Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and this is
Speaker 1: one of our from the Vault selections. Yeah, this particular
Speaker 1: episode originally published May two thousand sixteen, and it concerns
Speaker 1: a fantasia blindness of the mind's eye, the idea that
Speaker 1: if you're reading a description in a book or someone's
Speaker 1: explaining something to you, certain individuals will not be able
Speaker 1: to form that mental picture. And this is this is
Speaker 1: a fascinating topic. When we originally aired this, we heard
Speaker 1: from a lot of people, some people who suddenly realized, Hey,
Speaker 1: I think this is this is how my mind works.
Speaker 1: I think this episode generated some of the most listener
Speaker 1: male of anything we ever did. Yeah, we did a
Speaker 1: whole additional listener mail episode that came out after this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll make sure to link to that on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. Anyway, we hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: this episode from the old days. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. He
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today's episode concerns
Speaker 1: the mind's eye concerns mental imagery, and so we decided
Speaker 1: that the best way to kick off this episode is
Speaker 1: to take you on a little guided mental journey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so close your eyes unless you're driving or doing something
Speaker 1: that requires your eyes to be open, and in that case,
Speaker 1: don't close your eyes if you If you are able
Speaker 1: to close your eyes, close your eyes if not. Just
Speaker 1: imagine you're eight years old and you're walking along a
Speaker 1: beach with your mother, your barefoot. The tide is coming
Speaker 1: in and you see trails of footprints leading back and
Speaker 1: forth along the beach where other people have walked the
Speaker 1: same path today. But the waves are coming higher and
Speaker 1: higher and slowly smoothing all those footprints way. But then
Speaker 1: you look up at your mother and you notice something strange.
Speaker 1: She's wearing armor, a steel chest plate and a visored helm,
Speaker 1: with chainmail drooping across her arms and legs, rustling lightly
Speaker 1: as she walks. Across the front of her chest plate
Speaker 1: is a painted figure. It's foghorn, Leghorn. She raises the
Speaker 1: visor on her helm and smiles at you. A mosquito
Speaker 1: hovers in front of her face, and she flails one
Speaker 1: arm to knock it away and you both laugh, but
Speaker 1: then you notice something else. Your mother has a piece
Speaker 1: of metal dangling from her hip opposite you. It's a
Speaker 1: long sword. She puts one hand on the hilt and says,
Speaker 1: don't worry, only a bit of insurance in case he
Speaker 1: shows up. A wave of seawater rolls up over your feet,
Speaker 1: washing dry sand from between your toes, and you ask who.
Speaker 1: Then there's a faint rumbling under your feet. It's not
Speaker 1: just the tickling wash of the waves. The ground is shaking,
Speaker 1: and about two out in the water, a dark shape
Speaker 1: begins to rise up from the waves. At first it's
Speaker 1: just a green, black lump, but then the huge glaring eyes,
Speaker 1: the cavernous mouth, climbing higher and higher as it approaches.
Speaker 1: It's Godzilla. Not the friendly Godzilla who defends Earth against
Speaker 1: all the heel monsters. This is the angry Godzilla who
Speaker 1: breathes beams of radiation and crushes ten story buildings with
Speaker 1: a single swipe. Your mother puts an arm across your chest.
Speaker 1: She draws her long sword and says stand back. This
Speaker 1: could get serious, And with the flip of a switch,
Speaker 1: her hover boots engage, her feet lift off the ground,
Speaker 1: and then she's rocketing towards the head of the monster
Speaker 1: to defend the realms of humankind. Alright, so uh, we
Speaker 1: we tried to draw in a few different types of
Speaker 1: of imagery. They are a few different types of memories memories, right.
Speaker 1: We wanted to have sort of generic landscape that would
Speaker 1: be easy for a lot of people to picture, like
Speaker 1: a beach. Most people have some kind of image, generically
Speaker 1: of what a beach looks like. We also wanted something familiar.
Speaker 1: Usually they say to picture a relative or familiar family member,
Speaker 1: So hopefully you've got an image of a mother or
Speaker 1: family figure there, but then also some pop culture images. Right,
Speaker 1: most people hopefully know what Godzilla looks like. If you don't,
Speaker 1: you gotta go back and watch the original Godzilla from
Speaker 1: the fifties and right, uh and then uh and then
Speaker 1: fall horn like horn and personal favorite of mine. You know.
Speaker 1: It's one of the interesting things with this exercise is
Speaker 1: to think back on it, and think back of the
Speaker 1: specifics and ask yourself questions like who did I have
Speaker 1: a more vivid memory of what I looked like as
Speaker 1: a child, what my mother looked like, what Godzilla looked like?
Speaker 1: And in these details are not necessarily telling of your
Speaker 1: relationship with your mother versus your relationship with Godzilla. But but,
Speaker 1: but it it kind of just raises our awareness of
Speaker 1: the vast spectrum of visual stimuli that are informing are
Speaker 1: our inner vision of the world. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: a strange thing because the only person who can experience
Speaker 1: your mental imagery is you. You can sort of describe
Speaker 1: your mental imagery to other people, but nobody can take
Speaker 1: a look at it to see what it is you're
Speaker 1: picturing in your mind. So this is something that you
Speaker 1: largely have to deal with entirely on your own, and
Speaker 1: you don't know how similar or how different your own
Speaker 1: process of mental imagery is to that of other people
Speaker 1: unless you really put your heads together and start talking
Speaker 1: about your mental images and detail and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out if their difference is. It's not a standard thing
Speaker 1: that people do, really right, because even to describe it,
Speaker 1: if I describe my mental images to you, they become
Speaker 1: your mental images. Like it's in a way, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of handing off the blueprints and then you build a
Speaker 1: different building. It's the same building, but a different building.
Speaker 1: And likewise, maybe you paint, maybe you write um and
Speaker 1: some other artistic medium you create music to try and
Speaker 1: convey these images in your head. But you're still but
Speaker 1: you're still then limited by your artist artistic ability and
Speaker 1: then other people's interpretations of those works of art. You know,
Speaker 1: I already realized. I didn't think about this when I
Speaker 1: was writing this, but I did already see a contradiction
Speaker 1: in what I told people to imagine the original angry Godzilla.
Speaker 1: But then I also said green black, Right, Well, Godzilla
Speaker 1: in color is sort of greenish black, but the original
Speaker 1: anger Godzilla black and white. He's just you know, you
Speaker 1: look at him and he just looks like this charred monstery.
Speaker 1: So this is a this is already a mental confabulation
Speaker 1: on my part. I'm imagining a Godzilla that never existed
Speaker 1: anywhere in reality. But anyway, so most of you were
Speaker 1: with us there on that journey. You were, to some
Speaker 1: extent able to picture some of the things we were
Speaker 1: talking about. You could see in your mind's eye the beach,
Speaker 1: the armor, your mother, the sword, the fog horn, leg horn,
Speaker 1: the Godzilla. But there are some people who probably couldn't
Speaker 1: see any of that. They were there with us, they
Speaker 1: were understanding the concepts. They were able to follow the plot,
Speaker 1: whatever plot there was, and they could probably recount a
Speaker 1: list of the events that happened in the little scene
Speaker 1: we just described, but they couldn't see any of it
Speaker 1: in their imagination. And this is the concept we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about today. One study has found that
Speaker 1: this might be about up to one in fifty people
Speaker 1: who have this kind of experience where they just don't
Speaker 1: create pictures inside their mind the way most people do.
