Can humans learn synaesthesia? Predicting color qualia through fMRI data
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2022-06-18
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
Understanding how subjective experiences, such as color qualia, eventuate is crucial
for a better understanding of our own consciousness. The current research aims to
identify color qualia of research participants that were implicitly trained on
associating letters to colors. These associations were created by reading books in
which letters are consistently coupled to certain colors. In both a pre- and a post
training test the participants' brain activity was measured with fMRI as they were
presented with both colored and achromatic letters. Using this brain data to research
the color qualia that participants experience during the fMRI experiment allows us to
explore the overarching idea of whether humans can train to form synesthetic
associations. Therefore, the main question this project aims to address is whether the
training has any effect on how participants experience black letters that they were
trained to associate to a particular color. We investigated our research question by
testing whether after training, a classifier on the fMRI brain data can identify the
trained letter-color associations when viewing achromatic letters. The results showed
that the classifier barely performed above chance level, indicating that color qualia
could not be reliably predicted in the current analysis.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen