Synesthesia on Our Mind

Abstract

Synesthesia in perception and metaphor in language both provide waysto categorize and comprehend the world. Both operate through mechanisms thatcapitalize on the creation or discovery of links across disparate domains – notably,sensory experiences in different modalities, with cross-modal correspondencesserving as perceptual links in synesthesia and as conceptual links in metaphor.The perceptual links in synesthesia are typically fixed and rigid. The conceptual linksin metaphor, however, enable meanings to expand, creatively, through the activeconstruction of novel, emergent relations: Metaphors transform meanings, therebytranscending the fixed correspondences of synesthesia. Recent evidence associatesthe presence of synesthesia with an augmented capacity for creative cognition.Other evidence associates synesthesia with neural hyperconnectivity – augmentedconnectivity between regions of the cerebral cortex that process the synestheticallylinked domains. We suggest that mechanisms underlying synesthesia may also playa role in processes that foster creative transformations of meanings in metaphor.Keywords: metaphor; meaning; cross-modal correspondence, neural hyperconnectivity;creative cognition.