Synesthesia on Our Mind
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/ths-2013-0002Keywords
metaphor, meaning, cross-modal correspondence, neural hyperconnectivity, creative cognitionAbstract
Synesthesia in perception and metaphor in language both provide waysto categorize and comprehend the world. Both operate through mechanisms that
capitalize on the creation or discovery of links across disparate domains – notably,
sensory experiences in different modalities, with cross-modal correspondences
serving as perceptual links in synesthesia and as conceptual links in metaphor.
The perceptual links in synesthesia are typically fixed and rigid. The conceptual links
in metaphor, however, enable meanings to expand, creatively, through the active
construction of novel, emergent relations: Metaphors transform meanings, thereby
transcending the fixed correspondences of synesthesia. Recent evidence associates
the presence of synesthesia with an augmented capacity for creative cognition.
Other evidence associates synesthesia with neural hyperconnectivity – augmented
connectivity between regions of the cerebral cortex that process the synesthetically
linked domains. We suggest that mechanisms underlying synesthesia may also play
a role in processes that foster creative transformations of meanings in metaphor.
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