ESOMAR

Qualitative Research, Athens, October 2006

www.esomar.org

New frontiers for Neuroscience: Synaesthesia, a new bridge to communication

Luigi Toiati
Focus, Italy
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever asked yourselves when listening to Ringo Starr who is going to look after us when we are 64 ... and older?
Nearly always, for us qualitative researchers, anyone over 65 years of age is banned from participating in group interviews because he or
she is in turn part of a target banned from the market. For the elderly there are only a few embarrassing niches: denture fixative,
incontinence pads, medicines, orthopedic equipment.
However I've learnt from direct experience that this abandoned target has great human potential, and that specific disciplines such as
Synaesthesia help us investigate their world more directly. For about 18 months I have been working, initially as a volunteer and now as a
consultant, in a clinic for physically and mentally ill elderly patients. That is with the less fortunate part of this target. They are certainly not
potential consumers, and my aim is not to understand how to make them buy frozen carrots or Armani suits, but rather to establish
communication that helps them, through real mind gymnastics, recuperate parts of themselves that have been abandoned and above
all the dignity that is so important to have when you know that death is not far off. Synaesthesia is the branch of neuroscience that studies
anomalies of perception: subjects who have a multi-coloured vision by listening to a voice, or see numbers and letters in colour, hear a
sound by looking pictures, etc. Synaesthesia (etymologically 'correspondence between senses'), means perceiving a sense through other
parallel ones, smell with hearing, and so on. A piece of music is soft, a kiss is red hot, we are blind with rage. Recently, it has been adopted
by qualitative research.
The objective of this paper is to show how Synaesthesia, together with our other usual techniques, constitutes an important bridge for
communicating with the target of those over 65 years. It identifies, in fact, ways that could be useful in extending the categories of
products currently not available to the most self-sufficient part of this group who nowadays are often relegated to watching television.
THE APPROACH
My work in the clinic is as a rehabilitator, but without losing sight of being a researcher. Therefore I have called this approach
Communicational Therapy. The methodologies and techniques applied serve to re-awaken, or at least identify, the motivation of these
patients, and reduce their difficulties by making contact with and sharing with others.
What kind of patients are they? They are elderly, physically or mentally ill, but above all spiritually and psychologically damaged, in need of
moral support.
They are away from their family, feel that everything they have worked hard for in life has been in vain, they no longer feel secure. Time
is passing away. Even those who show noticeable improvement, faced with long periods of residential care, suffer sudden deterioration.
They cocoon themselves in a kind of protective torpor. They only think of themselves but this doesn't mean they look after themselves.
De-realisation and de-personalisation are a pretence of death in the emotional world and originate from adaptive evolutionary
mechanisms, according to Ramachandran: nothing to object to, but ... let's try to restore a spark, a sign of life.
We all know the limits of what can be done for these patients, but we try anyway. In my case, I try to help them regain self-awareness, to
help them relate to others: hence Communicational Therapy.
METHODOLOGY
Elicitation and projective techniques have been borrowed from market research.
Projective techniques are those aimed at reinforcing the sensations felt about something, and help bring emotions to the surface. They are
essentially verbal techniques, often in the form of a game, because they open up the imagination, helping to express ideas and sensations
that have been repressed or abandoned. They include word association, sentence completion, Balloon test, psychodrama. I also
introduced chakra breathing, in which breathing on the seven energy points is accompanied by a particular colour, and then they are asked
the results.
Elicitation techniques work on the emotions that are the most difficult to bring out just with words, and so are expressed in other ways,
images, body language (cenesthesia).
Psycho drawings are very useful, as are collages, clay modelling, the use of visuals, personification, mime, guided dreaming. The term
perceive is used as much for an emotion as for a tactile or olfactory experience, etc.

In Synaesthesia, for example, as we will see, stimuli in one direction create sensations in another. It can be found as much in language as
in memory, in perception, in fact, in everyday experience.
It would be foolish with such a target to search for universality in the results:

Words in themselves transmit knowledge and emotions, and represent objective, external truths. However in reality they mean
different things for different people. Lili or Bubu, who are sleeping peacefully on your sofa, would figure greedily on other peoples'
table, for whom they do not evoke friendship or affection in the slightest but solicit taste buds towards gluttony. According to
Cytowic identical stimuli carry different responses depending on the context, experience, and so on.

Every meaning is coloured by personal sensations, emotions, intuitions, and idiosyncratic images. It is useful to quote Cytowic
again, What we feel about about something is more valid than what we think or say about it that something.

THE PROCEDURE
The experience of Communicational Therapy in question lasted for more than a year on a weekly basis, with two groups of about seven
patients each, ranging at different times. Of course they are different from the groups we normally lead.

