The present study aims to contribute to this endeavor by including many subtypes of synesthesia as well as two other, possibly related, subjective phenomena: mirror-touch and ticker tape. Only a few large-scale, systematic studies have been able to provide prevalence estimates so far. As soon as researchers started considering so-called atypical subjective experiences, the social demand for numbers has been high, and quite legitimately: people suddenly either discover that they are вЂњdifferentвЂќ or may take comfort from not being that вЂњweird.вЂќ So the first question is how normative this experience is.

Is there any вЂњnormalвЂќ or at least common subjective experience? Synesthesia, which at first seemed a very rare and extraordinary condition, now seems to be shared by a large fraction of the population. The more we ask questions about the intimacy of subjective experience, the greater diversity of responses we seem to get. Those who do may also be puzzled, either by the idea that not everyone shares this experience or, on the contrary, by the discovery that they are not unique.

When probing atypical subjective experiences, for example when asking people questions such as, вЂњDo numbers have colors?вЂќ the most typical reaction from people who do not have such experience is puzzlement. Co-occurences of the different types of synesthesia were higher than chance, though at the level of small effect sizes. Within synesthesia, grapheme-personification, also called ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP) was the most common subtype and was estimated around 12%. The prevalence of ticker tape, unknown so far, was estimated at about 7%, an intermediate rate between estimates of grapheme-color (2вЂ“4%) and sequence-space synesthesia (9вЂ“14%). No differences were found across gender or domain of work and study in prevalence of synesthesia, mirror-touch or ticker tape. Mirror-touch and ticker tape were independent. However, effect sizes were small and we could not rule out that response bias influenced these associations. Of the 1017 eligible respondents, synesthetes (across all subtypes) reported higher rates of mirror-touch and ticker tape than non-synesthetes, suggesting that synesthesia is associated with these phenomenal traits. To explore synesthesia's associations with these phenomena, a diverse group ( n = 3743) was systematically recruited from eight universities and one public museum in France to complete an online screening. For example, when spoken to, a ticker taper might see mentally the spoken words displayed in front of his face or as coming out of the speaker's mouth. Ticker tape is the automatic visualization of spoken words or thoughts, such as a teleprompter.

For example, seeing another person's arm being stroked can evoke physical touch sensation on one's own arm. Mirror-touch is the automatic, involuntary experience of tactile sensation on one's own body when others are being touched.

The current study examined synesthesia's connections with phenomenal traits of mirror-touch and ticker tape experiences, as well as the representation of the three phenomena in the population, across gender and domain of work/study.

Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, UniversitГ© de Toulouse and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Toulouse, FranceДЄ fundamental question in the field of synesthesia is whether it is associated with other cognitive phenomena.

Synthesia test