Your Experiences With Aphantasia

are blow the Mind on both of those. You also find us on Instagram and tumbler and always if you want an easy way to help the podcast, the easiest way to go about that is to just rate and review us on whatever platform you used to listen to us, iTunes, Stitch or whatever it is. Give us a rating and review and that will help the show. All right, Joe,

what do we have today for the listening audience? Well, today is going to be a follow up episode to one we did pretty recently on the fascinating subject of a fantasia, the blindness of the mind's Eye. So in that last episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, you should go back and check that one out first. That's where we relay all the groundwork. We explained what a fantasia is, how how it was discovered, and um and what's the state of research today on this interesting condition.

But brief summary, Robert, what is a fantasia? Well, we're essentially talking about blindness of the mind's I We're talking about the inability to varying degrees to form mental imagery in the mind. So this is affecting the way that you remember things, the way that you daydream about the future, the way you dream even Uh, it really plays into

your sensory experience of reality. Yeah. So in the last episode, we tried to give you a visual picture to put yourself in a scenario, tell a little story, and then see how well can you picture all of the things in this imaginary scenario. And it turns out that some people can't picture these things at all. Because I think we were rolling out something. You're standing on a beach, pale deathly men and black coats and hats circuiting after you. No, wait,

that was a dark city. Uh that's a good one too, but yeah, we would We laid out this whole mental imagery experience just to sort of test everyone. Then we talked about some other sort of questionnaires that have been rolled out as well to sort of self evaluate your own place on the spectrum here. Yeah, and that is definitely one thing that came out in our discussion last time, is that there really does seem to be a spectrum

of the vividness of mental imagery. Some people are what we might call hyper fantasiacts or they have hyper fantasia. They when they make a mental picture in their mind, they don't just have a vague, kind of generic mental picture.

They have a very detailed, incredibly clear mental picture. So if they picture a beach, they might not just see sand and water in the sky and maybe some seagulls, but they'll see, uh, seven umbrellas, and these are the colors on the umbrellas, and there are fourteen people on their beach. And then at the other end we have the main subject of that episode that the people with a fantasia, meaning they can't picture a beach at all, there's no way for them to see it unless they're

looking at it. Uh. And then of course there's this whole middle spectrum. More people might have varying degrees of mental imagery, like you can sort of see a generic beach but not a lot of detail, or you can see a lot of detail up and down the scale. Robert, I think we we both took the test and fell somewhere in the middle and sort of typical levels of mental imagery. Yeah, indeed, and and that's one of the

reasons that we're doing this episode. One of the reasons we reached out to everybody because in talking about this, uh, you know, we're coming from the standpoint of sort of mid level mental visionaries, So we definitely wanted to get the perspective from individuals that are, you know, on either

end of the spectrum. And it turns out lots of you out there have really interesting experiences with a fantasia or hyper fantasia, and lots of you got in touch with us, So we thought we'd take this episode to read some of the great responses that you sent back on this subject. So, I mean, it makes sense to write because what it was like two percent and we don't do not have any firm numbers on this, but the estimate is a little over two percent of the

population has h you know, notable degrees of a fantasia. Yeah, this was that two thousand nine study we talked about in the last episode. I believe it was by Fall. The psychologist Bill Fall found that two points something per cent of the people in this survey seemed to have extremely low or no mental imagery. Alright, so we're gonna just jump into it now. We're gonna set up. We're gonna set a time or for ourselves and say an hour.

It's about it as long as we tend to like to go with the with the podcast episodes, So we're just gonna see how many of them we can get out in an hour. If we don't get to yours, I apologize, but I guarantee you we read all of them and we greatly appreciate the feedback. Okay, This first message is from our listener Koti so Kyoti says, Hey, so I saw you guys on periscope last week. It was my first time tuning in and what did you guys happen to start discussing? But this condition I recently

learned about called a fantasia. Y'all were trying to ask if people with a fantasia dreamed pictures. The answer is, well, I don't know about others, but I certainly do. One of the questions you asked in your podcast was about hallucinations. That's where we ask, you know, is it possible to hallucinate if you can't see things that aren't in front of your eyes? And Koti says, I also suffer from occasional hallucinations, which are very brief but very clear, maybe

like twice a month, not very often. I'm able to easily tell the difference between them and reality because they usually have nothing to do with what I'm trying to do at the moment. I've been like this my whole life, and I just thought I wasn't good at remembering things. I couldn't visualize things, but I would just know the information. I'm very good with remembering numbers, though, and very good at recognizing patterns. I often wonder if it's because my

head isn't cluttered up with pictures all the time. I wonder if there's anything, because, like when it comes to getting around town, I'm I'm the opposite. Like I have no idea what the name of that street that I travel every day, but I have it in my head and I didn't drive to it. No problem. You're picturing the guy you saw who looked funny on the sidewalk the last time yeah, I remember him the name of

the street, number of the street idea. Yeah, so, Kyote continues, Which isn't to say I don't see pictures at all, but they were ephemeral at best and very vague. So it sounds like maybe if if Kyota isn't completely a fantastic it might might be very low on the visualization vividness spectrum. Uh so, Kyote continues. I've known that people don't process information the way I do for a while, but for the but the first time I really understood was when my boyfriend was trying to teach me how