The people are much older than the 65 year limit.

It is a regular panel but with irregular attendance.

The procedure I am going to describe, by the way, could be adapted to other targets and demo groups.
In each group I establish a theme, which is somehow made easier using Synaesthesia because the theme becomes one of the senses as
we go along. I proceed to a warm-up phase. For example, if we are talking about smells I ask them to consider their part in their lives,
what the point of them is, how you could construct a map of good or bad smells. Then I go on to associations, initially verbal, What does
the smell of ... make you think of? This kind of mental gymnastics, as well as making the mind work better, liberates both hidden or
removed information, as well as forgotten pieces of news, memories, unexpressed fears, censored sensations. Focusing on a single
element, it is possible to bring out notions relating to personal history. Anger against someone, regret about a failed marriage, nostalgia for
someone who has died can emerge from a single smell.
Non-verbal elicitation is then used in the application of Synaesthesia: to represent a smell or a memory of it, or a situation linked to it
using a shape modelled in Das. Or getting them to colour a sheet at random like a scribble, on the same theme. I have also found a middle
path between collage (sticking images chosen in a group onto a sheet to describe something) and the selection of images (mood boards,
people boards). With a fixed theme, turn the pages of a magazine the same group by group, so several copies are needed. I ask them to
discuss the sense and significance of each chosen image, then I stick each image on a board in the order indicated as we go along. The
order chosen by the respondents is very important to me in the decoding afterwards. In fact, I have carried out a study on collages that
has been officially recognised internationally, the Tao Collage.1) I discovered that the geography of the collage itself is not random but has
a pre-determined map. Once completed, I ask them to explain the story and significance of the images this time as a whole.
It is very important that the respondents always give their own version of their responses. What did that association mean, what did that
photo make them think of, why did they use red for that sign? The respondents' language, because we can participate in it and share it, is a
primary source of observation, which puts us on the right track.
We should listen with the mind of someone on whom nothing is lost, rend the data artfully, and try not too judge too soon. (Cytowic)
The application of Synaesthesia was the basis of the experience with these groups. The Synaesthesia we apply is above all provoked,
stimulated to support the natural predisposition in all of us.
After the preparatory phase or warm-up focused on the sense I have decided to work on, I present some perceivable stimuli.

for sense of smell: small jars of rosemary, ammonia, perfume, vinegar;

for sight: photos, simply objects to observe, coloured sheets;

for hearing: audiocassettes with music and everyday sounds: bells, traffic, crowds;

for touch: rough, smooth, wet surface, sandpaper, cotton wool;

for taste: generally sweet things (with permission from the medical staff) or savoury things.

My decaffeinated coffee is proving very successful and it makes me think about opening a little bar!
An important element to consider, once over the initial shock, is deformed perception. I'll give an example: for me a biscuit is so in form
and taste, the image of a jewel is the image of a jewel, an engine roars and so on. Instead each tautology has to be suppressed. The
sensory experience of this segment, because of age, or because of the type of illness or disorder, is a deformed version of reality. The
biscuit has the taste of an appetizer, or has the form of a doughnut; the jewel depicted is a bunch of grapes; the sound of the engine is a
military band. What can you do? It is simple. Always use the language of the interlocutor, enter whatever the cost into the language of the
patient/respondent. In the end a bunch of grapes is also always a jewel! So the value it will have for me from that moment is no longer in
the object but in the perception and that is what I have to work on ... hoping that either everyone sees a bunch of grapes or that no one
sees a comet, a railway station or a rickshaw.

