New Insights Into 'The Mind's Eye'
Вставка
- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- SciShow explores a newly identified neurological condition, aphantasia, the inability to visualize things in your imagination, and gives tribute to Dr. Oliver Sacks, popular explorer of the human mind.
----------
Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters -- we couldn't make SciShow without them! Shout out to Justin Ove, John Szymakowski, Fatima Iqbal, Justin Lentz, David Campos, and Chris Peters.
----------
Like SciShow? Want to help support us, and also get things to put on your walls, cover your torso and hold your liquids? Check out our awesome products over at DFTBA Records: dftba.com/scishow
Or help support us by becoming our patron on Patreon:
/ scishow
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
Facebook: / scishow
Twitter: / scishow
Tumblr: / scishow
Instagram: / thescishow
Sources:
www.eurekalert....
www.exeter.ac.u...
www.washingtonp...
www.nytimes.com...
www.oliversacks...
The thing about aphantasia is that the idea of visualization isn't a can or cannot do it. It's exists as a spectrum- Aphantasia would just be describing the portion of the spectrum that cannot visualize- there exists many differences between people that can visualize, and to what degree, and further differences based on if those people have inner monologues, can conjure smells, tastes, feelings, sound etc. It's interesting that it seems this topic is getting some research now as it's crazy how little information that means anything is available on it.
since it is a spectrum, say you really focus and concentrate, can you kind of maybe see it a little bit then?
@@cornloin9732 yeah, I have it and I can picture things if I really concentrate. The only images I can see are very vague and hard to distinguish though, the closest thing I can compare it to is trying to look through dirty glass. I find it really mentally exhausting though so I pretty much never do it. I'm a photographer, and I noticed in school even though they taught us how to do lighting mathematically very few people even tried doing it that way. Most had trouble even doing it that way on paper even though they could actually perform the task. Everyone I've asked does it visually in their heads, even if they supplement it with some math (meter readings, etc). It's probably skewed by the fact that it's a visual medium, but I'm the only one so far that mentally does it entirely using math. I'm interested in finding another photographer with this and seeing how they work.
This isn't quite right. Just because something is a spectrum doesn't mean you can't also categorize it into a binary. Or put another way, there are absolutely individuals who 100% can't do it at all (I'm one of them and there are many others). Aphantasia by definition is the inability to visualize. Aphantasiacs are one part of the spectrum of mental imagery.
When I saw the title of this video, I thought it would be a video about the nature of consciousness.
+Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky I thought he was gonna teach us how to be psychics.
It is.
Hahaha the one thing that is considered undefinable
I had absolutely no idea that people could visualise things in their heads, experience memories by seeing, smelling, feeling, and seeing colours! My mind has been blown, I thought everyone just spoke in their heads.
People need to talk about this more because it has taken my entire life so far to find it out, and everything has just clicked for me after finding the word Aphantasia.
I know!
I feel like they should work this into education at a young age to identify these things. It might even make a difference in how to better educate people with it, as well as get a better grasp of how much of the population is like this(us).
I’m not sure what they mean. I feel pretty sure at the moment that no one actually ‘sees’ an apple when someone asks them to imagine an apple. I don’t ‘see’ one if I’m asked but I do know what an apple looks like so I don’t feel confused when asked to imagine one. My mum passed away almost a year ago. I can vaguely imagine her face in my mind but I think that is due to the photo on my window ledge. That is the image I vaguely get. If photos didn’t exist I probably would not have a memory of her face by now.
I just found out 3 weeks ago and it explains so much
do I have this aphantasia thingy?
I've noticed in like 8 years ago, people in school were closing their eyes and visualizing things but I never could do it
it's really, really hard to describe this
for example if I imagine a red house, It's like I know everything about the red house, I know how it looks, but I can't see it in my mind
I can draw it, I can do whatever I want to this house, but when I close my eyes I can't see this house in front of me
like there is no picture just all the data about this house
or did I get something wrong and no one can see that
like really see
wait
I'm confused...
+Niko i don't think i have it, not on a high degree enough at least, but weird thing: if i close my eyes it's really hard to imagine anything, but if i just un-focus my eyes, i can less or more imagine things, mostly photographs and still images(like that of an house or of a cosplayer to make an example)
i still can FEEL better things when closing my eyes though, just not being able to imagine them visually.
+Niko You don't actually need to close your eyes buddy. Most of the time, when I'm picturing things in my mind, my eyes are kept open. But my vision "turns off" until I stop thinking about whatever that was, and I regain sight.
Sometimes I do it with my eyes closed, but that's just when I'm sleepy and the eyelids automatically start closing.. really, don't force it, it should feel natural.
+Niko Yes most of us are able to see the house, whether we close our eyes or not. If I want to see a brain made out of pudding with dragon wings I can see it at will. So it sounds like you definitely have it.
That's so bizarre to me, I can't even imagine it. It'd be like trying to describe sounds to a deaf person I guess!
+mage7 Yes, my roommate actually sees it too, but how many details there are depends on how much I concentrate. Regardless it's still pretty realistic even if I'm being lazy.
When you read a book do you see the scenes and images? I feel like being unable to would take out most of the fun :0.
+Alaska1925 The weirdest thing is listening to audio books while driving on the freeway. I'm vividly imagining the story and sometimes I'll realize "how am I driving between the lines perfectly? I don't even realize I'm seeing the road".
For those who mention having trouble visualizing faces, that's not aphantasia, nor is it prospagnosia. It's a very common and normal thing. The brain recognizes faces as full objects rather than images, and as such most people have a harder time visualizing and describing specific faces than recognizing them. That's the basis for evolutionary facial identification systems that some police stations have started using in place of sketch artists: you're more likely to recognize facial features accurately than to describe them accurately.
+IceMetalPunk Yes, that's why when you're asked by a policemen to help him to draw a photofit he showes you samples of facial features and doesn't ask you to describe the face as a whole.
On the same note, when you draw a face you also proceed by facial features (the nose, the mouth etc...).
+IceMetalPunk Yeah, but I can talk to a person and the moment I turn away I have forgotten how the person looked like. That makes things very awkward. I'm not good at remembering names either but the fact that I can remember people even after talking at length with them is very troublesome to me and I can describe a place I haven't seen in over teen years and still get the details correct. No one has ever been able to explain to me why I'm so horrible at remembering people...