to meditate. I hadn't thought about meditation, and there's a lot of mental imagery and meditation or their candy. Yeah yeah, continuing, he asked me to visualize the color green and focus on it, and I tried. I really did. I was able to come up with a vague green in my head, but it quickly slipped away. I had a lot more luck with yoga because I was able to focus in on the music or my instructors voice. I don't visualize my body when I'm doing yoga, but I am aware

of where everything is when my eyes are closed. It's not because This is a point that I specifically brought up yoga. Yeah, continuing, it's not like a superpower or anything. I just know. And there's actually a scientific word for this. You might be aware of it. It's called appropriate reception. Yes, we have. There's an older episode of stuff to bling

your mind about this. Yeah, so appropriate exception is the reason why, Hey, to try a quick experiment, as long as you're not driving a car or something, close your eyes and then put your hands together. You can do it even though you can't see where your hands are. And this is because your sense of appropriate reception. It's this natural sense to be able to know where your different body parts are and their movement and relationship to one another, even without looking at them, right, I mean,

it's it's how we move our bodies around in this world. Yeah, you like, you don't always have to be looking at your feet in order to step. Pretty useful. Yeah. Yeah, But anyway, continuing with the mail, I'm also an artist and a writer. This is interesting to me because some of these people with a fantasy year reported that they can't draw at all, not even close, or they had difficulty trying to ride out imagine scenarios etcetera. Especially visual descriptions.

But continuing with the letter art is hard because I don't ever have a clear picture of what I want to draw. I just keep doodling until I've created something I like. Writing is easier, the words just come to me. I feel like I can tap more into how something makes you feel, rather than worrying about how something looks. The biggest downside is not being able to picture faces. I can sometimes get an image or of a place or a scene sometimes, but I've never been able to

picture faces. It makes me sad because I've just recently married my boyfriend and people ask me about my husband, I have to give them a general description or dig out my pictures to show them. I mean, I know him, he has a beard, dark skin, beautiful brown eyes, but I can't see it in my head. I know my family and friends, but I can't see them either. So to end on a glum note, anyhow, thanks for doing the podcast. It made me feel not so alone to know there are other people like this. I think I'll

check out those forums you mentioned. We mentioned some a Fantasia forums in the last episode. PS Okay, I do have one bone to pick with you in both periscope and the podcast. You are very careful to state that these people quote claimed to have a fantasia. Almost any time it was brought up and people about people having it, the word claimed was also present. What gives is it? Because there's no way to prove if someone has it, or because of a lack of understanding? Am I looking

too far into this? Just wondering? I can't imagine anyone pretending to have a fantasia? I mean, what's the point? I hope you guys have a great day and thanks for reading. Well, I can address the why we say claimed. That's just talking about how you would deal with first person experience in science, like there there's no way to know what somebody else's first person experience really is, so you just talk about what they claim to experience. That's

the only way you can deal that. It's not because we're being skeptical and saying all these people are lying about what they experience. It's just trying to reflect the reality of the data we have to work with. We can't be in their heads. We can only talk about what they claim to experience. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, thanks for that great email, Coach, that was really interesting to read. So Robert, let's have another one. All right. This is

one from Facebook. This is a far shorter response, but it has a nugget in here that I think it's very tantalizing. Marine wrote in and said, I think I have this. I can't visualize things either. Visualization is a strategy that I am supposed to teach kids who have trouble with comprehension, but I am not very good at this, and now I think it is because I have a fantasia.

Mind blown this Uh, this really fascinated me because it it underlines this idea that okay, we have all we're only talking about you know, two percent of individuals probably that have a fantasia. So the vast majority of individuals that are contributing to curriculums, to teaching strategies, they are individuals that have more or less than average mental visualization

uh system in place. Yeah, so then what's happening when you know, when you have individuals that are being taught or individuals that are teachers who are having to engage with the same curriculum and use the thing curriculum to teach. Yeah, this this makes me think about all kinds of different things about the way our society is structured based on the mistaken assumption that most people have roughly equivalent powers

of mental imagery. Like. Another way this comes across is in the justice system and the use of like the

use of eyewitness testimony in the justice system. I feel like, hopefully people know that there's a spectrum of vividness of mental imagery and visual recall, but I bet there are a lot of cases where there is There are serious problems in the justice system and the use of eye witness testimony because people are just assuming that everyone out there has just as good visual recall and mental imagery as they do, and that's not necessarily the case. Yeah.

This on top of of course all the inherent memory problems with eyewitness testimony, as well as the ability to manipulate those memories if you're the one asking the questions. So yeah, we can add a plantation into that, into that whole cauldron of problems as well. Man, I just never read a single thing about eyewitness testimony that makes me more trustworthy of Every single piece of science or

data I come across just undermines it more. Yeah, I mean, it just seems like the label should be you know, used, but used with caution and used with the understanding that this is not this is not video camera HD footage. This is this is a flawed memory that is susceptible to manipulation, alteration, and uh, it might not be that

even reliable to begin with. Yeah, yet another case for augmenting our bodies with video cameras where our eyes are, so we can just press record on everything that's important. That's that's all I'm arguing for. Joe. Do you want to do another one, Robert, Yeah, let me grab one here, all right. This one is from Emily. She says a longtime listener, first time caller, Smiley face. I just listened

