A condition that has some interesting tips on how the mind works. This information could help me the development when attempting to understanding how we relate sneses with past experiences.
Tactile-emotion synaesthesia
Category: Neuroscience
Posted on: December 1, 2008 11:30 AM, by Mo
Synaesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimuli of one sensory modality evoke experiences in another modality. This is thought to occur as a result of insufficient "pruning" during development, so that most of the pathways connecting parts of the brain mediating the different senses remain in place instead of being eliminated. Consequently, there is too much cross-talk between sensory systems, such that activation of one sensory pathway leads simultaneously to activity in another.
Once believed to be extremely rare, synaesthesia is now thought to be relatively common. The cross-modal connections implicated in the condition are present in all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, some researchers argue that we all experience synaesthesia-like sensations to some degree, but that these sensations are particularly intense in only some individuals.
The tests also showed that AW's tactile-emotion synaesthetic experiences are best evoked by the forefinger and little finger on both hands. Interestingly, they found that tactile inputs from her feet also evoked emotions, albeit not as intense as those evoked by touching textures with the hands. In some cases, the evoked emotion varies depending on the limb used to touch it: a ceramic tile elicied feelings of comfort when touched by the hand, and feelings of power when touched by the feet. By contrast, subject HS only experiences synaesthetic sensations when touching textures with her hands, and for her the intensity of the emotion elicited by a particular texture depends upon the size of an object. For example, she finds small stones mildly comforting, but larger stones provoke more intense feelings of comfort.
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