Speaker 1: Uh And this condition now hasn't come to be known
Speaker 1: as a fantasia or the blindness of the mind's I So,
Speaker 1: the American biotech leader Craig Venter, you know about him, right.
Speaker 1: He's famous for being a leader in the quest of
Speaker 1: sequence the human genome, and he's famous for creating a
Speaker 1: synthetic organisms. Uh So, he has actually described that he
Speaker 1: has an unusual way of thinking, a way of thinking
Speaker 1: that's essentially purely conceptual, like we've been describing, without any
Speaker 1: mental imagery. Venter says, quote, it's like having a computer
Speaker 1: store the information, but you don't have a screen attached
Speaker 1: to the computer. He's describing his own mind. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I I have trouble understanding what that would be like.
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe to understand it better. We should first
Speaker 1: look at some facts about what the mind's eye itself
Speaker 1: is before we get into the blindness of the mind's eye.
Speaker 1: What's going on when you create pictures in your head? Well,
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about mental imagery here, but also
Speaker 1: there's some other sensations thrown in as well. It all
Speaker 1: amounts to a quasi perceptional experience that occurs in the
Speaker 1: absence of the appropriate external stimuli. Um. So, I can
Speaker 1: close my eyes, I can see a deceased loved one's face,
Speaker 1: I can hear their voice. I can imagine myself standing
Speaker 1: on the shore of a distant ocean, a past ocean,
Speaker 1: or even some future sure that I haven't even walked
Speaker 1: on yet. I mean this, this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that I mean, most of us take for granted.
Speaker 1: We use it, we employ it every day. Um well,
Speaker 1: I mean, as I did with the Angry Godzilla and color,
Speaker 1: you can picture things you've never actually seen, right, Yeah
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah, there are things if you're like me,
Speaker 1: I feel there are things in books. For instance, no
Speaker 1: one has ever painted a picture of this character or
Speaker 1: this scene. Uh, and yet you have a very like
Speaker 1: crystal clear vision like I have a better visual memory
Speaker 1: of some things that have occurred in books than things
Speaker 1: that have occurred in real life. You know, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. Uh. Isn't it
Speaker 1: so weird to finally see a book you've read but
Speaker 1: it's never been illustrated or made into a film, or
Speaker 1: anything finally made visual by someone else. It's always people
Speaker 1: always have the same reaction. That's not what I thought
Speaker 1: so and so looked for. It's not what it looks
Speaker 1: like now. The things we perceive in the mind's eye,
Speaker 1: their their products of memory. There can structed from specific
Speaker 1: or varied memories. They may be accurate, they may be
Speaker 1: amalgams of diverse influences. Really, this runs the gamut from
Speaker 1: something you saw yesterday that you near perfectly remember, to
Speaker 1: have you know, vague side from your childhood that you
Speaker 1: at least think you remember, to an envisioned future scene
Speaker 1: in your own life, something you dreamt, something you daydreamed,
Speaker 1: landscape be viewed from the imagined walls of a fictional world,
Speaker 1: or your own creation of a of a an author's creation.
Speaker 1: It's just like pretty much any time we are envisioning something,
Speaker 1: any time we are closing our eyes or even keep
Speaker 1: with our eyes open are imagining something, we are seeing
Speaker 1: something in our mind that is of course the mind's eye, uh,
Speaker 1: doing its thing. Yeah, And I think this has always
Speaker 1: been a very interesting avenue for philosophy to investigate because
Speaker 1: it is something that we recognized was sort of strange
Speaker 1: about the human experience before we had neuroscience or psychology
Speaker 1: or or any of these scientific ways of instigating it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because because it obviously plays such a central
Speaker 1: role in the way we navigate the world and the
Speaker 1: way we think about time and a world of movable objects, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we've been as long as we've had philosophers,
Speaker 1: as long as we've had people among us with with
Speaker 1: time to you know, look up from their labors and
Speaker 1: think about the human condition, we've been thinking about the
Speaker 1: mind's eye. Um. On the podcast here, we've talked about
Speaker 1: the method of Loki before the the ancient Greek technique
Speaker 1: in which person utilizes spatial memory to memorize nonspatial information. Uh. Look,
Speaker 1: that kind of plays into into some of this. That
Speaker 1: involves a certain amount of a reflection on what's on
Speaker 1: how we're using the mind's eye, you know, I I've
Speaker 1: tried to use the method of Loki, and I have
Speaker 1: not been very good at it. Yeah, I wonder if
Speaker 1: I'm just not doing it right. Like when I'm able
Speaker 1: to to really get it set in my mind, it
Speaker 1: does help me remember the By the way, this is
Speaker 1: so a quick version of it is, if you need
Speaker 1: to make a list of digits of numbers to remember,
Speaker 1: you're not going to remember those digits. So instead you
Speaker 1: imagine your house being full of odd characters that each
Speaker 1: embody one of the digits in that number sequence, and
Speaker 1: then you can remember by picturing the room and where
Speaker 1: all of the odd characters were in the room, and
Speaker 1: then you just remember what digit they correspond to or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, like a very simplified version of
Speaker 1: this that I have employed frequently in the past. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a um uh you know, often called
Speaker 1: the memory palace because it's an imagined place that you
Speaker 1: fill with these examples. But oftentimes I only have room
Speaker 1: in my mind for one example, and that is, uh,
Speaker 1: that's when I am a swimming laps and I want
Speaker 1: to remember what number lap I'm on, because if I
Speaker 1: forget the lap number, then I'm going to make myself
Speaker 1: revert to the to the lower number. So if I
Speaker 1: if I don't know for sure I'm and four, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do three. And I don't want to keep doing
Speaker 1: one less than I want to do because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wear myself out right. But I'm also busy swimming. I'm
Speaker 1: having a hard time necessarily remembering which lap I am
Speaker 1: currently on. So instead of trying to remember four, as
Speaker 1: easy as that would seem, I find it easier to
Speaker 1: just force myself to think of, say, the four Horsemen
Speaker 1: of the Apocalypse, like, think of think of that, and
Speaker 1: that'll stick in my head just a little better as
Speaker 1: I'm you know, vigorously of swimming these laps um, you know.
Speaker 1: So it'll just be some sort of visual association with
Speaker 1: just a single digit. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: if anybody else out there has has done something of
Speaker 1: that that that nature, but that is kind of a
Speaker 1: simplified um, good crap. What's what's your visual image for eight?
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything for eight? Oh for eight,
Speaker 1: I think of Alan robe gerlays The Voyeur, where you
Speaker 1: have a character who keeps making figure eights out of rope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think of him setting by the shore um
Speaker 1: not quite contemplating horrible things and making little figure eights.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing to have in your mind here
Speaker 1: at the gym or the y m c a guess
Speaker 1: wherever you swim laps. So one of the important things
Speaker 1: when when thinking about the memory palace and then ultimately
Speaker 1: thinking about memory and the mind's eye, is just to
Speaker 1: to refresh here a little bit about human memory itself.