to your podcast on a fantasia. It caught my ear because a friend had recently posted about this phenomenon of Facebook. She doesn't see mental images and was doing a survey of her friends. I don't see mental images either. Until I listened to your podcast. I didn't realize people actually see things. I thought when people talk about picturing things in their mind, it was just a figure of speech. I didn't realize there was actually a picture. Mind equals

blown Emily, this is uh, yeah, this is interest. The the we I think we touched a little bit on this in the original episode, like people hearing about this and just not really understanding what what people were talking about. Yeah, this is something we've heard, so we heard it in the original episode when we were doing research. And like, for example, that essay by Blake Ross about what it's like to discover a fantasia where he reports that he

didn't realize other people could see mental images. Uh. And we heard this from a bunch of listeners. A lot of you who got in touch with us said you had the exact same experience. You just had no idea

this was even a thing other people could do. But another way this parallels the Blake Ross I say is that he also did the same thing where when he found out about it, he went online and started surveying all his friends and you know, trying to get in touch with them, saying, wait a minute, you see something that's not there, like you can see it, uh, and and quizzing all the people he knew. And it turns out he got in touch with some people he knew

who were also experiencing a fantasia. And it looks like Emily's friend did as well. In Emily um, I have a friend whose coworker has this, and I found this interesting. Apparently he describes his memory of people like when when he thinks of someone, it's like pulling up a Wikipedia page about that person, which is an interesting way to

describe it. There's a lot of That's one of the things that's so tantalizing about this this topic is that you you ultimately have the each side trying to relate with their experience their memory experiences, like in each dealing with a slightly different system. All right, now here's another one. This coming comes to us from Olaf in Sweden. Says, Hi, my name is Olaf and I'm a twenty nine year

old man from Sweden. When I was in my early twenties, me and a friend played the would you rather game and came to the question would you rather be blind or deaf? I said blind in a second, and my friend asked me why because he thought it was strange, and I said, well, I store all of my information vocally in my head, so my side is useless in that way. Then I thought, if you're born deaf and never heard a spoken word in your life in which language do you think? My friend replied you don't you

picture it. That blew my mind because I had never had pictures in my mind before. I had a constant thought process in which I have an ongoing inner conversation with myself where I sort out and store information. Like if someone tells me, remember that time last summer when we had watermelons for dinner, certainly remember that time, Robert. I first think about watermelons, what they are a fruit,

then the color green and how they taste. And after that I can remind myself of conversations I remember bound to the taste of watermelons. Then based on the lingo of the conversation I now repeat in my head, I can determine who I was speaking with at the time. Then I remember which time, uh they are talking about. So if I have to recall something, I always ask what were we talking about? Rather than was it sunny? Thanks for the great podcast, and keep up the great work,

old Off, Thanks for that message. All Off that so I don't recall ever having watermelons from for dinner, but I can actually relate here because I sometimes do this. I'm obviously I don't have a fantasia, but I often try to place memories by trying to remember what we were talking about at the time, and I'm sure that comes off as rather weird to people who are more visual, trying to remember what people were wearing or what, you know, what the weather was like that day, that those aren't

typically things I store as much. So maybe I'm lower on the on the mental vividness scale. And of course this is gonna get even getting into again the whole complex nature of memory, where sometimes we have these clear memories of what we were wearing, what we were doing, especially when really important things happened, and those memories are

not all that reliable either. Sometimes the brain just kind of goes ahead and just colors that scenario and you tuck that mental image away in your mind, and it might not even be all that accurate. Yeah, what happened that night, Well, we were eating watermelons for dinner. Uh No. Another thing that Olaf says that's interesting is that he talks about having this internal conversation with him with himself.

And this is another thing that we came across reading for the previous episode, where if sometimes people report this that instead of picturing the thing they're about to do, they have a conversation mentally about what they're about to do. So I don't picture walking to the kitchen going to get a glass of water. I say, what am I going to do? Now? I'm going to go to the kitchen and when I'm there, I'm going to get a

glass of water. Okay, let's do it. Okay. This next email is from our listener Luisa called another a fantasiac person. Luisa says, hello, guys, I really love the podcast, and when I saw the topic for this week's one, I knew it would be weird and exciting. I found out that I was a fantasiac. I prefer a fantastic. Actually I don't. I'm not sure what the proper word is. I would assume based on the way the word is structured,

if you have a fantasia, you're an a fantasiac. But I hope that doesn't come off as sounding like you're a maniac a fantasiac. It does kind of sound like like disturb People who would attack can say, like a Blue Sunshine type of exploitation film, Well, that is a great film, but please don't take it that way. But maybe we can go with a fantastic. That's a nice

one like it anyway, she continues. When the studies started to be reported by the media and science blogs, I was one of the people who were like, wait, you guys mean you literally see things? So yet again this experience as a child, I got bored when I was supposed to imagine things like counting sheep, and I just thought it was something that grown ups found entertaining, but I had no interest in like instrumental music and newspapers. Years passed, and I guess I just never thought much

about it. When I found out I was different, I felt immensely sad. It seems to be a very exciting thing to be missing out. My grandfather passed away last year, and I need pictures to remember him by. Of course, I know who he is and I can describe him in detail, but I cannot, for the life of me, picture him at all. It feels really unfair that I cannot see him when people can do that easily, even if they weren't as close to him as I was. It's weird that you guys can't imagine what it's like

