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The additional perception is regarded by the trained synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. Its reality and vividness are what makes artificial synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Synesthesia in general is also fascinating because logically it should have been a product of the human brain, where the evolutionary trend has been for increasing coordination, mutual consistency and perceptual robustness in the processing of different sensory inputs.

synesthesia

options it may provide for people with sensory disabilities like deafness and blindness, where a neural joining of senses can help in replacing one sense by the other:

During the past 20 years or so, biological sciences have advanced to the point that scientists have begun researching biological mechanisms of brain function and suggesting some reasonably well-founded hypotheses for consciousness. Leading the way in these pioneering efforts, in my judgment, have been:   Gerald Edelman with his hypothesis of the Dynamic Core, Antonio Damasio with his concepts of  Protoself, Core Self, Autobiographical Self, Core Consciousness and Extended Consciousness, Joseph LeDoux and his emphasis on the intricacies of synapses and the emotional brain,

Rudolfo Llinás and his researches into ~40 Hz oscillations and synchronization, György Buzsáki with his discussion and exploration of neural mechanisms related to oscillation and synchronization in the neocortex and hippocampus for perception and memory, Joaquín Fuster, the world’s preeminent expert on the frontal lobes, and his concept of the "perception-action cycle," Susan Greenfield's notion of "neuronal gestalts" as a way of conceptualizing a highly variable aggregation of neurons that is temporarily recruited around a triggering epicenter. I use the neuronal gestalts idea in my way of visualizing the functionality of the dynamic core of the thalamocortical system, Eric Kandel who has explored short-term and long-term memory,

The late Francis Crick with his collaborator Christof Koch who have pursued the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), Michael Gazzaniga with the concept of the left hemisphere ‘interpreter’ unifying consciousness experience, Edmund Rolls and Gustavo Deco with their mathematical models of brain function using information theory approaches for biologically plausible neurodynamical modeling of cognitive phenomena corroborated by brain imaging studies, David LaBerge with his discussion of the thalamocortical circuit and attention, Alan Baddeley who continues to refine his model for working memory, Philosopher John Searle who endorses the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neural networks.