WEBVTT - Ep59 "Do you visualize like I do?" 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:08.360 If you had to guess about the internal life, the 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:12.640 conscious experience of the guy who co founded Pixar, the 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.520 computer animation studio, what would you guess about what's happening 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:20.160 inside his head? And how do any of us picture 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:25.880 things internally? How do we visualize? These sound like simple questions, 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.840 but strap in for some very wild surprises today about 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:38.240 our internal experiences. Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.800 I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford, and in 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.959 these episodes we dive deeply into our three pound universe 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:59.959 to uncover the most surprising secrets about our lives. Today's 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:05.200 episode is about visual imagery. Now, I'm not talking about 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.080 vision when something is in front of us and photons 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:10.119 are bouncing off it and hitting our eyes and our 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.920 brains are doing the analysis. Instead, I'm talking about when 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:18.120 you're sitting there, let's say, listening to a podcast and 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:23.760 the speaker says, hey, imagine watching a bluebird landing on 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:28.360 a tree branch in the spring. Imagine the bird looks around, 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:32.240 moving its head curiously, and then it flaps its wings 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:35.160 for a moment, then it hops to a different spot, 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:39.520 then it flies away. Now, there's no blue bird. Instead, 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:43.720 your brain is taking everything it's ever learned about bluebirds 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:49.320 in the past and generating internal visual imagery, all in 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:53.360 the pitch blackness of your skull. How does that work? 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:58.600 And how did recent discoveries here completely change the debate 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:04.720 in psychology and neuroscience and the way we understand internal experience. 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:09.919 So let's start in nineteen thirty eight, when an animator 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.840 named Walt Disney was trying to reboot the popularity of 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:19.120 his little rodent character named Mickey Mouse. So after years 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.639 of work, he ended up making a feature length animated 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:27.760 film set to classical music, and he called this Fantasia. Now, 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:32.240 a project of this size combining visuals and music, this 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:35.280 had never been attempted before, and it ended up becoming 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.960 one of the most successful films in history. Now. Of 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.480 the millions of young children who gaped it Fantasia over 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:47.040 the next decades, one was especially taken by the magic 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:51.079 of animation and the possibilities for how this could evolve. 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:55.079 This was a boy named ed Catmol and he grew 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.799 up into a world in which transistors were shrinking in 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.240 the power of computer was growing, and all this was 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.799 lighting up new pathways in his imagination. This young man 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.960 would go on to create new methods to represent three 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:15.440 dimensional objects mathematically, and after his PhD, he would co 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:21.120 found a studio for making animated films with computers. This 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:26.520 studio was called Pixar after twenty seven feature films. Ed 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:31.320 had contributed more to our visual world than almost anyone 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:34.480 in his generation, but there were certain things that he 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.960 couldn't do. For example, his friend asked him to visualize 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.600 a sphere in front of him, and Ed just couldn't 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.280 do that. Now, was this some sort of rare brain 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.760 disease or what was going on here? So to understand this, 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.600 I'm going to zoom out to the question, the critical 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.080 question for today, which is how do any of us 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.880 picture a sphere in our heads? What does it mean 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:03.560 to visualize something? So I'd like you to imagine an 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:08.320 ant crawling on a red and white tablecloth towards a 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.760 jar of purple jelly. Now, what exactly is happening in 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.280 your brain? What is your experience? Are you seeing this 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.200 like a movie or is it just a concept about 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.800 ants and tablecloths and jelly? But it's not really like 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:24.480 seeing Well, this is one of those questions that might 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.320 seem simple, but it led to decades of debate and 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:31.679 experiment among researchers, and this debate came to a head 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.440 in the nineteen seventies in the psychology literature. People were 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:39.160 asking what is visual imagery? How is visual information stored? 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.720 Do we actually see the ant like the way you 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:46.080 would experience vision, like watching a movie, or is something 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.880 else going on? One side of the debate argued that 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:54.920 information about visual objects was stored in a symbolic language 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.520 like format, the way you would store data on a computer, 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:00.560 and on the other side of the debate, the idea 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.240 was that you're actually running your visual cortex and seeing 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.760 the thing. Essentially, it's the same experience as seeing something real. 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:13.000 This debate was really spearheaded by two luminarias in the field. 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:18.040 One was Xenon Folician, who said, you're just manipulating symbols 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:20.719 in your head, you're not actually seeing the thing, and 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:24.200 the other was Stephen Coslin, who said, no, it's actually 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.720 like a vision. You're running the same machinery. You're having 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:31.840 a visual experience. And they both did experiments back and forth. 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.200 Felician said, look, you're insane. It's not stored like a picture, 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.480 and Costlin said, no, you're insane. It's not stored like 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:41.400 a proposition, You're actually seeing it. And it was very 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:45.320 difficult to come to a conclusion. Each argued for what 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.839 he felt was true, and both were smart, so why 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:54.080 couldn't they come to an agreement? So who was right? Well, 0:05:54.480 --> 0:06:00.000 you can answer this yourself. Think about how people actually visualize. 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:02.440 I'm going to walk you through an exercise and then 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:06.279 I'll tell you the answer of how humans actually visualize, 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.080 and I guarantee that you will not get the right answer. 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:15.119 So imagine this picture in your head, the rising sun. 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:18.640 Think about the picture that comes before your mind's eye. 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:24.440 Imagine the sun rising above the horizon into a hazy sky. 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.000 And now picture that the sky clears and surrounds the 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:34.760 sun with blueness. Now picture clouds, A storm comes, there 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:39.960 are flashes of lightning, and now a rainbow appears. Now 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.719 what I want you to consider is how vividly you 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.160 pictured that. How vivid is your mental picture on a 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:51.000 scale from one to five, where one is pictureless and 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.599 five is akin to a photo or a video. So 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.880 really think about this. The sun rising into the hazy sky, 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:03.240 the sky clears to blue, clouds move in lightning flashes, 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.960 finally a rainbow appears. How would you rate the vividness 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.040 of your imagery from one no picture at all to 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:14.280 five as clear as a movie. So whatever score you 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.000 came up with there, it's not the right answer about 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:22.080 how humans visualize the rising sun. The score you came 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:24.720 up with is your answer, but it's not the right 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:29.480 one for everyone. So returning to this question of why 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.640 Fylition and Coslin, two brilliant researchers, couldn't come to agreement, 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:38.320 the answer was this, they were each having a different 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:43.960 experience on the inside. So with Felician's introspection, he didn't 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:49.120 experience a picture and Coslin did. And here's the key. 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:53.320 They both operated under the assumption that everyone else was 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:57.440 having the same experience they were. It's a natural assumption. 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.240 And you've heard me talk on other episodes about about 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:04.120 how we each live on our own planet, the details 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:08.440 of our inner cosmos determined by the three pounds of 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:13.600 electrically screaming cells locked in our skull and constructing our reality. 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:18.280 We each have our own slightly different version of reality, 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.280 but we generally assume that everyone else is having the 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:26.840 same thing, and so when Felician considered how do I imagine 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.600 the ant on the tablecloth or the rising sun? He 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.480 realized that he had no real picture in his head, 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.680 and he assumed everyone else had the same experience, and 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:39.160 he argued for that truth in the literature. And when 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.400 Coslin saw a little movie in his head, he assumed 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:44.800 everyone else did too, and he argued for what he 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:49.360 believed was true for everyone. Like all of us, they 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.680 were each operating under the assumption that everyone else's internal 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.120 life was just like their own. And that's why the 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:59.640 scientific literature was confused for years, because we all make 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:06.120 these assumption that everyone experiences their internal life as we do. So, 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.480 as it turns out, there are major differences between people 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.080 when it comes to the vividness of their visual imagery. 