to not be able to picture things. It's a lot harder for me to try to imagine what it is like to picture things. I guess it's hard either way. Yeah, that's I mean, that's the crazy thing. That's like, we're each on a different side of this stream. I mean some people are kind of standing straddling in a little bit. But yeah, I'm just trying to relate what the views like from our side. Well, one listener on Facebook pointed out, Hey,

you know it's it's difficult to imagine things. What about trying to imagine being actually blind instead of blinding the mind's eye? And I thought, well, obviously it's not what we can't simulate, whether it's like to be blind your whole life or to have that whole experience of blindness. But you can sort of temporarily roughly simulated just by closing your eyes. You know, you can know what it's like to try to navigate surroundings without being able to

see anything. But you can't close your mind's eye, or at least I can't. I find it literally impossible not to picture mental images on command. Yeah, like even when I shut if I'm able to shut down deliberate mental images, you know, I'm still going to have sort of spontaneous

mental images. Yeah, it's something related to the default mode network. Uh, you know, stuff in the past, thinking about the future of even shut all that out, then I'm still gonna get sort of like random like meditation shivasana imagery in

my head. Yeah. I find that if I try to just say, okay, picture nothing, don't picture anything, just blackness, nothing, my mind starts going to that scene in Ghostbusters where and then I end up picturing the Ghostbusters and I pictured dan Ackroid and I pictured the st stay Puff marshmallow Man oh Man. So so basically, if all of the Ghostbusters have been a fantasic and a fantasiact, ghoz Or would not have had a leg to stand on. That he could not have pictured something to for the

for the destroyer to to incarnate itself. He would have been thwarted. That's why you should you should always hire a fantasiac for your ghost fighting purposes. This is so good. This is so good, I'm almost tempted to remove it from the episodes that that we can exploit it. Uh, maybe we can. May we canna write something up for Houseloff Works now about this? Okay, that's a good idea. Anyway, we should continue with Luisa's email, So she says. I used to explain it as like having a smell bring

back memories. The information on the smell memory is there and it's easily recognizable once you smell that again. But it's in possible to conjecture a smell in your head. Actually, Luisa, I don't know if I agree with that. I can imagine what smells smell like, can can you, Robert? Can you smell something that you're not currently smelling, like a smell of onions sauteing in a pan? I can just I can sort of mentally smell that right now a

little bit. I know. I have found that I can do this better like I can there there have been certain situations in places in the right um arrangement of things to where I can imagine, taste and smell better if that makes sense. Vague description of it, um, But for the most part it's like I kind of have to strain for it. Interesting. Yeah, well yeah, so clearly here there. This is yet another thing where there is variable experience on what you can create mentally, the mental

sensory experience. Luis is obviously having a different experience from from me and from you. Yeah. Oh, actually, and she anticipates me. I should have remembered this, she says. But maybe people are able to do that also, And it's another sense I can't bring by myself. Is it so for me? Visual data is there. I can describe things as you could with a smell, but I am not visualizing the things I'm describing. I just know what the description is. This is consistent with a lot of what

we read. I am a fantasiac with sounds as well. If I try to imagine a dog bark, I can hear my own voice barking, but never an actual dog. That's fantastic. I love it. Earworms are me singing the songs and all the noise. I can only imagine them if I can make them. I'm the worst with impressions and accents. Can't do anything. I wonder if I can't do impressions because I can't imagine them, or I can't

imagine them because I can't do them. That, yeah, that's interesting because there I feel like when I do if I do an impersonation, goven. If I fail miserably to do one, um like I'm still very much like Donald Trump, for instance. I don't have a good Donald Donald Trump impersonation, but one cannot help but want to do one, given how much Trump were e supposed to in the media

right now. So even when I try, the mental image of Trump enters my mind and and I essentially try and blow that out into a full possession of my body. But you can't do the voice. No, it's not not you know, it just becomes a bad Australian accident or something, and then I feel bad about myself and stuff. Anyway, Luisa goes on, I do dream very vividly. We heard a lot of different stuff about dreams with this question.

Some some dreams, some don't. She says, I was told that seeing with your mind's eye is not like dreaming. Though I don't know if I can hallucinate, as I never did those kind of drugs. Though of course you don't have to do drugs to hallucinate. That that that is one way that a person without a natural tendency to hallucinate can get there. Anyway, Luisa goes on to say,

thank you for an amazing podcast. I was able to understand a little more about me, even if even if it always makes me sad for the things I'm missing. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask. I'll gladly explain that this is Luisa and Brazil. Well, thank you for that awesome email, Louisa, Yeah, that was great. All right, Robert, you got another one for us. Yeah, this one kind of relates we were just talking about

because it gets into smell. Carolyn rode in and she says, I never thought I would email a podcast, but your recent show and a plantation inspired me to right in. You asked what it would be like to imagine things without the minds. I never thought it was possible to see anything in my mind outside of a dream. For me, it's like having that memory of seeing the picture when you look at an object and then afterwards can remember