Ikajo
That's not unusual. It's all part of the same, very human, thing. It's because the brain treats faces as special objects and not images, so unless you force yourself to remember specific details of the face while blocking out the rest of it, it's not going to be easy to recreate in your mind. I'm also completely terrible at names; that's less common than not remembering faces, but still quite common.
IceMetalPunk After two years I still can't don't remember all the names of my classmates and certainly not connect the names to their faces. We are only 30 people in my class (Collage). There is nothing normal about my inability to remember people, I can create a person in my mind down to small details but I can't remember real peoples faces, or their names. I can remember a short conversation I had two years ago that even the other person don't remember. I can even remember the location. But I can't remember how my friend looked like at that point.
It is to the point that I don't dream about existing people. My mind creates people and they appear in my dreams instead...
+IceMetalPunk
Agreed. I have a ton of trouble picturing faces, but when I'm reading, objects and landscapes are very clear.
Wait, wait, wait.
People can actually see/smell/taste/hear what they imagine??
That's new to me.
Damn, I may have this.
People can’t see, smell, taste, heat what they imagine? So people can’t daydream and get lost in another world in their mind? I’ve built like a whole imaginary world in my minds eye, can’t imagine not having that to go to when I’m bored
It's like visual thoughts. It doesn't affect actual vision at all, it's different from sight. I can also very faintly taste certain things, but not on my tongue? The mental images seen to come from the same place thought seems to come from, somewhere in your head instead of your eyes or tongue or whatever.
I've decided its best that I cant. I don't need my mind showing me anything it wants photo-realistically 24/7. I spent 37 years not knowing I was Aphantasic, and now I know it I'm glad I am!
Not actually, but I can feel the smell without smelling it. I can imagine how I look from a camera on the wall without a real camera, I also can imagine how can I feel if my hand broke. Idk it's like magic. But I can just imagine it not feel it in reality.
Legend 28-1 yeah, I can too, it’s kind of weird and I never noticed it before I realized that some people can’t visualize at all lmao
The description of aphantasia isn't exactly true. If you give me a lump of clay I can make a vase or a bird or whatever, I just can't visually picture it in my head. My brain contains a mental representation of what a vase is and I have no problem making one. I just can't visually imagine it at all. Same with Harry Potter, I have a non-visual representation of Hogwats in my head, I just can't see it.
I think there's actually a name for that, they covered it in a video called "can you be born without an imagination?" It talks about how some people just cannot visually picture something in their head
Wtf. dude. :D You were reffering to Dnews video,but why? This video talks aswell about how some people just cannot visually picture something in their head and says the word is aphantasia. :D P.S I see why now. :D They explain it little better.
Exactly. I can sculpt and actually do a lot. I craft and draw and am a very artistic person. My creative process is just different. It involves a lot of 'messing around' and experimenting with how my piece looks, since I can't work backwards from a picture in my mind. I can have a rough idea of what I want to accomplish, but not in a visual way. For instance, I can know i want something to be red and round and such, but I couldn't picture such a thing in my mind.
Kristina Davis As an artist, does having aphantasia inhibit you from drawing/sculpting from imagination? I’ve been struggling with this lately and I want to know if it has something to do with my aphantasia or if I just need more practice.
@@RS-ep2ry It can make things difficult. I have to sketch and 'fiddle' around a lot during my process. I can formulate ideas and such, and can 'imagine' things, but I can't really create them in my mind. I have to almost form them by sketching or sculpting them out, if that makes sense? Practice does help though, and I find that if I haven't made anything for awhile, it's harder.
Hey, I *know* what my husband looks like, and Hogwart's moving staircases and quidditch pitches were certainly not entirely lost on me. I just can't *see* them. I can describe them to you.... but I can't see them.
I think I have this.
I was with a group and we were doing a guided meditation where we were asked to picture a beach. I sat there and closed my eyes as asked, but I couldn't visualize anything. I didn't think anyone could. Not yet. Our instructor asked us what relaxing scenes we pictured, and people described rockets flying through space, swings on mountains, a brisk ocean breeze on a hot summer day. All of their visualizations startled me. All I could do was conjure up adjectives of what my scene would look like, but I never saw anything except for the back of my eyelids. I suspected something at that point, but I still thought all of this "imagine this" and "picture that" stuff was some figure of speech used in place of saying something along the lines of "describe vividly using adjectives". I soon stumbled across a video much like this one and realized that the English language was not, for once, trying to play tricks on me. People can actually picture things, see dreams, imagine themselves on a tropical island. I use facts and adjectives. When I am going somewhere new and I need to memorize a map, I either remember the shape of specific landmarks, or describe the direction to myself. I can remember the map's specific landmarks; I just can't picture what it looks like. I saw someone say that if you can draw an elephant and it doesn't have legs coming out of its face or looks like a bunch of scribbles, you don't have aphantasia. This is completely false. I use the facts and adjectives to describe things. For example, if you asked me to describe my kitchen table, I could tell you that it was a rectangle and that it had a red tablecloth. I just can't see that picture. I can't bring that picture up in my mind to help me recall some details that I missed.
I might have some minor degree of this... I can't visualize faces in my mind. I know how people I know are suppose to look like, but I can imagine, it's all a fog mess.
I can't even describe my mom's face, or mine if someone asked me.
When I was younger I tough sketch artists in crime movies and TV were made up, since I thought that nobody could describe faces as well.
+Mateus Bittencourt yeah, i believe too it is a "degree of severity" type of issue, as i too can't visualize stuff unless i've seen it over and over and over and over and over.... and even then, it's quite blurry, unless that perfect image had a lot of details, i also believe other people's imagination is cleaner, but that's just a theory.
i also have no ability whatsoever in "creating" an image or something, but i don't think that's related to this problem in particular.
***** try to look a lot to a still photo of someone, i have problems at imagining faces, but that's not a problem with still images(thus if i know someone whom i never saw in a photo, i probably willl never recognize them just by looks)
+Mateus Bittencourt i have the same issue (well its not really an issue because it doesnt incapacitate me in my everyday life). but i cant even picture my own face most of the time!