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:15.840 Now this has been known for a while, but my 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:19.760 colleague Adam Zeeman put a name to this in twenty fifteen. 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:25.600 He thought, look, let's call your internal imagery fantasia, which 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.559 is the term that Aristotle used for the mind's I 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.160 think of this word like Walt Disney's fantasia, but now 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.400 with a pH instead of an F. And the important 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:40.840 part is Zeeman said, if a person really visualizes nothing 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.600 at all. We'll call that a fantasia. A is just 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:48.040 a prefix that means not so. In other words, no fantasia, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:52.000 no mind's I thinking without images. And on the other 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.800 end of the spectrum, if a person sees like an 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:59.920 internal movie, he called that hyperfantasia. They're having imagery so 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.400 so vivid that it rivals real seeing. So that's the 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.600 spectrum from a fantasia to hyperfantasia. Now how do you 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:12.800 measure that? Well, there's this standardized test created by the 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:17.440 British psychologist David Marx. It's called the Vividness of Visual 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.080 Imagery Questionnaire, and I've linked to this on the show notes. 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:25.880 This questionnaire walks you through visualizing a bunch of scenarios. 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:30.120 For example, think of some relative or friend who you 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.760 frequently see but who is not with you at present, 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:37.080 and consider carefully the picture that comes before your mind's eye. 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:42.760 Imagine the exact contours of the face, the head, the shoulders, 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:48.240 the body. Then think about how they walk, the precise carriage, 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.400 the length of the step, think about the different colors 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:56.120 of some of their familiar clothes. For each scenario, you 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.360 try to form a mental picture, and then you rate 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.120 how vivid it is using that at five point scale, 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.040 if you don't have any visual image, you rate vividness 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.839 as one, which means no image at all. I only 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.000 know that I'm thinking of the object. You would score 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:15.520 a two to mean dim and vague image. You'd use 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:21.720 three to indicate moderately realistic and vivid. Four means realistic 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:24.920 and reasonably vivid, and you use a five to mean 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.440 perfectly realistic, as vivid as real seeing. So think about this. 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:32.320 What is it like for you on the spectrum from 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.199 no image to as vivid as real seeing? So try 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.000 with some of these questions. Think of the front of 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.280 a shop that you often go to. Consider the picture 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.880 that comes before your mind's eye, the appearance of the 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.680 shop from the opposite side of the road, a window 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:55.800 display including colors and shapes and details of individual items 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.280 for sale. Now imagine you enter the shop and go 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.320 to the counter or the counter assistant serves you money 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:07.440 changes hands. How vivid is your imagery? Or try this one. 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:12.840 Think of a country scene which involves trees, mountains, a lake. 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.720 Consider the picture that comes before your mind's eye the 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:21.199 contours of the landscape, the color and shape of the lake, 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:26.040 the color and shape of the trees. So think about 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:31.000 what your level of clarity is. Now, my lab showed 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:34.200 that we can actually measure this in people objectively, not 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.600 just asking them subjective questions about their experience, but measuring 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.960 them in the brain scanner. So we had people take 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.720 the vividness of visual Imagery questionnaire, and then we put 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.240 them in brain imaging fMRI and we had them do 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.760 some visual imagery tasks, and then we looked at the 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:57.160 activity in their visual cortex relative to the activity and 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.720 the rest of their brains. And the key is that 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:03.959 instead of