what it looked like. Also, perhaps to compensate for the lack of images, I can, if I concentrate hard enough, feel and hear and faintly smell something imagined. Of these three, it is easiest for me to feel something imagined. For example, I once imagined I was laying on a patch of grass in the sun. I could feel the grass and the ground underneath me, and the warmth of the sun, and even the position I was laying. I also had a sense of how I had gotten there and the

wider imaginary world I had created. It was like I jumped into the scene just after I had laid down and closed my eyes, but I could not open my eyes to see if there were any clouds in the sky. That's about as vivid as my imagined sense can get. If I concentrate. I can even imagine a faint smell, but have never tried to imagine a taste. Most of the time, my imagination consists of words like I am

reading a book in real time as I write it. Also, as I traveled through my imagined worlds, I do so in first person, so I can imagine moving through the world either as myself or as the main character, so I can experience the other senses faintly, as if remembering something experienced before. I always look forward to your next episode.

Thanks Caroline, Well yeah, well thanks for writing in. That's again just another interesting person sspective on how how you experience and remember the world and imagine the world really with less of an emphasis on visual imagery. Now, Robert, you were saying you had some difficulty trying to mentally smell something like until you imagine the smell What about what about feel and and and taste and well taste,

touch and hearing. Yeah, well, taste definitely goes into what I know, the example that I mentioned earlier, like taste and smell, I feel like they're the same as far as field goes. Yeah, it feels difficult for me too. Yeah. You so you can't imagine the feeling of, say, petting a cat, like feeling it's for you? Can't? You can't

feel that in your mind. I can, but I'm more likely to describe it in my mind, like I'm thinking of like like I'm touching a cat or you know or or you know, my my son's cheek or something like. I can think, oh, that's soft and that's smooth, and I can visualize myself doing it, But in terms of like feeling it that like, I'm really struggling to to have that kind of a memory. What about taking a rotten piece of fruit, smashing it into your face and

smearing it all over your skin. Well, that's a fantastic visual image you just created, and that you can't feel the fruit? No, no, weird. I can feel that. I can feel what that would feel like. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about any of this before. But that example comes up because we have a coworker who sits between Robert and now who has had the same piece of fruit rotting on their desk for months. Yes, it's it's

quite in a way. It's kind of beautiful and very goth So it is like turned into a water balloon of of fragrance and worms and ms of a lot of balloon of worms. All right, what I should imagine We should probably take a quick break here and we come back. We will explore some more listener mail related to a plantation. All right, we're a what do we have next? Well, I'm going to read one from Nelson

called Gained a Fantasias story. So one of the reasons that we that we know about a phantasia, now, one of the reasons that's been written about in the media lately is because of a story of acquired a fantasia. A guy who was an older guy who got a coronary angioplastic which is routine medical procedure to widen an artery, and after this experience, he suddenly had lost his ability

to make mental pictures. It's almost kind of He's almost called the Rosetta Stone of this, uh, this scenario, and this this attempt to translate these experiences from one type of person to the audit. Yeah, and so, of course after this story, a lot of people started getting in contact with with researchers in this area and saying, hey, look, I've got a phantasia. I've headed my whole life. And so we we have been mostly talking about people who have always had a fantasia. But this is a note

from a listener who acquired it. So Nelson writes, Hey, guys, longtime listener to the podcast. While I work, I've never had a reason to right in until now with a personal story about how I, for a lack of a better word, gained a fantasia and what it's like. I know that I've not always been unable to picture images in my mind, because I remember waking up with night terrors when I was young, particularly to a dream of

my backyard. A farmer who I didn't recognize would be standing there with a straw hat and a pitchfork as a volcano grew out of the ground and killed us all. It always seemed incredibly vivid, and I would wake most nights screaming from it. This lasted until I was about six years old when I was in an accident. I rolled out of bed one night over the top of it, not the sides, and landed on a metal ac intake event, causing a concussion and multiple lacerations, requiring over twenty stitches.

When they put me under anesthetic, I had a hallucination that I still remember all of the details too. But when I awoke, things in my head just seemed different. I couldn't picture things like I once was able to. I remember things just as well as everyone else, but not in the same way. When I go to sleep, I no longer dream in the way I remember dreaming either. Now all of my dreams to this day are like

reading a book is to me. I know the events that are happening and the general makeup of the setting, but I see, smell and feel nothing. But I can hear what's going on. Even so, it still feels completely real, like it is happening to me. That's fascinating. So like he he he gets lost in the dream, Like I can't imagine what this is like either, being able to get lost in an experience and feel like it's really happening,

but not picture anything anyway. Nelson continues, but to the final point, I wanted to make both of you ask questions about what really is going on in the mind of someone with a fantasia And the best way I found to relate it to someone who doesn't have it is like if you were physically watching a D and D board as the game is played Dungeons and Dragons reference.

Of course, Uh, there's a large area, and you know where everything is is in relation to other objects, and there's description playing in your head of exactly what is happening, But you don't actually see the die cut token picking up a potion. You just know it's happening. Oh my goodness.

