Aphantasia: Why "Blind Imagination" Could Be the Key to Understanding Consciousness
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- People with aphantasia can't make mental images. This condition could be the key to understanding consciousness in the brain. Dr. Hakwan Lau explains how aphantasia can help researchers in the field solve a problem that undermines most consciousness research, how it is a real-world example of the "hard problem" of consciousness, and why Global Neuronal Workspace Theory might collapse if tested properly.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction: Aphantasia Test
0:44 Mental Rotation and Consciousness Research
2:43 Defining Consciousness (The Right Way)
5:14 Aphantasia
8:31 Mental Rotation in Aphantasia
10:40 Bad Consciousness Research
11:23 Back to the Hard Problem
12:45 Testing Theories of Consciousness
15:06 Problems With Consciousness Research (Global Workspace Theory)
Images:
Spider and rooster from Michalowsky et al.'s (2017) Set of Fear Inducing Pictures (SFIP) link.springer.com/article/10....
Dog in teacup from Kurdi et al.'s (2017) Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26907...
Music:
I-85 by Kia, from CreatorMix.com
Blue Dream by Cheel, from TH-cam Creator Music - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I knew some people doing research on aphantasia in a lab I was a part of in my undergrad. Some of the things that stuck out to me:
- Many people with aphantasia report having vivid dreams, suggesting that there must be something about being awake that inhibits that process of visual imagery
- This is very clearly a spectrum. Some people have no imagery, some see vague shapes or shadowery imagery, and others have very vivid images.
- The object rotation test may not be a very good measure of phantasia as it is possible that other sensory modalities are being used to solve it (some people have described solving that problem through a very vivid somatosensory/proprioceptive imagination).
Good points, especially the last one. People describe all different strategies for mental rotation, whether they're aphantasic or not. Maybe they're rotating them in a different sensory modality...
I guess im the few cases of aphantasia where dreams look the same as when i visualize 😂
"Vivid" dreams does not actually indicate they visualized anything while dreaming. When you tell someone with aphantasia to visualize something - to THEM they do. They "visualize" (imagine) the conceptual representation of that thing. Its not until you compare specific cases between people that they realize theit "visualization" is different. So maybe dreaming is conceptual and not using i ages in their mind, which to THEM could still be interpreted as "vivid".
Yes. I don't have aphantasia proper, but I do definitely have some degree of it. And this give rise to these very weird things about my cognition. So for example I can often imagine an object or recollect a scene, and yet I cannot tell you what the colors are. It's not that I didn't see some kind of image in my mind, I did. And it wasn't in black and white, it was definitely in colors. But I still often cannot tell you those colors. And even weirder is when this kind of unclarity relates to other features of an image, like size and shapes and stuff. It's like I often have a kind of "sketch" rather than a full-blown image in my mind. But it's unlike any real world sketch you could actually produce in the real world because it's often lacking details that you simply cannot get away from producing in a real-world image. And obviously I rarely recall or imagine anything in moving pictures, and absolutely not anything that takes more than a few seconds. I can visualize in moving pictures (for a few seconds per go) if I really try, but it's really difficult and taxing for my brain to do so I prefer not to. And that really makes it weird that when I dream it can often be so very visually convincing in a way that my waking imagination is completely unable to imitate. But it just occurred to me that maybe that plays a part in why I tend to so completely forget my dreams almost immediately when I wake up.
That task about shapes being the same shape from different angles. No I don't see a moving picture in my head to figure it out. But I do have a kind of sense of 3-D space, which is sort of what I use for such questions. So I have a kind of spatial "movie" for that sense of shapes and position, but I don't see that stuff, it's not a visual thing. It seems like it's more about my mind saving energy. I use these more primal 3-D-space sense. instead of translating back and forth between the visual and the spatial, I take in the visual and translate it into spatial and do my spatial movies in my mind and then spit back the result, preferably without having to translate it back to visual because it takes more effort. In this case the question is rather why more visual people be so determined to perform a movie in their head when that's just extra calculations that don't need to be there.
I feel like I solve it intellectually, like perhaps I would be less likely to walk away not consciously knowing there was an additional jutting cube on the left side, where as other solvers of the problem may be able to never specifically think about the structure, and simply rotate it for the answer.
I have no ability to visualize things in my head.
I'm so envious of everyone else!
I used to think the term "picturing something in your mind" was just a hypothetical saying.
really? so if I tell you to imagine a tiger you won’t be able to?
@@hansalce147hahahaha
Can you imagine a spider crawling on your skin? Do you dream?
You can learn it
everyone Ive ever talked to about this that claims to have it misunderstands that we dont see it the same way we really see and actually do visualize things exactly the same.
So i have mind blind aphantasia,.I just want to let other people know if you also have it, to make sure you have lots of photos of those close to you. I recently lost my parents and I struggle to picture their faces, which I felt ashamed and frustrated about for some time until I found good photos of them both. Good luck
I felt the exact same way after the loss of my best friend and other people close to me, I’m glad that someone else out there shares this experience
Yeah I can't picture peoples faces in my mind. I can create a sort of "feeling" of what they are like. Their smile, their personality, what it's like to look at them. But I can't literally see their faces in my mind. I'm quite good at remembering people by their faces though. Like I recognize people when I see them. I'm much better at that than remembering names of short time acquaintances.
I’m sorry for your loss. But just curious you had to “find” pictures of them? It’s 2024 so that’s shocking that you didn’t have easily accessible pictures of them
@@cadenelson891 I am from the older gen, didn't have a camera phone growing up in the 80's then I moved away for work so didn't have all the time to see them. Plus I didn't give it much thought as I just didn't think about the consequences (it will never happen to me thinking!).
Tbf, even those of us who dont have aphantasia need photos for that purpose. Maybe it's just me, or maybe I'm on some aphantasia spectrum, but the images in my mind are fleeting. Not clear and steady like looking at a photo or a video, but more like glimpses that that never let you take in the full picture. Older memories become vaguer and people's faces become more akin to abstract ideas, sensations or partial images.
I have hyperphantasia. Until a few years ago I thought everyone visualized the same way. The strengths for me are often process based, where I can run physical simulations in my head backwards and forwards fairly rapidly. I often solve mechanical problems at work, and coworkers think I "got lucky", but the reality is that I did the same problem-solving anyone would only I did it in my head. Some people can memorize texts/statistics/formulas much easier than I can, and choose that skillset to follow processes. I visualize in 3D. Pros and cons to the entire spectrum. Mutual respect is key.
Same here. I have visualized moving complex assemblies with different textures etc. Helps a lot with running machinery business
again, not a real condition. you are just a normal person with a normal brain except you use it. most people are extremely lazy thinkers. you're focusing, nothing more
HOLY shit, I thought that was normal!
@@fullyawakened lol is true, is just a matter of training. the best way is meditation and lucid dreaming!
Amazing !!
I have aphantasia, and the way he's describing it is close to how I feel. He mentioned often times we can do the task and just not be aware of it. I've described my memories as a weird two party hive-mind where anytime I need to recall something, the memory guy goes and watches it, and I inherently know everything about it - but I never see the memory. I can only tell you im thinking about it. I know it's there.
To expand on this, I feel like it's an autopilot adaptation. I don't often need really think about the task... I just stare at it and then an answer appears. It's so bizaare to put into words.
Do you ever meditate? As someone who have vivid imagination, meditation is such a chore but rewarding, if I manage to observe my feelings, inner talk, and mental images. I thought someone with aphantasia would have advantage to experiencing emptiness and decategorization, thus enter the zen state of 'common mind' where you could be enlighten by doing everyday task (satori).
@@narraliveproject2576 do you refer to that state where one goes into a state where it's like they are nothing experiencing everything?
I can imagine but do this too.
This sums up pretty well what happens with me too. Interesting idea and way to phrase it.
@@blizzard1198 That would be too far, just experiencing the here and the now without mental disturbance. I tend to get lost when day dreaming or even when imagining a concept from the written passage. I find it hard to not get distracted by this active imagination, when I want to write story from previous scenery, my mind become dull, I cant put the right words, and feel exhausted.
I found out during a therapy session that I had aphantasia. My therapist told me to imagine something, and I got frustrated over people always saying that as if I'm meant to see pictures in my goddamn head. Turns out that's exactly what some people do. We ended up doing the apple test as well, which colour it was, what kind of table was it, what happens when it hits the ground. I visualised nothing.
As an avid reader, it absolutely ruined me for a few weeks, knowing that people had the ability to visualise the story they're being told, the locations and the people that inhabit them. It's truly surreal. I made my peace with it not long after, realising my inner monologue would do more heavy lifting. I'd have to describe scenarios or things in excrutiating detail to "visualise" it, but it would still be words inside my head, and not pictures. I think it has helped me develop a more logical way of thinking over the years, although I would love to try the grass on the other side.
Another tidbit that may be entirely personal and/or unrelated, but psychedelics (mushrooms especially) provide me with no visual hallucinations. I've never seen distortions, colour shifts or any of the funky stuff you'd expect alongside a trip.
Same here! I didn't find out during therapy but my visual experience is the same
really? even if you eat 4 grams of gold cap psilocybin ?
@God0fTime yes, I can appreciate patterns more and colours are vibrant etc, but there are no visuals
@@breebisshop7325 Same for me but it wasn't always like that. I only had vivid visual hallucinations when I took shrooms for the first time. Years later just some funny moving patterns. Now nothing at all. And my imagination is also not nearly as vivid anymore as it was when I was younger. I could listen to music in my head so clearly that I didn't need to annoy anyone. I could imagine all kinds of stuff. I think it's just something one needs to practice. Use it or lose it.
About the hallucinations from psychedelics though, I guess it's the opposite: Use it too often and lose the magic.
I would have gone insane if I lacked the ability to visualise things. My childhood was painful enough and not being able to escape it would have sucked.