Speaker 1: Human memory is not just like a tape real rolling
Speaker 1: in the brain that we just, oh, let's go back
Speaker 1: and look and see what happened yesterday. Human memory in
Speaker 1: multiple ways. It's not multiple, certainly not that accurate, right,
Speaker 1: because human memory consists of several different types of memory
Speaker 1: that are working in uh kind of an unequal chorus
Speaker 1: um to create the human experience of memory that we have.
Speaker 1: So we have sensory memory, um, you know what something
Speaker 1: feels like, what it smells, It smells like, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. We have short term memory. We have long
Speaker 1: term term memory. We have and then we divide long
Speaker 1: term memory out. We have explicit memories of consciousness, we
Speaker 1: have in iplicit memories of unconsciousness. We have declarative memories
Speaker 1: of facts and events. We have procedural memories involved that
Speaker 1: involves skills and tasks. We have episodic memory that deals
Speaker 1: with events and experiences, and we have semantic memory that
Speaker 1: concerns facts and concepts. So we have all these different
Speaker 1: types of memories, each one dealing with in a way
Speaker 1: certain you know, different types of skills, different types of
Speaker 1: ways of utilizing memory when we engage with the world.
Speaker 1: And studies have shown in the past that, uh, if
Speaker 1: you have a part of the brain associated with the
Speaker 1: one type of memory is injured, sometimes you see those
Speaker 1: other types of memory compensating. So it's like a a
Speaker 1: in a way, it's like a staff. It's like a
Speaker 1: staff of different memory drones and they all have their
Speaker 1: jobs to do. But if somebody is slacking, then it
Speaker 1: may fall to another employee to uh to to you know,
Speaker 1: to step up and and cover for their shortcomings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good metaphor that the brain is
Speaker 1: more like a workforce than a machine. If one part
Speaker 1: of a machine breaks, the whole machine gen probably isn't
Speaker 1: gonna work. But if one part of a workforce is
Speaker 1: slacking or calls in sick today, the others can often
Speaker 1: find a way to cover for them, right, and they
Speaker 1: might cover you know, everyone does their job a little
Speaker 1: bit differently, so their their skill set might allow them
Speaker 1: to cover in a slightly different way. But back to philosophers.
Speaker 1: So philosophers have continue to argue about the minds, and
Speaker 1: we're certainly not gonna be able to do an exhaustive
Speaker 1: journey through all of their their takes. But you go
Speaker 1: back as far as Plato, for example, and Plato brought
Speaker 1: us one of the most famous examples of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: He utilizes mental images in his famous allegory of the Cave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of the idea that the world that
Speaker 1: we perceive is not the true reality, you know. But
Speaker 1: Plato had this whole belief in ideal forms, you know,
Speaker 1: things that were the more true version of the thing
Speaker 1: than the thing we're familiar with. Right. There's a realm
Speaker 1: of forms out there, and in that realm of forms,
Speaker 1: there's such thing as a perfect chair. But in this
Speaker 1: world we can only build imperfect chairs that inch maybe
Speaker 1: a little closer and closer towards that unobtainable ideal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so his metaphor for explaining this was that of
Speaker 1: the cave, where there are people who are chained up
Speaker 1: in a cave and they don't even really realize that
Speaker 1: they're in a cave. And uh, and there's an opening
Speaker 1: to the cave through which light comes through, and figures
Speaker 1: pass in front of the opening to the cave, casting
Speaker 1: shadows on the wall of the cave, and all we
Speaker 1: see we're facing the back of the cave, the wall,
Speaker 1: and we see the shadows, and we think the shadows
Speaker 1: are the real things, but they're not there. They're only
Speaker 1: the the sort of like the vague outlines of the
Speaker 1: things that that are the true forms. If anyone out
Speaker 1: there is watching The Path on Hulu, there's actually a
Speaker 1: scene um in the first episode where they roll out
Speaker 1: this this allegory and it's it's pretty entertaining, but but
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly it's an it's an allegory. You can
Speaker 1: have a lot of fun with either trying to contrast
Speaker 1: your worldview to another individual's worldview, to try and win
Speaker 1: someone over with your true version of reality versus there
Speaker 1: they're you know, their illusion based understanding of reality. But
Speaker 1: it also you know, gets down to like what is
Speaker 1: our perception of reality itself? These mental images that fill
Speaker 1: our mind when we close our eyes those are imperfect.
Speaker 1: But also the mental images when we have our eyes open,
Speaker 1: we're still just in a sense, we are still just
Speaker 1: seeing those shadows on the walls of a cave. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Aristotle also referred to mental imagery and his work
Speaker 1: referred to it as a as a fantasia with an
Speaker 1: F with a P, not an fright, not the Disney movie. Uh,
Speaker 1: And this was central to his theory of memory. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Though you know, I can see why the Disney movie
Speaker 1: would be called that, I mean, they it evokes the
Speaker 1: concept of fantasy, even though he didn't I think directly
Speaker 1: mean fantasy and the way we do, like somebody coming
Speaker 1: up with a with a fantasy to escape from life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the idea of being able to to imagine
Speaker 1: things in your mind now. And A. Carts also thought
Speaker 1: a lot about mental imagery and how they form in
Speaker 1: the mind. Uh, the view that an idea is a
Speaker 1: quasi perceptual thing, perhaps even pictorial, formed in the imagination.
Speaker 1: And he did distinguish between images formed in the brain
Speaker 1: and ideas in the mind because he was a duelist
Speaker 1: he saw uh, he saw the mind and the body
Speaker 1: as separate. The essence of mind is thought and the
Speaker 1: body is an extension of it. Thoughts are not extended
Speaker 1: in space, but the body is now us. Where in
Speaker 1: philosophy you have you have like idealism, which states that
Speaker 1: reality is equivalent to mental images, and the mental images
Speaker 1: are reality itself. Well, yeah, I mean, if you want
Speaker 1: to take this very far, the people who believe in
Speaker 1: hardcore idealism would probably say that there is no like
Speaker 1: that reality is merely the mental image of a higher
Speaker 1: being or something like that. Yeah. So, as you can see,
Speaker 1: you can really go down the deep end, into the
Speaker 1: deep end, uh, contemplating mental imagery and what are the
Speaker 1: philosophical ramifications of it? Um, there's you know, there's a lot,
Speaker 1: there's a great deal more we can discuss this kind
Speaker 1: of the philosophical groundwork. I guess you could say. Um.
Speaker 1: For instance, though in the nineteen eighties, there's a great
Speaker 1: deal of debate over the over the connection from between
Speaker 1: mental images and language. So one side argued that representations
Speaker 1: underlying the experience of mental imagery are the same type
Speaker 1: as those used in the language. And then there was
Speaker 1: the other camp, and they held that that these representations
Speaker 1: served to depict, not describe objects. Okay, so what does
Speaker 1: that mean in practice. Well, my understanding is that basically
Speaker 1: comes down to, you know, to what extent is mental
Speaker 1: imagery like the the the groundwork of language itself. Um well,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, at times, it feels like it's
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to um to overstate the importance of
Speaker 1: mental imagery in our perceptions of reality. Um So, just
Speaker 1: how deep does that go? Does it underlie just about
Speaker 1: everything in cognition? Does it underlie language? Does it underlie um,
Speaker 1: you know, just every free, little detail of our experience. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this does seem to sort of tie into us stuff
Speaker 1: we talked about in the Tip of the Tongue episode,
Speaker 1: where you can you can perhaps you can have the
Speaker 1: face in your mind, you know, oh, I know this
Speaker 1: actor's face, and you can picture it, and you can
Speaker 1: know the actor's name well enough that if somebody said it,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, yeah, that's it. You'd immediately recognize that.