averaging all the participants together like you usually 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:09.000 do in fMRI experiments, we analyzed each person individually and 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:12.480 we found that some people when they're imaging, have less 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.800 activity in the visual cortex, and some people have more 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:19.679 and everywhere in between. And when we correlate each participant 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.880 with their vividness of visual imagery score, we found that 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:28.360 the more clear your imagery, the more activity in your 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.600 visual cortex. In other words, your vividness of visual imagery 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:37.920 is measurable objectively. If you're someone who has rich visual imagery, 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.640 you have more activity running in your visual cortex. And 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:46.720 we were Jazz defined that we could objectively verify subjective report. 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:51.040 So let's return to the young man that I mentioned 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.640 at the beginning who watched and loved Walt Disney's Fantasia. 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:58.079 This was Ed Catmoll. He loved animated films as a 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.320 child and wanted at some point more than anything to 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.800 go into the world of animated filmmaking, but there was 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.840 no clear path for that. So he ended up getting 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.480 his doctorate in computer science and in nineteen seventy eight 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:16.520 he developed new three D computer graphics techniques involving how 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.720 to describe any arbitrary surface as little patches. This is 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.440 called the Catmull Clark surface subdivision, and later he would 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:28.360 win an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for this, and 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.760 Ed was involved in all the stuff that followed from that, 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.360 including particle effects and ray tracing and everything about how 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.960 light bounces off objects and where you get reflections and shadows. 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.360 And he and his colleagues made the computer program render Man, 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:46.200 which allowed them making a very complex scenes, and collectively 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:51.040 this is what made computer graphics realistic. So in the 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:54.080 nineteen seventies he got together with his friends and colleagues 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.560 and they collectively had the ambition to make the world's 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:01.720 first computer animated film, and things took a while, but 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:05.440 then George Lucas got interested and took on the team, 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:09.240 and then in nineteen eighty six, Pixar spun off as 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:12.680 an independent company with Ed as the president. They got 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.640 their investment money from Steve Jobs, who joined the board 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:20.880 of directors as chairman, and they made this stunning two 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:26.800 minute short film called Luxo Junior, which starred two desk lamps, 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:29.200 one large and one small. You may have seen the 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.680 short film, and if you haven't, you should. The large 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.120 lamp looks on while the smaller, younger lamp has a 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.800 great time playing with a ball until it accidentally deflates it. 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:42.680 And by the way, this film is from Whence Pixar 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:47.320 got its mascot. So Pixar went on to great acclaim 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.560 and success, starting with Toy Story in nineteen ninety five, 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:55.880 which was the first fully computer animated feature film, and 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.840 Ed eventually became president of Walt Disney Animation Studios. So 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.240 here's a guy who led the world in the realm 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:09.960 of gorgeous computer animated film. So imagine his surprise when 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:15.320 he learned about a fantasia, because he immediately understood that 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:20.800 his mind's eye was blind ed. Is a fantasic. He 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:25.160 doesn't visualize anything, and this makes no sense, right, How 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.920 could the guy who runs Pixar and produced the visuals 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.440 for our generation? How could he be a fantasic? So 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.360 Ed and I have been in touch for a while 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:37.680 on this topic. So I called him up to talk 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:52.720 with him today about a fantasia and Art ed, when 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:56.520 did you first realize that your brain was different from 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:57.280 other people's. 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.080 Well, not that I ever thought it was like anybody else's, 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.640 but there was a curious thing that took place when 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.280 I was having dinner with a friend of mine who 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:14.760 was involved in visual meditation, and since I meditate, I 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.080 wanted to have him teach me how to do that. 