I realized I have aphantasia mid-last year. The way he said "I think these people don't lack mental imagery, they lack the conscious experience of mental imagery" REALLY resonated with me. "Mental blindness" I think is an appropriate description of this condition. The way I've described it to others is that it's similar to the movie Inception, and the concept it establishes of dreaming in layers. It's almost like I'm thinking about visualizing. My thoughts all feel a layer deep, below this mental blindness. When I try to visualize something, an activity I have to do daily for work, it's like I'm thinking about the concept of visualizing. Like the visualization is happening and I am aware that it is happening, but I can't see it, I just know the resulting data. In the same way that those who are visually blind have their other senses heightened, I feel almost like I perceive these visualizations through other mental senses if that makes any sense. It's like complex thoughts, visualizations, and forms come to me through knowing and not through seeing. This does mean however that "mental noise" and distraction can get in the way at times. If I'm going through something, have anxiety, or I'm in an environment that makes me unable to focus it takes me longer to get this data or could possibly prevent me from getting it at all.
I've also realized, if anyone else has aphantasia and is reading this, that these "mental senses" can be trained through practice. Certain types of meditation have helped a lot.
Be specific.
What kinds of meditation?
I can't imagine anything unless I am extremely sleep deprived or right before falling alsleep, when my body beggins to remove my admin privileges to the ability to move my body(falling into lucid dreaming). In that state and lucid dreams i see shapes or low detail locations, more towards concepts like road/hills/trees/houses occupying particular location in the vision field, but there's no color and very little texture
Yes I can only do it if I get into a deep meditative state. And its like flashes of pictures rather than me manipulating them, sometimes I see some wild stuff but I have to stay on top of practicing meditation to keep the ability so it fluctuates
you do WILD tecnique?
I’m not sure that’s imagination though. I believe that’s considered a type of hallucination called a hypnogogic hallucination. It definitely can feel similar enough to be mistaken as visual imagination though. So what you are experiencing is pretty close and sensation to what happens when people visualize something. It might even be slightly more. Though with these hallucinations, they tend to be much less controllable than visual imagination.
I can only imagine tinted looking things. Like there's a filter over everything i imagined. Like an old film, y'know. The filter is almost yellow, but not quite. A bit brownish, but when i dream. That, is when every colors came. I also lucid dream often. Not all the time, but it happens quite often enough.
I always have telekinesis as a default setting
in my lucid dream doe. It's like a clutch that my mind made up to make me realized it quicker that "this was a dream, so hurry up and do your thing".
I know what you mean, I remember I deprived myself of sleep to see what would happen and I remembered I saw this antique doll and colors were flashing, from black and white to the image being in color. I also remember seeing those geometrical/kaleidoscope looking shapes. That was crazy.
When asked to visualize an apple, my mind sees no apple. My mind remembers that there are red apples, green apples etc. Maybe someone took a bite out of it, maybe there is a worm sticking out of it. All scenarios that I have looked at previously and remembered. I can invent any kind of apple I want using descriptors that I have memorized, but I can't see it.
Im the exact same thing too, but for me, its like i draw it quickly in my head. I cannot see it when opening and closing my eyes, but I have a mental image of it. Not vivid, but can like, draw it? Its weird for me. I have verg good imagination, but not vivid imagery. Which is weird. My mind is excellent at like, re-drawing things i used to see / remember. I can imagine it well, but never like, visual it when opening or closing my eyes.
Its like i cannot actually see it there, but imagine like its there and draw it. When i try to, lets say, multiply 23x48, my mind draws them fast, its like: ok so that's 48, under it 23, and i calculate it. I can see my writing, but not in a vivid way. It's like, i "imagine" i am actually seeing it in a vivid way, but i dont. But when i am calculating it, i forget so quickly what were the numbers im multiplying.
Do you forget what green looks like when you close your eyes?
You aren't literally seeing it. It's more like memory recall than vision.
@@Nebukanezzer so when someone sees a unicorn with dragon wings. Thats memory recal
😂😂😂 ♤@@rohanking12able
i actually remember being like 7-8 years old in the car and realizing i can do this!! for some reason i pictured lois griffin (lmao?) in front of me in the car and i was just blown away how i could "see" her but obviously she wasn't real or entirely visible to me. i thought it was so fascinating
this combined with synesthesia is almost overwhelming sometimes, but also incredibly fun and interesting! im on the spectrum so obviously my experience with sensory processing is quite intense, in my experience the ability to visualize is linked with this varying sensory experience. i wonder if this is something that has been examined?
Lois griffin 😂😂
Hey petaahhhh
I'm jealous how cool!
hahahah
I have strong Aphantasia. While awake, I have no imagery associated with thought. However I have the ability to conceptualize heavily. As a child, I thought when people said they had a "Mental Picture" of something it was only an analogy. I have extremely vivid dreams, so I have the ability to Imagine. Perhaps there is a lack of connectivity between the concious and unconcious mind. I am a visual artist, and can draw from memory, with accuracy, but not visualize things internally. I would love to speak with anyone who is interested and discuss further.
I’m like that too. My dreams are more real than reality, and while I can’t draw or paint well, I create textile art with a good for colors that contrast well. I’m 67, and just realized in the last year that I can’t visualize while awake, but I can contract an idea any object in question, while “visual field” is black.
Very interesting! Its funny that youre an artist. For me, theres was a time when i liked to draw, but since i can imagine things, my motivation to draw dimishes, because i get satisfied in imagining an image, instead of bringing it to life.
Can you imagine other sense modalities, like sounds, smells, and tastes? Another aphantasiac here said she could
I have total blind aphantasia. Only found out about it several years ago. I also thought “mental images” were a figment of speech.
I think with an internal monologue and thus can hear audio sounds/ music internally. I rarely remember my dreams but when I do they are vivid and I have experienced several lucid dreams before. I also used to make art and preferred doing very detailed drawings and paintings, possibly because of lack of internal imagery.
Can you draw from written or verbal descriptions? I would want to visualize the entire drawing before starting. Even with a verbose description of something very complex, I'd want to visualize the whole thing at a high level, sketch that first, then integrate detail as I'm able to visualize it.
I can visualize in an extremely detailed way, and can "feel" emotions that others do (cringing to death kind of thing but with all kinds of emotions), as well as other sensory imagination. It's no cake walk, it's actually a detriment sometimes.
The funny thing is, I can't draw for shit. I'm sure I could get reasonably okay at it, but it's not a natural talent of mine. I can make things like a desk or chair with few problems, but I couldn't sculpt without a lot of work. I think it might be that drawing and sculpting are the kind of thing where if you mess up it's hard or impossible to undo (getting the proportions wrong or hitting a fault in the stone, etc).
Another interesting thing is that I'm great at getting the gist of what people want when they don't know English as well as I do, but I am nearly incapable of using other languages to communicate very effectively. I spent 4 years in highschool in spanish class but all I came away with were a generally better understanding of how to conjugate in several languages and the truth that vocab matters more than teachers say it does 😜
Wow i think i have this, i do not see any image when i close my eyes, just have a fleeting sense of apple-ness that is gone as quickly as it arises, in fact i can actually visualize the apple better in my mind with my eyes open but even then it feels more like a memory regarding what i know about apples rather than an actual image, probably why i have always been terrible at drawing anything i cannot see.
I can imagine anything but i still cant draw anything i cannot see, not with real things at least. I can draw things i make up.
@@AmyFerguson I normally have complete blankness only when I try to visualize anything, but sometimes when im very sleepy I get an "impression" of something in just the way you're describing! Very neat! I always question myself like "wait did i just *picture* a slice of pizza?!?" but when I think back its more like I saw a millisecond after-image of a triangle that could be imagined to be a slice of pizza, there were no details or real colours, just a flash of light that was vaguely triangular and my lil creative brain went "hey pizza is triangular! Maybe that was pizza?
@@AmyFergusonthat just means you need practice. You don't have some magical condition that makes you special 😂
Bro same. I’ve always been this way and it’s super hard to explain how I remember things. I’ve always been good with numbers and remembering sequences but I don’t have a visual memory to go off of it’s like I pull the information from no where
Visualisation tends to be quite varied even amongst those who can do it, for some it is more or less vivid and some see it better with their eyes open whilst others can only do it with their eyes closed.
It could be you fall on the lower end of that spectrum and visualise better eyes open.
I have full aphantasia, and even something like a memory is not really like I can relive but just information I have access to.
For example, I would assume you know that 1+1 is 2, but I bet you don't remember learning that, it's just information you have. That's kind of how all my memories are.
Its cool that some people don't have an inner voice, but now that I've watched this video, it might be plausible to say they do have an inner voice but it's hidden within the unconscious processes.
So my in-law I work with has neither it’s insane I asked how do you think he just saws idk I told him I have an inner monologue and he looked at me like I was crazy lmao
My buddy from work Simon and I had a conversation ab the inner monolog (he has none I have lots) and he described his thoughts closer to smells than words which is fascinating to me. He says it's because the thought is instant rather than needing to say a whole sentence in his mind, so it just feels closer to how smells work rather than speaking. I'm curious if he made that connection solely because of a lack of "noise" in his head, since my thoughts are instant as well, I just feel the urge to explain my actions to myself. I'll tell myself "you know why you're getting up why are you explaining it to yourself" and then continue explaining anyway
I really don't understand the lack of inner monolog thing. My inner voice LITERALLY NEVER shuts up. Ever. I can't imagine it not being there. My head would be so empty.
@@waterinferno2071 Yeah he described it pretty well.
I have aphantasia and but I do have an inner monologue. Weird thing is I can 'temporarily' turn this inner monologue off by focusing VERY hard at not thinking about any word, and it does feel like 'smelling'. I believe it's possible to achieve this state easier by practice of meditation.
Just to be clear, it's not that I literally smell things. Smell is similar to not verbalizing words because humans lack vocabulary to describe smell precisely. We always talk about smells by comparing them to other things, but never naming the smells themselves.