Speaker 1: But you can't make the connection. But of course, in
Speaker 1: recent years, we've seen the study of mental imagery make
Speaker 1: a more scientific transition. I think we we've started to
Speaker 1: look at it from a neuroscientific point of view, where
Speaker 1: people are saying, okay, well, let's identify what brain regions
Speaker 1: are actually being used and activated when people are in
Speaker 1: the process of coming up with mental pictures. And one
Speaker 1: of the sources we used for this episode, it was
Speaker 1: a paper by Adams Salman and colleagues and and UH,
Speaker 1: these authors identify that essentially in the brain voluntary imagery,
Speaker 1: that the mental images you come up with have been
Speaker 1: associated in previous research with the brain's frontal parietal executive
Speaker 1: systems or of the executive control you know, the president
Speaker 1: of your brain sitting there directing traffic, and with the
Speaker 1: posterior brain regions, which you know in the back of
Speaker 1: the brain that's often the identified with visual processing. And
Speaker 1: together you sort of put these things uh into a
Speaker 1: teamwork relationship and they are what allows you to come
Speaker 1: up with mental pictures. That's right. And UH, we've also
Speaker 1: seen studies where we've taken f M R I, We've
Speaker 1: done a PET and we've done PET scans on individuals
Speaker 1: summoning mental images. You know, they're asked to summon a
Speaker 1: mental image and then we look at the brain and
Speaker 1: see what it's doing in real time. And UH reveals
Speaker 1: that activation in brain areas that are used in visual perception,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound that surprising. Uh, this is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Visual and mental imaging share roughly two thirds of the
Speaker 1: same active activated brain regions, So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of cross over there between the usual and
Speaker 1: mental imaging systems, a lot of shared mechanics. Yeah. Like if,
Speaker 1: for example, if you show somebody a picture of somebody's
Speaker 1: face and then you asked the same test subject imagine
Speaker 1: this person's face, a lot of their brain activity is
Speaker 1: going to be roughly similar. Right. In fact, the study
Speaker 1: found that when the same task is performed in perception
Speaker 1: and then with eyes closed using mental images, you get overlaps.
Speaker 1: So so again, a lot of the same mechanisms, a
Speaker 1: lot of the same brain equipment is being used, whether
Speaker 1: you're dealing with just visual perception or mental perception. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's funny because the phenomenal experience is completely different, right,
Speaker 1: Like you, uh, somebody, to somebody who has a fantasia,
Speaker 1: this might be new information, but it's obviously not going
Speaker 1: to be new information to most people out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: When you picture something in your mind's eye, it is
Speaker 1: extremely different than seeing it in front of you, But
Speaker 1: it's hard to explain how it's different. Yeah, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a two thousand fifteen BBC
Speaker 1: article titled a Fantasia, A Life without Mental Images by
Speaker 1: James Gallagher, and I'll be sure to include a link
Speaker 1: to that article on the landing page for this episode
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com because in addition
Speaker 1: to running through some examples of uh, some accounts of
Speaker 1: individuals who have this blindness of the mind's eye, which
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss more here, there's also a quiz
Speaker 1: you can take, uh. And it's just an eight question
Speaker 1: quiz about asking you like the level of detail that
Speaker 1: you experience when you are asked to mentally envision, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, someone you see every day, Uh, A sunrise,
Speaker 1: I believe, clouds in the sky, the clouds clearing in
Speaker 1: the sky, a thunderstorm, the these sort of images some
Speaker 1: of the same kind of stuff that we ask you
Speaker 1: to summon at the beginning of this episode. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't just ask you can you picture it? It
Speaker 1: asks you to rank level of details. So for each ample,
Speaker 1: it might say picture, get someone in mind and maybe
Speaker 1: a close friend or spouse or close family member, and
Speaker 1: picture that person and then on a scale of not
Speaker 1: very well at all too extremely well, how well can
Speaker 1: you see in your mind's eye the contours of their
Speaker 1: face and the shape of their body, and what color
Speaker 1: their eyes are, and and so it's asking for specific
Speaker 1: details of the image to to get at the vividness
Speaker 1: of the picture in your mind. And that suggests to me,
Speaker 1: and I think their findings do suggest so far that
Speaker 1: it's not just an on off switch. It's not like
Speaker 1: you can make pictures with your mind or you can't.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a spectrum, that's right. Some people
Speaker 1: seem to have very intense, very lucid, vivid mental images.
Speaker 1: Other people have kind of hazier, blurrier or more generic
Speaker 1: mental images, and some people have almost no mental imagery
Speaker 1: at all, or even report having none. And it's so
Speaker 1: at the opposite end of the scale of the main
Speaker 1: topic today. You know, we're talking about these a fantasiacts,
Speaker 1: but there's also what's come to be known as hyper fantasia, right,
Speaker 1: and these would be people who I think would experience
Speaker 1: visions of the mind ie with just extreme lucidity is
Speaker 1: far compared to most of us. So they're not just
Speaker 1: vague pictures, but they have bright colors and vivid details.
Speaker 1: So if I tell you imagine a beach, you might
Speaker 1: picture sand and waves and maybe some umbrellas. But I
Speaker 1: bet you wouldn't naturally say, Okay, I can tell you
Speaker 1: there are seven umbrellas in the picture in my mind,
Speaker 1: and these are the colors of stripes on the umbrellas.
Speaker 1: But somebody might actually be able to have that level
Speaker 1: of vividness in their mind's eye. Yeah. This idea of
Speaker 1: a spectrum of of of mental detail and visual imagery,
Speaker 1: it uh, it really makes you reanalyzed just how you're
Speaker 1: painting the picture in your head. Uh, these memories, you know,
Speaker 1: like it. I think we both scored around the same
Speaker 1: on this where we had kind of like typical image.
Speaker 1: I was in the typical range. Yeah, but even even
Speaker 1: then I was I found myself asking questions like, well,
Speaker 1: how when I think about these people that I see
Speaker 1: every day in my life and they are very important
Speaker 1: to me, Uh, you know, what does it mean that
Speaker 1: I don't have like just a picture perfect vision of them?
Speaker 1: What does it mean that when I think back on
Speaker 1: a beach, I find my like a sunrise on a beach,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking of, you know, images of sunrises from
Speaker 1: paintings and films more so than actual beach sunrises that
Speaker 1: I've witnessed. Do you think about the final scene of
Speaker 1: the Warriors, Yeah, that sort of thing, like I end
Speaker 1: up like putting a fictional Instagram filter over all of
Speaker 1: these these memories, and I'm not really remembering. I'm not
Speaker 1: really summoning a mental image of a thing I actually saw.