This makes me want to now question all of my the players in my Dungeons and Dragons campaign and find out if they're a fantasics or not, because that that because I have this idea, I just kind of assume, yes, they having having the exact same visualization experience as I am as we lay out this collective storytelling world. But probably not. I mean, even if none of them are are a fantasia acts, we're all going to be somewhere

slightly different on the spectrum. Yeah, well, it makes you wonder if you could play if you could play D and D with no visual aids whatsoever, like just all sitting around, just people talking through a D and D game with no with no writing materials, no maps. Well that's interesting now because I've never been in of in a game where there's absolutely nothing. But I feel like the like some of the earlier games that I was involved, we we didn't even we didn't really have much in

the way of maps drawn out. It was more of hey, you are here, what are you doing? And maybe maybe that they were also playing a little fast and loose with the rules to facilitate that, but it Yeah, but it could be that the d M, which was like an older kid um as in my theres in Boy Scouts with maybe he was just a you know, higher level on the visualization into the spectrum and just assume that we all were too. And then surely you don't need figurines or maps because I'm explaining it to you

and your mind is there. Yeah, I might as well play a video for you. Yeah, wow and interesting. Yeah, Well, anyway, thank you very much for getting in touch. Nelson. All right, this next one comes to us from Chris. Chris is a long time listening to points out that he's been listening since the stuff from the science Lab days. So thanks for hanging in there all this time, Chris, He says, your podcast wasn't awakening. I never knew that it was a normal thing to be able to picture images in

your mind. The only thing I can picture in my mind is the faint white outline of basic perfect geometric pet shapes on the blackness that is my inner eyelift. Wow, that's very specific. Yeah, I have to have my eyes closed for that. I can dream, and my dreams have pictures, but I cannot remember any detail about my dreams moments after I wake up, so I cannot describe them more. My memories of things and places are like facts, not videos. I cannot replay a memory, but I can recount the

memory in bullet points. This happened, then, that happened, etcetera. This may explain how it is so easy for me to misplace things, as only important details are remembered. This may not be related because even visual people lose things. My thinking is not visual, and I don't have a monologue running in my head. I can think in words, but mainly my thoughts in ideas and these can be translated into words. I can translate them into pictures as well,

but only if I am drawing or making something. What is interesting about this is that I am a very creative person visually and otherwise. I draw not as often or as skillfully as I wish I could. I write, and I cook. My writing is, as I've said before, not directly out of my mind, but translated from ideas into words. Sometimes the idea is slow and I don't consciously have to come up with the words, but there are definitely times where I need a gap to find

the right word. It's like translating from one language to another, but one language is English and the other is conceptual. Communication is definitely my weakness, and I have spent much time working to improve my communication skills, and most of that is the translation from ideas into words. And I cook, and by that I mean I am going to school for culinary arts and baking and pastry. In the culinary and banking, you need to plate food to make it

look appetizing. Whenever I played up food, I know that there is a certain way I wanted to look, but I don't know what it is going to look like. Whenever I take a photo of my food or something else, I know what I want before I pick up my camera, but I can't describe it. I could recognize it, but I can't visualize it at all. This is this really

fascinated me especially. I mean, this is something that comes up a lot for me just at work here, because i'll well, we'll publish a podcast episode and uh and generally I'm the one who ends up looking up some artwork for it, and I really enjoyed doing that. Robert is really good at this way. Well, thank you, But I have but sometimes they get into trouble because I have a it's not a very clear idea of the

image I want. I'll have a very definite idea for what I want and it will be very hard to shake that even if the options and say Getty images are are less than forthcoming. And additionally, Joe, you, Christian and myself have been engaged with Greg Um, another one of our coworkers here in creating a new logo for

stuff Aloy your Mind. So now I can't out but but think about that process in terms of of three actually four individuals with different approaches to visual to mental visualization, trying to come up with the same visual um summary of the brand. Yeah. Absolutely. I again, this is one area where sometimes I do wonder. I mean, obviously, I, like I said, I'm in the typical range of the spectrum, but I wonder if I'm kind of low on the typical range because I I have a hard time picturing

what I want for for say, like a logo. I feel like I'm better at that. This has got to be so annoying to you graphic design folks out there. But I'm the kind of person who I know what I don't want once I see it. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm that guy. But I feel like that's as far as I can go. That relates back to our P equals MP episode two, right, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like the the the MP problem, the MP problem

of visualization. Like I can't I can't put it together in my mind, but I can check the answer once I see it and know if it's right or wrong.

One more question that came out of this based on what Chris was having to say about how his memory works, like the ability to replay a memory versus being able to recount the memory and bullet points or facts I would love to see a study on who has more accurate factual recall of an event, somebody who has visual recall of the event, or somebody who has a fantasia and just remembers it as a series of facts. And the obvious conclusion would be, well, somebody who has visual

recall has better recall. But I don't know if I would go along with that assumption. I wonder if there's more confabulation going on in memory when you're picturing what you're remembering, because you're just throwing in visual details that may or may not have been something you actually saw, and that's cluttering up your perception of what the event was. I think it's entirely possible that somebody with a fantasia

might better remember just factual details about something thing that happened. Yeah, in a way, it's kind of like, you know, you watch the TV show and there's there's one department that's dealing with the set, another is dealing with props that people touch, and then the horse. The actors are doing their own thing and they're going off the writing, etcetera.