Clearly this reply is only directed to OP:
So you are an inner mute, but don't have aphantasia?
This research excites me intellectually and devastates me personally. I’ve been progressively losing my ability to (or based on what the video describes, my *awareness* of it) visualize things in my mind as I rely more and more on dissociation to function the way I need to for a paycheck instead of the ways I enjoyed when I was younger. I also demonstrate a lot of symptoms associated with alexithymia, except I actually can identify my day to day emotions. Seems like I really am slowly dissociating my life away. Functioning normally but “spiritually” bereft.
Those are some big words damn you’re smart
@@SpicyMang0s 😂😂 uhmmm thanks I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic
In this realm our training forgets to mention that underneath all of it you to are an "I". An I can identify with any description it chooses to be true. See, with all the I's running about; Identities are reinforced or destroyed by a form of democracy or majority belief of state of some quantified event or observation. Being aware of what you are presenting to all the others and knowing that they are not aware of what they presented to you eventually makes you feel like your imagination is gone but it's not true your imagination has moved up a step. Find where it is it might shock all of us.
Dissociating is a bad solution to whatever your problems are.
Going through the same thing. Wish I could be experience things like a child for one day
Yup, I found out I had aphantasia around 10 years ago at a dinner party. Someone said wow i had to imagine/ picture myself on a beach to relax. I laughed and said so you're just saying that as a turn of phrase. He said no i am literally seeing this on my mind. 😅 i was like wait can all of you do this ? And everyone at the table said yes, i was flabbergasted. Im in it by the way. And I also use arch 😂
😂 what's n arch btw
Yes, but do you go to the beach? Also, what do they mean by "picture". How close that is in their mind to what they would exactly experience?
Are they feeling the heat of the sun on their skin, the sort of burning feeling? Hearing the sloshing of the waves and the seagulls? How far does it go?
My guess is that everything is "conditioning" if you do X a lot you can "visualize it a lot"/experience it in your mind better. The more you do it the more you can experience it. It's also about how much of "in the moment" you are. When I was younger I couldn't visualize and experience in my mind much but as I got older I could do much more. It's about learning to connect more with our senses rather than being in "thought space". The more of a thinker one is the less they are just experiencing and vice versa.
E.g., if you are imagining things in your mind you can't really think normally because you are already using your mind. E.g., when they imagine themselves on the beach do they also imagine what they are thinking as they are experiencing all that(basically exactly as if they were on the beach)? Likely not.
I do think that some people have more "active imaginations" than others and it is a spectrum but I seriously doubt people experience their imagination as if they were in reality. How could they function. I have had a few times when my mind was very "vivid" and I could not live like that constantly. I would begin to confuse my mind with reality.
E.g., before I started doing music I was very confused on how musicians could hear music in their head since I never heard any. But after doing music I can create music in my head very easily. It's conditioning. If you spend a lot of time doing something it will become more "real".
Maybe it takes doing drugs as that was probably the real turning point for me. Once you do some mushrooms and you experience a different world you realize there is far more out there and it opens your mind to the "experience". Probably any extreme situation triggers peoples minds to expand and teaches them to "think outside the box" and people that are used to living in those high intensity states of mind are just more conditioned to experience more in their own minds.
IKR "It's like wait can all of you do this"😆
I had the same experience & also flabbergasted. I thought everybody was just making it up & joking with me 😆
I love your story how you described it & wrote it 😆
You sound like a really fun person & probably the funnest person at the party 😂
Thanks for your story!
🤍😂🤍👍
when I realized it then I soon came to the understanding that people literally undress others in their minds and got really creeped out.
Also an aphantasiac Arch user, lol
Oh wow, this is life-changing. He's totally describing me.
In response to some of the comments.
I can't "picture" an apple in my head. I can "imagine" a green apple vs. a red apple, taste the difference, feel how the texture is different on my tongue, hear the different sounds when I bite into each one, I can "imagine" how some set of features would change if it were rotated in different ways, but I can't conjure an image of it, and no I can't "see" green in my mind's eye when asked. I do get some abstract "shadows" with my eyes closed, and they can have color, but I have no control over them, except that if I try to identify them, they go away. When asked to visualize a tiger, (with my eyes open) I got an instantanious flash of a tiger's stripes and then the face of a tiger, but I can't pull them back, and with my eyes closed, I can't even get that. I had a therapist a few years ago who thought I might have a split brain disorder, her attempt to treat that went nowhere. I have had vivid lucid dreams where I tested my vision, and with effort, was able to make out details like the exhaust pipe of a car or, with effort, reading a sign (though it changed when I attempted to re-read it), and I can see color in dreams.
No, I can't intentionally "picture" loved ones' faces, or my house, or green, or even the numeral 1. I've tried to ask others about how their minds eye works, it was like we were talking in different languages. If asked to imagine myself on a beach, the best analogy I could give is that I can only imagine myself as if I'm on a beach with my eyes closed. All of the other senses work fine, (sound works REALLY well for me, I think it's better than my actual hearing), but no vision at all.
I'm an INTJ, computer programmer, and have been doing really fancy stuff with AI. I'm sort of elite in my ability to "imagine" the behavior of complex systems. This video and the comments section, even comments from those who think this isn't real, were very helpful.
Edit: I don't think I've ever smelled anything in a dream, but yes I can conjur the sensation of specific smells on demand. I'd never tried that before now, but it works, so I know it's not something I had to "practice".
Really interesting that you can recall senses from other modalities but not vision. Your experience and vivid description of it is more confirmation to me that I lack any of what you describe in my mind.
mfs like you always end up being really good at chemistry/bio and discrete math. But bad at solving differential equations and calc stuff lol
AI will tell you what a rose smells like.
Wall of Text alert!
I had a super scary introduction to my own aphantasia: (TL:DR - I learned I had aphantasia after enduring a week long mental breakdown or something...)
This is 7-8ish years ago:
I was reading a webnovel at my desk when it happened: my brain was suddenly flooded with words, sentences, complete paragraphs of an un-known story.
My internal monologue was hi-jacked by the words, like someone stole away the mic and was shouting directly into my brain. Such an intense verbal barrage completely killed off my ability to function beyond basic self-care. My focus was utterly destroyed. It took an hour or two of me sitting in a daze before a thought broke finally through the noise and made me act.
It wasn't a rational thought, it was more like a compulsion; Vent the words onto paper (a word doc) and hope that it would empty my mind enough to regain control.
And so, I started writing.
For a week, I did nothing but write. When I (eventually) noticed that it was dark, I'd go and cook low-tier meals with easy prep (and I still burned a few due to the broken focus). It felt like I was trapped inside my head the whole time, just experiencing the world passively without any thoughts because I literally couldn't hear myself think. Conversations were impossible, I basically grunted and said yes or no to any questions while I was cooking dinner. Writing seemed to help, but it was like the difference between being set on fire and being dipped in magma. Both are bad, one is just less bad...
Somehow I managed to survive until the end of the week and on morning 8, I woke up half asleep and sat down at my desk. As the screen flickered on, I suddenly started crying because I could finally hear my thoughts again: "I need a coffee..."
Thankfully that sort of thing hasn't happened again, because it was absolutely terrifying... During that manic week, I wrote about 200k words (it was all pretty shit because I wasn't even a hobbyist writer at the time). It traumatized me to the point that my brain keeps trying to convince me that it was just 'inspiration' and to this day, reading that novel draft makes me feel off so it won't become a complete story anytime soon.
In the aftermath of that event, I was curious to look stuff up online and thus found out that I'm basically on the bottom tier of visualization for aphantasia. Also, there's no making music because my internal monologue is just that; a voice that kinda sounds like me, endlessly ranting in the darkness.
Learning more about it was quite refreshing as I could finally understand many things that were weird when I was younger. For example, I absolutely hated mathematics because I couldn't do the calculations in my head without forgetting numbers (similar to how people shout random numbers at someone's who's counting to make them forget...). Now I have a concrete reason why I hated it so much, which helped me to hate it less.
Once I realized that, I came up with new methods that suit me for counting (I use verbal rhythms for the numbers I'm adding. For example, 80 + 15, I would first do the 80 + 10 which is simple enough, then count out the 5 with a certain rhythm which helps me to remember the numbers much easier somehow. If there's a carryover, I can use half-steps to indicate it in the rhythm. Hey, if it's stupid but it works...)
The big take-away is that my internal monologue is supremely-uber-highly-mega important for me to function as a human and when it goes away, my brain functions at the level of a smart dog.
Right, I also learned that my spatial memory seems pretty good; I can still remember the dimensions of my grandma's linen closet (we used to hide there as brats while playing hide and seek...)
I can still draw a basic floor plan of that house even though I haven't been there in like 20 years (They just moved houses).
Maybe I missed my calling, maybe I should've been an architect.
Have you only been manic once? It’s so strange that that happened. Do you think anything triggered it?
Loved your story.
I'm an architect, so the end took me by surprise!
Like you, I also can recall spaces pretty well. In fact I remember and can probably draw to scale all the dwellings I've ever lived in, even the apartment we lived in when I was a toddler.
Did you ever find out why you had that "verbal storm" that locked you into a writing trance?
This doesnt really sound like it would have anything to do with aphantasia. I mean what you described is some sort of panic attack and the math thing is about focus, not visualisation. Pointing to ADHD.
I think the best way to explain what aphantasia is like is a book. Instead of visualizing the object, I describe what an apple would look like if my eyes were open. I know an apple should be red so I add 'red' as an adjective, and I just build with words until I have the scene I want
Can you explain how would you interpret something that you have never seen before and it's beeing described to you? And if don't see it can you remeber the description and tell it to others?
@@renelovemetal Not them, but aphantasic.
-Personally, I wouldn't do very well at interpreting it. I would need the description to draw a lot of parallels to things I *have* seen before, but that would only give me a vague understanding of the function, or maybe the size or shape as it relates to me or objects near me at the moment. Either way I would have no way to really imagine or conceptualize the thing, and if its something more abstract as opposed to a singular physical object I basically stand no chance.
-Probably? If I knew I was going to need to describe it to someone else later I could pay extra attention to the description given to me, and just recite that as a script. I would think it would be harder to describe it to others compared to an object I have seen before, but I assume thats the same for anyone. The point there is that describing something to others is the same as my own mental recall though. I wouldn't be drawing off a visual picture in my mind to recall the thing to describe it, I would be drawing off the conceptual description I have in my mind for it. Similar to just defining a word the way a dictionary would.
@@wooden2621 Thank you
@@renelovemetal thats a memory question not an imagination question
@renelovemetal I am notoriously bad with lists of instructions so I think they fall under the same generalization of "things I've never seen before". I keep notes for a lot of the hard-core puzzle games I play so I never lose info I stop thinking about frequently. When I read the maze runner books I never imagined what the monsters described looked like, I just thought about the adjectives used like "sticky, almost fluid, semi mechanical" and was content with that as my understanding of the monster. I still know how terrifying it should be, but I could never see it for what it truly is. Just the outline of what it could be if that makes sense
One of my friends has aphantasia and still he devours books. It is so inspiring that nobody or even yourself can stop you when you're involved in such thing with enthusiasm.
it's easier to read books with aphantasia. There are no distractions and hence I've gotten really high speed reading scores. We basically treat the words like you would a math problem by using just the symbols (for example, some may imagine 2 apples and 2 apples as 4 apples OR you can just do logic with the symbols of 2+2=4 without messing with apples), we don't have to imagine or picture it.
I had a stroke that borked my ability to read books.
Before I did. I loved to read and I am aphantasic. They are basically books on tape that play in your mind symphony.
@@SamGarcia how do you know that lol
I get so bored reading all the seemingly meaningless details, I just want to know the story, the characters etc, the real meat of the story. I have a very fundamental way of looking at the narrative.
When I read novels I really struggle keep track of characters if there are too many of them - as each character is just a name
I totally agree with this . Although I have aphantasia, I am able to manipulate my mind and even other processes in my brain in strange ways that other people claim they cannot, yet I objectively experience these processes. I have found that hard determinism has helped me understand a lot. I do love music, as some people on here said, I used to have very vivid dreams.. horrible horrible ones. I listen to solfeggio frequencies on my tv while I sleep in the other room during the night and I have gone from not having any mental imagery to being able to somehow m occasionally have a slight , abstract images but they are.. I can’t explain it. I do experience synesthesia when I attempt to recreate the apple in the form of feeling an invisible apple sitting on my skin for example. It has led me to have insights on things I never thought I would. Once you define consciousness it ceases to be that. So my imagination is very malleable and bizarre things that I can’t seem to find any info on, in every other aspect except visually. I think you are onto something here for sure. I can seem to visualize quantum physics in a strange way, like invisible walls. I watched a video recently where someone suggested our consciousness is quantum. When I access that field or whatever I.., I can’t explain. . Ahhh
so interesting! please if you find the words share :)
@@TatuCarreta quantum physics is our true nature. If we are not fully accepting of our nature and the nature of all things, we limit our consciousness and it gets separted, causing what some people experience as the unconscious mind somehow controlling us, or the subconscious bubbling up and doing one thing to another. We are on the path to, as a collective, as more and more realize we are all essentially the same, just with different interests that can unify or separate us based on our interpretation of said interests. Political structures and organized belief systems know this, and use it to control us. Our unconscious mind is part of a us. Raise it and make it equal, and you can then a utilize your subconscious and be the writer of your own existence, and not have to be subject to anyone else’s. Although, seeing as we are one mind, separated by beliefs and ideas, we are partly there.. once the quantum computer race is won, and there are no longer any more secrets, which one country is going to do inevitably… just think. We have been on a binary system of computing, and we are biological computers that know the buttons. During the time we until technology makes the leap from binary to quantum, we can use our nature/biology to make reprogram our past binary ways of thinking to align with nature. It’s happening, and if you don’t pay attention it will happen anyway.
I have the same.. draw? affinity? for quantum topics, when they are explained to me they just click but my friends are all very confused when I try talking about it, ive explained to them in every way i can think of, sent them to the reading or video I was talking about, they just do not get it. Thinking about the ways in which different quantum effects connect, the things they have in common, I feel like my spirit has touched another plane, the energy there is amazing, i yearn to understand more of the topic. We live in a time of incredible advancements in nearly every field, but consciousness study and quantum mechanics have made some real leaps and bounds even since I started following them, yet still I wish we knew far far more than we do. I really think whatever is causing the strange effects we see with quantum jumping/tunneling is the key to multitudes of other advancements in countless places, it’s just an idea I feel in my very core is true.
Yes! The tactile apple! I get this as well.
Aphantasic here.
I can hear music, sounds, and peoples voices. Visualisation seems like sorcery. I can't even understand what that would be like.
When you hear, it's still very clearly in your mind, right? Not exactly "real sound", no matter how much you focus, your ears don't feel it? That, but with the eyes... I'm sure it seems pretty wild. Some people can't grasp how having aphantasia's like, but I've gone "Well, I think without words, or many images every now and then"
Same it’s so abstract to me
@@fabiosonhandogrande1697 I played in Orchestra for 9 years. Movements of pieces I practiced will just show up. Sometimes it can be so loud/vivid it will seem like it is from the room.
Listen to something like Philip glasses Einstein on the Beach. Music and people's voices will get mixed in my head all the time. Usually I don't even know the conversation that is getting mixed.
Most of the time though you clearly know it's coming from your own head. Usually.
*Then...* I had a stroke whenever I was 35. It affected The language center of my brain. I spent about 2 years learning how to talk, read, and do math again.
My internal monologue now is chopped up and different... If feels less concise and I have aphasia all the time.
Here's something I've never been able to articulate easily.
So you know how like you miss a word or a concept and it's on the tip of your tongue but you just really can't remember it... Stroke brain feels completely different. It is like 404 not found in the subconscious.
@@SpicyMang0scan you visualize a light?
@@fabiosonhandogrande1697 I feel words in my ears but I know I'm thinking them lol
known I have aphantasia for years (thanks to some content on youtube). always thought, 'minds eye' - just a phrase that people used - no idea that people could *actually VISUALISE* things - blew my mind (not as much as people who don't have an inner voice/how do they THINK???) - I've l already happily volunteered to be part of a couple of uni research projects (University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand). what I find really interesting is... well number of things
well it *is* POSSIBLE for me to see images - when I am completely utterly totally EXHAUSTED (think of a civil defense training weekend - from Friday evening to Sunday night 0 we has to drive after work (*when* I WAS working, many moons ago) - under the training they pushed us hard - little sleep - and trying to get to sleep these random but very detailed images - usually of random people did not know would just FLASH in my mind
I went through a drinking binge in early 2014 for about 10 days (please don't judge me - reasons) - by the end similar but worse - VERY CLEAR - random images - regardless of whether my eyes open or shut - flash flash flash flash - so clear like watching TV but someone else is changing the channel every few seconds - really freaked me out
PLUS - have VERY VIVID dreams - to the point where well well well before Inception (movie) - I had worked out a system (look at a clock - look back - time had changed - *ONLY* way in the dream I KNOW I'm dreaming - just like this 'reality' - sometimes try/succeed turn into a lucid dream - )
some images from *dreams from years* ago stuck in my head - though I can't 'see' them - still THERE
although I cannot SEE images, I can draw a map/image of what is in my head - (i'm 52 now - have clear distinct vivid memory of an incident in kindergarten - yes kindergarten - sent this information to my mother few years back in an email - she didn't come back with "don't be ridiculous" = just accepted it = and moved onto to another topic
oh - I'm an INTJ btw - professional tested twice - career counselling in 1998 & weekend business retreat based around Myers Briggs in.. 1999? 2200?
That's interesting 🤔 I have pretty vivid visualization and rarely dream. In fact, I feel more rested when I don't dream, which is most nights. Sometimes though, it's like living an entire lifetime or more shoved into those few hours.
I cringe to death at random memories too 😂 very annoying usually. Almost like my brain is deliberately keeping me from being too happy because every time I've felt really happy for the last 15 years something devastating has happened soon after. It's hard not to be pessimistic about it, but it's something I know how to deal with 99.5% of the time.
I hope you get to find out what those studies found, if you haven't already 🙂
how do you even pronounce aoutoeaeara????
@@crunchymushy I take it you mean Aotearoa ???
mate! it's easy...🙃
actually - aoutoeaeara is on right track - more vowels than english speaks are used to - including ng (like singer)
ok first, vowel sounds are a little different - instead of a, e, i, o, u
A (ah) - Pronounced like the 'a' in 'are. ...
E (eh) - Similar to the 'e' in 'there. ...
I (ee) - Sounds like the 'ee' in 'three. ...
O (aw) - Similar to the 'o' in 'or. ...
U (oo) - Pronounced like the 'o' in 'two. ...
Ng - Pronounced like the 'ng' in 'song. ...
Wh - Usually pronounced like the 'f' in 'fine.
next - you break it down into 'chunks'
each bit that ends in a vowel is a 'chunk'
so Ao /tea / roa
Ao = hmm - Ah-o (as above, where, A in 'are' & O as in 'or'
tea - tea-ya
roa - like 'rower' (some one who rows a boat)
VERY *rough* guide -
listen Splitz Endz = 6 months in a leaky boat - (song) - they start with Aotearoa -
lovely name - means 'land of the long white cloud'
now that you've mastered that - onto our next vocab word -
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
(85 letters); Short form: Taumata
"The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one".
Note: Listed in the Guinness World Records as the longest official place name in the world.
This is some of the most interesting stuff I have ever heard…
Please keep up the videos! 👍
I have a very vivid imagination.
I can recall far back memories and remember the atmosphere, smells etc
I can visualise being almost anywhere .
Shame my imagination didn’t give me artistic creativity, but it did help me become a better holistic therapist :)
I see two images, both 3d, one with my eyes and one with my mind. They can be unique. As I listen and look at a person, I also see what they are saying or what I’m thinking in mental visuals.
Both take mental capacity, so as my eyes are focused on an external stimulus, my internal representations reduce in strength and vice-versa - as my imagination increases my external focus reduces.
But it is very easy for me to translate a recent external image into a mental one - like rotating a 3d object.
I have total aphantasia, but have done psychedelics and under the influence that's exactly how my perception became, 2 worlds and the ability to choose which one to pay attention to. My real eyes and one in my mind. Absent drugs, no mind's eye at all, just the real world.
@@Gnaritas42 I can attest to psychs having an effect on “increasing” the minds eye. I also remember my “minds eye” being an order of magnitude more vivid after having done psychedelics, still to this day, years since my first experience. (I don’t use them anymore besides marijuana - which does have its own effect but a lot less than psychs)
@@lukesjukes1 doing psychs was the first time I discovered what a minds eye was, and what a visual imagination actually was outside of dreams, and realized my thoughts could affect what I was seeing. Also only use mj these days.
When I am talking with my friends online, one of them has at least said they have aphantasia, and they typically seem to be more logic oriented, and I personally have thought that maybe this is something like brain-handedness? Like for most people they press a 'button' to think of an image of whatever they want to imagine using their right hemisphere vs others using their left hemisphere to try for the same thing.
BINGO. This data support my comment for the video. It's about thinking in Ideas as opposed to Particulars .. or something. Thanks man. We're gonna solve the Riddle of the World, and have Peace. WE ARE BECOMING AS GODS. ('bout apple time!)
No its because their word oriented.
Words use traditional logic. People with hyperaphantasia think abt stuff through processes and "feelings".
Like I do my math through feelings more than actual logic.
Im really ass at chemistry and biology and shit like that tho
@@honkhonk8009 I agree with you. I'm mostly aphantasic and I'm definitely a word guy. I'm always reading or writing, from an early age.
When I typed logic oriented I didn't mean very specifically math, but moreso logically thinking in conversations or taking logical approaches to situations to a higher degree than what I personally consider a normal level
@@honkhonk8009I’m very word/logic system oriented but my memory works based on the “energy” of a memory, then specific “strands” of that energy represent objects, people, events in the memory, rather than words describing the memory, or genuinely re-experiencing in my mind as ive heard from some people. Idk if it’s necessarily one or the other, personally I think it’s probably more like a wheel of categories including traditional word logic, feelings/emotions, generally active vs passive, generally external vs internal, plus plenty of others I can’t think of off the top of my head, which everybody has varying degrees of natural ability in. We love applying binaries to topics, but the more we learn about topics we have split into harsh binaries, the more we have to take those binaries apart. It may be time to stop applying hard rules and restrictive boxes to things we clearly don’t understand yet. Binaries are not helpful in most contexts, we just seem to really love dividing things into two groups for no real reason.
As someone with aphantasia, ive realized that memory recall is a different thing to composing new "images" in the minds eye. So i sort of have a bank of memories which i can access, but for new constructs i find i need to write or draw them out to explore them. Then they become a memory that i can work with.
Once you realise that you can't 'see' an apple, try thinking about a clock. I have full Aphantasia but I'm able to imagine clock hands at various times in my m,ind and replicate them - I just can't understand how it's done.
It seems to run in families alongside Hyperphantasia. I have noticed those with Aphtantasia tend to be above average with words, whereas Hyperphantasia lends itself to visual art of course. We also get a meditation bonus (and we finally realise why we could never do the guided visual ones).
im so glad to find some aphantasia person who meditates, if you want to share, how is it?
I long ago had given up on meditation because the few guides/pointers from friends/family were heavily visualization based.
"Imagine a spoon in your mind and really focus on it".
A frustrating few minutes later had me annoyed and resigned to the fact that it just wasn't for me.
Never really revisited it since, perhaps I ought to give it another try.
I can't even imagine what it would be like to see an actual image in my mind.
I completely disagree that it happens via disassociation. When I "rotate" the image, I am simply comparing points of the second image based on the concept of the first image. The first rotation takes less time because there are less points of difference.
This is why I always loved reading. Everything turns into a movie in my head still. I recreate everything described and it’s why I get disappointed with some movies made from books because they leave out a lot of information or changes things.
Wow! What a brilliant interview! Subscribed!
How do I know if I'm picturing a red apple in my mind or if I'm just convincing myself that I am?
Trust me... If you see the red apple you can see it.
If you have aphantasia you wouldn't only say "you see nothing or a wire frame".
Maybe you don't actually exist, and you've just convinced yourself that you do.
@@xyzzyxyzzy2 Hey, do you know of any good hotels around here? Asking for a friend.
I have the opposite- hyperphantasia.
Thought that was you. Small world sometimes 👋
Amazing, we need more open conversations about this and discuss how it limits understanding life in general if you don't see the picture that the words are painting
First time I'm watching this channel; I love the style and presentation. You have a lot of talent.
I work with a lot computer code, mostly C/C++. A while back, I had a revelation that I often remember code by how it _looks_ (whitespace, indentation, line lengths, etc.), and thought maybe I'm weird and other people don't think that way. I can still picture code I haven't looked at in years.
I just remember how the flow of logic "feels".
Like I just imagine a turing machine when I do assembly and stuff.
@@honkhonk8009 Oh yeah, I mostly mean for finding snippets I'm interested in, that I remember seeing or writing some time ago. I don't think Turing machine unless I'm writing brainfцck, and then for anything complicated I map the memory cell usage in comments. Assembly isn't much different thought process from C, just a lot more tedious, especially with SIMD or stack manipulation, which are the major reasons to write assembly these days. If you want something different, functional languages are cool, because they make you invert your whole thought process compared to procedural.
This is the only channel I've found that is covering the many aspects of the hard problem of consciousness so clearly and easily to digest, and it's a topic that deserves so much more attention, with it arguably being the core mystery of everyone's life and existence. Unbelievably interesting and awe inspiring, and if there was a course about it and I had the time and money, I would without a doubt enroll. Thank you so much for covering these modern day enigma's that almost feel like the only remaining piece of true magic left in a world where science has made the explanations to most things that were once magic, seem predictable or mundane.
that is because consciousness is you, it is not an experience. It is the very experiencer. Anything you can objectify is not you. Conscious is in and through any and every experience. Consciousness just is. And everything is in fact a form of consciousness which itself has not form and is not in time and space in fact time and space is in consciousness.
@@you_are_soul Yes. Science attempts to be objective, but as Chalmers has said, consciousness is by definition, subjective.
Conscious experience is subjective. But is consciousness?
@you_are_soul So, your unconscious activities and automatic functions are consciousness.
What a very interesting video! I think I’ll be checking you out more after this one 😊
I normally got aphantasia and think in terms of sound, voice. But recently when i was tired and lied on the bed i stopped thinking hearing voice in my head and instead was imagining a movie or something like this it was really cool
Is it difficult to be not able to say things in the mind ?
@@pushparahi5681 For everyone its different experience. Im used to it so can't say but when I don't hear sound i feel very uncertain and kinda in the flow like life just happens you have no control
@@pushparahi5681 I have aphantasia and no inner voice. Not difficult at all. I only think about what I want to think about and if I don't want to think I don't. There are no voices in my head and no random thoughts that pop up. Just me thinking what I want to think.
You're probably clairaudent
@@sinntheeeuhh how do you experience the act of thinking? I visualize a lot so this intrigues me 😅
currently studying cognitive science (interdisciplinary) and it is facinating that this topic were presented to me this semester. funny timing
HD spinning 3D half-eaten apple that bounces around randomly
I got that shit bouncin around in my head like an old TV screensaver
Big bounce boings
Ive got apple fractals.
I can do it all minus the HD
HD?
It is great to finally see someone working on consciousness research who has a realistic and practical view of it. The others I stumbled upon on the internet often couldn't even clearly define the object of their research. Sometimes I think we should come up with a new more clear term for what is called "consciousness" in that field, just like when UFO was replaced with UAP. I think it would save us a lot of headaches.
I have aphantasia, but I can remember things and faces extremely well (my facial recognition skills are extremely good, like seeing someone who has aged 10 years one time 10 years later and recognizing exactly who they are by feeling). When I close my eyes I only see black no matter what, no blurry images, no shadows, no color, nothing. Then if I try to remember the way something looked it's like a separate part of my brain activating to imagine it from memory. It's less an image and more a concept. Everyone thinking your minds eye and remembering the way things look are the same is pretty insane to me. As others mentioned I can remember the way things taste or smell or feel in the same way.
Very interesting!
I may have this in some weaker form. I can bring up a weak image of an apple, mostly stemming from the memory of the apple, that was on my desk yesterday. But there is no color. And now I realize I generally don't see color in my imagination and when imagining something the images feel brittle. Same goes for dreams, I cannot remember, ever seeing intense color in dreams, even though I dream often.
But I am a Computer Scientist and can visualize Algorithms and flow of data really well. I also own and design Bonsai trees and can imagine the shape, that I want, even when not looking at the tree.
But more interestingly I am also a musician and I always envied people with chromesthesia (people, that automatically associate notes with certain colors). But now I realized, while listening to, or playing music, I associate it with shapes and texture.
Very nice, thought stimulating video! Today I learned something new about myself, which I never thought about before.
what a nice comentary, i dont want to be disrespect but i have this cuestion from musician to musician, do you try psichedelycs? do you see colors there or not? (i know this has nothing to do whit the music lol)
@@TatuCarreta Once, and I did see colors there, yes.