*****
I can't imagine tastes or smell, not even a little, but I can imagine scenes. Like in a book... I'm able to imagine what the people I'm reading are doing, but not very vivid, and since I can't imagine faces, they don't have any.
I can imagine sounds, like other peoples voice, but is very hard... Mostly is specif things I remember that person saying, but I can't imagine that person saying something else.
And to clarify... I can recognize people. I don't have any issues seeing o recognizing faces in the real world, it's just in my mind I can't do it. It's like I know what people look like, I just can't picture.
+Mateus Bittencourt You might have prosopagnosia! It's also known as "faceblindness". I've had that all my life, and yeah, police lineups and identification based on facial reconstructions seems hella fake to me. I think mine is part of a larger spatial-processing problem, though.
I'm a total aphantasiac. Meaning I can't visualize things. I can't recall smells, touch, taste or things I hear. I can remember songs, words, tastes and smells, but in some weird way. I can flip through smells/tastes in my memory to fit a craving so I know what type of food will give me the best foodgasm, but I can never actually smell or taste anything unless I'm eating it. Feel free to ask me anything about it..
Oh, and I'm a vivid dreamer. Dreams being realer than life itself sometimes, and sometimes when I'm focused enough I can control them (lucid dreaming).
U sound like me
I have Aphantasia, but I'm a visual artist and I've been an artist and drawing like mad since 1st grade. It's absolutely possible to be a successful creative artist without visually seeing mental images... I thought I was normal....
And I have to admit I'm jealous, though I've always had a vivid imagination, daydreaming epic stories and characters on a daily basis as a child... but through using an imaginary sense of touch and telling the story through words. I want to know more creative people with Aphantasia and pick each others brains about how we work around it.
Aimee, your comment is quite old but I just found out. I'm an artist, I just found out and I'm really crushed. Feel free to get in touch.😕
I'm also curious to what your workflow looks like. I assume you would collect a lot of references, and probably have a large stash of reference images. I don't have Aphantasia.
Ameshin Designs Same. I’ve been so bummed out recently because now I know what I’m missing out on. I feel like I might have to give up art as my career because I’ll always be at a disadvantage.
I'm a writer and imagining a taste or smell is easy for me, just like remembering my mother's voice or remembering what my car looks like. Thinking about it and 'seeing' it, feeling, sensing or hearing it inside my head. I can imagine the way apple pie tastes, or how my boyfriend's arms feel around me, the way that my favourite shampoo smells. I can live out a full fantasy in my head with every sense including depth, height, weight, feeling ill, pain, pleasure, or if I was dizzy at the time. I can even bring back an emotion I once felt. I can sort of relive anything in the imagination or create whole new events. This is how I write; I experience every part of it mentally. The idea, as a writer, of being unable to imagine any part of any experience is unthinkable to me.
Exactly. Sometimes i become my characters. I can tell the greatest stories because i live them out first in my head:)
I am an art instructor, and because of this one of my primary tasks is to help people visualize objects or people. In the beginning, everyone struggles with imagining the most rudimentary objects, but through years of practice they slowly get better. Think of running as an anology. You may start out slow, but the more you practice, the faster you'll get. Just because you are slow doesn't necessarily mean you lack the necessary body parts (legs). Some do, but most of us just need to practice.
Some people just can't. I've spent the last 35 years of my life trying to visualize anything and it doesn't happen. There's no amount of practicing that's going to fix my complete aphantasia.
@@Zimoria I wanted to say this before realizing the comment was 7 years old HAHA
same though
I just figured out about this. I have never seen images or heard other people's voices in my mind. I didn't think that I was strange. I assumed people were just kind of speaking metaphorically when they talked about picturing something in their head. I still have memories and imagination, but it's just the concept of things instead of images. I know what people look like in that I remember facts about people like eye/hair color but I can't actually picture anyone. When I close my eyes it's only darkness.
Instruction Clear Enough. Can't imagine how aphantasia is possible. Thank you.
This is like when I was in fourth grade and realized for the first time that you're supposed to be able to see the blackboard from the back of the classroom...
bruh moment
@@ockertoustesizem1234 bruh
I've allways had this. explaining dreams to people have allways been hard. Kinda cool it's got a name now
I have an inability to visualise things - however I can still draw and imagine and I know what I'm think about - I just can't form a
picture of it 😥 I have a pretty good imagination and still dream which confuses me
Yes, it's same for me, bro.
Dreams use involuntary access, which is a different process.
MEGA KNIGHT can you imagine the smell of cookies? Can you imagine how it feels to step on a nail? Imagination =/= visualization. Visualization is *one form* of imagining. And some people literally can’t visualize things. Why are you lashing out aggressively to someone about their comment on mental imagery? 😳
Same here
Same
Thanks Hank! Dr. Sacks was a great man and your tribute was right on the mark.
im still so confused about this do they mean LITERALLY see it in their mind like with color and texture and all?? bc all i see is black. but im a really vivid daydreamer and can imagine specific scenarios and stuff without actually seeing it
Wait, I watched AmyRightMeow on UA-cam and she did a video about this as well, the pinned main comment explains it!! Hope it helped!
RIP Dr. Oliver Sacks
Most of us can only dream to have such a positive impact on society.
Holy fuck, I would hate to have this. Literally all I do for like most of my time is wander about within my own head.
Just curious, how many people can't fabricate images, smells, sounds, touch, or taste in their own minds?
+Deathmachine513 I can't conjure smells, touch, or taste at all. Though I also can hardly perceive most smells even when I'm smelling them, so that might explain my inability to "remember" smells.
I can conjure sounds perfectly fine, but if I want to conjure images such as a written description of something, I need to actively devote attention towards imaging what it's describing, and even then it's just a nebulous image with little to no fine details. If I lose concentration at all the image is instantly gone and I need to re-read the description to be able to "see" the object again. This is probably why I've never been able to appreciate poetry.
+Deathmachine513 No touch, smells, taste, or images here. Sounds not only come through... but precisely exactly 100% accurate.
I've explained this to everyone my whole life. No-body really believed me. Glad to see it has a name now!!!
+SergeofBIBEK That's actually really interesting. So, do you use this for music?
And by that, do you mean that when you recall the sound of say, middle C, would you perceive the sound entirely correct every time? Can you do the same with songs and attach the pitch to the note reliably even in complex sections?
