Elizabethtown College professor of psychology Dr. Catherine Lemley is conducting research on synesthesia, a neurological condition.
“Synesthesia occurs when the stimulation of one sensory modality reliably causes an involuntary and simultaneous perception in another modality,” Lemley said. “For instance, I know a synesthete that always tastes strawberries when she hears the word ‘bend.’”
“Synesthesia is a topic I typically cover in my teaching, for example in Sensation and Perception and Neuroscience. My primary area of research expertise is in perception,” Lemley said. She is currently in the data-collecting phase of her research on synesthesia.
This research is very personal to Lemley. “The first research participant with synesthesia that I worked with is a friend — when he hears specific sounds, he also sees specific colored shapes that move and have texture,” Lemley said. “After I had explained to him what synesthesia is and that he is a synesthete, he expressed a desire to learn more about it.”
This is not the only reason Lemley is researching synesthsia. “I thought that research investigations with synesthesia could present a nice line of research for Etown students to be involved with. So I started designing studies that included my friend along with some additional synesthetes my friend. That way, students could assist me. This led to some original work by a number of students that resulted in professional conference presentations, Honors in the Discipline projects, and even a top prize in a national research award,” Lemley said.
This is not the only research that Lemley is involved in. She currently has three other projects that all have to do with synesthesia. She is working with Dr. Kerstin Bettermann in the Department of Neurology at the Milton S. Hershey Penn State College of Medicine on a project “using fMRI and behavioral measures with the goal of using synesthesia as a model of brain plasticity to potentially help individuals who have sustained brain damage as a model to help them to gain some recovery,” Lemley said. She has also enlisted the help from four Etown juniors: Andrew Kile, Leticia Martins, Kelly Pool, and Rosarito M. Clari Yaluff. “I was grateful to have been awarded CISP funding to support this project” said Lemley. “Another project is directed toward the role that learning can have on the synesthetic experience,” said Lemley. Juniors Kelly Pool and Ryan Schwark are assisting her with this project.
Lemley usually finds her participants through word of mouth. Although recently she has put recruitment advertisements around campus.
Lemley feels that it is important to know about synesthesia. “Some of the synesthetes I have worked with thought something was wrong with them because others did not share their perceptual experiences—they felt they couldn’t talk about it. Others even suffered ridicule and disbelief. I don’t want anyone to feel this way,” said Lemley. From a scientific perspective, gaining knowledge about synesthesia can help people to better understand perceptual processes and brain organization.