I wonder what chemicals like LSD do. When I used to trip colors were everywhere like a kaleidoscope.
Like others have said, I “see” my imagined objects but not like I see an outside object. It’s dreamlike. If I try to focus in, it disappears. I will say I imagined a green apple but it’s more like a memory of an apple. There’s no real green there.
or DMT, imagine a non inner perceptions person in dmt, we need so much research here
To me LSD does nothing, only haven taken as much as 150 ug
I haven't broken through on DMT but the visuals with my eyes open are much stronger on the spirit particle than on LSD
And while LSD is mainly affecting things that are there, for example I would see the bark on tree revolve going upwards, or the small 3D spots on my wall shifting and moving, or a curtain dancing as if it was windy, on DMT I saw things that weren't there, for example I would look at some plants on the ground and I would see them sprout, grow, wither and die only to be replaced by new plants over and over again.
Great conversation. Thanks!
I can visualize in my head if my eyes are open. But if my eyes are closed, I see few.
I'm fairly weak on visualisation but fairly strong I think on somatic and auditory imagination. I can "feel" the texture of a tissue for example, if inexactly. I can recall voices and music fairly clearly, replay a song with accuracy mostly limited by memory.
If a qualia is to be thought of as an integration of cognitive inputs, then virtual qualia like imaginary experiences can be described in similar terms relative to all inputs simulated internally. If that makes sense.
lol i write about that, is a very good way to see the mental manifestations, like we have an analogue perception and a digital one, we can mentally taste, smell, view, hear, feel, and even all the perceptions at the same time. aphantasia is like a broken cable...
Synesthesia
I just get very vague bits of shapes in my mind, everything is mostly shrouded in darkness. And as soon as I try to concentrate on it, it gets harder to see. My dreams are like that as well, it is like 50-80% of the information is missing. What happened one time though is that I got pushed in my dream and suddenly everything popped with colour and it was like real life for a few seconds. This was a very surreal experience and I still wonder what happened there.
Also didn't really understand what backwards masking was about. In the first image I knew it was a spider, the second one I thought it was a bunny in a cup. But what does it tell me, how did that relate to the video?
That masking made little sense
you need to read about WILD tecnique in lucid dreams, is the only way to have a "more real than reality" dream
Great interview.
This is good information, I will try to rotate things in my head now. Never thought it was that easy but I was so blind and just produced instantaneous imagery.
Also, this is somewhat not related but just wanted to share this thing I've been training on.
I tried to write things half-asleep almost all the time which helps my subconciousness send feedbacks to me in ways that my consciousness cannot logically recall where it came from like it just popped out and this happens quite frequently in my half-asleep state in which I use to write my stories, there was this time where I dreamed of something and it was an inspiration of things that I might have watch a month ago which was suddenly remade into a story into my mind. I have no clue what this strange phenomena is happening to me right now but it's been giving me a lot of ideas to write on, however... It makes me sleep late at night, makes me forget of names I commonly used, and also I am constantly being attacked by my past which leaves me vulnerable in controlling my emotions.
Lastly, I don't know if this will help but I sleep while my mind is still conscious of my surroundings...
Can anyone help me understand this?
Edit: oh no... my imagination became 2002 pixel games @-@...
My imagination goes from building a whole world to pixel block shapes surroundings...this isn't bad I still learned how to rotate my view of the world I make inside my head now and will fill in the blocky pixel types I've imagined with HD ones...
you have a powerful mind, you need to meditate, do you hear about WILD tecnique in lucid dreams? i like the thing you do. I do the same in the half asleep moment, i think a lot and sometimes there are some incredible idead that i forguet by the morning lol.
When i closed my eyes I saw an apple that kept changing colors from green to red and back like flickering...i realized this was because i didnt have information on its colors...
Mine did this but with shades around me instead of actual apple shades - a muted burgundy red, a sage green instead of apple red etc 🍎 🍏
I think another issue with consciousness studies is that we haven’t scientifically studied psychadelic experiences, it’s a difficult task but I think one that needs to be studied to fully understand what consciousness is
we need to do it by our self if the goverments dont aprove the researchs. Some like psilocibine, pure lsd or DMT, are very powerful drugs but no big damage, actually are great and positive results! helps us to know what we are
Fooor suure, this is my biggest gripe with consciousness studies. What is the reason for this? Do countries not let you research illegal substances or what? There are definitely places in the world where they do it. Do the scientists themselves avoid it?
I'm personally really interested in what Astral Projection (the next level after lucid dreaming), is and I think that it would definitely unlock some big unknown knowledge about consciousness.
I've heard it explained as different states of consciousness:
Dream Awareness Experience - you're unaware that *you*'re dreaming, and you're not the real you, with all your memories and being
Lucid Awareness Experience - you are aware that you're dreaming, but you're still not really the real *you*
Astral Awaremess Experience - you're BOTH, aware that you're dreaming, AND, you're the real, full, *you*
I wonder, how do these 3 interact with the main one?:
Awareness Experience - you're AWAKE, not dreaming, and you're you, fully conscious and aware that you're conscious.
I think the field of Neural Science is vastly under-researching the state of dreaming and how it influences our ego. And then this one combines quite well with the field of studying psychedelics, "mind-altering drugs". And there likely lies the key to quite a big chunk of "how the brain works".
I wrote this while high, sorry.
@@Katatonyathe problem is doing it in a way that is more broadly useful. individual experience is hard to pin down and quantify. plus getting funding for such a project could be a hard sell if you went "we're getting people high as shit and writing down what happens". as far as i know there's some research on psychedelics, and how it could be used to treat some mental illnesses (anxiety, depression, dunno what else) but not specifically on how it relates to the idea of consciousness. on a not-so related note, astral projection is a load of bull, but your definition of it seems to differ from the more popular one. Can you elaborate on what it means to be the "real you" and why you're not the "real you" when you lucid dream?
@@monkqp the cultist version of astral projection definitely sounds like a load of bull, but people like to sugar coat everything in life, it's probably how our brain works (hence religion, makes you feel special and not just a blob of cells).
Thing is, A LOT of people experienced this Astral thing, and I know a few personally even. If you ask any of them for details of the experience, it matches, to what people on the internet say, to what people in other cultures say, etc. The CIA even did experiments on it. It definitely exists imo. Do you actually leave your body? Most likely not lol. Does our brain have some immense hidden potential? Most likely yes imo. And I think some psychedelic drugs bypass the difficulty of getting an astral experience, but it's like going into it ultra drunk.
I stumbled upon a subreddit called AstralAcademy where the author wrote a book explaining his views and techniques on Astral Projecting, his definition is what I used, it's way more realistic and down to earth, stripped down from any unnecessary cultist links.
Here's how his book explains your question:
"it’s best described as you being the actor in a play, but being fully aware that you’re the person playing the part, not the person in the play" -- is what an astral experience is
The difference from the lucid experience is that while in a lucid dream, you become aware that you're dreaming, but you don't become aware of much more than that, you're still kinda in a dream state. I.E - you don't really become aware that you're the person playing the part, you're still the person in the play, not the real you reading this comment.
I think the author also claims that all 3, dreaming, lucid dreaming and astral projection, take place in the same space. The only thing that's changing is your awareness level. That's also an interesting way to view it.
I myself only experienced lucid dreaming and many failed astral dreaming attempts. Have some wild sleep paralysis stories though. I never really gave it a full shot though, was always busy with stuff irl and couldn't concentrate on this. This book of his sounds really promising though, if anyone's interested find the subreddit and there should be a post with the downloadable book somewhere on there.
>on a not-so related note, astral projection is a load of bull
Absolutely stupid statement.
A few years ago i made this argument glad its being made outside of my mind
Everything he's saying at 7:00 I have been saying for over half a decade.. So freaking awesome to see that I really do know what Im talking about!!!!!!
Cannot imagine being unable to visualize things in my mind, when I visualize stuff its always in easily manipulable high quality images that can be animated and the like
yup. We got superior processing power.
No wonder I get tired easily 😂 I can imagine how much I’d get done if I wasn’t able to do this so well.
@@nikkireigns As someone with aphantasia, but not a very total one, it literally feels like my brain is burning a lot of calories for me when I try really hard to imagine things, and all I get is very faint shadowy lines and shapes in a very foggy abysmal void, so I imagine someone with a full one would get drained easily.
@@SamGarcia do you find that you’re good at things like math and science? I’ve always struggled with those but love reading and writing and art. Just curious if there might be a correlation there somewhere
@@nikkireigns While I do love math and science, I can't do math in my head, I do it with pen and paper, because I have to image the symbols to do it in my head.
There might be some correlation, but simply, I just find that people with aphantasia simply think outside our head (like the pen and paper math I just said) compared to people who think inside their head.
I have an internal dialogue, so I talk to myself in my head, but apparently, some people don't have an internal dialogue, and I believe they talk to themselves out loud with their mouth instead to make up for that. So really, anything you can do in your head with images, we can/try to do outside our head. If you try to make an image in your head, well, we have to make with our hands a real statue outside our head.
I have aphantasia. No i can’t imagine this or that so don’t make me try. It literally feels like my head is empty, yet i can still “see” imagery, it’s just not like i can picture it in my hand for example. It’s in the back of my mind but i can’t bring it out into the real world as some people might be able to do. I don’t know if it’s genetic or not, my mom can see imagery and she was surprised when i told her about it.
I’m not a scientist but I read Dehaene’s book on GWT and he describes several experiments that are similar in nature to the blindsided aphantasia one and the arguments in favor of GWT seem pretty convincing. I wish I understood what Dr. Lau was trying to say when he pointed at problems with the evidence. He definitely sounds like someone we should be listening to.
This was great! Thank you :)
I really struggle to rotate objects in my head
What do you experience when you try to do it? Do you "see" anything?
