Final answer:
Synesthesia is the condition that occurs when stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, such as tasting colors or seeing sounds.
Step-by-step explanation:
Synesthesia occurs when a person experiences sensations in one sense when a different sense is stimulated. Synesthesia is a phenomenon where the mixing of senses or descriptive imagery occurs; for example, using one sense to describe another such as the phrase "summer tastes yellow" mixes gustatory imagery (taste) with visual imagery (yellow).
An individual sensory modality represents the sensation of a specific type of stimulus, and humans have different sensory modalities such as somatosensation, olfaction, gustation, equilibrium, and hearing. Each modality can relate to a specific sense like touch, smell, taste, balance, or hearing. In the context of synesthesia, these modalities may cross-wire, leading a person to experience a sensory input through an unassociated sensory modality.
Integration is the process where stimuli that are received by sensory structures are communicated to the nervous system where that information is processed. Synesthesia may involve a unique form of sensory integration where the brain forms atypical connections between different sensory stimuli.