Imagine a sunset, now imagine you can't

Summary

Podcast Summary: Unexplainable – "Imagine a Sunset, Now Imagine You Can't"

Introduction to Aphantasia In the episode titled "Imagine a Sunset, Now Imagine You Can't," host Manning Nguyen delves into the intriguing phenomenon of aphantasia—the inability to visualize images in one's mind. This condition challenges the conventional understanding of human imagination and sensory perception.

Personal Story: Alice Coles The episode centers around Alice Coles, a professional artist who discovered she has aphantasia. Alice shares her personal journey, revealing how she struggled to visualize despite her creative profession.

• [01:08] Alice Coles: "There's just a lot of words going in my brain all the time."
• [02:47] Alice Coles: "I can't see anything. I just know."

Alice recounts her realization of aphantasia during her college years while practicing yoga, where visualizations played a significant role. She was surprised to learn that others could vividly visualize images, a capability she lacked.

Scientific Insights on Aphantasia

Adam Zeman’s Research

Adam Zeman, a neurologist at the University of Exeter Medical School, provides a comprehensive overview of aphantasia. He explains its origins, prevalence, and the complexities involved in understanding this condition.

• [06:03] Adam Zeman: "We borrowed Aristotle's term for the imagination, or the mind's eye, which is fantasia, and tagged an A on the end to denote the absence of that capacity."

Zeman discusses the case study of MX, a patient who lost the ability to visualize after cardiac surgery, highlighting that aphantasia affects approximately 2-3% of the population. He also touches upon the potential genetic components and associations with other conditions like autism and depression.

Joel Pearson’s Contributions

Joel Pearson, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of New South Wales, Australia, explores the neurological underpinnings of visual imagery. He describes how brain imaging techniques reveal the absence of visual cortex activation in individuals with aphantasia.

• [07:53] Joel Pearson: "A general definition of a visualization, or a visual image is forming an image in your visual cortex that is detached, so it's not coming from the outside world."

Pearson emphasizes the challenges in studying mental imagery due to its inherently private nature and discusses objective methods to measure visual imagery, such as observing pupil responses and using brain imaging technologies like fMRI.

The Role of Mental Imagery in Emotion and Mental Health

Emily Holmes’ Research

Emily Holmes, a psychology professor at the Uppsala Institute in Sweden, examines the profound connection between mental imagery and emotional responses. Her studies demonstrate that visualizing scenarios—both positive and negative—intensifies emotional reactions more than verbal descriptions alone.

• [16:25] Emily Holmes: "The more you use imagery, the more it kind of cranks up the volume on your emotional amplification."

Holmes highlights the potential protective aspects of aphantasia, suggesting that the inability to form mental images could reduce the prevalence of intrusive memories in PTSD patients.

• [18:45] Emily Holmes: "If someone had a difficulty forming mental images, then it would stand to reason it would be very difficult to have intrusive images, which could be protective."

Aphantasia in Creative Professions

Alice Coles discusses how aphantasia has influenced her approach to art. Initially feeling disadvantaged, she realized that visualization is not a prerequisite for creativity. Instead, she leverages muscle memory, anatomical knowledge, and external references to produce her artwork.

• [20:11] Alice Coles: "If I could visualize, I would be a better artist. And I sat with that for a while, and then I realized that's simply just not true."

Alice compares her creative process to following written directions rather than relying on internal images, demonstrating that creativity can thrive through alternative cognitive strategies.

Reconciling Aphantasia with Creativity Over time, Alice embraced her aphantasia as a unique aspect of her creative identity. She found that not being tied to visualizations allowed for greater exploration and spontaneity in her art.

• [22:23] Alice Coles: "I'm pretty glad I don't visualize. Honestly, I think I have an overactive imagination. And like, I would rather not visualize. I'm okay with it."

The Diversity of Human Cognitive Experiences The episode concludes by emphasizing that aphantasia is not a dysfunction but a variation of human experience. Manning Nguyen and the experts highlight the importance of recognizing and valuing diverse cognitive processes, advocating for broader conversations about neurodiversity.