So in a way it's like we it's like having a set designer who is a little out of step with everything else, and it might just throw something in that makes absolutely no sense and uh, and it has nothing to do with what the prop person or the actors of the writers are putting together. Like like that's a little bit what it's like, Um, you know, to to have to to work with a visual memory. You have no you have no idea what weird visual clues are gonna be thrown in into that very malleable memory

of what sort of happened. Yeah, And it's like you feel like you should have a sense of what the falsified elements are, but you don't. They feel as real to you as the real elements. And they have been studies to prove this out. And one of the more interesting ones that had to do with the people's memories of nine eleven, like where they were, what they were wearing. Um,

fascinating stuff, and they're wrong about most of it. Yeah, because essentially, and and you know, I don't have all the details in front of me, but like one of the basic summary of what's happening is the brain is focused on something really important, you know, you know, I know, essentially getting down to some survival uh programming, and the visualization is like, this isn't important. So trust me, you were in a red shirt, you're eating a captain crunchy,

non essential details. It just lies to you. Yeah, I fill you in because the precise visuals of of your serial and your shirt do not matter in this scenario. But you probably can remember what escape route you were planning on thinking of from the building you were in or something. Yea. Indeed, Hey, so it looks like we need to take a quick break, but we will be

right back after hearing from the sponsor of this episode. Okay, here's another email from our listener l J. L J says, I've been reading a lot about a Fantasia ever since the New York Times article on it earlier this year. Count me as one of those people who never realize that the mind's eye was anything more than a metaphor. Yet again, we're hearing this. I've always known I wasn't

a visual learner. While I'm a strong reader. I learned best by kinesthetically doing something, and then I can refer back to written instructions and pictures to remind myself of a specific detail. Learned something like tai chi from a video. Yeah, not a chance that requires you to take in the visual details and flip them in your mind and then apply them to your own body too much translation. Same

thing with reading a map. I'm hopeless with directions and am essentially dependent on my GPS even to find my way to familiar places. I'm a physical therapist by training and never had any problems in diagnosing or treating my patients, especially when I could use my hands to do the work. My biggest problem was trying to draw stick figure exercises

for them. That's great. Um. Now, I write fiction, and when I was a new writer, I used to have critique partners tell me I wrote floating heads in black boxes. It never occurred to me to spend time on visual description. Like the author you talk about, I skipped over long rambling descriptions in books. They were meaningless to me. For example, epic fantasy tends to spend pages and pages describing setting. Okay, I get it, it's a tree. I have the concept of tree no as firmly in my head. Can we

please move on? Yeah? I again, I can't really imagine what it's like to read this way. Well, the one thing that that the one thing that I can I can say that relates to this. And I may have mentioned this before, but ever ever reading a book and you get a pretty firm idea of what that the main character or secondary character looks like. Maybe you're you know,

they kind of form out of nothing. Maybe there you end up throwing in an actor or someone you know, you get a firm idea, and then you're like thirty pages in the book and the author mentioned that they have a mustache. Yeah, they start describe any like, no, stop, yeah, the boat has sailed that he had. This character has no mustache, they have no ponytail. He can't throw that in thirty pages. This is a clean shaven Danny DeVito.

You can't do this to me. Yeah. So I can imagine someone saying, all right, we get it, George, we know what they're eating dinner. We got it. Just tell me about the dynastic succession here. Okay, yeah, I can get it alright, So LJ continues. I have no problem being imaginative and capturing these stories and characters that I create, and I've learned to layer in visual description because most people are reliant on them. One of my strengths in

writing is dialogue and creating characterization through character interactions. I think I'm one of those people who can get flickers of occasional visual images, but not volition early. And the harder I concentrate on a visual image, the more it slips away. If you ask me to close my eyes and describe my husband of twenty seven plus years, I can tell you he has brown eyes and oval face, brown hair, a beard, and a mustache. But I don't see those things. They're just part of the package that

is him in my mind. My husband is a hyper visual spatial person. Over the years, we have had situations where he will remember something vividly describe it to me, but I will have no memory of it until we're back in the place it occurred or with the people he's referencing. UH, and the memory can come flooding back. It's as if I need a proximity trigger. I don't

feel as if I have any sort of disability. I'm just glad to know that others have the same perceptual style as I do, and knowing how my mind works allows me to compensate in situations that require strong visual skills. I enjoy your show very much, Best regards, LJ. Well, thanks for that email, l J. And I like the part you have about whether or not you consider it a disability. Obviously you don't. And I think that's something that we came across in in some of the other

reading that we did on this. Some people feel sort of at a loss because of this condition and other people don't. And I wonder what triggers that. Like, So, if you can't create mental images, what's the difference between feeling like you are suffering because of this condition versus feeling like it's no big deal, this is just how

your mind works. Yeah, I mean I feel like that the real takeomen is that that everyone has a slightly different suite of sensory memories and sensory visual manifestations in the mind, you know, um, And it's you know, it's hard to say with if one is better than the other, like like, for instance, I mean me, I might have you know, slightly or a little better visual memory than

some people. But there might be people listening to this that might think it's awful that I can't actually like like that, my memory of saying, you know, rubbing my son's head is more descriptive and visual. It's more linguistic and visual. As opposed to anything approaching like actual just sensory memory, like I have even troubled imagining what that would be like. Yeah, you can't imagine the feeling of plunging your face into a pie. Oh don't really know what? What?