As far as language is concerned, it is useful to mention the importance of using simple direct language, without difficult words. Facial
expression should be sincere and open. A smile has never hurt anyone. The questions should be posed in such a way as to offer a wide
selection of replies, without suggesting the answer. Not What do you think of death? but What does this word make you think of? What
emotion/sensation do you feel? What images come to mind? Or, What colour/shape is it? and If you were talking what would you say to
each other?
Divergent thoughts are preferable rather than a question without a way out. Questions using the third person are useful in avoiding
emotionally destabilizing involvement, or to switch attention to something else, encouraging the flow of hidden perceptions. If I'd asked
your best friend this question what would he have replied? or Imagine a person is dying at this moment and you could read his thoughts,
what would he be thinking? These are a few modest examples, in a field where, however, as far as I'm concerned, instinctive
improvisation is positive, a non-rule that a good researcher should always follow.
SYNAESTHESIA
So we come to the point. Where Synaesthesia lies on the brain is not our focus: the answer to Synaesthesia will not be a where, but a
what, according to Cytowic. So, what is Synaesthesia? Etymologically it is the simultaneous functioning, the correspondence of the
senses, according to Vilaynur Ramachandran. While you are looking at and listening to me, you can hear someone coughing nearby, you
look at the beautiful blonde colleague two tables away to the right, you're hungry, you can perceive smells, or the pen or tablecloth under
your fingers, without directly concentrating. More specifically Synaesthesia means perceiving a sense through another or others. I'll give
you an example. A housewife tells you her washing is white, notice, white, when crumpling it to her cheek it feels soft, touching it, it
crunches under her fingers and sniffing it she'll say it smells white. As you can see sight alone does not cover the idea of white. Until
now I haven't come across anyone tasting a sheet and saying it's white but it wouldn't surprise me. For example, you say something is
good to eat when it also looks nice: for four-fifths of humanity in fact, insects, at least cooked, look nice and are good to eat.
Damasio's most recent discovery is the importance of emotions in efficient behaviours. That is to say that Homo Oeconomicus, considered
equipped with free will, and therefore not influenced by so-called hidden persuasion, is in fact conditioned by a cerebral zone (N. Bonini),
the insula, which sets off an emotion before it is transformed into a sensation, and later into a verbalisation or gesture of acquisition or
refusal. This is linked to the question of Synaesthesia so much so that a clothing chain in England sprays its shops with natural smells,
and some supermarkets are successfully trying out fresh fruit and vegetable smells in the vegetable and frozen sections. British Airways
is trying out music to play in its waiting lounges that identifies the company. Starbuck's has bought specific Bob Dylan songs for the same
reason.
All this is called multi-sensorial marketing.
Who hasn't spent a hot evening, another synaesthetic metaphor as you can see, with oysters and champagne?
Synaesthesia is expressed verbally, above all through metaphor, the transfer of meaning. Metaphor aims to bring out what we have inside,
transforming it. The acquisition of metaphor relies not on a capacity for verbal abstraction... but on physical interaction with the
world (Cytowic).
We commonly say hot colours, boiling with passion, to be so hungry as not to be able to see straight.
In Proust, more than the much used quotation about the madeleine sensorially leading back to childhood, I am fascinated by the idea of
Madame Guermantes immersed as in a sunset of orange light that emanates from the syllable 'antes'. As Oscar Wilde said, literature
does not imitate life but vice versa. So you can amuse yourselves by finding synaesthetic metaphors in your reading or conversations. Alan
Branthwaite reminds us that we use an average of six metaphors a minute!
In my experience Synaesthesia also uses other rhetorical forms. An example is metonymy or exchange between similar fields the sweat of
one's brow, to have guts, or to be a big mouth.
Another example is synecdoche, based on spatial contiguity: roof for house, bread for food, mortals for men.
A FEW MORE DETAILS
The elements I will now report are not intended to be a collection of data nor anecdotes. They are intended to be simplifications of results
patients achieved for themselves, and so are rehabilitative in terms of rehabilitating them in their Being In The World.
They also serve to demonstrate how we can re-cycle our experience as researchers. You may also use them as a methodological pattern
for other demo groups.
I will demonstrate them briefly, concentrating above all on those obtained through piloted Synaesthesia, asking you kindly to release me
from the burden of cataloguing, which is not for me.
Let's try to synthesise the procedure:

Each encounter has a physical sense as a theme: smell, touch, hearing, sight ... to which Peter Cooper has added three other
sensory modalities: body language, temperature, pain. For example, we use numerous gestures to express hunger, boredom, cold.
High temperature provokes visions. Pain influences other senses.

In the warm-up phase, projective stimuli (verbal) and elicitative stimuli (non-verbal) are administered to familiarize the topic and
bring out sensations that have been removed or abandoned.

Then a physical stimulus is introduced corresponding to the sense in question through material that is perceptible sensorially
(images, objects, surfaces, sounds, food).

First impressions are gathered, possibly resorting to projective stimuli again (What does this smell make you think of?)

Next a crossing sensorial stimulus is used, e.g., what colour is this smell? What sound does it have? If we could feel it under our
fingers what would it be like? If we ate it, what taste would it have?

FAIRY STORIES
The use of so-called story-telling, talking about oneself through identification with a character in a fairy story can be useful if we want to
examine or get the patient to re-live the relationship with parental figures. For example, applying transactional analysis the following
emerge projectively:

A naive child self: Pinocchio.

An adult obsessive self: the ogre, Mussolini, the father, more easy-going, the Blue Fairy, the mother.

An adult-child self: Pulcinella, always as good tempered as he is contrary. Little Red Riding Hood represents innocence, filial
affection, badly rewarded in life. A sister eaten alive by the mother-in-law, a daughter slowly eaten by death, a patrimony
eaten away by a thieving servant.