If so, that is really cool. :-))
+Deathmachine513 No smells, sounds, sensations, or tastes for me. Images occasionally crop up (VERY rarely), but they're very vague and I can't really gleam anything from them other than a general shape.
So, instead of picturing things or recalling them in my mind, I just recall facts about them. Like, my sister has long brown hair and greyish-blue eyes; I'm able to say that not because I'm picturing her face in my mind, but because I just know those facts about her. I can't 'play' music in my head, but I remember the beat of a song enough to tap it out on a table. Smells, tastes, and sensations I also 'memorize facts' about - it was 'burning', or 'disgusting' or 'good'; although I can't recall them, I remember my experience with them.
I'd say that, considering an almost total lack of a "mind's eye", it's fairly impressive that I'm able to write decent fiction and do graphic design pretty well. I never really considered the fact that I was unable to recall images\smells\etc in my mind until a year or two ago, and just assumed it was a weird quirk I just 'had' (I'm a preemie baby, so there were already some odd things that I had to deal with). When I first heard about this research a few weeks ago, I just sort of stopped like "are...are you talking about me? what?". Nowadays, I'm sort of distressed about it but try not to dwell on it too much; I seem to be missing out on some fundamental part of the human experience, after all.
+Deathmachine513 I can watch movies in my mind! I create them in my mind on the spot and watch them over and over again. I am never ever bored but its hard to turn it off when I am trying to sleep.
Any IB Psychology student knows and loves Dr. Oliver Sacks.... Thanks to him for making us able to pass the course as well as giving us insights into the human mind
Can you have like a mild form of aphantasia? Where you still have the ability but it's more difficult?
I was wondering the same thing, as it's extremely difficult for me to conjure smells
+Steve Venit i think everyone isnt as able to visualize smells as well as images. i know i cant, or at least vry poorly
+Cool Guy Lol not smells as images, just "smelling" things without actually smelling them physically
+Rebecca Johnson I think I have that too. I "picture" spaces and movement in a nebulous sense that's more intuitive than visual.
+Rebecca Johnson this... I have great difficulty imagining a variety of objects but not a total loss of the ability. I can imagine what people I know look like but it's a faded image and I can't hold it for more than a couple of seconds. However I know that I know exactly what they look like.
All of Dr. Sacks's books are fantastic. I highly recommend each and every one of them. He will be greatly missed.
I thought he was going to talk about the third eye and pineal gland :-/
there totally should be an episode about those
I don't understand your connection here. The "third eye" is a mystical concept, not a scientific one, while the pineal gland just regulates sleep.
***** the third eye actually exists. Some lizards in New Zealand have it and dinosaurs might had it too. We don't know the purpose of it yet but it has to do with regulating the sleep cycle.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_eye
+IceMetalPunk +IceMetalPunk It's not necessarily a "spiritual" concept. The pineal gland is referred to as the "third eye" in some cases (by scientists), as it has a similar structure to the third parietal eye seen in reptiles. It even has a retina. The fact that it produces serotonin leads some people to believe that it can be 'trained', just like any other part of the brain, to make people happier (through meditation etc...). Whether this is true or not I don't know, but many scientific studies show that meditation does improve the quality of life. Do some reading on the pineal gland and meditation, it's quite interesting.
Rudi Leandro I'm not sure if meditation has anything to do with the pineal gland or not, but whatever its mechanism of action, it's really nothing more than relaxation techniques. It certainly helps many people, but it's nothing odd or special. And the pineal gland doesn't have a retina...it reacts to light via signalling pathways that begin at the retina, but it doesn't have one of its own.
As for making you happier through training your pineal gland..that's unlikely. Yes, serotonin is implicated in mood regulation, but only in the limbic system. You can't just increase serotonin anywhere and expect your mood to be regulated; for instance, serotonin in the gut regulates appetite only. Similarly, the serotonin in the pineal gland regulates only sleep, not mood (though, of course, healthier sleeping habits can increase mood regulation).
I heard dr. Oliver sacks had cancer because I listen to wnyc as well where you contributed many story ideas which I absolutely loved to listen to. RIP
So wait, people can clearly imagine things as if they're actually seeing them? That is so weird.
+Brendan Nikola Can you?
+Brendan Nikola i can only with static things, in fact i can't recognize most people whom i have never seen a photo of,.
it's like movement messes up with my memory and imagination.
+Frank Quinn Not really. I realize now that what I wrote may seem sarcastic, but I'm serious.
+iota-09 I can't picture objects clearly, and I don't dream clearly either. I always thought this was normal.
+Brendan Nikola It's not the same as actually seeing them, and I really need to concentrate on it to "see" with even modest clarity, but yes. I can't imagine not being able to.
I had never heard of Dr. Oliver Sacks, but he sounds like someone who I would consider a personal hero
This is definitely one of those things that comes in varying degrees... I've always had a hard time visualizing things in my mind. I can hear things really clearly, and I can imagine spatial relationships, but everything I see is kind of fuzzy. Even my dreams are like that, nothing is clear. I can't really picture people's faces most of the time either. I can barely stand novels, I really prefer things like comics because they give me visuals to work with so I can just imagine the sounds and movements instead.
But it's not as if I have no visual imagination at all... I can sometimes picture things, even faces occasionally. It sort of comes and goes.
as someone with asperger i feel i shuld learn more about Dr. Oliver Sacks in a way to thank him for the knowlege he brought to light about it and ofcourse, everything else he worked with as well.
I used to have the biggest crush ever on Hank
+Naudia Villalba Not anymore?
SharpBalisong haha no I found myself another nerd that I love cx Nerds are the best. Lol
+Naudia Villalba How can one love someone else more than Hank? He's the definition of nerd smexiness!
+Paul Eriksen Ha!
+Naudia Villalba I want both hank and john.
Love you and your brother! thanks for the content
So can people actually just "picture" their parents or just people in general? I can't imagine what someone looks like or draw them but I recognize them when I see the. The same goes for just pictures in general. I can't picture a triangle but I can easily draw one. It's more intuitive.
Yea, most people can see a visual picture. You won't see it with your eyes, but you'll see it in your mind. From my understanding it's more of scale than a YES you have it or NO you don't. Some people can do some imagining of scenes or objects, some people can imagine full 3D models in their heads and rotate it 360.
So glad there is finally information about this online - and a name. Been so annoying trying to explain over the years how I only see what's in the real world and all of the associated memory problems. People just used to think I was crazy...
holy fuck the little lines around the subject words are slowly moving! i just noticed this..
here's a few tips to try
Don't have a long to-do list
Avoid multi-tasking
Do most important tasks first
Simplify and de-clutter
(I discovered these and why they work from wilfs blueprint system site )
Val M wtf?
Nice spot! I watched it carefully after reading your comment and noticed the top left corner of the title "paper/sheet" is also curling upwards. Very, very slowly. Love small details like this. :)
holy fuck. wow lol
I've talked to my dad about Dr. Sacks. He apparently knew him. They weren't exactly friends, but recognized each other if they ended up meeting. RIP Dr. Oliver Sacks. Cancer sucks.
wait - people can imagine smells and sounds? because that's not a thing I can do.........
Maybe you have it?i think I might also have it as far as the visual part
I need to imagine sounds to write my music! :P
+Bex Edmondson If you cant imagine sounds, you've never had a song stuck in your head. You're lucky.
+Bex Edmondson [Morgan Freeman]"If i tell you to read this you can't imagine my voice?"[Morgan Freeman]
Yeah...
Thanks for eulogizing Olivers Sacks. As a musician I found his "Musicophilia" especially interesting. And there is a linguistic analogy to pareidolia, namely, a mondegreen. Writer Sylvia Wright coined it in 1953 to describe mishearing lyrics and forming new words or phrases. When as a child she had heard the Scottish folksong that goes "They have slain the Earl of Moray / And laid him on the green," she heard it as "Lady Mondegreen." Also look up hobson-jobson. The mind is an incredible trickster, and the things science is discovering about it are fascinating. Thanks for adding another brick to the ediface.
What does it mean specifically to visualize something in your imagination?
I've got a pretty relentless imagination but I wouldn't say there's any sort of visual component.
Idk, when I close my eyes it's just dark... what's this visualizing experience like?
Do you close your eyes and it's like Oculus Rift or what?
If I have my eyes closed, and I decide to think of a rabbit, I suddenly see a rabbit in my head, hopping around in that black void. Now that I’m describing it, it seems odd, but I’ve never questioned why I know that there isn’t actually a rabbit in my head.
I just realized I have Aphantasia today and I am a 60 year old writer artist! Instead of visual stream I have always had a information stream. So I see by information and I have developed it so well I never realized I was not making mental pictures. Weird but not weird!
Well… I can't remember faces.
I do recognise faces as I see them but I cannot, as an example, say how is my mother's nose without looking at her. Would that be this thing?
Other than that, I can picture large structures of data and their relationships (I'm a programmer) way better than most of my colleagues. Could an inability in some areas lead to an enhanced ability in other areas? That's intriguing!
-- edit --
Looking at other comments, it seems like this specific inability (not remembering faces) is pretty common! Wow! Maybe I'm not that strange after all! :D
+Felds Liscia your case sounds more like a mild case of prosopagnosia, we have a part of our brain solely for recognizing faces so even if that doesn't works it doesn't means that you cant visualize other things.
Also i said mild because while you can't remember your mother's face you can recognize it if you see it; a more complete case of prosopagnosia would be to have class with some for half a year, stop seeing them for 1 month, then have class again with them, but don't remember nor recognize their face as your classmate (you think is someone else).
+RoarOfDamnation I think I have a similar thing as +Felds Liscia - I can imagine for example, how a Philips-type screwdriver looks like, with all the little cuts, exact angles the different cuts are made on it and so on - but I won't be able to tell you how wide is my mothers nose, or the shape of her eyes
at the same time, I am able to recognize people by shape of their faces, and don't have much problem to recognize them even after few years when they changed their hairstyle, changed glasses or shaved or put on a beard
+Felds Liscia A funny thing is, people who have had nose "jobs", even though their nose might be extremely altered often find that none notices. So we might remember people's faces overall but cannot remember what their individual feature exactly look like.
+666Tomato666 Then you are fine man, even if you get the nose a little bit wrong as long as the rest of the face ends looking like your mom then it is ok.
RoarOfDamnation thing is, I can't recall a face at all (to inspect details), but I can recall how my old bike or car looked like
RIP Dr. Sacks, thank you so much.
Huh, I wonder if I have this. I've always just thought I didn't have a very visual imagination, that's one of the things that drew me to music as a mode of non-visual artistic expression. Is there any sort of test or diagnosis for this that isn't fraught with the usual issues of self-diagnosis? It'd be nice to know.
idk maybe try going to the doctor, and yes i know this comment is 6 years old when i'm writing this reply
I think I have this! Thank you for telling me about it. I emailed the people who're researching it. I've been trying to put into words what's wrong with the way I remember things for years but never found anything helpful online.
I am one of those people who has no ability to recall sensations (with the possible exception of music, but only rarely and in a rudimentary way). I love Sci Show, but this description of what it is like to have aphantasia is really NOT ACCURATE! I can draw and sculpt, I can remember what things look like, I can recognize people I know... In fact, most people with aphantasia function in pretty much the same way everyone else does. I'd love SciShow to do a little more research now that aphantasia discussions have been happening more broadly and do an update to this video. It really does give a false impression of what the condition is.
I agree, it is partly right. I can tell you how many windows are on my house, but it is not because I can see my house, I just know what it looks like and can count them. I know what a vase looks like but if you tell me to sculpt a vase that was in my parents house when I was a kid I would probably get all the details wrong.
Considering that Aphantasia is a newly minted condition, research will find that there are varying degrees of it. You aren't the _only_ model of Aphantasia.
Matthew VandenBerg I agree with you, but he starts off the presentation by saying "imagine you couldnt' remember what things look like". Everyone I've met with aphantasia can to one degree of detail or another describe what things look like, even without a "mind's eye". I think making that the basic premise of his supposedly scientific presentation is just misleading.
Ethel B your description is great. I totally relate.
Finally it has a name! The research on "MX" was done I believe quite awhile ago. I lost my mind's eye as well, but those doing the study weren't particularly keen in interviewing me. Probably needed to weed out self-selection.