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.040 So he said, well, it's simple. Just sit down and 0:17:21.080 --> 0:17:25.360 then close your eyes and visualize a ball in front 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:27.000 of you. Really simple. 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:28.960 So went home. I tried it. 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:33.200 I couldn't visualize a ball in front of me. So well, 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.280 I was weird for a week. I kept trying. Now, 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.360 when I went back to him, he said, oh, that's okay, 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:42.399 some people can't do it, But now my curiosity is peaked. 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:47.000 So I went to the person who was the production 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:52.119 designer Ralph Eggleston for Toy Story and several of the 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:56.200 Pixar movies. And I said, if you close your eyes, 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.800 can you see things? He said, of course I can. 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.520 And there's some people here who can do it so well. 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.280 They can open their eyes and trace what they see. Okay, 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.800 now it's interesting to me. Now, what's interesting about it 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:17.280 was that the surfaces that are used in the movies today. 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:22.960 We're from Jurassic Park, Toy Story movies, but almost everything 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:27.000 you see in the movies was based on a patch, 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:31.000 a way of making a surface that I conceived back 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:32.320 when I was at the University of Utah. 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:34.120 It's like forty five years ago. 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:39.040 And I remember very well the process in which I 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:42.399 did it, and that was I knew what the problem was. 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.800 I would write things on the whiteboard that's trying to 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.640 solve a problem about how to make a new kind 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.919 of surface, and then I would feel the problem go 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:57.280 down into my brain or subconscious It felt like it 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:00.560 was going down, and I stood in front of the 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:04.080 whiteboard and I rocked back and forth for twenty to 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:08.439 thirty minutes, this several times, and I knew something was 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:08.960 going on. 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:11.840 I had no conscious access to it. 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.760 And then something would bubble to the surface and I 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:18.879 would draw on the whiteboard and interact with it. And 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.280 when I would run into a problem, which I usually did, 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.080 back down, I would go this was a very real feeling, 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:28.280 but for all I knew, that's what other people did too. 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:33.320 So now I'm surprised because I came up with this 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.520 new way of making surfaces, but I didn't do it 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:42.600 with math, and I didn't do it with visualization. So 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:44.960 then I started to ask people that pixar, because I 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.960 would have weekly lunches with random people, can. 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:51.760 You just flesh out what the problem was. 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.960 At the time when I was starting, there were two 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:59.640 ways of making surfaces, one of them which was with polygons, 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.720 and the other one was with patches. 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.760 These were called beast blind patches. 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:12.399 They had a lot of flexibility and you could bend 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.480 them in certain ways and then you would stitch a 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:20.160 surface together with these four sided patches and they would 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:22.320 come together with four. 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:25.600 Corners from the different patches. 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.639 Now, because I had made an image of my hand 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:32.720 it was one of the first things I did with polygons, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.600 I knew there was an inherent problem, and that is 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.880 stitching together four sided things where they come together at 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.679 the corner with each one has problems if you do 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:49.080 a hand or something simple like if you take a cube. 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:55.359 Just think about a cube. It's got six sides, and 0:20:55.440 --> 0:21:00.959 it's got these four sided squares, but they come together 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:05.399 with three edges at a point, not four. Even if 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:09.399 for something as simple as a cube, four sided things 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.160 coming together with four at a corner doesn't work. 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:14.160 Since we were now in the early. 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.280 Stages, I wanted a patch where you didn't need to 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.480 have three come together at a corner. You had more flexibility, 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:25.040 very important. So I came up with a way of 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.320 doing that, and I proved that it worked once I 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.720 figured out how to do it. Mentally, I proved that 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.600 it worked using high school geometry. So I then went 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:42.400 to a professor with this idea, and I. 