• [23:37] Alice Coles: "If we start opening the conversation of I don't visualize, where else can we start recognizing each other's differences?"

Conclusion "Imagine a Sunset, Now Imagine You Can't" offers a comprehensive exploration of aphantasia, blending personal narratives with scientific research. It challenges listeners to reconsider the fundamental aspects of imagination and perception, highlighting the rich tapestry of human cognitive diversity.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• [01:08] Alice Coles: "There's just a lot of words going in my brain all the time."
• [06:03] Adam Zeman: "We borrowed Aristotle's term for the imagination, or the mind's eye, which is fantasia, and tagged an A on the end to denote the absence of that capacity."
• [16:25] Emily Holmes: "The more you use imagery, the more it kind of cranks up the volume on your emotional amplification."
• [20:11] Alice Coles: "If I could visualize, I would be a better artist. And I sat with that for a while, and then I realized that's simply just not true."
• [23:37] Alice Coles: "If we start opening the conversation of I don't visualize, where else can we start recognizing each other's differences?"

This episode sheds light on the mysterious realm of aphantasia, offering insights into how the human mind operates beyond traditional sensory experiences and encouraging a deeper appreciation for cognitive diversity.

Transcript

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[Manning Nguyen]

When I close my eyes and let my mind wander, I start to see images. The green canopy of redwood trees, or the mushroom risotto I ate last night for dinner, or my sister's face. Like, I can picture all this in my head. And that's something that I've always taken for granted. Until I spoke to Alice Coles.

[Alice Coles]

There's just a lot of words going in my brain all the time.

[Manning Nguyen]

Words, but not pictures.

[Alice Coles]

You know, there's the song going. There's like TikTok audio down there. There's like the running to do list of stuff that I haven't done. There's the guilt over something I said in sixth grade, you know, and then there's like all the other stuff just on top.

[Manning Nguyen]

When she was in college, Alice started to realize that some people could imagine more than just words, which was a little shocking to her.

[Alice Coles]

I think a big part of it was when I started doing yoga. In yoga, there's a lot of like, visualize yourself in your happy place and stuff like that. I've always heard that kind of stuff before and like, I've tried it and I'm always just like, I don't know what this means.

[Manning Nguyen]

But the people in Alice's class kept telling her about these visions that they could almost literally see.

[Alice Coles]

One of the girls was talking about this beautiful visualization that they had had that these like, ravens were bursting out of their stomach and flying away. And they felt like this amazing release because they finally felt like they were embracing their body. And it was, I was so happy for them. But I also was like, you saw that I. Is that normal? I was, I, I. Is that what's supposed to Happen, because that seems worrying. I was like, what? What? What are you talking about?

[Manning Nguyen]

As she started thinking about it, Alice realized that this happened to her all the time.

[Alice Coles]

You know, I'd always read about things like picturing your loved one's face. And I was like, why can't I picture anyone's face? Why can't I picture my old house in England? Even though I can remember. Even though I can remember my room was yellow and it had a mural on the wall. And when you came in, you went to the left and out the window was a park. And I can remember all that, and I can remember the layout and everything, but I can't see it.

[Manning Nguyen]

For a long time, this was just a mystery to Alice. But one day she came across a video on YouTube.

[Emily Holmes]

Whenever I'd read self help books that required you to visualize your ideal self, or even guided meditations that asked to imagine sitting on a private beach at sunset, I could understand the concept, but I couldn't believe that anybody could actually see a beach in their head. It's just fantasy talk, right?

[Manning Nguyen]

Someone else couldn't visualize images either.

[Emily Holmes]

To put it simply, if the brain is like a computer that can store and access data, mine seemingly runs perfectly fine except for the fact that the screen is switched off.

[Alice Coles]

And I was like, that's me. That is me 100%. I am a zero. It is all blacklit. I can't. I can't see anything. And I called my mom and I was like, mom, can you. Can you visualize? And she was like, yeah, I can overlay stuff into the real world if I want to. And I was like, excuse me.

[Manning Nguyen]

Alice called up the rest of her family. She called up her friends, she grilled everybody she knew about whether they could see images in their mind. And she was a little shook that so many of them could.

