Writes Yasemin Saplakoglu, in "Scientists Are One Step Closer to Demystifying ‘Aphantasia’/Inside the brains of people who can’t picture things in their mind" (The Atlantic).
Most of the article is about people at the opposite end of the spectrum, the people with aphantasia, that is, no mental imagery.
You might think that aphantasia is this terrible thing … a very impoverished mental life,” [researcher Bence] Nanay says. “[But] I really think that if you have aphantasia, you actually have something to be happy about.” Imagery is often deeply tied with mental health. It’s possible that people with aphantasia are less likely to have mental-health problems marked by vivid mental images, he says. On the contrary, if you have hyperphantasia, that risk might increase....
[Researcher Sarah] Shomstein still can’t believe that other people, with their eyes wide open, can imagine an apricot against the backdrop of the real world. “Wouldn’t [that] interfere with your everyday life?” she asks. “I think they’re weird—in a nice way—and they think that I’m weird.”
But really, everybody’s weird, Nanay says. We all sit on the spectrum between hyperphantasia and aphantasia....
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40 comments:
Joe Biden?
Is there anything that's not a disorder these days?
Believing you you were born in the wrong body
"They just imagine their whole life just the way they want it."
That means our entire shared reality could just be in the imagination of some other "superior being" sitting on a couch?
"Can I buy some pot from you?"
but enough about readers of the Atlantic
which spread the Social distancing idiocy, that exacerbated a generation of shut ins,
They sit down on the couch, they don’t leave their house, they don’t go to school, they don’t see friends, they don’t go to their work. They just imagine their whole life just the way they want it. Because for them, it feels as real as reality.
I suppose that if our government didn't facilitate this sort of lay-about lifestyle, with lots of free stuff for these folks, at least some of them would get off their sorry butts and go do some work. A society does not help itself when it encourages sloth and social disconnection.
aphantasia, that is, no mental imagery.
i think.. Therefore, i AM.
so, when you close your eyes? the world ceases to exist?
without "mental imagery".. What exactly IS THERE?
people with aphantasia are less likely to have mental-health problems
i'll BET! since being without "mental imagery" means essentially, that you have NO THOUGHTS or ideas.. And if you are a brain dead lobotomy, you PROBABLY won't have mental thoughts to have mental health issues with
does everyone have bad mental health issues with the new format's lack of word wrapping?
Might either end of the spectrum be preferable to trans compulsions, or addictions, that cause self harm? If so, could there be a drug to induce the protective mental health condition?
My son in law has this. He thought everyone was this way. He's highly intelligent but not by book learning. If he watches someone do something, and they explain how to do it, he learns it immediately. I have never seen anything like it. He can watch a video on making furniture then build it. He can fix any car, any plumbing problem, electricity, build a house. He runs his own business without the pictures in his head.
Aphant guys sound like their whole right brain hemisphere is missing.
I just can't imagine what it's like to live with aphantasia. Must be tough.
So that’s how those people sleep at night.
Juxtaposing a post about daydreaming with a post about the Times believing that Trump is “bewildered” makes a great deal of sense to me. Did you do that deliberately, Althouse?
Scientists are sooooo close
"My son in law has this. He thought everyone was this way. He's highly intelligent but not by book learning. If he watches someone do something, and they explain how to do it, he learns it immediately. I have never seen anything like it. He can watch a video on making furniture then build it."
I would argue that your son-in-law does not suffer from this condition, then. The very learning, for example, of furniture making by video tells me he is seeing the video in his mind as he replicates the process afterwards.
I don't doubt this condition exists but I do doubt that any of its sufferers are functional in any way whatsoever.
"[Researcher Sarah] Shomstein still can’t believe that other people, with their eyes wide open, can imagine an apricot against the backdrop of the real world. “Wouldn’t [that] interfere with your everyday life?” she asks."
Is she serious?
Where do day dreamers fit into the fantasy spectrum?
Are persons who process science outside of a limited frame of reference considered maladaptive or a cult with a vivid faith, a liberal ideology, and progressive religion?
I have aphantasia. (I don't suffer from it, I lead a perfectly normal life. )I think in words, and until age 55 never realized that other people could actually see pictures in their mind. I do have trouble remembering names, and wonder if it is because I don't have an image of their face to associate it with.
And I am functional in pretty much every way
Ignorance is Bliss: do you build anything without a plan in front of you?
"It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." – Epictetus
Or Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so. The daydreamers seem to have to taken that to the extreme. They imagine a great life, while sitting alone in their house.