In my case it may have been damaged by chemical inhalation when an old capacitor exploded in some electronics made in the 1960s. It's been gone about two years now.
Well now it all makes sense I always thought by siblings were over exaggerating thier memorys when they say the can remember peoples faces and whatnot I would tell them I can't and they look at me with a derp face lol when I try to remember faces its just a black screen not even a outline its wierd
+cristian hernandez i can't remember faces of people whom i have not seen a static image for before, which is why i can barely remember the faces of my family members but can very well remember the faces of anime characters or cosplayers(they're all statics anyway)
I have no mental imagery (no visuals, sensations, taste or smell), and I don't remember voices or hear them in my mind, but I can play a song back in my head perfectly
I must have this, I never could visualize answer to test until I have seen them in book again :D
I always like these videos without even noticing, so when I finish them and go down to like it... it's already liked.
Less stigmatised? I find that since it became common knowledge that some people are born this way, an ever increasing number of children on the internet have been using ''autism'' as a general slur or curse word.
+Ebon Hawk but people with these conditions are not locked up in psychiatric "hospitals" (they weren't hospitals then, they were more like prisons).
+Ebon Hawk Doesn't really constitute as the general public, though, so I think in general it's less stigmatized indeed.
+Jess Rushworth (JessieRushie) Being used as an insult by idiotic kids on the internet is a bit of an improvement when compared to being locked up and abused in a loony bin.
***** my point exactly
+Dzeinii Which is precisely why I'm sure "autist" is gonna stick around and eventually be a part of everyday vocabulary. However, lest you think that eventually every word will be an insult eventually, words cycle out of use on a regular basis. The insults we have today are not the ones we had 50 or 100 years ago.
I never understood why people had to close their eyes to visualize things. Someone asks me to picture a table, a beach, my best friend, or even a movie scene, and I can do it with my eyes open. I can imagine it "in my head" where the object is not being visualized in my surroundings, but I can also imagine it in front of me, like placing an imaginary apple on a desk. I can visualize sounds as realistic as if they were actually happening. It's wonderful for practicing music or listening to my favorite songs when I don't have headphones.
Same, I can imagine anything better with my eyes open, I can hear any song or any sound perfectly in my imagination but can't see really vividly, it's mostly blurry.
And all of the sudden, everybody in the comments has that, just like how all of the sudden everybody was a supertaster when that one video was uploaded..... -_-
+Adrian Fahrenheit It's because that you wouldn't comment unless you do have what the video is describing. Like, if some study suddenly showed that you had some condition, you'd probably comment it too.
+vin bia and also a little bit of people being desperate to think they're special in some way.
+Magmafrost13 eeeh... not really... but it's like cold reading: you think you have whatever it is because you think about the cases in which you might have had it, but then you think about lall the times it would be contradictory and you realize that you really don't have it.
i feel like i AM a supertaster though, or at least have higher sensitivity than everyone i know.
iota-09 you overestimate the honesty of the collective internet.
+Magmafrost13 I can say I am probably not a supertaster, I don't really taste or smell much of anything (apart from things which are fairly strong).
normally, I can visualized stuff pretty good, but I have noted an limitation:
I can't really easily convert things I have seen into a different representation.
for example, if I have only seen 2D images of something (vs having seen it IRL), it is difficult to visualize it in 3D (say, look at it from arbitrary angles). my mental world is a 3D space, but things I have only seen in 2D are like flat "windows" in this space, unable to escape the window and move around freely.
I also have a difficult time visualizing things from descriptions unless they are described in a fair bit of detail.
though, I can generally remember things I have seen pretty good, as well as visualize mechanisms (such as imagining the parts of a machine and how they all fit and work together).
similarly, have built a few machines mostly by imagining them and pulling the measurements and doing layout fairly directly from imagined values. measuring the part in my mind and layout out the real-life parts to match, though some parts have been 3D modeled and 3D printed, with others made of wood and metal.
though, my artistic skills are fairly poor and I have a difficult time imagining anything "new". I suspect it may be because my imagination tends to be fairly literal-minded...
and my dream-space is fairly similar, sort of resembling a mash-up of the "real-world" and my waking mental world. stuff often resembles exploded diagrams with characters often jumping between poses and sliding around without moving correctly (it seems to take a bit more mental effort for background characters to have natural movements). characters tend to look and move more naturally if I am only interacting with a small number of people (this issue is most obvious with crowds of people).
typically "I" move mostly by floating, and generally have the ability to summon objects into the scene at will, though a recurring theme is "myself" being mildly confused as to why I float and can summon random objects, and if my character realizes it is a dream, generally this destabilizes the dream-state and causes it to collapse and "reset" to a prior point (with memory of the subsequent events somehow erased and no longer aware of being in a dream-state). very often I am mostly a detached observer, rather than taking part in the events.
the dream-world outside the current scene tends to be an empty black void (and if it collapses, everything seems to "crumble" back into this void). there also seems to be a tendency for colors to often fade to shades of yellow and violet (it is hit-or-miss if things retain full color), but memories also seem prone to this effect.
I have little real idea why it all looks like this.
For over 25 years I've always asked new people I met, if they "think in pictures", because I absoluteley don't. Most of them were the opposite. But I strangely do enjoy reading and I have coulorful dreams and nightmares. Always wondered about this topic, didn't know that it was so new to science.
Wow--this is scary. I'm and INTP and I think almost exclusively in terms of logical progression maps and flow charts as well as 3/4 turned exploded diagrams. I can't think of a single ailment I'd want LESS than Aphantasia. That's like my own private version of the deepest circle of Hell (if I believed in Hell). *shudder*
+Women's Studies Textbook I know what you mean. Most of my life happens in my head!
D- Don't rub it in! *Curls up and cries*
Goodness, I almost cried when I heard about Dr. sacks. He will be dearly missed
great now my parents and my friends think I'm crazy because I can't visualize things. I am also now jealous of all you normal people
Another condition that Dr. Sacks recounts is achromotopsia. It is very interesting.
Furthermore, thanks to recent studies, it is understandable as to why certain animals cannot see color, which I thought was strange when I was a child.
