Balliol College, Oxford, England.
Yale J Biol Med. 2013 Jun 13;86(2):203-16. Print 2013 Jun.
Synesthesia, the conscious, idiosyncratic, repeatable, and involuntary sensation of one sensory modality in response to another, is a condition that has puzzled both researchers and philosophers for centuries. Much time has been spent proving the condition's existence as well as investigating its etiology, but what can be learned from synesthesia remains a poorly discussed topic. Here, synaesthesia is presented as a possible answer rather than a question to the current gaps in our understanding of sensory perception. By first appreciating the similarities between normal sensory perception and synesthesia, one can use what is known about synaesthesia, from behavioral and imaging studies, to inform our understanding of "normal" sensory perception. In particular, in considering synesthesia, one can better understand how and where the different sensory modalities interact in the brain, how different sensory modalities can interact without confusion - the binding problem - as well as how sensory perception develops.
联觉是一种有意识的、特质的、可重复的、非自愿的感觉，一种感觉模式对另一种感觉模式的反应，是一个让研究人员和哲学家困惑了几个世纪的现象。人们花了很多时间来证明这种情况的存在，并研究其病因，但从联觉中可以学到什么仍然是一个讨论不多的话题。在这里，联觉被视为对我们目前对感官知觉理解的空白的一种可能的回答，而不是一个问题。首先，通过欣赏正常感官知觉和联觉之间的相似之处，可以利用从行为和成像研究中了解到的关于联觉的知识，来增进我们对“正常”感官知觉的理解。特别是，在考虑联觉时，可以更好地理解不同感觉模式在大脑中是如何以及在何处相互作用的，不同感觉模式如何在不混淆的情况下相互作用——即绑定问题——以及感觉知觉是如何发展的。
