[{"command":"openDialog","selector":"#drupal-modal","settings":null,"data":"\u003Cdiv id=\u0022republish_modal_form\u0022\u003E\u003Cform class=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form ecl-form\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 action=\u0022\/en\/article\/modal\/6260\u0022 method=\u0022post\u0022 id=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 accept-charset=\u0022UTF-8\u0022\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHorizon articles can be republished for free under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EYou must give appropriate credit. We ask you to do this by:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 1) Using the original journalist\u0027s byline\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 2) Linking back to our original story\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 3) Using the following text in the footer: This article was originally published in \u003Ca href=\u0027#\u0027\u003EHorizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003ESee our full republication guidelines \u003Ca href=\u0027\/horizon-magazine\/republish-our-stories\u0027\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EHTML for this article, including the attribution and page view counter, is below:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\u0022js-form-item form-item js-form-type-textarea form-item-body-content js-form-item-body-content ecl-form-group ecl-form-group--text-area form-no-label ecl-u-mv-m\u0022\u003E\n \n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Ctextarea data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 aria-describedby=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 id=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 name=\u0022body_content\u0022 rows=\u00225\u0022 cols=\u002260\u0022 class=\u0022form-textarea ecl-text-area\u0022\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EDo we all have synaesthesia?\u003C\/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhile rare in adulthood, scientists think that about 4.4 % of the population has some type of fully fledged synaesthesia, with one of the most common types being grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Such synaesthetes have a one-to-one association linking letters and numbers with a certain colour.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EScientists are fairly confident that synaesthesia is inherited, but most research about synaesthesia has been on adults, and researchers don\u2019t know much about how it behaves in early life or in old age.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHowever, they have noticed that the number of synaesthetes goes down with age, and a team of researchers headed up by Dr Julia Simner at the University of Sussex in the UK is preparing to run large-scale tests in primary schools as part of a research project called MULTISENSE.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Our goal is to examine this in young children and to sort of try and map out how synaesthesia develops and how common it is,\u2019 project researcher Duncan Carmichael explained.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe project, funded by the EU\u2019s European Research Council, is creating an online battery of tests for synaesthesia in children to identify conditions such as grapheme-colour synaesthesia.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018You\u2019d have a simplified colour palette and you\u2019d present them in a random order and you\u2019d ask what colour should we paint \u201cK\u201d, for instance,\u2019 Carmichael said. People with synaesthesia will give the same response again and again, even if they are asked months later.\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022tw-text-center tw-text-blue tw-font-bold tw-text-2xl lg:tw-w-1\/2 tw-border-2 tw-border-blue tw-p-12 tw-my-8 lg:tw-m-12 lg:tw--ml-16 tw-float-left\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cspan class=\u0022tw-text-5xl tw-rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n \u003Cp class=\u0022tw-font-serif tw-italic\u0022\u003E\u2018Everybody potentially starts off as a synaesthete.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cfooter\u003E\n \u003Ccite class=\u0022tw-not-italic tw-font-normal tw-text-sm tw-text-black\u0022\u003EDuncan Carmichael, University of Sussex, UK\u003C\/cite\u003E\n \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey hope to have the first tests ready towards the end of this year, which will allow them to benchmark them through a pilot study of a small group before they begin testing around 4 000-5 000 primary school students from the age of five and up.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESynaesthesia emerges around the age of four or five and it is more common in younger children. By age 10, the amount of synaesthetes will have already decreased.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Everybody potentially starts off as a synaesthete,\u2019 Carmichael said. \u2018As the brain develops or responds to the input it receives, we lose this kind of connectivity and we lose these superfluous connections between neurons, and different areas of our brains become specialised to respond to different stimuli.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers also hope to develop some information for educators on how to recognise and offer help to synaesthetes, whose clashing colours can make doing things like elementary maths difficult. In a class of 25 students, scientists expect there would be at least one child with synaesthetic traits.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt may even be that we all have a bit of synaesthesia within us, and that synaesthetes are just on the upper end of a scale of merged senses.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018If you ask people to match colours with sounds, for example, most people will match light colours with higher pitched sounds. That seems a very common sense, intuitive kind of response, but there is no real reason why it should be like that,\u2019 Carmichael said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe reason for such background associations may lie within the structure of the brain.