A mother experienced as authoritarian evokes instead both hardness and softness, the solemn rhythm of an opera, bright red, while a
weak father smells of tobacco, is compliant like a waltz, pliable, soft to the touch, grey-light blue colour.
SYNAESTHESIA AND THE SENSES
We will now go into more detail about the senses and their intercrossing declensions.
Sight
Colours rather than images encourage synaesthetic combinations, e.g., yellow is bizarre, has a melancholy smell ... is rough and soft like
a sunflower ... is bitter, or sweet like a pumpkin ... has the sound of a guitar.
There are some drawbacks to using images similar to what happens in market research:

If selected by observer on personal criteria, they can generate reactions of an opposite sign. Venice is or isn't the capital of love?
Forget it. Images of this city provoked resentment, depression, a sense of solitude ... in those who in that place love left them
behind. I feel lacking in everything ... it gives me the sense of life passing by and going away ... in Venice you don't find happiness,
it's not like a fairytale.

Before being elaborated, the images, in line with what Ramachandran says, generate emotional states. We know that the sign, its
name itself, the emotion, precedes the image, the rose comes first of all with the name (Umberto Eco). So the meaning changes
according to the starting emotion: the roses given to a fiance are of a sign different to those given at a funeral.

Hearing
Works well with sight, by recognition or association (the sound of a bell, a horn) but also with colour (a blue sound).
It works well with taste (a sweet sound), less well with smell and touch.
It also goes well with cenesthesia (body language). Some sounds give the shivers (think of chalk on a blackboard), others make you jump,
startle (a bell rung suddenly).
Smell
Works well with sight, also by image association, but in an even wider sense; even better with colour (a stale smell is yellow, that of
vinegar is red; also here similar to market research, where smells are determining factors in product choice).
Also works well with taste, the smell of onion is acrid, sour, or sickly. However it seems smell functions less with hearing.
Touch
It is a sense that is unusually active in this population which is so limited in direct manuality.
It works well with both the sense of temperature, a warm or cold touch, and with body language, cenesthetically. An object when touched is
in fact often perceived as escaping ... flies away ... slips away.
Also works well with the sense of sight, both with the evocation of a colour and of an image.

Works well with hearing and taste. For example, for rough surfaces, touch can suggest a sound mellow, strident, or a sour taste of
vinegar.
But in connection with smell it seems limited to a basic floral unit, which is the least complex reference: a touch that would smell of roses,
flowers, for example.
Requests to evoke spontaneous tactility, these respondents mention a good touch, a parental kiss, a caress, or a bad one, quite often
cenesthetic, a slap ... a pinch.
Then I go down a scale and get them to produce Synaesthesia for kiss:

its colour is pink;

it smells of jasmine, sugared almonds, eau de cologne;

it has a sound like a waltz, of a smack, a gentle bell;

it has the taste of chocolate, strawberry, pineapple ... courgettes.

Taste
It is often said that as we get older we get greedier. In fact Synaesthesia applied to this sense, with this age segment, works excellently. It
is the most all-embracing and strongest sense.
Taste evokes strong sensations and is more easily linked to other sensory experiences both in the initial spontaneous association phase
and in the later direct tasting.
Already in the spontaneous phase, associations emerge that are above all visual, olfactory, tactile, partially auditory (the crack of a
broken biscuit is an indication of its crumbliness, the simmering in the saucepan is a sign of cooking, the slippery but pleasing sound of
pasta that slides in the dish makes the mouth water). As you can see, these experiences can be recycled in qualitative research.
Taste works well with synaesthetic associations: it works well with hearing and touch. But both sight and smell deviate the associations in
that direction. Asking what smell or shape the taste just tried would have means listening to the reply of what smell or shape it really has.
Let us give an example with a biscuit. There are two synaesthetic phases, analogical/semantic and with crossing modality.
The analogical/semantic phase is linked to universal Synaesthesia, which we can all arrive at through analogy. The second, the neurological
one, really belongs to synaesthetes. But as you can see, it can be set off in each one of us.
In the first phase, as soon as the biscuit is seen, sight predicts the taste. It is a biscuit, so it tastes of biscuit. The familiar colour
reassures if it was violet it would look strange, and smell does the same.
Touch analogously informs us if this biscuit is crumbly, and therefore fresh in analogy with the relationship already acquired: fresh
crumbly, soft not fresh.
This phase is based on semantic recognition. A is like B. The biscuit is crumbly like the earth, for example.
In the following phase, Synaesthesia intersects sensorially and therefore neurologically, so they produce the metaphor A is B. It tastes
of love... it has the sound of childhood.
We are all synaesthetes but we don't realise it.
CONCLUSIONS
Words transmit knowledge and sensations, but in reality mean different things for different people. Each meaning is coloured by personal
sensations, intuitions, images.
Eliciting and projective techniques use some fundamental mechanisms with the aim of soliciting responses, getting people to act without
thinking, playing and enjoying themselves, and keeping alive the meaning of clichs and common words.
Synaesthesia is forgive the aphorism like cheese on macaroni, just the job, helping the emotions emerge and allowing greater
expression of emotions.
Synaesthesia can lead to a common language through sensorial metaphors and to a language not based on impressions but on
expression (Peter Cooper).
Synaesthesia is emotional... not an idea, but an experience (R. E. Cytowic).
It is the rehabilitative experience that teaches us the great human potential enclosed within this target. In fact Synaesthesia helps people
with physical and neurological disorders recuperate their equilibrium, memory. Therefore, it could have even better results on a self-

