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BBC News has an article about a newly described condition called "aphantasia", where people can't visualize an imaginary scene:
Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology, wants to compare the lives and experiences of people with aphantasia and its polar-opposite hyperphantasia. His team, based at the University of Exeter, coined the term aphantasia this year in a study in the journal Cortex [paywalled].
Prof Zeman tells the BBC: "People who have contacted us say they are really delighted that this has been recognised and has been given a name, because they have been trying to explain to people for years that there is this oddity that they find hard to convey to others."
How we imagine is clearly very subjective - one person's vivid scene could be another's grainy picture. But Prof Zeman is certain that aphantasia is real. People often report being able to dream in pictures, and there have been reported cases of people losing the ability to think in images after a brain injury. He is adamant that aphantasia is "not a disorder" and says it may affect up to one in 50 people. But he adds: "I think it makes quite an important difference to their experience of life because many of us spend our lives with imagery hovering somewhere in the mind's eye which we inspect from time to time, it's a variability of human experience."
If you think you have aphantasia or hyperphantasia and would like to be involved in Prof Zeman's research he is happy to be contacted at a.zeman@exeter.ac.uk
If this is true, isn't it fascinating that we have apparently always had two groups of people: those (majority) who could "count sheep" in order to fall asleep, and assumed that everybody could, and those (minority) who thought that "counting sheep" was just some weird expression, surely not something actual people could actually do.
Personally, my mum once advised me to count sheep; I could visualize them jumping over the fence, but it didn't help much in getting me to sleep. Clearly the genes for this "aphantasia" are not linked to those for insomnia.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:44AM
If they are "impervious to hallucination", could this be a good evolutionary trait?
(lucky I'm not in the position to do it, I'd be tempted to feed some tiny quantities of certain mushrooms or a special type of acid... mwahahaha)
Let you fantasy run wild
(and make no attempt to catch it back... grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:04AM
Huh, it wasn't to be!
Apologies in advance for the spoiler (give your fantasy a break!), it seems that the place I work does have access to TOFA (the original FA). My selection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:17AM
Here is the questionnaire: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/MarksVVIQ.htm [berkeley.edu]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:34AM
No idea to the first but the second there's no problem with in my experience. Give me enough coffee and I'll start seeing things out of the corners of my eyes that aren't there. Ditto dreams.
That with me being all but completely unable to think visually.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:55AM
If you think at the way you think, are your thoughts closer to "a melody" or to a "a painting/sculpture"?
Put in other words: do you primarily experience a "line of thinking" (time process) or an "birds-eye view which may be further explored" (space placement)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:08AM
Time process for the most part but that doesn't really describe it well. More thought concepts that skip over the time process and only store the input and output. Like if you asked me about a conversation, I could tell you all the salient points resolved but all the steps that got us there get filed away in a completely different area of memory.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:17AM
For that matter, I don't even think in English unless I'm trying to write/type/say something. Like if I wanted a beer, I'd think the abstract concept of that desire and its object rather than "I could use a beer".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:21AM
To put it very terse: "definitely `what`, perhaps `how`, `when` is fine along the way but don't ask me to remember it". Is that it?
What about "why" and "where"? Do you count them in the process of thinking? Are they "persisted" once the algo finished running?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:19AM
Depends.
When I'm trying to figure something out, the 'how' is the most important part. When I've already done something or thought something through, the 'how' is left right out as it's irrelevant. If it becomes relevant again, say if I need to preform the same thought process again, I have to go dig the 'how' out of my mental junk drawer until it's been used enough times to become second nature.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:48AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:27AM
This is interesting to me. I'm very good at 3D spatial stuff - when I was young, my spatial perception and processing skills were tested (I was a gifted kid), and I was told I was literally one in a million. My visual imagination is extremely detailed and photorealistic - it's just like watching a movie, except I can turn it around in my head and look at it from any angle. However, my sense of time is not as acute, and often my imagination will play like it has poor buffering, with stops and starts and sometimes repeating actions in a loop. I find retracing the threads of a conversation challenging (but not impossible), and I suspect it's related. It seems there is a lot of diversity in people's mental faculties - mine have certainly served me well in an engineering career.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:37AM
Until I read TFA, I thought that's already clear for everybody (as in "it is so obvious that it shouldn't be even mentioned") that the humans have different ways of mentally representing the world and operating with the artefacts of this representation.
Examples:
"Sequence like" reasoning? Maybe on short term, to get a certain situation resolves and then you can forget it.
Add the chemists to the same category, even if their 'taste-buds like' concepts are replaced by the "formation enthalpy", "electro-potential", "catalysts" or the like
It really surprised me those neurologists are surprised that some people can and other can't form/operate-with certain type of mental representations - to me it's obvious that whatever "mental image" one can (or cannot) form and operate come from the senses.
As some of the senses just good enough to get around' but (maybe) others will be more develped, it comes naturally the way two different 'minds' work will be different. Now, here's [ingentaconnect.com] what blew my mind, like "What were you guys doing all this time and spent all those taxes on?":
WTF?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:49PM
For me my visualization ability depends on what mode my brain is in. I can visualize stuff but it's normally not that great. If I'm in a calm less noisy mental state that's near dream state (or even lucid dreaming) I can visualize stuff a lot better. I can't easily switch to that state though - it's often easier if I am half asleep (just woke up or similar).
Neurobiologists testing for imaging loss seem to assume that visual recognition, describing objects, and free-hand drawing require the forming of conscious images.
Uh but just because I can see and recognize a picture doesn't mean I can easily remember the picture well even a few seconds later. Whereas there are people who can go all the way and draw every single detail.
So perhaps some other people do form the images but that stays in their subconscious and their conscious mind just gets the message that "It's Bill".
So for scientists in this field to assume people fit into such neat pigeon holes seems remarkably silly. I would have expected people studying this field would have encountered an even greater diversity than I would have.
(Score: 1) by GoodBookOfTaunts on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:03AM
This lack of visual ability and moderate face blindness (prosopagnosia) are two things which I only realized were uncommon among around my teenage years. I'm curious whether there might be a correlation with face blindness for others who have limited or complete inability to visualize.
(Score: 1) by evk on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:16AM
I used to think that I didn't dream in pictures, but nowdays I'm more or less convinced that it's only the memory of the dreams that lack any visual imagery (just as all my memorys).
I started to suspect that this was the case after waking up from dreams with a very clear experience of just having seen something. The actual picture was gone but it was almost like an after image (just like you've looked at something bright and close your eyes).