Another gift Dr. Sacks gave us was depicting that there is not loss but change. This has helped me through the beginning of my acknowledgment of acquired anosmia. I do think it is a loss, especially it feels like 1.95 senses are gone (as flavor is most of what we falsely call "taste"). However, Dr. Sacks' articulation of his case studies helped clarify that even if we do not "gain more of another sense," we do adapt and change. It is all part of survival of the fittest in my opinion: daily adaptation to physical and other changes.
Hold on y'all telling me you actually see things in your mind?
bing bong you're wrong lol I’m confused to
Yes
I noticed that "visualising" was actually an ability people had and not some sort of miss communicated metaphor when I was younger and tried to research it but turned up very little. I'm thrilled that this "cognitive deviation" of sorts is now being researched a lot more. It's so cool that people can actually *see* things like wow thats amazing
Wow, that would suck...
I didn't even know people COULD literally picture things without drugs or dreaming until I was 19 years old, I thought it was just a saying when people say "picture this". It's feakin' infuriating...like school would have been SO much easier if I could literally stare at a page and just memorize the answers by sight instead of linguistically:0
Everyone: hey a new scishow video!
Hmm... Some people can't picture things in their mind? I can't remember what that stranger that said hi to me yesterday! I must be special! *proceeds to brag about how he's special*
+Plurii Relatively unique people are interesting. I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing about how these people are special, it's fascinating.
DysnomiaFilms I don't think you get my point at all.
Or maybe people recognise that the way they live is not the norm and want to be able to connect with others like them and learn more about their condition
"Essentially, Oliver Sachs did for the human brain what Carl Sagan did for space. He clarified misconceptions, dispelled fears, and inspired wonder in all of us" Nice. Very nice.
The "not even 301 views" club??
+jaap aarts Didn't UA-cam get rid of the 301+ View thing?
Artos Fred not that I know of, after 301, it still verifies subsequent views.
+Artos Fred Yes, they did.
RIP 301+ CLUB 20??-2015
+StrokeMahEgo They did... They improved the algorithm that verifies views, so it doesn't need to stop at 301 anymore. It's almost real time now...
This terrifies me... I can't imagine not being able to imagine things.
I can't visalize things in my mind...
+Alice - Me neither, kind of startling to hear that it's a common thing to be able to.
damm you noe i lpst it i cant do it anymore
+Alice - so you dont know what anything looks like till you see it?
Living Universe Does one typically see something in their mind when they know what it looks like? To me it's all adjectives written on a piece of paper slipped beneath a door when I make a query.
It's like command line, but you don't see the response. You hit enter, something happened that you can't see, new prompt.
***** yes, maybe ur confused?
i just learned about this. ive had this for a long time, if not my whole life. but just like he said, i thought i was completely normal until i learned about it, and now it is constantly bothering me.
Are you telling me you guys can see vivid picture when you close your eyes? If so, I have aphantasia lol
You'd have to define picturing it. Do I know what my mom looked like the last time I saw her? Yes. Can I picture it? Vaguely? If I close my eyes all I see is black, with some shifting colors that I typically associate with blood flow through my eyelids. I can KINDA visualize something, or at the very least know that something is being visualized. I suspect it has more to do with the connection between the two halves of the human brain and the two halves not communicating quite right though.
it doesnt have to vivid, can you imagine a circle, or a triangle, if not, then you may have aphantasia
+ExtremeTG I've been trying more and more recently and I'm fairly convinced that I'm just not well practiced in it. Images snap together for an instant then break apart.
I remember as a kid I got images stuck in my head in a loop like an old popeye vs bluto cartoon fight. Always hated popeye for that.
Tim Davis lol how u practice it though. And when you say images snap together, how clear the images are.
It varies, and you'd practice the same way you practice anything else, repetition.
I can visualize complete sceneries, feelings, shapes, colors, sounds, movements, even sensations, like that I'm spinning, or falling, when I concentrate. It's gotten up to the point where I think so fast, so much, and so vividly when I have nothing else to do (like the time it takes for the bus I'm taking to arrive at my destination), that when I "come back to reality", I feel misplaced, or lagged behind, like I'm still in that same space I imagined. I can even conjure up completely original concepts, with no apparent source material. I can even change perspective, like first person or third person. I thought this was a normal thing everyone could do. Is it not? Like, I can't REALLY see it with my eyes, but with my mind, my consciousness. If I lose focus it might turn my normal senses back on.
wait a second. he mentioned "the ability to remember smells and tastes" I can't visualize a smell, I have to smell it again. also, I can't remember what people look like but I can remember the color of their hair and face. That's normal right?
+Evan Roden I'm 100% certain no one can.
+MrGlorifiedCake most ppl can
nhitzel
you can conjure up a taste?
+MrGlorifiedCake sure, its not as vivid as it would be when you experience it "live" but still.
+Evan Roden It's a lord harder to remember a smell or a taster than everything else, for most of us (except super-tasters of course). With time and training it becomes easier, but most of the time we don't need it so we don't use this capacity. For me imagining a smell is very hard because I use drugs that cause anosmia (so I can't remember many smells anyway).
Try to taste sugar or to smell a very characteristic odor.
Oliver Sacks has impacted my life forever. His work reminded me of how much I loved the neuroscience that got mixed in by my slightly eccentric fourth grade English teacher, and gave me some understanding on my own neurological problems.
P.S.: Virgil, the "man who was born blind and suddenly [became] able to see," was born with full sight, but lost it due to a long string of illness at the age of 4. Source: An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks.
I don't have pictures, I have voices but no pictures no pun intended
This sort of thing is more common than we realise. I'm 26 for example and I only recently discovered that my own thought processes are different that the average person, closest similarity is Aspergers Syndrome but I'm not on the autism spectrum and it went undetected as a result. I also don't "feel" empathy the same way others do, more so I "think" empathy if that makes sense, which might explain why I like horror movies in a different way than others seem to be able to. This sort of difference gives persons like myself advantages as well as the obvious disadvantages. We tend to do better in stressful and confronting occupations like combat soldiers, police work, EMTs and trauma doctors and nurses since our thought processes are more systematic including how we process stressful stimuli. As a quick explanation, we're exposed to a stressful stimulus (with varying degrees of intensity) and like in all things (not just stressful matters) our brains automatically go something like "What do I do next?", if we have the answer to the question, the stress is eliminated and we can move on, hence why we make good soldiers and cops on average for example. If we don't know what to do, the stress can compound. I could give anecdotal examples of such behaviour observed throughout my life but that wouldn't fit in a UA-cam comment. The point I'm trying to make here is that our brains and minds are so varied we might not know just how different we are from eachother, we're only just scratching the surface. Science is awesome!
who the fuck can imagine taste?
