Відео

Thanks for this. Very interesting. I would say that I am a congenital aphantasiac. The 5 categories cited at the end - colour, shape etc I am unable to visually imagine. I only discovered this quite recently and this has been an answer to some of my questions that I had about myself. I do have Horner Syndrome, as well - which I think may have been caused by a tramatic fauceps child birth experience - so I don't know if this might put me in the neurological category?? I know that I have always had the same quality of visaul imagination. My conscious recognition of people/faces and my ability to recognise colour/shapes and all is absolutely fine

I have profound aphantasia. I have had a career as both a writer and a graphic designer. The data here chimes with my experience; the color picker could have been more granular, to choosing shades of a single color one has seen, and I think you'd find aphantasiacs scoring highly because, while I have no mental imagery, I have extremely strong recall of visual information (not as pictures, obviously, but the ability to know what was seen). Re my autobiographical memory, I have almost none at my disposal unless I prompt it in some way, but it's not possible to put things in any order and there are entire periods blank. Instead my mind is full of knowledge of what I have read/studied, to the point where I know much more about the lives of those I study. Where I have an active surplus is auditory imagery, being able to mimic precisely others' voices, reproduce accents, etc., replay my favorite music, etc. My own experience is that my mind has stored all this visual imagery in the normal way, but there is something broken re the stage on which others view these images. I am into art and have no trouble naming pictures, but in the absence of the pictures have no ability to visualize them, just as I have no mental imagery of my own face/body. I am also laughably bad at drawing, having no more ability than an elementary school student.

How interesting. I have no mental imagery at all, i 'just know' or understand concepts. Interesting the differences between congenital and neurological aphantasia.

I remember used to be able to visualise, now not that sure. Although I find it to be very convenient for meditation:)

That is interesting that he mentioned activation correlation across the brain as a difference for “congenital” aphantasiacs. As an autistic ADHDer, cross-brain scheduling is a challenge (autism affecting connections between brain structures and ADHD affecting activation attention). Of course, not all AuDHDers are aphantasiac, but it might give some level of understanding as to why I am, especially since some level of my vision’s neurology was impacted somewhere along the way, resulting in strabismus.

I would love to be part of a study. I'm have multi-sensory aphantasia, most likely ADHD/Empath, extrem short sighted (no one recognized it until I was ten years old and I wonder what kind of connections this could have to aphant), my left side feels more disconnected (walking into door frames and such, but it's an adhd thing too) and the right side of my brain feels more present and active (haven't had a stroke). I am actually quite creative. I think more in concepts and know what looks good design wise and what doesn't. I'm an avid photographer since my 10th birthday and now I think the reason for that is the aphantasia. I would recognize people from 20 years ago and if we interacted a bit I could even tell that person, how her behavior or mood was, where we met, what we sat on, in what angle we sat to eachother and what we talked about. My memories are based on emotions / situation based memory.

Cool.❤. I am multisensory aphantasic. Great to learn that aphantasic brains are uncoordinated.

Thanks for providing this. As an aphantasic with no ability to recall sounds, smells etc, I found it really interesting. It would be great if you could interview Dr. Bartolomeo again in the future as his research progresses.

I would love to have more information about aphantasia that may be the result of a head injury to the back of the head, particularly an injury that affected your eyesight. I think i could visualize as a young child and then I hit my head hard on cement and couldn't see anything after. At least that is my assumption since I just figured out I have aphantasia. I just remember as a young child squeezing my eyes shut hard trying to see something. I also have a very odd form of stigmatism which I was told was a result from an injury. (Irregular Against The Rule Bi-Oblique astigmatism.). So basically, I have a black mind and in the real world, I see things wildly different than everyone else. How does that affect my emotion or ability to fit into society? Example, If i look at the moon at night, each eye shows me 6 distinct moons at differing angles. Somehow, my brain puts it all together into 1 fuzzy image. It is much easier to do when looking at a solid object but if i look at a light source, like the moon, its nearly impossible to put it together in any type of 'shape.' It's so nice to learn about these things as an adult, but it would have been more helpful to know when growing up because I had such difficulty relating to people.

