ABSTRACT
Synesthesia is a conscious experience of systematically induced sensory attributes that are not experienced by most people under comparable conditions. Recent findings from cognitive psychology, functional brain imaging and electrophysiology have shed considerable light on the nature of synesthesia and its neurocognitive underpinnings. These cognitive and physiological findings are discussed with respect to a neuroanatomical framework comprising hierarchically organized cortical sensory pathways. We advance a neurobiological theory of synesthesia that fits within this neuroanatomical framework.
ABSTRACT
Rats trained on a series of 16 novel 2-odor discrimination tasks using a 10-s intertrial interval (ITI) rapidly improved in performance and made only 0-3 errors by the end of the test series. They were then tested on other novel pairs of odors, but with a 10- and a 30-min interval between trials. There was no decrement in performance accuracy in the longer ITI tests and, in most cases, criterion performance was achieved after making zero or 1 error after the first (information) trial. These results demonstrate that rats have the capacity to remember for at least 30 min whether a single brief presentation of a novel odor was followed by a reward.