sufficient target, and on people not living in hospital. Because of its elicitative nature, avoids the obstacles of verbal rationalisation, it
breaks the routine that in these age groups leads to laziness in active behaviours. It contributes to restoring a sense of identity, underlining
what Hillman calls force of character.
Participation restores contact with others and sharing. It allows divergent thoughts. Not this is but this becomes.
Operationally, with this target it is appropriate to support the language:

By accepting de-recognition. If a pear appears to be a melon, go along with the perceived melon.

By making everything possible, recognising its validity.

My mother wants to meet you ... but she's dead. Alright, how can we organise it?

I feel down Down where? What's this place like? How does it feel?

I've got a volcano inside my head. Let's go together to see what it's like; What's inside? Is it hot or cold? What smell is there?
Bring it outside and we can observe it together.

Empathy is not Commiseration, but Compassion in the Etymological Sense, or Rather Managing to Share (Emotions,
Sensations)
As can be seen, all this can be applied to our routine experience as Qualitative Researchers.
Synaesthesia is an extra tool for establishing communication with this forgotten target, but obviously not only with this one. It is in fact a
bridge for communication.
Our mind leaves us, as well as its memories. Our heart no, it is like a Jewel case, all the memories remain. This comes not from
Shakespeare but an unsighted elderly person.
FOOTNOTE
1.

To learn more about Tao Collage, also read the article on QRCA News, Fall 2003, Vol. 2, # 1 (mmansell@leadingedgecommunications.com)
Tao Collage is also included in the ESOMAR Workshop on Projective and Elicitation Techniques, conducted by the Author and by Alan
Branthwaite.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Accame, F. and C. Catenacci. (2005). Culture della Sinestesia, Hortus Musicus. October.
Bedinom, F. and L. Braghin. Condividere l'esperienza vissuta, etc., Riabilitazione Neurocognitiva, Saggi.
Branthwaite, A. and L. Toiati. Exploring projective techniques. ESOMAR Workshops.
Cooper, P. and A. Branthwaite. Researching the power of sensation.
Cytowic, R.E. (2003). The man who tasted shapes, su Amazone; Touching tastes, etc. Cerebrum, The Dana forum on brain science; The
Clinician's paradox, Journal of consciousness studies. October.
Deleuze, G. Marcel Proust e i segni, P.B.E.
Hillman, J. (1999). The Force of Character, and the lasting life.
Laing, R. L'Io diviso, Einaudi (The Divided Self).
Longo, G.O. Lo spazio del corpo, etc., Riabilitazione Cognitiva, Saggi.
Marchese, A. Dizionario di Retorica e Stilistica, A. Mondadori.
Ramachandran, V.S. Che cosa sappiamo della mente, A. Mondatori (The Emerging Mind).
Perfetti, C. Raccontare il corpo: istruzioni per l'uso.
Perfetti, C. and C. Rizzello: Descrizioni, dati, esercizi, Riabilitazione Neurocognitiva, Saggi.
Tecchio, M.P. la sinestesia e la riabilitazione, Riabilitazione Cognitiva, Saggi.
Toiati, L. (2003). The TAO Collage. A.Q.R., Prosper-Riley-Smith Award.

Copyright ESOMAR 2006

ESOMAR
Eurocenter 2, 11th floor, Barbara Strozzilaan 384, 1083 HN Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 664 2141, Fax: +31 20 664 2922
All rights reserved including database rights. This electronic file is for the personal use of authorised users based at the subscribing
company's office location. It may not be reproduced, posted on intranets, extranets or the internet, e-mailed, archived or shared
electronically either within the purchasers organisation or externally without express written permission from Warc.

www.warc.com