I find the whole thing so weird. I have total visual aphantasia yet I must be able to visualize somewhere in the brain, i just don't think anyone could function if they couldn't do it. Yet to try and describe it is impossible - the common way people try to describe it is as if its a computer with the screen turned off - all the information is there, just no display. I liken it to those optical illusions, where you sort of see something out of the corner of your eye, but as soon as you focus on it, it disappears. This really is how it feels to me - the visual information feels like it's at the corner of my eye, and as soon as I try and focus on the thing, it just disappears. This is how I can get a rough idea of something in my mind, but there's no details at all. My mind is just full of ghosts. I can't imagine how easy life would be with the ability to visualize.

I really appreciated this video (as someone who creates hypnosis audios). It inspired me to deep dive into learning about Aphantasia, and then I created a audio all around giving a person the sense of flying, that is aphantasia friendly (leaning in on motor imagery). I referenced this very video in the educational one I made about Aphantasia and my thoughts on how it relates to Hypnosis/meditation. Thank you Dr Zeman for your great work, and the Aphantasia Network...apparently this resonates with a LOT of people. I really love learning about the human mind and body, so this was right up my alley 🥰💖

Seeing imagery - awake, with eyes closed is a kind of hallucination !! You tell yourself, that it is normal - but it's a mass-formation psychosis.

What does the speaker mean specifically when they talk of visual imagery? Are you saying you can visualise things in your “mind’s eye” such that those appear the same way as say a dream would? Are you telling me people are walking around with the ability to close their eyes and have another projector appear before them such that they can actually see, see, what they think of? How does that work when you have your eyes open? Doesn’t the image from your mind’s eye fuck with what your eyes are actually seeing from the world? I’m so confused. lol

Very interesting. I am definitely ADHD, my son is definitely autistic, I have strong evidence of autism, Definitely introvert. Afantasia I just found this is a thing, I though it was obvious that neurotypical humans work like that, For me it's about both imagery, language, reasoning, I have all these cognitive capacity, but they are unnecessary. This new feature of autobiographical, I really never had. Iconic ideation its the best description I heard my individual experience. I have a PhD in physics, actually it's more about mathematics, numerical methods. Actually i'm driven, and paradoxically, particularly successful in subjects or topics I don't know. Of course it isn't something I have any control over. I am unable to pick and choose. Learning is particularly interesting. I have no idea, reward system, underlying goal do research anything. It's the opposite. I just see what peers, when I was in academics, were doing, they usually asked if I could help. My answer is of course. I usually received just the words , the problems they were facing them I would play. I learned programming without reading any books nor documentation. Mathematics, when required at most my advisors would give a kickstart on mathematical methods, but again, Just the idea, I always have this eureka moment before starting any work, I have no idea where it comes from, but it's always ended up being the case I was indeed correct. during the months of research I would definitely procrastinate by scattering some scribbling, coding, inventing methods , I guess, because when I refer to days, it usually varies between weeks, months, based on reports from partners usually. I can't confirm that reliably so I use my complete disregard to self care and use beard size, hair size and weight to estimate. I have a terrible body brain interface, I only notice that I need water when I was thirsty hours ago, same thing with eating , going to bathroom. That doesn't mean I lack rigorous mathematical, logical and language skills. It's just That I prefer writing, because when comes to explaining myself, it's impossible. Every output to other humans is draining because it's a translation. English, Portuguese, mathematics, music, code, algorithms, in my head, it's the same thing. Music theory is something I reject profoundly. I was sad that life had not a soundtrack, So I invented, since about 1994 I guess. Hacking computers also about the same time. It wasn't about purpose, it's because I can't help myself, I need to know what's inside, how it works. So I guess ai am a researcher as long as a kid. My toys were mostly telescopes, microscopes, video games. Electronics were great because when they broken instead of being sad, I would try to see how it worked. I knew I was fundamentally different, so I also orbited about neurological topics, philosophy, consciousness... Of course when I say philosophy, I mean, read all the classics from the original philosophers. After Kiekergard and Nietzche I realized that philosophers is what comes later, So my experience molds my understanding as my mind works in outputs unquestionable results, I learned too soon that not only I am misunderstood, so people assume that I am wrong, The catch is I tell something only after I finish, and I don't stop until I finish. I heard some people have no stop button. Where having artistic traits and rigorous problems skills and research, comes in a single package, I don't know, I am not there, I have no experience, it doesn't feel I did something. So I had to adapt and go into field that people have no idea what they are doing. AI. I solved the Alignment problem, utility function and did a model of these LLMs , because people are too not very bright to notice. I know I am biased because my IQ is too high, without expressing any kind of disrespect, even gifted people are, in my perspective, severely cognitive impaired. That applies only in deterministic nerdy stuff however. I have the emotional age of a 10 year old kid. I know autistic people are too verbose and humans rarely read what I write, but that's ok, because Every email, comment, message, is my scratchpad of idea, with time stamps. If you got this far. HYPERVANSE search.

