Mirror-touch synaesthesia: the role of shared ... - UCL Discovery

77
Chapter 3
(e.g. Cohen Kadosh et al., 2009) and what implications this may have for veridical
sensory processing.
In summary, this study extends previous findings that grapheme-colour
synaesthetes show enhanced perceptual processing of colour (Yaro and Ward, 2007)
to suggest that an oversensitive concurrent perceptual system is a core property of
synaesthesia. Mirror-touch synaesthetes were shown to have enhanced tactile
sensitivity only, synaesthetes who experience both mirror-touch and a form of colour
synaesthesia were shown to demonstrate enhanced tactile and colour perception, and
synaesthetes who only experience colour were shown to have enhanced perceptual
processing of colour only. These findings imply that the presence of synaesthesia has
repercussions for sensory processing for stimuli which do not themselves induce
synaesthetic experience. It remains to be determined whether an oversensitive
concurrent perceptual system is a cause or consequence of synaesthesia.