Speaker 1: I'm summoning this mental image that's composed of these varying elements.
Speaker 1: You know. One thing I read when we were doing
Speaker 1: our research for this episode was a first person essay
Speaker 1: that I came across by the software designer Blake Ross,
Speaker 1: who was involved in Mozilla Firefox on Facebook, and he's
Speaker 1: also done some screenwriting. And he found out after reading
Speaker 1: an article I think in either in the New York
Speaker 1: Times or in Discover magazine by Carl Zimmer about a
Speaker 1: fantasia that he he had this experience, and he also
Speaker 1: was just shocked to find out that other people weren't
Speaker 1: like him. His discovery was that, oh, I never realized
Speaker 1: other people could see pictures in their minds. His whole life.
Speaker 1: He thought when people said stuff like picture this, they
Speaker 1: were just being metaphorical. He didn't realize other people could
Speaker 1: actually hold these pictures in their brains. And in this
Speaker 1: essay he starts he recounts how when he found out
Speaker 1: about this, he was asking all his friends, what's it
Speaker 1: like to picture something in your mind? And asking all
Speaker 1: these questions I've never really thought to ask myself about
Speaker 1: my process of mental imagery that were very interesting, Like
Speaker 1: he was asking his friends, Okay, when you see a
Speaker 1: picture in your mind, like you picture a beach, is
Speaker 1: it still? Is it a still photograph or is it
Speaker 1: more like video where things are moving? And that distinction
Speaker 1: just hit me like a wrecking ball. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. When I picture something in my mind,
Speaker 1: I can make it move consciously if I need to.
Speaker 1: But when I just picture a beach, it is almost
Speaker 1: neither still nor moving. It is it exists in super
Speaker 1: position between these two things. It's kept for me. I
Speaker 1: guess when I think about it, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the old music video for What Was It where the
Speaker 1: people go into the painting or into the drawing Take
Speaker 1: on Me. Yeah, I feel like my my mental imagery
Speaker 1: is kind of like the take on Me video. It's
Speaker 1: stuff is moving, but it's all kind of stationary as well. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I certainly can imagine something moving on purpose.
Speaker 1: But when I just picture a thing and I don't
Speaker 1: imagine it moving on purpose, I don't think it's still,
Speaker 1: but it's not moving either. It's very strange. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of two of the experience of reading a book,
Speaker 1: especially a book to set more or less in the
Speaker 1: real world, And at times I'll find myself stopping and
Speaker 1: thinking about, like, oh, I'm picturing this in this living
Speaker 1: room from that I've limp that I visited or lived
Speaker 1: in at some point in my life, Like that, for
Speaker 1: some reason, is the living room that my brain is
Speaker 1: drawing in for this setting where I'm picturing this character. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the character just is that character and
Speaker 1: that and there's not really like a firm mental image
Speaker 1: in your head exactly what they look like. Other times
Speaker 1: you can't shake their um their appearance as being that
Speaker 1: of someone you know or or you know a character
Speaker 1: actor from a movie, etcetera. But I do find myself
Speaker 1: like analyzing, like where are all these elements coming from?
Speaker 1: Like some of them are obviously coming from the the author.
Speaker 1: The author is providing the blueprint, the author is providing
Speaker 1: the scaffolding. But then that scaffolding is kind of like
Speaker 1: magnetically drawing in elements from my own visual memory. Yeah, definitely, Uh,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about there. Uh. An
Speaker 1: interesting thing about fiction that that Blake Ross says in
Speaker 1: his first person essay about this is he he reports that,
Speaker 1: so he's always read books, you know, he's enjoyed fiction,
Speaker 1: and he's written fiction. But when he writes fiction, he
Speaker 1: has almost no visual description because he just doesn't picture
Speaker 1: things in his head. And when he reads, he skips
Speaker 1: visual description. He just kind of jumps over it. That's
Speaker 1: not it has no meaning to him. Really. Huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's fascinating. Okay, now it's time to take
Speaker 1: a quick break to hear from our sponsor. But when
Speaker 1: we come back, more on the mind's eye and a fantasia.
Speaker 1: All right, So, just how common is a fantasia? Um,
Speaker 1: it's a difficult question because this is something that hasn't
Speaker 1: really been uh in the public mindset. It hasn't been
Speaker 1: out there, it hasn't been something you get a pamphle
Speaker 1: it on until very recently. There was one interesting study
Speaker 1: on this from before it had a name. Before this
Speaker 1: a fantasia term came out that was studying sort of
Speaker 1: the lack of generative power and mental imagery, and that
Speaker 1: that was in two thousand nine, right, study by Fall, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bill Fall psychologists. And what did it find? He found
Speaker 1: that between two point one percent and two point seven
Speaker 1: percent of participants in his study claimed to have no
Speaker 1: visual imagination. So that's where we got that number up
Speaker 1: at the beginning, that it might be around one in
Speaker 1: fifty of you who just didn't see any pictures when
Speaker 1: you were following along in the story with us. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: of course we have to that that number is not
Speaker 1: coming from like a you know, large scale study, so
Speaker 1: results aren't really fully supported, but it gives us sort
Speaker 1: of at least a ball park. I think, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: something to work with. But but a lot of this
Speaker 1: recent research has popped up because of an interesting I'm
Speaker 1: about to use a great word here, synergy between between
Speaker 1: actual medical rea search and some writing in the popular press. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think like Carl Zimmer's articles had something to do
Speaker 1: with people coming out of the woodwork to say, hey,
Speaker 1: now I have this experience of a fantasia. I can't
Speaker 1: make mental pictures. But it started with the research of
Speaker 1: Adam Zaman, Right. Yeah, he's a professor of cognitive and
Speaker 1: behavioral neurology at the University of Exeter Medical School, and
Speaker 1: along with co authors uh Um, MICHELLEA. De Wira, and
Speaker 1: Surio Della Sala, they coined the term a fantasia in
Speaker 1: their two thousand fifteen paper Lives Without Imagery congenital a
Speaker 1: Fantasia that was published in the journal Cortex. Now, people had,
Speaker 1: as we said, previously described things along these lines like
Speaker 1: it had always been kind of noted that, well, there's
Speaker 1: some people out there who say that they can't create
Speaker 1: any mental pictures. But nobody really looked very deeply into this,
Speaker 1: and I think some of the I think the earliest
Speaker 1: example that the authors we were looking at were able
Speaker 1: to draw on was just the nineteen century. Now, this
Speaker 1: condition and the condition had in these earlier works and
Speaker 1: condition had previously been referred to as a defective revisualization
Speaker 1: or visual ear reminiscence. What a great word, ear reminiscence.