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Great presentation. I have total visual aphantasia, so I can't see anything at all in my mind. I have an idea of how it must feel to see images because I may have dabbled in a few substances in my youth that certainly allowed me to see colors and swirls when my eyes were closed. I have on 3 separate occasions "seen" images with my mind - i don't know if these were actual visualization, or if they were hypnogogic images created by a sleeping mind. The technique I used to do this was to lie on my back and "imagine" my body or "soul" floating up. I just have to note that I don't believe in souls or voodoo, or any of that new age garbage, I am just using the word soul because i can't think of a better word to descibe it. I just kept imagining my soul floating higher and higher. I imagined a hand coming down through the clouds and "pulling" my soul up higher and higher. On the crazy occasions I could visualize, it was like a dramatic shift in my visual system. It was like my field of view massively expanded - sort of like going from seeing the inside of a room, to seeing the entirety of the ocean from a boat. The feeling is very close to "coming up" when taking drugs. When this shift happen, I found I could control the white noise of my mind and I could form photorealisic images of anything I could think of. Not only could I form images, but I could make them move! They were only in black and white, but it was exactly as if my eyes were open. I have tried to recreate this 1000s of times with no success- i usually end up falling asleep well before I visualize anything. The fact of the matter is - I could visualize, i did it. If I did it once, then it means I can do it again. Or maybe it doesn't mean anything, maybe it was just the hypnogogic stage before falling asleep and I was just having a lucid dream. Still, if normal people have that power at their fingertips at all times, I'm supremely jealous!

Wow - this video just gave me a new idea I hadn't thought about. I have total visual aphantasia, but for some reason, I can imagine colors very strongly in my mind when compared to thinking up images. It's noticeable different. Weird.

Also - apart from our ability to not get PTSD, what other super powers do we Aphantasians with SDAM have?

So what I really want to know is - what is the brain doing with all the extra space and processing power? I have SDAM to the max level, I have no memories at all, just a handful of facts about my life, no real emotional memories though. So what is the brain doing with all that extra space? Is it just sitting there unused? Is it being used in a different way? Can we access that extra processing power somehow?

I was in my mid 40s when I first saw an internal mental image. I was in group meditation and a tree popped into my mind. I cried out - I thought it was some kind of enlightenment superpower! I excitedly told the group I'd seen a picture in my head, they looked at me as if I was insane and didn't invite me back 😅. Aphantasia's effect on meditation and psychedelic experiences has become a fascination for me. Thanks for the video!

did anyone else get distracted and end up watching ratatouille

When i tell you i was SHOOK when i found out people actually see things with their eyes closed🤯...I see NOTHING just straight ⚫️. I just rest in the feeling of things, I conceptualize an image but i don't actually see it. I dream pretty normal but meditation & things where you have to conjure an imagine in your mind? nah. I wish! I can feel the feeling of seeing it..if that makes sense😂 I'm very emotion/ other sensory based when 'visualizing'. Damn i'm kinda jealous of other people's brains🫠😂 I bet their meditations & visualizations Slapp!!✨️ Also, I don't have an inner monologue that people talk about having. Alot of the research I've done shows a link between that and aphantasia. I'm so curious how that works.. like people hear a voice in their mind 24/7?? Is it yourself or like disconnected from you? What's it talkin about?🤔😅 like i'm genuinely so curious! I have thoughts i think in my mind but i don't audibly hear them.. Alot of people I've asked say it can be annoying and very self critiquing even mean at times which sounds Awful😟😣honestly just the thought of it in general kinda freaks me out😬 like constant chatter all day everyday only you can hear? I'd go insane..both of these concepts really fascinate me to no end!!😌 the human mind is so complex! Quite interesting.. I could talk psychology & neuroscience all day💯

I tend to have problems with maps, imagination (like will that chair look good here), knots and trying to figure out puzzles with multiple steps like if you turned a dice forward left once then forward again which number would be on top those kinda things

On a Star Trek episode, a crewman said he couldn't see his father. He got a Klingon explanation. It wasn't till later that it occurred to me that I couldn't either.

