) activity. Using SIR, we demonstrate that a rapid (∼170 ms) reduction of behaviorally irrelevant information occurs in the occipital cortex and that representations of the information that supports distinct behaviors are constructed in the right fusiform gyrus (rFG). Our results thus highlight how SIR can be used to investigate the component processes of the brain by considering interactions between three variables (stimulus information, brain activity, behavior), rather than just two, as is the current norm.
| S-EPMC6345582 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which an experience in one domain is accompanied by an involuntary secondary experience in another, unrelated domain; in classical synesthesia, these associations are arbitrary and idiosyncratic. Cross-modal correspondences refer to universal associations between seemingly unrelated sensory features, e.g., auditory pitch and visual size. Some argue that these phenomena form a continuum, with classical synesthesia being an exaggeration of universal cross-modal correspondences, whereas others contend that the two are quite different, since cross-modal correspondences are non-arbitrary, non-idiosyncratic, and do not involve secondary experiences. Here, we used the implicit association test to compare synesthetes' and non-synesthetes' sensitivity to cross-modal correspondences. We tested the associations between auditory pitch and visual elevation, auditory pitch and visual size, and sound-symbolic correspondences between auditory pseudowords and visual shapes. Synesthetes were more sensitive than non-synesthetes to cross-modal correspondences involving sound-symbolic, but not low-level sensory, associations. We conclude that synesthesia heightens universally experienced cross-modal correspondences, but only when these involve sound symbolism. This is only partly consistent with the idea of a continuum between synesthesia and cross-modal correspondences, but accords with the idea that synesthesia is a high-level, post-perceptual phenomenon, with spillover of the abilities of synesthetes into domains outside their synesthesias. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that synesthetes, relative to non-synesthetes, experience stronger cross-modal correspondences outside their synesthetic domains.
| S-EPMC5089906 | biostudies-other