Speaker 1: Somebody was trying to make us say that, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: not gonna work. It's a fantasia. Uh And there are
Speaker 1: skeptics actually out there who say that that what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here does not exist at all. I think
Speaker 1: that's fascinating because how would you prove them wrong? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and why why would you make that argument? I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, arguing about the existence of somebody else's internal experience.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just it's crazy. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: almost seems seems like you'd have to be making the
Speaker 1: counter argument of saying, oh, you don't have a fantasia,
Speaker 1: you just have a lazy mind, right, your imagination is
Speaker 1: just a bit stunted. But I can understand why people
Speaker 1: might be tempted to this direction because I, as I
Speaker 1: we've said before, I think you probably would agree with this.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what this is like. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: no ability soever to put myself in a position of
Speaker 1: not being able to make mental pictures that I don't
Speaker 1: even understand what that means really, Right, It's kind of
Speaker 1: like if most of us are more or less the
Speaker 1: same computer hardware with differing software. You know, we can
Speaker 1: talk all day about I don't understand how your software works,
Speaker 1: and this is how my software works. But here we're
Speaker 1: talking about essentially a difference in hardware. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that analogy completely holds up. But essentially there's
Speaker 1: something a little more, uh, you know, base level is
Speaker 1: different and and how do we even begin to describe
Speaker 1: that to each other? Yeah, So Zaman first started studying this,
Speaker 1: I think in two thousand ten, right, because of the
Speaker 1: story of this. So there was a patient who reported
Speaker 1: having contracted, like acquired a fantasia after a medical procedure, right, right,
Speaker 1: So there was a sixty five year old man who
Speaker 1: had coronary angioplastic and that's where they So if you
Speaker 1: have a blockage in one of your arteries or something
Speaker 1: like that, they'll open up one of your arteries and
Speaker 1: stick a catheter in it, and somewhere along your body
Speaker 1: wherever the blockage is occurring, they'll inflate a small balloon
Speaker 1: or something inside your artery to widen it, essentially and
Speaker 1: allow easier passage of blood. Yeah. It's not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you would initially imagine altering your brain functioning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's generally not considered a major surgical procedure, but
Speaker 1: it's like it's you. I think you're typically left awake
Speaker 1: for it. They don't even necessarily put you under, though
Speaker 1: they might need to give you some drugs to calm
Speaker 1: you down. But yeah, it's this is this is not
Speaker 1: like a gigantic big deal. So it's coronary angioplasty. And
Speaker 1: after the procedure, this patient was unable to form mental
Speaker 1: pictures and he had not had this problem before, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, and that's where this study comes in. And afterwards,
Speaker 1: after there were some pieces published about this, Zaman started
Speaker 1: to hear from people who said, Hey, I have this condition.
Speaker 1: And not only do I have it, I didn't get
Speaker 1: it from I didn't have an angioplastic or any you know,
Speaker 1: injury or or surgery. I've always had it. This is
Speaker 1: just how I am. So Zaman and his co authors
Speaker 1: they they looked at twenty one of these self reporting
Speaker 1: cases and then they discovered most of these individuals um
Speaker 1: kind of discovered their condition, their own condition in their
Speaker 1: twenties when through conversations or or readings they found a
Speaker 1: discrepancy between how other people described the use of the
Speaker 1: mind's eye and their own experiences. Can you imagine I
Speaker 1: just have a hard time imagining how you get that
Speaker 1: far in life without realizing. Now, this is another thing
Speaker 1: that's addressed yet again in that that essay I mentioned
Speaker 1: by Blake Ross, where he just talks about how whenever
Speaker 1: he heard people using the language of the mind's eye
Speaker 1: were talking about, you know, picturing something, imagining something, he
Speaker 1: thought it was all metaphorical. He thought they were just
Speaker 1: talking about conceptually meditating on the idea of a beach
Speaker 1: or something. So you're sitting there thinking about the concepts
Speaker 1: of sand and water and sunshine and umbrellas. But he
Speaker 1: didn't realize that other people were literally seeing something in
Speaker 1: their mind. Yeah. I mean, it's like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: when one when you have all these different types of memory,
Speaker 1: and if one is taking uh, you know, a back seat,
Speaker 1: the other ones are going to compensate. So it's not
Speaker 1: like if you have a fantasia, you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to function in society at all. It seems like
Speaker 1: quite the contrary. Uh, individuals find a way to function.
Speaker 1: They find they just end up utilizing these different modes
Speaker 1: of memory. Okay, but of these twenty one self reporting cases,
Speaker 1: what did Zalmon find about them? Well, so I found
Speaker 1: that nineteen of the twenty one were male. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that this might have more to do
Speaker 1: with the readership of Discover magazine. This is not a
Speaker 1: randomized self selected because right this is where people would
Speaker 1: have read that Carl Zimmer article, and they were the
Speaker 1: ones who said, hey, so yeah, I just might have
Speaker 1: to do with the male readership discover On the other hand,
Speaker 1: they found it. Five of the twenty one reported that
Speaker 1: it affected relatives as well. This is something I've read
Speaker 1: of people's experiences online. Some of them say, one of
Speaker 1: my parents has this. Yeah, so this leads us to
Speaker 1: believe it might be hereditary. And then ten of the
Speaker 1: twenty one said, uh, said that all all versions of
Speaker 1: the imagery were affected. Now, now, like I alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: this does seem to me, based on what I've read
Speaker 1: so far, to be sort of a um it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily an all or nothing. It's sort of a spectrum condition.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things that these people reported is
Speaker 1: that it's not like they've never ever in their entire
Speaker 1: live seni mental image. They just generally don't see them,
Speaker 1: like some of them sometimes reported that they might have
Speaker 1: had very brief involuntary mental images, like they they might involuntarily, quote,
Speaker 1: flash an image of somebody's face, but it's just that
Speaker 1: this is rare and they can't do it on man, Right,
Speaker 1: it's something that just might occur during while they're awake.
Speaker 1: It might occur during dreams some of them. This is
Speaker 1: another thing, the interesting variation on dream experience. Some report
Speaker 1: that they don't have dreams at all or don't remember
Speaker 1: having them if they do have them, and some report
Speaker 1: that they do have dreams and can experience visual content
Speaker 1: and dreams, but just can't do it while they're awake
Speaker 1: or on command. Yeah. Zeman is a big believer that
Speaker 1: this is essentially a variant of neuropsychological functioning and kind
Speaker 1: of like synesthesia in a sense, and again kind of
Speaker 1: on on a spectrum as well. So so again, don't
Speaker 1: think of it as a you know, as a as
Speaker 1: a as a brain injury, don't think of it as
Speaker 1: a as as an ailment. It is just a different,
Speaker 1: uh a different way that the mental chorus is coming
Speaker 1: together to receive reality. Yeah. Another thing that I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting is, uh so we've been talking about images
Speaker 1: being visual as in like what you know, light, photons,
Speaker 1: and the eyes, but this does seem to extend to
Speaker 1: varying degrees to other senses as well. Right, Some of
Speaker 1: the people who report that they have a fantasia for
Speaker 1: visual images. Also can't imagine the feelings of other senses,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. And then some report
Speaker 1: that they sort of can, again, making it seem like
Speaker 1: a kind of spectrum issue, like can you hear a
Speaker 1: piece of music that you're not currently listening to? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's That's another good one. I certainly can. Like
Speaker 1: one of the ones I wanted to think was the
Speaker 1: Star Wars theme. I can just play the whole Star
Speaker 1: Wars theme in my mind from beginning to end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And certainly we've all experienced earworms, so that's kind of
Speaker 1: a variant of that now. Um. Also in this UH
Speaker 1: the Zaman paper, they said of the individuals, a number
Speaker 1: of them reported modest effects on their relationships, which I
Speaker 1: guess one can imagine if you and your um, your
Speaker 1: significant other are ultimately engaging with mental imagery and drastically
Speaker 1: different ways. And also, fourteen of the twenty one participants
Speaker 1: reported difficulties with autobiographical memory. So here's a quick quote
Speaker 1: from the paper. The same number identified UH compensatory strengths
Speaker 1: in verbal, mathematical, and logical domains. They their successful performance
Speaker 1: in a task that would normally elicit imagery count how
Speaker 1: many windows there are in your house or apartment, etcetera
Speaker 1: was achieved by drawing on what participants described as knowledge, memory,
Speaker 1: and subvisual models. Yeah, this is interesting. So this again
Speaker 1: gets back into the idea that you end up just
Speaker 1: utilizing different modes of memory the workforce of the brain. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: because I can't imagine. So if somebody said how many
Speaker 1: windows are there in your house? I would do that
Speaker 1: with a picture. I would picture my house and sort
Speaker 1: of picture walking around the sides of my house and
Speaker 1: seeing how many windows are there. But they can do
Speaker 1: this without the picture. It's not like they're unable to
Speaker 1: do it. So there's something else kicking in. Must be
Speaker 1: conceptual facts logged about the house. Okay, so we need
Speaker 1: to take one more quick break and then we'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more a fan tasia. Now that BBC
Speaker 1: paper that we mentioned earlier by James Gallagher. In that paper,
Speaker 1: Gallagher spoke with one Neil kin Mure of Lancaster. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a self reporting individual with blindness of the
Speaker 1: mind's eye, and he provided some interesting insight on the condition.
