User:IzzySquishy/sandbox

Ordinal Linguistic Personification

Neural basis
While there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the true neural basis of OLP, significant speculation exists that it develops as the result of cross-talk between regions – cross-activation between regions of the brain usually separated in non-synesthetes as a result of synaptic pruning. This cross-activation is believed to allow sensory information from one region of the brain to cross into a different stream of sensory information, leading to the synesthetic experience (e.g. information processing gender crosses into the stream of sensory information processing numbers, leading to the gendering of numbers common in ordinal linguistic personification associations). The noted trend of forms of synesthesia appearing within families has led to the suggestion by some that this lack of synaptic pruning (leading to cross-activation) has a genetic basis. Dementia studies demonstrating that ordinal sequences can be retained as a whole when degeneration does not affect the inferior parietal lobule, and that lesions in the parietal cortex can lead to impaired ordinal processing, have suggested this region as a key figure in ordinal sequence processing. Additionally, several studies have implicated the left inferior parietal lobule in the determination of personality features, and the left temporoparietal junction in inferring mental states in others (an important feature in the ‘theory of mind’ field, associated with the interpretation of others behaviour based on attribution of thoughts, memories and personalities to oneself and others). Synesthete brain scans have showed higher activation in the precuneus (an area associated with mental imagery), suggesting that some form of consistent, automatic mental imagery may play a role in the activation of OLP. Other research has suggested the presence of a ‘personification network’ (based on a network used for processing intentions, and incorporating many elements of the theory of mind network), consisting of the extrastriate cortex, the fusiform gyrus, the amygdala, posterior parts of the temporoparietal junction (angular gyrus), and the medial frontal cortex. Despite the range of neural differences found between synesthetes and non-synesthetes, one study examined the associations of individuals with OLP to letters in relation to Goldberg’s Big Five personality traits. The findings showed that OLP associations generally rated high-frequency letters (e.g. A, E, I) as high on agreeability and low on neuroticism, and that this association was implicitly shared by the non-synesthetes also tested in the study. These results lend weight to the theory that while OLP (and synesthesia in general) come about as the result of significant differences in the neural processing of synesthetes, there exist underlying mechanisms common to both synesthetes and non-synesthetes.