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:42.280 Showed it to him. 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:45.560 Was eighteen page lung proof, and I looked at it 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.720 briefly and he said, ed, what is this and he 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:52.440 tossed it back of me. Wasn't critical to my thesis, 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:57.159 so I set it to the side. And then after 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:04.280 I graduated, then Jim Clark we came up with paper 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:05.480 which then described it. 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:07.520 Let me just get it straight from the audience. So 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:11.960 it is how do you represent surfaces on a computer 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:14.960 and then you can do things like bounce light off 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.760 that and take care of color and stuff like that. Yes. 0:22:18.560 --> 0:22:24.440 Yes, this is basically the underlying patches that you piece together. 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.639 And when you've got those pieces together, then there's a 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.040 separate question of how you put texture on them and 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:35.320 lighting and so forth. This is really the definition of 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:37.560 the surface. It's a geometric problem. 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.680 And this is what all animated films came to use 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:43.480 in the future. Yeah. 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.840 Yes, and so I and a couple of others received 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:50.959 an Academy award because of this way of making services. 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:55.480 Now tie this back to your inability to picture the 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:57.400 sphere while meditating. 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:03.560 So, knowing that this took place, I went to these 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:07.199 lunches and I just talked about it with people and 0:23:07.280 --> 0:23:10.760 I would say, Okay, if you close your eyes, can 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:13.840 you visualize something? How good are you at it? And 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.720 what I was finding was that their ability to visualize 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:22.320 among this random group of eight people at the table 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:25.280 was all over the place. In fact, in one of them, 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:28.720 the only person who couldn't or would report of they 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:33.040 couldn't visualize was an artist and everybody else who is 0:23:33.040 --> 0:23:37.080 not an artist could visualize. So at this point it's 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:41.000 like this is getting stranger and stranger, and I was 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.880 wondering if there was if there wasn't even a strong 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:49.959 correlation or any correlation between what they did and their 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:51.520 ability to visualize. 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:54.040 Now, at this point, I. 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:57.720 Don't know about authentation, never heard of it. It's purely 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:02.080 this curious phenomenon about the way people think. 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:04.440 The way they visualize, the visualize. 0:24:04.480 --> 0:24:08.800 Yes, the next big step in terms of making it 0:24:08.920 --> 0:24:12.879 a very strange phenomenon was that I had a dinner 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:17.159 with Glenn Keene. Glenn Keen is one of the best 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:20.280 hand drawn animators of all time. 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:23.280 He did The Little Mermaid and what else. 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:27.119 Yeah, so basically he was the primary animator on those 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:33.280 course of films. So his Little Mermaid, Beauting, the Beast, Aladdin, 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:38.760 so the main characters they and they were done by Klan. 0:24:38.920 --> 0:24:40.800 I mean, they were rather great animators too, but like, 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:44.080 this was the guy that was the best, and if 0:24:44.119 --> 0:24:49.160 you watch him draw, it's pretty stunning. So I had 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:52.920 dinner with him and I explained the topic to him 0:24:53.440 --> 0:24:56.040 and he just said, oh, I can't visualize either. 0:24:56.560 --> 0:24:58.080 I've never been able to visualize. 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:02.280 In fact, I got into an argument with my mentor 0:25:02.760 --> 0:25:05.399 at Disney, and his mentor was one of these the 0:25:05.480 --> 0:25:09.359 famous nine Old Men of Disney who did the fields 0:25:09.400 --> 0:25:10.600 from a long time ago. 0:25:11.400 --> 0:25:13.960 Glenn really could draw, and the mentor knew this. 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:18.600 The mentor at one point said visualize it, and Glenn said, well, 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:21.880 I can't, and the mentor said, well, of course you can. 0:25:21.960 --> 0:25:22.520 You're an anime. 0:25:23.280 --> 0:25:27.000 So they had this argument about whether or not he 0:25:27.000 --> 0:25:30.439 could visualize it is no, he really couldn't, so and 0:25:30.520 --> 0:25:31.800 at this point is this. 0:25:31.720 --> 0:25:32.520 Is really weird. 0:25:33.200 --> 0:25:37.280 And then the next step was that, as my daughter 0:25:37.359 --> 0:25:40.679 pointed out, this article in the New York Times about 0:25:41.280 --> 0:25:46.560 Adam Zieman's work at Exeter in London. 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:48.040 The article. 0:25:49.320 --> 0:25:52.480 Actually had a mistake in what it said, because it 0:25:52.640 --> 0:25:56.040 wasn't what Adam had said. But what it reported in 0:25:56.080 --> 0:25:58.600 the New York Times article was that there was somebody 0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:02.520 who had a brain tumor and then they removed it. 0:26:02.560 --> 0:26:07.240 But after this process he was no longer able to visualize, 0:26:08.000 --> 0:26:11.840 and therefore they have found the center of visualization in 0:26:11.880 --> 0:26:16.439