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posted by takyon on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-do-you-see dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:34AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:34AM (#228439) Homepage Journal

    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.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:55AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:55AM (#228444) Journal

    That with me being all but completely unable to think visually.

    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

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:08AM (#228449) Homepage Journal

      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

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:17AM (#228451) Homepage Journal

        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

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:21AM (#228454) Journal

        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

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:19AM (#228469) Homepage Journal

          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

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:48AM (#228543) Journal
            To me it's the reverse. I need to understand why and how, the solution to a problem is the process you get to the result, not the result as such.
            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by Kell on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:27AM

        by Kell (292) on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:27AM (#228456)

        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

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:37AM (#228475) Journal

          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:

          1. An auto mechanic won't be good if it doesn't handle spatial representation of the world. Same as a team-sport player. A surgeon as well. Likely the "tactile and/or proprioception-like" concepts will play a role in their abilities (e.g. "get the WD40, that bolt will break if I'll fully set my hands on it").
            "Sequence like" reasoning? Maybe on short term, to get a certain situation resolves and then you can forget it.
          2. a decent cook (a chef even more) will have to deal with a clear temporal sequence (while following a recipe) and perhaps highly likely s/he'll need the smell/taste 'imagination' (capability to project or handle taste/aroma "concepts"). Spatial/proprioceptive abilities? Just enough not to chop their fingers or drop a hot pot on them.
            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
          3. musician or composer? Time sequence and good musical ear early in life (if they are good, they can go deaf and still create master pieces)
          4. a mathematician will have to handle the concepts mostly "spatial-like" (even when there's no real-world representation for the concepts) - time and other stuff are of no consequence to them. The only case in which the "sequence" matters is the order of transformations applied to the concept
          5. a physicist may not worth anything if s/he can't handle both "when" and "where" (if I'm right, then we can exclude the string theorists from the physicists)

          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?":

          Much of the current imaging literature either denies the existence of wakeful non-mental imagers, views non-imagers motivationally as 'repressors' or 'neurotic', or acknowledges them but does not fully incorporate them into their models. Neurobiologists testing for imaging loss seem to assume that visual recognition, describing objects, and free-hand drawing require the forming of conscious images.

          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

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:49PM (#228597)

            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

    by GoodBookOfTaunts (3804) on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:03AM (#228482)
    Same here, a complete inability to visualize while conscious. Occasionally there might be something in a dream, but it's hard to be sure that isn't just "knowing" the idea of the image in the dream versus actually "seeing" a visual image.

    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

      by evk (597) on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:16AM (#228533)

      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).