Lack of imagination is never discussed when discussing intelligence. Yet, imagination, including the ability to "Imagine" what other people are thinking or divining what their true motives are is important to success in life. The literal minded have a real problem in that regard. They think everyone is "Logical" because they are. Or everyone is "out for a buck" or faking religious beliefs because they are. The most dangerous are the fools with power, who never understand that most leftwing idealogues really believe what they say.
They arent overly emotional or snowflakes or faking it.
Everyone is Walter Mitty now.
Walt Disney presents "Aphantasia"--classical music classics with no visuals.
I'd watch.
SO MUCH, with so many new "features"!
Me too, unless I'm actually dreaming. I dream in pictures. But my waking thoughts are a voice in my head. My husband and kids apparently don't have this, and they tease me about my efforts to use (and enforce) precision in language - but it's probably because language is how I "see" the world.
Was it a psychological diagnosis or suggestion?
I have imagination - I just don't (or rarely, and while dreaming) experience it in pictures. I have trouble remembering faces until I've known someone for quite a while, so while I'm not actually face blind, I would be useless with a police artist or IdentiKit (I always used to wonder how people did that on TV - "No, his nose was a little longer and kind of bulbous at the tip").
But I've written two novels, many short stories, poetry... And I used to paint icons, which (unless you're quite a master of the art) is characterized by how faithfully you can copy an earlier icon, because they're like "family portraits" from the days before photography, according to the iconographer who taught me), so while it's visual, it's not original. My imagination is far more verbal than visual.
I don't believe that I think in words, but I describe my thoughts in words.
My internal monologue is more a running commentary on my thoughts.
‘The man in the arena’ on one side, and ‘Pain lies on the river side’ in the other.
I have never taken life
Yet I have often paid the price
And you, you are a victim of this age
And the guilt that hangs around your neck
Has got me locked up in a cage
You've got to learn to live until no end
But first you must learn to swim
All over again
Oh no because...
Pain lies on the riverside (yes)
And pain will never say goodbye (no no)
Pain lies on the riverside
So put your feet in the water
Put your head in the water
Put your soul in the water
Join me for a swim tonight
More White People Problem diagnosises. Call me when Big Med gets a handle on AIDS, cancer, COVID, malaria, and the rest of the things that are killing us.
My aphantasia notes:
Never knew about it until the word cropped up about 5 years ago, then went "O, sh!t, that's me"
Visual memory is write-only. I can (usually) recognize the thing once I see it again, if I have coded its characteristic architecture, but cannot visually pre-construct how it _looks_ in my imagination.
But I have color-matched housepaint in a hardware store precisely, without sources, by "guessing" right. It's stored, I just can't access it imaginally.
Likewise, color-matching tests are easy to ace. It's not a "lack of vision" thing, it's a "lack of mind's eye" thing. Like an internal version of blindsight, where the eyes track, but the vision centers don't process.
Probably why I went into classical music performance. Live manipulation of complexly architectured audio images, etc.
Paperwork is hell. The moment I look away from the page, it is BLANK.
I don't think in words or images. More like "dynamically evolving cathedrals, navigated by radar in the dark."
If I want to reconstruct what an object is, I more or less "raster" the object in planes, angles, & vertices, and then rotate it by radar in my head.
"Not thinking in words" is why this comment of mine reads so disjointedly. All the elements are there at once, interacting simultaneously, but I don't have time to edit down to a narrative flow that the eye can follow seamlessly.
Ah, well!
"with the..." I couldn't read the rest because of the lack of word wrapping. It does work right on my pc browser. But I use that for work.
I think I may have synesthetic aphantasia. That, or aphantasiac synesthesia.
Maybe both.
I don't have aphantasia, but diminished visualisation, rather like figure 3 (of 5) over at the Wikipedia page. I dream with little color or visual precision. For this reason I don't much bother with visual description in novels, preferring conversation and plot. I hold photographs in mind well, but not video. I have an exceptionally good memory for information, auditory, and abstract information. I have long suspected that this is entirely brain structure and not childhood learning or exposure, as my brother is a theatrical designer.
As for daydreaming, I can do it for hours. I can go hours driving or walking with or without electronics or companion, or sit in a waiting room a long time without effort. Mostly conversations and giving lectures.
An excellent long essay about aphantasia (and her discovery that this is how she thinks) by Katie Herzog, one of the hosts of the good podcast “Blocked and Reported” on Substack: https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/revelations
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