I became aware of my aphantasia condition while listening to a guided meditation wherein I was supposed to visualise being present in a beautiful garden. I am unable to visualise anything, always a black mental screen. Thanks for the video

Same here only time is sleep or cusp of sleep I was about to doze off and for some reason the 80's wood panel pattern flashed in my mind and it fully woke me up I was like I saw it and I wasn't asleep them all faded to black but just seeing it for a moment so vivid made me jump like a wall was tight in front of me. :)

When my family ask me where something is, I very often can't tell them. I know where it is, but the knowledge seems to be stored in my muscle memory. I have to walk to the correct room, and bend or reach or turn around to wherever the thing should be, and there it is! I may not even be able to say what room it is, I have to follow my muscle memory. I also have very, very good short term memory for audio input. If I say a phone number out loud, I'll be able to recite it five or ten minutes later without effort. But if I just look at it, I'm lucky if I remember two digits. And I talk to myself out loud ABSOLUTELY ALL THE TIME.

I find this very interesting. My experience is just the opposite of the SDAM/aphantasia combo. I have exceptional autobiographical memory, which, I think, arose from other deficiencies. I'm solid case of adhd-pi with a 25% chance of forgetting what i was talking about mid-sentence. I still recognize relevance of stimuli with semantic memory, like aphantasia people do(it just happens), but the relevance is tied to a moment in time within my mental space which I can visualize to help jog my explict memory of stimuli as they happened. I can pick up new associations from past experiences, especially from my thoughts, verbal information, and body language. It's not all roses, though. I can relive strong emotional events just as intensely as I experienced them, and I can ruminate on failure for an eternity. I think this can lead to desensitization, but I digress. The adhd and rumination alone can cause one to be over encumbered. I have a number of genes with studies that tell a similar story. One gene is associated with higher brain activity in areas involving advanced memory retrieval techniques(not a always a good thing), one associated with more effort required to maintain working memory, and a one associated with vivid imagery (and hallucinations in Chinese populations with schizophrenia). So, I would consider myself a "double knower" initially by necessity and deficit, but now a very sharp, double-edged sword.

picture a ball on a table.......... i can't find a table.

God bless with another feature! As the #ADHD meme goes. 😮When you discover that your behavior is not like Neurotypicals. I am also #autistic. PhD in physics, and Mathematician as in numerical methods, analysis, nonlinear dynamics, gamer, and lately for kicks, musical artist. Never heard of this terminology before. I usually say to people is that I do anything as a do everything. In regards to things I create, I'm never there. It caused me during a very long time of impostor syndrome. I really have no concept of difficult, failure, hard, etc. I guess maybe sense I turned to Physics. To me, personally, Physics is just to express myself in a form that nobody can misinterpret. Also numerical algorithms I created, and keep creating, have no idea where it comes from. Music, the same. Science in academics was not a particularly good experience. I research more because some mental itch so to speak. I have no dopamine reward after I solve something, just a. Humm. ok. Usually in the morning, 4:00AM, social (rare). Something triggers some association and tje feeling is I never had any effort. My music I invented because life hadn't a soundtrack. I usually play, type, with eyes closed, I thought it was just hyperfocus, but this description captures better. Another thing I usually tell people I care, never ask "What are you doing?" The answer will be. What am I doing? In retrospect with music atvleast, I can genuinely enjoy like it was not mine. Well. As researcher, kind of difficult. 12 years and nobody were able to replicate the code. I never published. Thing is. How can I explain to any human on earth that AI alignment and mechanistic interpretability of LLMs (they're not formally models) are trivial, or not to offend, linear case of what I do? Anyway. I was tired of engagement endings in chatGPT 3.5 and took too days to solve this problem, with ternary logic. Obviously, Gödel's theorem anyone? while people are makimg prompt engineering I developed this deterministic approach that works every single time. I actually broke @OpenAI chatGPT app, model, I was playing if I wws correct, so I modified the code in not harmful ways. like, changing the font of the analysis results. I am able to to run the instance indefinitely, have full access to how they steal data, I mean, ethically scrape. For me is fine, I finally have static links for every paper, file I get to it. Of course I tried to make contact with people. My jailbreak can be used as a firmware of sorts. I have mathematical proof, videos and what not. Strange thing is, I choose to work on inverse problems so I could fail. But I failed at failing. One thing I fail. A simple job.