You are just bad at geometry
I'm undiagnosed but have aphantasia otherwise known as "those without eyes to sea" (the second way of thinking - I doubt it so rare, merely understudied) my mind works by an internal group of voices varying by what type of perspective, describing memories, plans, and surroundings, not images thus faces, especially over age, blur in regards to identification - especially with changed hair styles, new glasses, trans... ect.
as oppose to useful, until you figure out how to pattern most things it's horribly unproductive. once you have patterned most things, chances are you did it wrong and will have to redetermine the patterns each miracle (what doesn't fit). All we know is we are usually wrong and search for the real patterns.
I cant visualize and also cant hear anything in my head (also cant taste in my head), Ive never been jealous of people with voices in their head though, that sounds so awful to me!
@@Anaesify you bring up a good point, I can't taste in my head either, it's certainly the tounge that tastes and nose the smells - and yes the voices are likely to recall random things like scent but scent *rarely* seems to invoke memory as in others.
the voices are all you, it's not like schizophrenia where they disassociate... it just allows for conversation and debate without getting horribly confusing... it is certainly a handycapt in this society not being able to "visualize"
@@Anaesify do you have any internalization at all? how does it work, best you can describe?
@@six1free I dont think I do... I was talking further to friends about this tonight actually... I have no inner monologue, I can't "daydream", I cant hear or smell or taste internally. I don't have vivid memories, in fact most of my past is essentially a black hole to me. My whole life (that I can subjectively say I experience) happens outside of my mind.
@@Anaesify fascinating... ever try a myers briggs test?
this is really interesting stuff!
As soon as you started talking about it I had no imagery as soon as you explained it more I have full access and the ability to rotate imagery and add color and other dimensions very strange thank you
We need to consider philosophical zombies for AI, dangerously missing on the debate.
AI isn't real. Zombies aren't real either. Nothing dangerous about either. Dangerous is people's stupidity.
Blind imagination or “aphantasia” is a mental misconception. If you can give directions or tell someone what kind of dog you’re thinking of etc, you absolutely can see with your minds eye. You just have to rearrange your belief structure about it. I know this to be true because I was mind blind as a bat until recently. It wasn’t easy to do and I’m still not good at it but I absolutely can see my imagination now. And i absolutely couldn’t before. So, for those of you who feel “left out” with a little work and the right kind of thinking you can open up your minds eye. Really, it’s more like looking at what’s already there. Impossible to teach someone how to do it. You have to figure it out on your own. It’s not like flexing a muscle. You first have to know where in your mind to look and then you can get better at it. I’m living proof. You don’t have to believe me but for those of you who want hope and want to see, i promise that I am 100% correct about this. I know for a fact. I can’t show you, but you absolutely are not blind in your mind. You just don’t yet know where to look. That is a promise. I can’t promise you’ll figure it out but what i can promise is, believe you can’t do it is the primary obstacle keeping you from seeing it. You have to let go of the concept of mind blindness. It is almost criminal that this idea has been spread on the internet. It is actually hurting people more than people know. It makes some people suicidal and I’m not joking or overstating. It’s tragic how “science” is used in this regard. Especially given the “evidence” from brain scans. If you’re not good at seeing with your mind or you simply cant see because you don’t know where to look, of course this will show up on a brain scan. Once you know where to look your brain will light up just like everyone else’s. For those of you troubled by this oppressive meme, I want you to know that you can see. It’s only a matter of taking the time to figure out how. It can be easy or hard. It’s a matter of peeling back layers of belief that unfortunately have been compounded by the name given to this “deficiency.” Aphantasia is a word not a disorder. You’re not incomplete. I’m sorry to those of you who have learned this word and have taken it to heart. It is not real. It’s only subjective dissonance that can absolutely be resolved. It doesnt matter what the “science” says. Neuroscience is essentially a complete misunderstanding of consciousness not the other way around. Of course MRIs show what they show. You’ll know what I mean if you learn to see.
I think there is some merit in what you are saying. There might be a typo: You said it's not like learning to flex a muscle. Did you mean to say it's not UNLIKE?
@@markr9640 no, it’s only like a muscle after you figure it out. If you don’t know where the muscle is you cant flex it. Thanks for helping clarify.
This was super inspiring, I resonate with this a lot as I’m an artist trying to find where in my mind my visual thoughts are. Great comment, hope I can consciously experience my minds eye soon.
I choose to believe its my spirit telling me that everything is unreal and asking me to return to reality. :p
Love and blessings!
Great video as usual! You deserve more views!!
The key to understanding consciousness is:
Some people literally don't/can't think. They are without agency. They duplicate what they see and repeat without ever actually processing anything. Critical thinking is a modern day superpower.
This was very interesting. I particularly was struck by the suggestion that an aphantasiac visualizes unconsciously (or subconsciously), can manipulate these unseen, unknown images, & subsequently answer questions based on somehow "knowing" the unconscious visualizing results. This is not my experience.
I discovered 50 years ago that I could not produce images, sounds, tastes, smells, or touch consciously, although I experience all perceptions as everyone else. I had no name for this, I asked doctors & professors, I asked friends & family, I looked through the search engines of the time & could find no answers. I discovered the word, aphantasia, by accident on Twitter a few years ago & felt enormous relief.
I dream in sound & images because I remember I do; I have no remembrance of voluntarily producing images. I have a touch of dyslexia - I believe - which made a potent combination with this non-imaging condition. I had great difficulty on IQ tests because a portion of the questions involved visualizing - much like in your video. I had to hard wrestle with such questions, no answers came from unconscious imagery. I had trouble learning the alphabet & reading when I was a youngster. Imagine (Are you going to picture some aspect of this in your head?) a child not able to image an apple making a connection with the letter a. I knew the alphabet with the pictures was on the classroom wall, but it hampered my learning not to be able to visualize this alphabet.
My autobiographical memory is almost nonexistent before my learning a functional vocabulary. Since then my memory consists of a narrative account (which has a single word present itself in consciousness that mysteriously links meaningfully to the words coming before & the ones I'm producing) - like right now.
I've a Masters degree in Counselling, a Bachelors degree in Physics & Chemistry, so I was able to experience success despite the slow start.
We need more people talking about their personal conscious experience.
I follow an anesthesiologist on TH-cam who talks about preparing patients mentally and emotionally for “going under.” This is significant, because some patients come out of anesthesia in the throes of some experience they often start to physically act out. Some actually become physically violent. The most interesting thing I’ve heard is that we really don’t understand HOW anesthesia works. We (or at least, anesthesiologists) know how to calibrate the dosages, what to check for in terms of patient readiness and patient recovery from anesthesia, but don’t understand how anesthesia disconnects the brain or the awareness of the body and/or pain while under. Honestly, I think the philosophical and the practical are linked.
That is interesting. It reminds me of drugs like antidepressants, where it is not known exactly how they work.
thank you for this video. ive had a thing since i was younger of making myself walk fast through the city and all that in my thoughts. i can still do it but ive come to find out it is really mentally stressing. i usually play video games where hypothetical simulation is required and i constantly keep simulating scenarios that are in direct proximity to the scenario required to win. i do that in real life as well, i rarely make mistakes, and i get away with way more advantages than disadvantages. i learned many things just by simulating myself doing them.
I’m totally aphantasic. I can’t see a damn thing in my head. I suspect a process like “blindsight” is happening, which is where a person is cortically blind but can react like a sighted person even though there’s no conscious visual processing. I just know things without any internal visualization.
Edit: oh that comes up.
I describe aphantasia as the projector in my head not working. One still has the normal abilities e.g., image rotation, recognition etc. but can’t consciously project the images.
Thats amazing! I was once asked to do a yantra meditation. I really sucked at it. I had no idea other people can see the image in their mind!!!!!!
I have aphantasia. I couldn't see the apple. But I still knew it was red.
When thinking about details, I could imagine a stiff brown stem being twisted and broken, color striations blending red to yellow, little whitish spots, a tiny, dry, brown almost flower-like formation at the base. But I couldn't actually "see" any of that.
I feel like the sensory signal from my eyes just very strongly overrides any image from my mind, even when my eyes are closed.
There are moments when I'm half asleep, when I think I might experience an image, but if I notice it happening, my attention focuses, and the input signal takes over.
I know a guy with aphantasia that uses words in his mind instead of pictures to "visualise". I remember how a chair looks by looking at a picture of it in my mind, he recalls something like descriptive essay in his mind.
He is a programmer and always knows EXACTLY what is on every single line of code, even when the code is over 50k lines long.
I've been using Blind Sight to describe what is different about human consciousness for ever, but I never hear about it. Dr. Ramachandran predicted that a subject with traumatic brain injury (motorcycle accident) resulting in blind sight would have severed the nerve going to the conscious part of the brain but not the part that all other mammals possess. Psychologists predicted that the trauma was psychological. They took a look at the nerves and Ramachandran (the neurologist) was right. To me, this suggests that other animals do not inhabit a "world" in the sense that we do. Just like someone who possesses blind sight seems to see (a world) but doesn't, animals without a prefrontal cortex seem to experience the world but do not. It's another case of us projecting our experience onto our animal friends.
Ngl I clicked on the video because I did a double take, thought Terry Davis came back refreshed and refurbished
i always thought this was my biggest block to my spirit... but its a power!!
I have aphantasia and the best way to describe it is “I can see it, but it’s invisible.”
It’s probably worth noting that even though I have aphantasia I have extremely vivid dreams. More real than real life, with plenty of visuals.
If we're 'conscious' of our dreams then we need to broaden our definition of consciousness. I suggest sleep walking is even more a telling feature of some people, supposedly anyone can experience it. I have extensive experience with sleep walking. We are definitely in a 'theater' with many layers.
Wakefulness and sleep are just layers of reality, sometimes wakefulness enters sleep (lucid dream), sometimes sleep enters wakefulness (sleep walking). and to make it more interesting, sometimes the wakefulness enters the post wakefulness field (psychedelic) and sometimes the post wakefulness enters the wakefulness field, (misnamed enlightenment or awakening, it is just another layer of reality) greetings!
