Hypothesis concerning embodied calendars: A case study of number form, color spreading, and taste-color synaesthesia

‘Time-twisted space’: an exploration of the synaesthetic continuum through the work of Vladimir Nabokov

“…Synaesthetic concurrents induced by a sensory experience are fixed, involuntary and perceptual – hardly useful in communicating a concept to an audience – whereas metaphorical associations are fluid, under conscious mediation, and borne often from the creative need to express something to others (Downey 2008). Yet there is a strong link between metaphor and synaesthesia: when the metaphor ‘to feel someone's pain’ finds a physical counterpart in the phenomenon of mirror-touch synaesthesia (Marks and Mulvenna 2014, 89; Ramachandran, Chunhuras, and Marcus 2017), it becomes conceivable that metaphor and synaesthesia share common ground. Many of the cross-modal relationships seen in synaesthesia – in particular, time–space – are similarly metaphorically connected.…”

“…The ubiquity of the spiral motif holds significance for the study of spatiotemporal perception when considered alongside the spirals, circles and ovals that constitute the commonest form of time–space synaesthetes’ externalized representations of time (Jonas and Jarick 2013; Ramachandran, Chunhuras, and Marcus 2017; Smilek et al 2007). Synaesthetes’ visual concurrents, despite their individual heterogeneity, can largely be categorized into several broad constructs; among them circles and clusters, radiating lines, grids, geometric shapes and spirals (Cytowic and Eagleman 2009; Klüver 1966).…”