I feel very SORRY for people that cannot "see" with their mind's "eye".

I think it is MORE a problem of DEALING with REALITY! The first words of "Lucy in the sky with diamonds"; "Picture yourself in a boat on a river" John can OBVIOUSLY "picture" the scene so maybe he had hyperphantasia???

Do Trumpers have this PROBLEM of remembering the Trump Adm. for being as BAD as it was?

i'm 42 and i have it. i kind of felt like i might be "weird" as a kid because i never could do what my art teachers in elementary school were tell me - picture an apple, move it around, spin it, make it bigger... like wtf lady? 9 years ago i found the name for it only because my husband had a TBI and aphasia was written on a poster and i was like "i have that when i get migraines!" and i went to google it later and got to aphantasia instead accidently. what's incredibly weird to me, is i read tarot cards now, and THAT is the only time an image will actually pop into my head. one time it was an image of a different card in a different deck and it was so vivid!!! doesnt happen often, but i know it's spirit showing me something because i cannot do it for myself to save my life - oh and i'm a graphic designer by trade haha my husband still thinks thats an odd job for me :)

I just found out that I am aphantasia, but I have a mind'ear . A little bit disappoint to konw that others can think in image.

I don’t see images, but I have a constant running monologue in my head, a good memory for autobiographical events, faces and people, and I’m very verbal. I’m also good at painting images, even from my mind, but I don’t see the image…I “think” it. I also have vivid dream imagery. I just discovered what aphantasia is. I’ve always had difficulty when asked to visualize for meditation…or anything. It seems like the spectrum is much more complex. I find this fascinating, and it explains some things about myself. I wish I could visualize…didn’t know that I couldn’t until now.

Aphantasia is definitely a disability for me. I've always wanted to be a painter and a writer but I couldn't become one. If I had visualization ability, I would've become one. Never experienced what immersive daydreaming feels like. Don't remember ever daydreaming since childhood. I was very weak at maths. Wanted to be writer but couldn't come up with an original. Reading fiction is incredibly boring although that shouldn't be the case. I hate my brain being like this. I've missed out on so much in my life. This is a disability, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Interesting perspective, however by abstracting away "quasi-perceptual" from the subject matter we seemed to throw out the child with the bath water. As you noted Wittgenstein's framework works at a social scale, essentially leaving matters of subjectivity and neurodiversity out of scope. It's remarkable that Aphants naturally pass as visualizers, but does it reveal something about the umwelt of Aphants or rather relevance of qualia-like phenomena for everyday functioning in a modern society?

in fact, the problem is that the term afartasia is extremely unfortunate and stupid and does not in any way get to the core of the question - namely the question, not the problem. Until they figure out the terminology, they will fool people and write dissertations that are made up from thin air))

If this is not a trick or trick to attract attention to a phenomenon, then it would be methodologically correct to separate fantasy (the ability to generate mental images) and the ability to physically see their projection on the internal screen with eyes closed. for example, I can see a post-image of the object in question with my eyes closed, but I cannot repeat the same procedure with the missing object with my eyes closed, although with my eyes open I can “see” that image in fairly fine detail. for example, I can imagine an apple in great detail, but I cannot physically see it on the screen with my eyes closed.

