UEL Psychology Seminar Series - Professor Fiona N. Newell - Can research into multisensory integration inform theories of synaesthesia?

UEL Psychology Seminar Series
Date: 25th February 2015
Time: 17:00-18:00
Venue: Arthur Edwards Building, Room 2.06

Professor Fiona N. Newell
School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Title:
Can research into multisensory integration inform theories of synaesthesia?

Abstract:
Although the behavioural and neurological processes underpinning the condition of synaesthesia have been elucidated in recent years, there have been relatively fewer attempts to investigate the extent to which synaesthesia is mediated by general multisensory processes. Evidence for shared synaesthetic-like associations across the senses in non-synaesthetes is consistent with the idea that synaesthesia is not a discrete condition. Recent results from neuroimaging studies suggest that there are important interactions between the senses in synaesthesia and that these interactions go beyond the nature of the synaesthetic experience itself, consistent with broader genetic and developmental influences. Our behavioural evidence supports the idea that synaesthesia is triggered by multisensory rather than unisensory inputs, and moreover, that the synaesthetic experience itself may be penetrated by on-going cross-modal processes. Taken together, these findings suggest that synaesthesia may be supported by multisensory interactions which are common to all, although the extent to which these processes overlap is not yet fully understood.

Brief Biography:

Fiona Newell is a Professor in the School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience in Trinity College Dublin. Her main research interest is in human perceptual function. The goal of her research is to provide a better understanding of how information is shared across the senses for the maintenance of coherent perception and to elucidate the brain processes involved in the perception of objects, faces and places across vision, hearing and touch. Recently, together with her research team, she has investigated how development affects multisensory processes, as well as individual differences in multisensory perception such as blindness and synaesthesia.

She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Durham, UK, and was awarded several post-doctoral research fellowships allowing her to work in different perception labs around the world including Israel, Germany and the UK. She returned to Ireland in 2000 to take up a lectureship position in the School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin.

Session Chair: Dr. Clare Jonas