Example, you smell chicken. Then you can imagine what it tastes like.
+MrGlorifiedCake Many, many people... it'd be pretty hard to cook actually if you couldn't imagine taste. It's be pretty hard to cook a decent meal otherwise (unless you only over follow recipes)! xD
I can... if you read a recipe, especially for something you like, you should be able to imagine what it would taste like. Aaaanndddd now I'm imagining the taste of cookies and I'm hungry. Thanks for that.
IceMetalPunk Damn you now i want chocolate chip cookies....
me
I can mentally taste stuff that I've tasted before and can listen to music that I've memorized on my mind, can visualize views and even get a clear idea of how I would feel there including the vibe of the environment, the smell and the air of the environment, but I also have inner monologue in narrative which is like reading something out loud on your mind while writing or reading
Ha Assburgers.
+Luka lomidze If it's so serious why don't they call it meningitis?
Luka lomidze
Actually it's Pierce Hawthorne.
+Luka lomidze I know right. I always thought it was pronounced "Ass-purge-ers", so hearing it in this show was especially funny *:D*
As an artist I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to lose your ability to imagine something. I guess I can put that higher on the list of "things I hope I don't lose" than "eyesight" or "hands"
+Stephen Plant I've got fuck-all visualisation ability, but I'm a decent visual artist.
...well, not so bad you'd think there's something wrong with my brain, in any case. So I guess those abilities aren't necessarily related?
I have no idea what the picture is going to look like until I actually produce it though, if that makes sense. I just have a general concept and mood in my head and maybe some techniques I want to use.
+Stephen Plant I guess it's funny. The fact that I can do this is what puts me somewhat at peace with the possibility of going blind, because I would be able to remember how my loved ones looked, and figure out how other things look from description or other senses.
"Aphantasia".
It's nice that there's a term for that now, even if I didn't know people could have that.
Coming from a person who can pretty much conjure up any image I want when I have my eyes open, but absolutely fail to keep it steady if I close my eyes, (Image keeps changing shape with no consent of mine).
On a completely different and unrelated note: That shirt is badass. I want it.
My imagination is so vivid that I can even play clips of my own created characters, interacting with themselves, and visualize them visualizing stuff
i think most of people can as well
Wow! When you watch the intro you have to try using earphones. It sounds so amazing!
I was so sad to see Oliver Sacks had died - love his books!
I temporarily experienced this after I hit the back of my head on the gym floor in middle school. It only lasted about a day but it was very strange.
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing this!
This is both a great week, and yet a sad week for Science. Gaining new insights in undiscovered fields is always exciting news. But we must still remember those who can no longer make the journey of life with us. Goodbye Dr. Sacks, may you find peace in the afterlife.
Another great mind we lost due to cancer.. RIP, Dr. Oliver Sacks.
That's a really nice white and gold shirt you got there, Hank.
I "suffer" from this. I have never been able to picture things in my head. For most of my life, people have thought I was weird or just plain making it up. I get a small amount of vindication knowing this is now being realized as an actual thing.
a very nice tribute to the doctor!
I sort of get the opposite of this. Vivid images, sounds, even smells or entire scenes will come to me without consciously calling them up. It completely takes me out of reality and I almost have to literally shake myself out of it. It's really intense. Anyone else get this?
Omg same
This reminds me about how my mother and I read books. When reading a book I can visualize everything that's described in the paragraphs like there's a movie playing in my mind. When I was a kid, I thought it was like this for everyone and anyone could do this with any sort of book. Then in high school I realized that I was kind of unique in this regard and a lot of other kids really couldn't do it to the extent that I could or they couldn't do it at all. I also know now that my mother is fully capable of doing this to just as well as I can but my father and sister cannot do it at all. I hope more study is done on this it seems very interesting.
Interesting, apparently only 3-5% of people have it, I wonder what's causing you to know so many people with it
I'm able to see things in my brain very vividly and make them move or behave as I wish. I can also make short clips in my head. It's pretty cool
I don't think it's aphantasia but I lack two abilities that I think most people have:
1- To remember how someone's face is without having to look at it. I totally wouldn't be able to make a police sketch from anyone I know. If you ask me how is my mother's nose, if it's big or small, if it's crooked or not, I have no idea! (and then after writing this you realise some people wrote the exact same thing already in the comments)
2- Imagining things or people by a description. This one makes books insanely hard to read. If the book was made into a movie that represents everything as written in the book, once I read the book I can see all those elements and picture them in my mind, but reading the book first I can't really imagine the scenery, or how the people are. If I want to have an image of the characters in my mind, I google for images of them, or I picture them as someone I know IRL who has the same characteristics (and frequently I end up thinking that character has some other characteristic that it inherited from the person I know from real life).
On the other hand, I'm actually quite good at using my mind's eye for things or places I have seen.
"Essentially, Oliver Sacks did for the human brain what Carl Sagan did for space: he clarified misconceptions, dispelled fears and inspired wonder in all of us."
And I will miss him too. Still haven't finished his last book.
I used to have crazy clear pictures in my mind's eye, it was like watching a movie and I used it to write stories and ideas. But then I suffered depression and took antidepressants and, I believe, that hindered my ability to create anything in my mind's eye. To this day I've tried to return to that state of being, but it's been a struggle and a terrible hurdle in my life.
this has lead me to an interesting discover about my self. i can only visualize memories of places and people when my eyes are open. if i close my eyes all i see is darkness.
I do remember visual sensations, but i cant actively visualise things in my head.
There's a lot of education still needed in the medical community regarding Aspergers. One doc told me "I just needed to get out more." He's not much of a people person.
My regards for Oliver Sacks, the man was a genius, and a huge inspiration for me in pursuing neuroscience. Maybe one day we'll be able to recreate his mind, but for today, this is a really sad loss.