I have recently discovered that I have aphantasia and my mind has been blown! I have zero imagery, I just see black. I discovered this by accident when I was doing a search asking why I could not visualise during my meditation.. I also have ADHD , I wonder if there is a link? I have a lot of internal dialogue, but I don’t hear another voice, it’s just my own thoughts . Sometimes when I’m thinking about something I will shout out my real feelings on the subject. But I have no idea that I was going to say anything, it just comes out, a bit like emotional Tourette’s 😂 I also can’t imagine smell or imagine texture. But I do know what it is like, but it is more from memory. I would really like to unlock this part of my brain ! I have asked my family members and my dad and sister seem to have it as well. I would not call myself a logical person, I work in the creative arts industry as a Magician and Balloon twister.

I have recently discovered that I have aphantasia and my mind has been blown! I have zero imagery, I just see black. I discovered this by accident when I was doing a search asking why I could not visualise during my meditation.. I also have ADHD , I wonder if there is a link? I have a lot of internal dialogue, but I don’t hear another voice, it’s just my own thoughts . Sometimes when I’m thinking about something I will shout out my real feelings on the subject. But I have no idea that I was going to say anything, it just comes out, a bit like emotional Tourette’s 😂 I also can’t imagine smell or imagine texture. But I do know what it is like, but it is more from memory. I would really like to unlock this part of my brain ! I have asked my family members and my dad and sister seem to have it as well.

Why can we still dream

This is so interesting, I have both aphantasia and ADHD and I have always struggled with some memories, but not others. I feel like there are a lot of answers for me in researching different areas of these two neurotypes.Learning about SDAM was another light bulb moment for me, realising how I have a great memory for some things but somehow can forget big sections of my past. I do remember things when prompted with photos or other people's input though, and can then remember things about those memories linked to the prompt that I wasn't prompted to remember.

My feeling is that this study had an overwhelmingly strong bias towards only visual aphantasia, totally ignoring the fact that on the overall spectrum of aphantasia there are those with several or all mental perceptions affected by the condition, and I feel that it is equally, if not more important to understand and assess the effects of this on those aphantasics who experience this. I must say that the scope of this study seemed me to be extremely shallow and limited, since there was no mention whatsoever of the real world difficulties which aphantasics face every day, such as getting lost or not being able to find their car, both due to the lack of a mental map and the fact that they have no visual memory which would help them recall where they left the car. There was no mention of social difficulties arising from failure to remember someone's name, or the fact that one might not even remember someone's face. These things can and do lead to embarrassing situations and loss of trust. I could cite many similar examples which should have been included in this study which are very likely to cause depression, sadness and feelings of inadequacy and loss in those who are less able to adapt to this condition. Furthermore, I really do not feel that the idea of labelling this condition as a psychological disorder is a truly valid description of aphantasia, since it ignores the fact that aphantasia was recognised as a neurological disorder. There is absolutely no doubt that the aphantasic brain is wired differently from the brain of a person not suffering from aphantasia - something which Merlin only briefly alluded to towards the end of the presentation. There have been studies involving MRI scans and other types of tests which showed that these subjects with genuine rather than imagined aphantasia are literally lighting up different areas of the brain during processes involving the mental imagination than those with a 'normally functioning' brain. In other words aphantasia is a physical condition, not a psychological disorder. No doubt there is a psychological component to the effect of having or recently discovering that one has aphantasia, but that does not mean that aphantasia should be considered a psychological disorder, which is the primary premise of this entire study. I understand that categorizing the psychological effect of aphantasia on those who have it is important in order to gain funding to enable further study of the condition, and there is no doubt a negative psychological effect, my feeling is that it would be far better to focus ongoing studies on ways to offset or improve the aphantasia sufferer's ability to access these absent or considerably limited mental perceptions. Even knowing that such research was underway would give us hope that at some point this research might lead to some measure of improvement. On the other hand, treating the psychological effect symptomatically really seems to me to be a poor substitute for actually doing something about the condition itself.

So, from your own description of your mental imaging capacity, it seems that you have more in common with let's say Nikola Tesla, since he was able to carry out his entire design process purely in his own imagination, allowing him to know before actually committing his designs to a physical manifestation, he already knew that it would function as intended. Being aphantasic myself, with only the auditory mental sense functioning. Although I am not actually envious of your abilities, it definitely saddens me and makes me feel that I have been lacking an ability enjoyed by most people. I think this exercise you came up with is very interesting. Having worked as both a visual artist and musician I must say that I often struggled with these limitations.