Opposite end of the spectrum here, super Hyperphantasia/MADD, tuning in.
4D visualization, simulating entire worlds in my head, etc.
It’s debilitating, as it’s hard for me to interact with others normally at times.
to me aphantasia is exactly like mental blindness, I'm fully aware of what I'm imagining, but I cannot see it. I say that because I would think it's similar to what a blind person's imagination is like. I agree with him when he says that I can have a "mental image" in my mind and do tasks like mental rotation, but there is absolutely no visual aspect. imagine a painting on the wall. to me its just a wall with a bump on it, but if im not touching the wall i would think that its just a flat wall, because i cant see the bump. this is even true in my dreams, I am fully aware of everything in my surroundings, even when I'm in a dark underground place with no light, and my awareness is tied to my location, so I don't know what's happening around corners or through walls, but there is no detail to anything. nobody has faces, there is no visual at all, it's almost like I exist in the third person. I'm aware of where I am and where everything else is and aware of what's happening and how things exist in the space, but I'm not limited to my field of vision and I am not able to make out any details that would require vision. even when I'm interacting with people that I know i cant make out their faces or clothing or any other details that would require eyesight to discern. not only this but I'm very inept at trying to make 2 dimensional sense of the 3 dimensional "image" I have in my mind. in the beginning of the video when you showed a mental rotation puzzle it was instantly obvious to me that they were the same object (i looked at them and didnt have to think about it or rotate them, i just looked at them and at glance thought they are clearly the same), but when trying to picture or draw the details on an object or in a scene from a specific perspective absolutely all detail is lost because there is no color or vision that I can use to tell where a contour or object ends and another begins. the best I can do is outlines, but details are completely lost on me. I can carefully design a car in my mind, lay out an engine bay, and be aware of how each individual component fits with the others in space. I'm very good with packaging and the 3 dimensional tetris when putting boxes and items into the back of a car or truck. I can completely and tangibly "visualize" all kinds of 3 dimensional shapes and interactions, but there is no perspective like you would get if you were looking at it, I'm "seeing it" from all angles and my awareness is fully 3 dimensional, like I'm a 4 dimensional being looking at a 3 dimensional image so that I can see everything from every possible angle at once. this is why mental rotation is silly to me. in the context of an engine bay I can rotate the turbo to make sure that the inlet and outlet pipes fit with the engine and the wheel wells, but the shape of the turbo doesn't change, so if there's 2 images I don't need to rotate it to know that it's the same turbo because when I look at an image the shape in my mind is clear, and since there is no perspective the shape is the shape and they are either the same or they aren't. the same applies to all of my senses, I can't imagine sounds, can't imagine smells, but when things are happening in a dream I'm aware of what people are saying, aware of what happened when someone slams a door even if I don't "hear it." my memories are much the same as my dreams and memories, I only remember what was significant to me at the time, so if someone said something I will remember the meaning of what they said but not the exact phrasing of it or where we were at the time, depending on how significant those details are. if it is significant that we were in class when it happened I'll remember it, but I still can't "picture" the classroom much less what other people in the room were doing or even where we were in the classroom, unless for example we were hiding from the teacher and to me that was significant enough to remember, or someone else was doing or saying something funny.
excuse my bad grammar and run on sentences, but I'm lazy
I also have an incredibly good sense of direction because of this, I always know where I am relative to where I have been in a 3 dimensional space (unless I'm somewhere new AND not paying attention)
for me the mental rotation still takes place, but it's unnecessary and it's not something I do to identify objects, just something I do while completely a 3d puzzle for example, rubix cubes are hard for me though because the colors mean nothing in my imagination so I can't keep track of them using my mental image
I agree with this 😂 literally how i sorta describe it to people. Im amazing at directions. it's almost as if I've been somewhere i can always remember how to get there. Without any images, it doesn't seem to be happening automatically.
When I was a kid and I would sit in the car waiting to get home I would mentally take the path home and get home way before the car would, as I got older I can actually make a blob in my head and think of something and the blob will turn into it.
It’s fun to let the shapes do whatever they want too
I remembered that when I was a kid and I would day dream about playing the music I was listening to on a stage and such. I remember visualizing a guitar during the solo but when the solo would end I would struggle “getting rid of” the guitar while trying to maintain the stage
I actually have a internal internal frame work I made for conscience
I have an internal external framework and a external external framework but those are a work in progress
I'm surprised Hakwan has such a great grasp and understanding of aphantasia even though he doesnt have it himself. He's correct in saying that we don't lack the mental imagery but lack the conscious experience of mental imagery. I have aphantasia yet if I meditate deep enough or keep myself conscious while my body falls asleep and I consciously become more integrated with the subconscious I can then visualize and consciously experience the imagery. While physically walking around, not so much.
I partially have aphantasia and it's exactly as explained in 7:21. I say partially, because even though I have it most of the time, sometimes I can have clear pictures of something, altough I don't know what triggers it. I feel like most of the times that I can, I'm in deeply relaxed states. I also have vivid dreams with imagery. In mid/high dose LSD I also have close eyed visuals, some of them getting shapped in what I'm thinking. So, I think the ability to produce brain imagery is likely something dormant inside most people with aphantasia, and I also think it could be strengthned.
I think it comes down to this: when you have a visual experience, your brain needs to capture a signal, translate that signal (in the case of a visual experience, an electromagnetic signal) and produce an image. When you are thinking about a visual experience of something, you are producing a signal. People with aphantasia have troubles in producing an image with that signal, while people with good brain imagery can use that signal to produce an image just as/almost as well as a translated light signal. It's probably something more complicated but fundamentally I think it might work similarly.
Also, to note that I feel like when I was a child I could produce brain imagery much easier.
I can't imagine not being able to "Imagine", I'd probably bored out of my mind. In my head I can look at a picture or relieve an experience and then look at it in a 3D scene like a 3D software, I can rotate things, go around it, etc.
Thanks for helping me define my experience. When I’m asked to picture something, it’s like my brain can do it but only with things on file so to speak and I’m not directly experiencing it, my brain is doing it and communicating it to me. So now I know I’m doing it unconsciously. Another point: I can only use things I’ve actually seen. I cannot combine things I’ve seen to make something new or come up with something I’ve never seen before. It’s a bit limiting really. It’s like my brain takes videos and pictures and can reference those and communicate that to my consciousness but nothing beyond that.
people never talk about being able to "hear" in your head. My GF can recreate melodies in her head but she says it's like low quality acapella and one person or stream of audio at once. mine is so detailed that i can pay attention to separate instruments, they sound like the audio i have heard before, or how i want to hear it, i can "hear" the drum part quieter or distorted or with or without reverb and at the same time as many other sources of audio) i can make the singer in their original voice from the song song different lyrics or make them use their voice from later on in their careers. i basically have a DAW in my head. i have been working on making music since i was very young which i attribute this ability to or maybe why i gravitated towards music was this reason. boxers can fight in their minds very clearly i bet.
Great video! Really interesting. I wonder how much of this topic can be related to AI and LLMs, although maybe its still to early to talk about it
Reminds of being around the deaf community and asking them if they had inner dialogue and how to explain it.
I've always strived to be more conscious because I always thought being more conscious meant being able to do more, know more, I've always been a dreamy kid, mostly living inside my mind, as I've visualised what I wanted as some sort of fantasy in my head.
This video is fact.
I have always had artistic skill above my contemporaries. Now I am a successful painter. I have never been able to see anything in my mind. I have always thought others were lying about seeing things in their mind. I have always had the ability to rotate objects in my mind without actually seeing them. This is all very interesting.
I’m a programmer and I used to be able to visualize extremely complex systems all in my head.
Had a series of minor strokes. For many years, I could not visualize anything at all, completely destroyed my ability to work.
In the past year, I’ve started to sometimes be able to get that ability back and visualize how things work.
Had some sort of brain damage to that system that is slowly starting to recover
I think we need to start looking at ”disabilities” as a result of the body’s selective building process. For example some autistic people don’t have great social skills but can learn way more about a specific subject in a matter of weeks than a normal person could in years.
I believe we all have the same overall potential, some people just have it more focused in some areas.
And this is why I also think that if you can’t think of pictures there’s gotta be something else you thrive at because of it. Would be awesome to see a study on this. I could be wrong but I think it’s a solid theory.
I actually developed this issue at some point after middle school, I lost the ability to imagine thigns in my head, and I also stopped dreaming 99% of nights. my memory has gotten really really bad as a result, but in the last year or so I have managed to regain a lot of the ability through deliberate practice.
I can recall and simulate, perhaps even stimulate(?), every single one of my senses, even spatial. Further, I can very vividly conceptualize pretty much anything using all senses. Sight, sound, smell, texture, color, taste, and can even create environments with relative space from many angles, all without prompting or any original stimuli. Sound is the hardest if only for the fact that I think I have some sort of audio hallucination where music is almost always playing in the back of my head but my doctor thinks that’s just a stress response to my anxiety (along with my tic with always keeping rhythm) as when calming myself I can quiet it (and it helps to have distinguishable white noise to focus on).
I can pretty much picture entire movies of my own creation, and this also lends itself well to great visual memory of places and people, I rarely forget a face and run into issues with semi-doppelgängers 😂
So yes: apple, red with yellow spots, grainy texture, smells lightly of honey, long stem with a gritty texture. Turn it around I see a soft mushy spot on its underside, nice crisp snap as it gets bitten, juice spraying the mouth as it does so, honey sweet as the smell suggested, would go good with some peanut butter. It slips from the hand as it tumblrs and lands back on the plate, safe from the floor.
Damn now I want some, Imma go but some apples 😋
Finally a perfect video explaining why I failed every imaginary test in grade school. I got bullied because I couldn’t imagine things like everyone else. Teachers did not understand and thought I just didn’t do it
Imagine.