Speaker 1: So I have just a couple of quotes here from
Speaker 1: that that piece that I found were interesting, he said. Quote,
Speaker 1: my stepfather, when I couldn't sleep, told me to count sheep,
Speaker 1: and he explained what he meant. I tried to do it,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't see any sheep jumping over fences. There
Speaker 1: was nothing to count. No, that's a that's that's an
Speaker 1: interesting because I guess that might be one of the
Speaker 1: earliest examples of of here mentally mentally imagined this. Like
Speaker 1: with my own uh son, I had a similar situation.
Speaker 1: Like I distinctly remember the first time I told him
Speaker 1: to close his eyes and encouraged him to imagine an
Speaker 1: elephant because he was really obsessed with the elephants at
Speaker 1: the time. And Um, I saw the delight on his
Speaker 1: face as he imagined the elephant. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: after doing this research, I realized, well, there's equally a
Speaker 1: possibility that he wouldn't be able to see the elephant.
Speaker 1: And you know, there wouldn't be anything go wrong with
Speaker 1: him if he couldn't see it. In the BBC piece,
Speaker 1: um the the the interviewed individual, Neil kim Miller also
Speaker 1: said that he had a terrible memory, but he was
Speaker 1: good with facts and and then there's an additional quote
Speaker 1: This is the hardest thing to describe what happens in
Speaker 1: my head when I think about things. When I think
Speaker 1: about my fiancee, there is no image, but I am
Speaker 1: definitely thinking about her. I know today she has her
Speaker 1: hair up at the back, she's brunette. But I'm not
Speaker 1: describing an image I am looking at I'm remembering features
Speaker 1: about her. That's the strangest thing, And maybe that is
Speaker 1: a source of some regret. Yeah, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the thing because typically these people report that they it's
Speaker 1: not like they can't they don't know what somebody looks like. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not like that scene in like Hannibal where they
Speaker 1: show face blindness as just seeing p but with like
Speaker 1: smooth skin over their face. Yeah. What's that condition called
Speaker 1: a congenital prosopagnosia? Is that a where you you have
Speaker 1: a born condition where you just can't recognize faces people
Speaker 1: You see people who are familiar to you, but you
Speaker 1: just they just don't look like anybody, uh you know,
Speaker 1: whoever that is. And and it's not like that you
Speaker 1: or at least not for everybody. Like we said, there
Speaker 1: seems to be a wide variation in how this applies
Speaker 1: to people's lives, but I haven't read that it's like that.
Speaker 1: For most people, it seems like they report, yeah, they
Speaker 1: recognize people. Once they see a picture of of a
Speaker 1: close family member or of the president or whoever it is,
Speaker 1: they know who it is. They just can't make the
Speaker 1: picture without looking at it. It's almost kind of like
Speaker 1: we talked about in the P versus NP episode, like
Speaker 1: the kinds of problems that once a solution is presented,
Speaker 1: you can easily check to see if it's correct, but
Speaker 1: you can't come up with a solution and a reasonable
Speaker 1: amount of time by yourself. It sounds like a version
Speaker 1: of that. You can't make the picture, but when somebody
Speaker 1: shows you the picture, you can say, oh, yeah, that's it. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I I just find this condition really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And so if you yourself are somebody who thinks you
Speaker 1: may be experiencing a fantasia, or if you just want
Speaker 1: to learn more about it, one interesting resource I think
Speaker 1: would be to go and look at some of the
Speaker 1: message boards online that have recently been created by people
Speaker 1: who claimed to have this experience. Because there's one I
Speaker 1: found that was a fant dot asia. Nice. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's a it's just like a forum online, people talking
Speaker 1: about their experiences. Uh, and it seems to be a
Speaker 1: lot of people having this kind of, uh, this awakening
Speaker 1: kind of experience. They're like, oh, man, I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize that this was what was causing all this confusion
Speaker 1: between me and other people all these years, or I
Speaker 1: didn't realize I was the I wasn't the only one
Speaker 1: who was like this, or you know, people really seem
Speaker 1: to be having a lot of fun coming together with
Speaker 1: a community of other people who have the same issue. Well,
Speaker 1: like it reminds one of the whole you know, the
Speaker 1: old example of hey, what if when I think of
Speaker 1: purple and you think of purple? What if we what
Speaker 1: if we're each seeing different colors? But there's never a
Speaker 1: way to prove that out. But but this is kind
Speaker 1: of like a case where what it's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you were one day able to say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the purple I see is different from the purple these
Speaker 1: people see. I'm gonna I'm gonna go hang out now
Speaker 1: with individuals who see purple the way I see people.
Speaker 1: I've never understood what the deal with Barney was, but
Speaker 1: now I get it. Uh No, but so I have
Speaker 1: all these questions about a fantasia, like what it means.
