Nunn J A, Gregory L J, Brammer M, Williams S C R, Parslow D M, Morgan M J, Morris R G, Bullmore E T, Baron-Cohen S, Gray J A
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, London SE14 6NW, UK.
Nat Neurosci. 2002 Apr;5(4):371-5. doi: 10.1038/nn818.
In 'colored-hearing' synesthesia, individuals report color experiences when they hear spoken words. If the synesthetic color experience resembles that of normal color perception, one would predict activation of parts of the visual system specialized for such perception, namely the human 'color center', referred to as either V4 or V8. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we here locate the region activated by speech in synesthetes to area V4/V8 in the left hemisphere, and demonstrate overlap with V4/V8 activation in normal controls in response to color. No activity was detected in areas V1 or V2, suggesting that activity in primary visual cortex is not necessary for such experience. Control subjects showed no activity in V4/V8 when imagining colors in response to spoken words, despite overtraining on word-color associations similar to those spontaneously reported by synesthetes.
在“色听”联觉中，个体在听到口语单词时会报告有颜色体验。如果联觉颜色体验类似于正常颜色感知，那么人们会预测专门用于这种感知的视觉系统部分会被激活，即人类的“颜色中心”，称为V4或V8。我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI），在此将联觉者中由言语激活的区域定位到左半球的V4/V8区域，并证明其与正常对照者对颜色做出反应时V4/V8的激活存在重叠。在V1或V2区域未检测到活动，这表明初级视觉皮层的活动对于这种体验并非必要。对照受试者在根据口语单词想象颜色时，V4/V8区域没有活动，尽管他们在类似于联觉者自发报告的单词-颜色关联方面进行了过度训练。
