page_title: V. S. Ramachandran
section_title: Neural basis of synesthesia
hierarchical_section_title: V. S. Ramachandran / Research and theory / Neural basis of synesthesia
context_page_description: Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran is an Indian-American neuroscientist. Ramachandran is known for his wide-ranging experiments and theories in behavioral neurology, including the invention of the mirror box. He is a Distinguished Professor in UCSD's Department of Psychology, where he is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition.
  After earning a medical degree in India, Ramachandran studied experimental neuroscience at Cambridge, obtaining his PhD there. Most of his research has been in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics. After early work on human vision, Ramachandran turned to work on wider aspects of neurology including phantom limbs and phantom pain. Ramachandran invented mirror therapy which is now used to treat amputees with phantom limb pain and also to help restore motor control in stroke victims with weakened limbs.
  Ramachandran's popular books Phantoms in the Brain, The Tell-Tale Brain, and others describe neurological and clinical studies of people with synesthesia, Capgras syndrome, and a wide range of other unusual conditions.
context_section_description: Ramachandran was one of the first scientists to theorize that grapheme-color synesthesia arises from a cross-activation between brain regions. Ramachandran and his graduate student, Ed Hubbard, conducted research with functional magnetic resonance imaging that found increased activity in the color recognition areas of the brain in synesthetes compared to non-synesthetes.
  Ramachandran has speculated that conceptual metaphors may also have a neurological basis in cortical cross-activation. As of 2015, the neurological basis of synesthesia had not been established.
caption: Synesthetes who experience color when viewing different symbols may quickly identify the presence of the "triangle" in the left-hand image.
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