Speaker 1: And again, just to emphasize, it does seem like we
Speaker 1: haven't nailed down that there's a specific cause and a
Speaker 1: very specific effect yet, because there seemed to be a
Speaker 1: range of different ways this manifests in people's minds. It's
Speaker 1: associated with different things. Some people dream, some people don't,
Speaker 1: some people have memory problems, some people don't um. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I was wondering about was can
Speaker 1: a fantasiacs hallucinate? Yeah? So what if an a fantasiac
Speaker 1: takes a drug that often causes visual hallucinations? Do they
Speaker 1: see anything different? Yeah? Are they just going to get
Speaker 1: the non visual hallucinatory effects, uh? Or is it going
Speaker 1: to sort of ignite a type of visual imagery that
Speaker 1: isn't normally there sort of heighten the flashes that some
Speaker 1: of the you know, the the the occasional flashes that
Speaker 1: some of these individuals experience. Yeah. And so I looked
Speaker 1: this up actually on the on the forum boards, and
Speaker 1: they had actually addressed it. So one member of a
Speaker 1: message board said they typed a question that struck me
Speaker 1: as intriguing. This person said they were confused Essentially, they said,
Speaker 1: how is hallucinating different from seeing things in your mind? Again,
Speaker 1: that question is hard to answer, but to somebody who has, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a mind's eye, it's very clearly different. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm hallucinating when I imagine something, But
Speaker 1: try to describe the difference. Well, you're seeing being something
Speaker 1: in your mind that's not there. Okay, that sounds like hallucination,
Speaker 1: I think, but then it's also been It's also just
Speaker 1: like seeing it. So, yeah, we come back again to
Speaker 1: the cave. We're all still lined up staring at the
Speaker 1: play of shadows on the wall. Yeah, some of us
Speaker 1: maybe just have a slightly different view of the shadows
Speaker 1: and others. Okay, Robert, I've got a question for you. Okay,
Speaker 1: hit me. Do you think you could try to simulate
Speaker 1: this in your in your own mind? Like? Could you try?
Speaker 1: I know you it would be impossible for us to
Speaker 1: really fully be able to do it, But can you
Speaker 1: try to go through a standard day to day process,
Speaker 1: something you would do all the time without using any
Speaker 1: mental pictures. I was trying this morning, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. Just trying, yeah, trying not to think of
Speaker 1: mental images immediately calls to mind mental images. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, telling somebody like, don't think of a rhinoceros
Speaker 1: wearing a jet pack. Yeah, you just did it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And even it works in the in the general sinse
Speaker 1: just saying, try not to think of mental images, and
Speaker 1: immediately my mind is filled with rhinoceroses and jet packs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if anything, I have to try and keep
Speaker 1: from daydreaming and keep from or keep from you know,
Speaker 1: pummeling myself with with different mental images. Uh, and and
Speaker 1: actually focus in on a task, you know. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean the way this really seems like it would come
Speaker 1: through is like, how does if you can't have mental images,
Speaker 1: how do you have fantasies about things you would like
Speaker 1: to do? So you imagine, you know, your boss makes
Speaker 1: you furious and you wish you could punch him in
Speaker 1: the nose. You wouldn't actually do it, but you at
Speaker 1: least have that image for a moment, right. Uh. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably a nearly universal experience for people. Thought
Speaker 1: of it. But what happens if you can't have that
Speaker 1: image in your mind? Do you do? You think about it? Conceptually?
Speaker 1: It's like I I just thinking about the concept of
Speaker 1: punching my boss in the well. And then also even if,
Speaker 1: like I was just thinking to myself, like, what are
Speaker 1: some of the times when I'm actually able to to not,
Speaker 1: you know, mentally imagine anything and have these mental visualizations
Speaker 1: in my mind? I think, well, okay, maybe when I'm
Speaker 1: doing yoga, because I'm able to sort of shut out
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, I'm able to shut off the
Speaker 1: default mode network to a large extent. But even then,
Speaker 1: if I'm focusing on a pose, I am also focusing
Speaker 1: on a mental image of what I must look like
Speaker 1: in that pose, which may or may not have a
Speaker 1: match up to how I'm actually doing the pose. So
Speaker 1: what is it like then to engage in a in
Speaker 1: a physical activity like that with a fantasia? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you can do it, but it just
Speaker 1: kind of drives home just how much mental visualizations, um,
Speaker 1: how big a role they play and just everything we do. Okay,
Speaker 1: another question, ok, fiction writing. This is something again from
Speaker 1: the from the Blake cross piece. So he's he is,
Speaker 1: he's done some screenwriting, and he describes his process for
Speaker 1: fiction writing without having mental images, which he described in
Speaker 1: terms of words and parts of speech. I thought this
Speaker 1: was interesting. So he said, like, when I'm imagining something,
Speaker 1: I imagine a noun, the word, and then I imagine
Speaker 1: a verb that follows it, the word um. And so
Speaker 1: there's something very different about his process for writing than
Speaker 1: I would have. So when I'm imagining a scene, there's
Speaker 1: there's translation going on. I think of a picture, and
Speaker 1: then I have to put the picture into words. But
Speaker 1: could it be possible that this allows people to do
Speaker 1: creative writing without any translation the original creative thing that's
Speaker 1: happening these words. That's interesting. Yeah, Like they're not having
Speaker 1: They're not in that situation that I mentioned earlier, where
Speaker 1: as an artist or a creator of any kind, you
Speaker 1: are stuck trying to translate the mental image into something
Speaker 1: another person can share in. Like you said, there's no
Speaker 1: translation going there. Well, it makes me wonder if the
Speaker 1: maybe the ultimate form of direct written communication with almost
Speaker 1: nothing lost in between, would be an a fantasiac writing
Speaker 1: to another a fantasiac somebody, because there you're not translating
Speaker 1: it into pictures on both sides or on either side.
Speaker 1: I will say that something that does remind me of
Speaker 1: is like in my own writing process. There there's definitely
Speaker 1: the point where I have an image in my mind
Speaker 1: or seen in my mind, characters in my mind, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to bring that to life on the page.
Speaker 1: But then if I'll get into these situations where I'm writing,
Speaker 1: and in a way what I'm writing is coming before
Speaker 1: the mental image, so I kind of create the point.
Speaker 1: Not to say it's it's a fantasia at all, but
Speaker 1: I'm kind of writing before the mental visualization. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of reading what I've writen I've written and and experiencing
Speaker 1: it more or less in real time as a reader would.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, I bet you've had the experience I
Speaker 1: know I have of writing something before you get the picture,
Speaker 1: and then getting the picture, and then going back and
Speaker 1: revising what you've written based on the picture. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So this is Yeah, the writing is definitely
Speaker 1: a fascinating area to think about this because it is
Speaker 1: this sort of it's the mental image, but then this
Speaker 1: stripping down of the mental image, the translating it into
Speaker 1: into another form. Uh yeah, yeah, Well, it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: be coming into this topic and it's such an interesting
Speaker 1: time for it, you know, when when it seems we're
Speaker 1: on the cusp of a lot of new learning about
Speaker 1: what this condition is, how many people have it, what
Speaker 1: it's like for them, And Hey, if you out there
Speaker 1: actually experience this, if you have some level of a
Speaker 1: fantasia or you're toward that end of the mental image
Speaker 1: re spectrum, I think it would be great to hear
Speaker 1: about your experience. If you want to write in and
Speaker 1: tell us what it's like. Yeah, and if you're on
Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum, if your hyper visualizer, uh,
Speaker 1: let us know about that as well. Uh. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That is the mothership. That's where you will find all
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes. You'll find videos, blog post links up
Speaker 1: to social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. We
Speaker 1: are blow the Mind on both of those. We also
Speaker 1: have accounts on Tumbler and Instagram. And if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with your experience of
Speaker 1: mental imagery or with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Well more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Star to start back by