What a sad day? Whoa? What's that? Why it's Carney? Oh no, I see Carney's feeling left out because we've been reading listener mail without you, Carney. Well, Carney, see the issue is this is not a full blown listener mail episode. This is very specifically in response to one episode we did a couple of weeks ago. So we weren't trying to hurt your feelings. Uh, we we just we just had to get on with it. And frankly, we couldn't find you this morning when we were looking

for you. But oh but you have one for it. Okay, we covered in rotten fruit, so that makes me think you may have been dumpster diving or something. All right, well we'll read this one. We'll see what do you have here for us, Carney. This is one for on the website that was left on stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Uh. Steph rights then and says how

to experience a Fantasia. Having completed an eight week Evelyn Wood course in speed reading in the late nineteen seventies, my class was given a small book of fiction to read called The Pearl. Unless twenty five minutes, the entire volume was consumed cover to cover. When finished, everyone else looked distressed. Not only had speed reading prevented them from experiencing the book visually like watching a movie, they didn't even seem to have much conscious memory at all of

the course of the story. They were astonished, however, to discover, as the teacher began quizzing them, that they could still answer questions about many of the book's specifics. One woman asked whether she could go back to reading the old way that she enjoyed more than a little frightened that she had exchanged one form of reading permanently for another. For my own part, there had been nothing to lose.

I had never experienced their word movies. I assumed, because of dyslexia as well as blind sight in my right eye, that I had learned somehow as a child to only store my understanding audibly. Thus I could easily read aloud very well, taking in whole paragraphs and using context correctly. Guess the identities of garbled spellings and squished margins before concentrating on knowing slash speaking each word allowed speed reading only seemed to slightly improve my ability to skim nothing more,

you know. Actually, the most interesting part of this comment to me isn't about the a fantasia, but about the classmate who is afraid that she had permanently exchanged methods of reading. I wonder if it's possible to do something like that. I mean, I I've had this experience before of uh, trying to read fiction to too quickly and then feeling sad about it. I haven't really had this much since since I was in school, And like I've been assigned a novel to read or something, and I'm like,

I got it, was read by tomorrow, better finish it tonight. Uh, And I just remember thinking, like, man, this is just not a way to read a novel. Oh man. I have not experienced this in a while, but I'm curious if if you've ever experienced this, or any readers have. But there have been times where I'm like, I'm heavily into into reading a particular the book, and I have a certain set visual feel for that book. Like the

visual universe of that book is is is pretty consistent. Uh, But then I'll do something like watching Miyazaki film one night or some other animated film, and then when I go and try and read the book, suddenly everything is animated.

Everything is in an illustrative mode. Everything resembles the look and feel of the animated picture I just saw and I and I have at times like put down the book and said, I'm just gonna wait till tomorrow because I am not going to engage in this world with a different visual motif that's entirely informed by the film

I just consume. It's almost like by watching the film, you've taken a drug that alters your your imagery, your alters your visual processing and puts you in a state of mind where you're unable to experience the book as you normally would. And maybe, I mean, I've never experienced that with with with non animated films. Maybe it works too to smaller degree. But you know, like maybe if you watch a Kubert film and then read your book, maybe the book is going to be more kubrick esque.

But but it maybe maybe it's just more pronounced with something like Miyazaki. But I don't know. I wonder if the same thing could happen with with like video games, you ever, Like like you're reading a book and then there's a video game you play that's a little too close in subject matter to what's going on in the book, or something like that, Like you end up you're reading Dracula,

but you you see all of it is Castlevania too exactly. Well, the more recent example I'm thinking, I was like, well, what if you're reading Coremick McCarthy's The Road and then you start playing The Last of Us on PlayStation kind of similar worlds and stories, and you start picturing, getting the visual uh, the visual imagination all garbled up. Yeah. I mean that comes back to something we discussed in

the first episode. So oftentimes, the the visual experience we have reading a book is so strong that we we don't even want to entertain the idea of a film adaptation. Yeah. I don't want to look at it. Yeah, because that is not it. That is not the thing that was in my head. It's a it's a clean shaven Danny de Vito, And if I have to see otherwise, I'm going to kick somebody in the face. All right, Well, looks like that's all that we have time for today.

But uh, and we unfortunately weren't able to get to all of your excellent emails, but but thank you so much for sending those in. We would, like I said, we do read all of them, and and they were fantastic and we really loved hearing back from you. It was it was a treat. Yeah, and we just knew

that there was so much material here. We just wanted to go ahead and get it out before we do one of our more regularly schedule three host listener mail episodes, because we didn't want to clog one of those up entirely with a Fantasia and we wanted to get these out closer to the original publication day. Yes, absolutely, but hey,

one more thing we're gonna do. We should put in our landing page for this episode on the website the contact information if you want to get in touch with that researcher we talked out in the previous episode, Adam's Aman, who has been collecting people who Orien say Fantasia for his research. So so we'll help put you in touch there if you are interested in being part of that. Indeed, all right, so once again If you want to get in touch with us, head on over to stuff to

blow your mind dot com. That's the mother shift. That's where we'll find all of our content, including all of the episode, with landing pages that include links to related content and some outside resources as well. And of course, if you want to get in touch with us about this or any other episode we've done recently, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Isn't how stuff works dot com has a time to about