This could be analogous to the effects holding an item in working memory selleck inhibitor has in guiding attention to matching features (for review, see

Soto et al., 2008). Thus, setting voluntary attention to the task-relevant feature also selects the same feature in an image that is internally created in the absence of incoming visual signals, analogous to its effect on ‘normal’ perception when multiple features physically appear in a visual scene (Saenz et al., 2003). Our results also show that the relationship between pitch and synaesthetic objects follow the same rules as the subtle cross-modal mappings seen in non-synaesthetes: non-synaesthetic individuals tend to map high-pitched sounds with small, bright objects located high in space. This effect in non-synaesthetes has been documented using subjective report (Eitan and Timmers, 2010; Ward et al., 2006), speeded reaction time (Ben-Artzi and Marks, 1995; Evans and Treisman, 2010; Marks, 1987),

and preferential looking in infants (Walker et al., 2010). Although the implicit cross-modal Selleckchem R428 correspondences in non-synaesthetes can only be measured under specific experimental settings, whereas synaesthetes have daily conscious experiences of auditorily-induced visual percepts, there are some hints in the data that controls may be subtly affected by these mappings even when we use stimuli tailored to synaesthete experiences. For example, as Fig. 5a illustrates, controls show a pattern numerically similar to that of synaesthetes across conditions, although there are no statistically significant congruency effects in their data. Ward et al. (2006) suggest that similarities between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes in sound–colour mappings show

that synaesthesia co-opts the neural substrates for ‘normal’ cross-modality mappings and reveals the associations in a more explicit form. Another study reporting the similarity between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes in their mapping between luminance and numerical quantity also fits the notion that synaesthesia builds on ‘normal’ mechanisms of non-synaesthetic Bcl-w brain (Cohen Kadosh et al., 2007). We interpret our data similarly as implying a common neural/cognitive mechanism underlying both auditory–visual synaesthesia and ‘normal’ cross-modal mappings. The documentation of non-colour synaesthetic visual features is crucial for developing more comprehensive models to explain how synaesthesia relates to general aspects of cognition. Here we provide objective evidence showing that auditorily-induced synaesthetic objects with multiple features affect behaviour, as well as that attention modulates the component features of synaesthetic objects. Our findings suggest overt synaesthetic experiences induced by sounds reflect implicit cross-modal mechanisms we all share.