During the past year, the effort in the Section has been devoted to the development of new paradigms for the study of multi-sensory information processing (including new hardware and software), to the addition of new performance tests to enhance the present composition of the attention battery, to the preparation of a new PET/fMRI protocol to investigate multi- sensory processing in normal subjects and clinical populations with the symptom of impaired attention, and to surveys of persons who exhibit the phenomenon of synesthesia. More than 50 subjects have been run in various paradigms. A question that interests us with respect to synesthesia is the possible link between synesthesia and the aura phenomenon in certain seizure disorders, i.e., is the temporal lobe, the usual source of auras, implicated in synesthesia? Interest in synesthesia in the neuroscience community is increasing, as most recently evidenced by a request by the Journal of NIH Research to include an interview with Dr. Grossenbacher on this topic in the forthcoming issue devoted to neuroscience, and an interview with him and colleagues that was published in February 1999 in the New York Times. - attention impairment, synesthesia, elements of attention - Human Subjects