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen we look at an object, we immediately make lots of associations. Neurons that are specialised in detecting one thing, say edges, fire off impulses. It\u2019s then up to the brain to make sense of everything and suppress what is not relevant in our unconscious mind. But for synaesthetes, normally superfluous information may make it to the top of the pile, producing unusual sensory associations.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ERooted in the brain\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd in fact a separate group of researchers has discovered just how deeply the way we handle multisensory information is rooted in the brain.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt the Charit\u00e9-Universit\u00e4tsmedizin Berlin, Germany, neuroscientists at the MULTISENSORY-MIND project, funded by the ERC, were looking into how the brain processes information from multiple senses, and whether it was different for schizophrenic patients.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou may have heard the term brain wave \u2013 different frequencies of electrical impulses that are generated by neurons and which are linked to different levels of brain activity. Such electrical oscillations are taking place all the time in different parts of the brain as neurons process information.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe team in Berlin wanted to examine how such waves link up or synchronise when the brain tackles multisensory information.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cfigure role=\u0022group\u0022 class=\u0022@aligncenter@\u0022\u003E\n\u003Cimg alt=\u0022Researchers study subjects\u2019 brain waves while they use multiple senses like sight and touch to see how the brain processes stimuli. Images courtesy of MULTISENSORY-MIND\u0022 height=\u0022399\u0022 src=\u0022\/research-and-innovation\/sites\/default\/files\/hm\/EEG%20test.PNG\u0022 title=\u0022Researchers study subjects\u2019 brain waves while they use multiple senses like sight and touch to see how the brain processes stimuli. Images courtesy of MULTISENSORY-MIND\u0022 width=\u00221200\u0022\u003E\n\u003Cfigcaption class=\u0022tw-italic tw-mb-4\u0022\u003EResearchers study subjects\u2019 brain waves while they use multiple senses like sight and touch to see how the brain processes stimuli. Images courtesy of MULTISENSORY-MIND\u003C\/figcaption\u003E\n\u003C\/figure\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018It\u2019s like in a soccer stadium where you have a fan club and they\u2019re singing one chorus and then the opposite side starts singing and they are somehow interacting with each other,\u2019 the principal investigator, Dr Daniel Senkowski, explained.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey were especially interested in gamma waves, oscillations with a frequency around 40 Hertz that were known to be related to one of the brain\u2019s most important inhibitory neurotransmitters, called gamma amino-butyric acid (GABA). GABA is a chemical messenger that modulates the acitivity of neurons.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr Senkowski and his team wanted to measure whether that neurochemical system was also involved in moderating how the brain handles multisensory data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESchizophrenic people are known to have problems processing information, and they thought that lower rates of chemicals like GABA might also give them problems with multisensory processing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo test their hunch, Dr Senkowski and his team used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure precisely what happened in the brain when subjects were exposed to multisensory stimuli like touch and video. They also used magnetic resonance spectroscopy that let them measure specific amounts of chemicals like GABA in different parts of the brain, specifically the temporal lobe.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EInvestigating healthy individuals, Dr Senkowski and his team found that the GABA concentration in the temporal lobe was related to gamma waves during multisensory processing. But the data they got back from schizophrenic patients surprised them. Where they had assumed that there would be a lower level of GABA, and therefore the ability to deal with multisensory information, they actually found levels similar to healthy patients.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe next step is to see if there is a direct relationship betwen the brain oscillations and changes to the way people perceive multisensory information.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0027One thing our field should do now is to manipulate oscillations in the brain, and you can do this with specific non-invasive methods like transcranial magnetic stimulation, where ... you induce an oscillation, and you can investigate if this changes the way we integrate multisensory information,\u2019 Dr Senkowski said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EIf you have colours for letters or numbers, and you are interested in taking part in the genetic test for synaesthesia being run by\u0026nbsp;Dr Julia Simner at the University of Sussex, please email the Sussex synaesthesia lab at\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:synaesthesia.research@ed.ac.uk\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003Esynaesthesia.research@ed.ac.uk\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/textarea\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E\n\n \u003Cdiv id=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 class=\u0022ecl-help-block description\u0022\u003E\n Please copy the above code and embed it onto your website to republish.\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n \u003C\/div\u003E\n\u003Cinput autocomplete=\u0022off\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022form-adqihllpo8ujpuli-vvctgqngs8-3leev1utonwvsz8\u0022 type=\u0022hidden\u0022 name=\u0022form_build_id\u0022 value=\u0022form-aDQiHllpO8ujpULI-VvCtGQNGs8_3Leev1UTonWvsz8\u0022 \/\u003E\n\u003Cinput data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 type=\u0022hidden\u0022 name=\u0022form_id\u0022 value=\u0022modal_form_example_modal_form\u0022 \/\u003E\n\u003C\/form\u003E\n\u003C\/div\u003E","dialogOptions":{"width":"800","modal":true,"title":"Republish this content"}}]