[Alice Coles]

When you kind of put a name to it, there is a sense of loss or missing out of, oh, well, I'm supposed to be able to do this and I can't. And then for me, there was almost an immediate sense of jealousy that, oh, my God, this is why it's so hard. Why can't I be like them?

[Manning Nguyen]

I'm Manning Nguyen. And this week on Unexplainable. Why can't some people see things with their mind's eye and what's going on in the brain when the rest of us can? All knowledge must come through the senses, all that we perceive and all of the awareness of our daily existence.

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Light.

[Alice Coles]

Double rainbow. Oh, my God. Sound.

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Listen to Me.

[Manning Nguyen]

Listen to me.

[Alice Coles]

Touch, squishes, odors and tastes.

[Manning Nguyen]

What are your thoughts concerning the human senses? As meat and wine are nourishment to.

[Adam Zemin]

The body, the senses provide nutriment to the soul.

[Manning Nguyen]

All that we perceive, See all that. The awareness theory. All knowledge must come through the senses.

[Adam Zemin]

I have an incredible sense of touch.

[Manning Nguyen]

All that we perceive, tasting, all of.

[Adam Zemin]

The awareness, smell it.

[Manning Nguyen]

All knowledge must come through the senses that makes sense. The inability to picture an image in your mind only got its name a few years ago.

[Adam Zemin]

We felt there was a phenomenon to describe and that it deserved a name.

[Manning Nguyen]

This is Adam Zemin, a neurologist at the University of Exeter Medical School in the uk.

[Adam Zemin]

We borrowed Aristotle's term for the imagination, or the mind's eye, which is fantasia, and tagged an A on the end to denote the absence of that capacity. And so that was how the term aphantasia was coined.

[Manning Nguyen]

Adam first came across aphantasia in 2005 with a curious medical case.

[Adam Zemin]

The patient was referred to me, who his GP said his general practitioner said had lost the ability to imagine.

[Manning Nguyen]

This man, who the case study just called mx, used to love getting lost in his imagination.

[Adam Zemin]

He used to get himself to sleep by imagining places he'd visited and faces of friends and family.

[Manning Nguyen]

But after getting cardiac surgery, something changed.

[Adam Zemin]

He said, when I read a novel, the descriptions in the novel no longer conjure a visual scene which I used to enter if I lose my keys. I used to be able to visualize where I'd put them down, and I can no longer do that.

[Manning Nguyen]

Adam and his colleagues gave MX a range of tests and found that his vision was fine. His working memory was also fine. So Adam gave him another test to figure out whether he could visualize something in his mind.

[Adam Zemin]

So, for example, if I ask you to tell me which is darker, the green of grass or the green of a pine tree, you will probably call the two shades to your mind's eye and answer on the basis of visualization. MX could answer questions like that without any difficulty. And when you asked him how, he said, well, I just know. I can't see anything. I just know.

[Manning Nguyen]

Here was a patient presenting a symptom that he'd never come across before, but who seemed to be fine on most measures of psychological testing. Adam was stumped.

[Adam Zemin]

I realized that I knew very little about visualization, and so it sent me both to the neurological literature about people who lost the ability to visualize, and also to the neuroscientific literature about what happens in our brains when we visualize.

[Joel Pearson]

A general definition of a visualization, or a visual image is forming an image in your visual cortex that is detached, so it's not coming from the outside world.

[Manning Nguyen]

This is Joel Pearson. He's a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of New South Wales in Australia, and he specializes in visual imagery.

[Joel Pearson]

It's not coming from your eyes, from your retina. You're not seeing something perceptually. You're voluntarily creating that.

[Manning Nguyen]

But visualizing is still related to how you see.

[Joel Pearson]

When you look around the room now and you're seeing, you know, or you're driving a car or whatever you're doing, you're seeing things, a lot of information is hitting your eyes, your retina, it's shooting back to your visual cortex. And so that's going upwards, if you like, from your eyes up into your brain.

[Manning Nguyen]

When we visualize, similar parts of the brain are activated, but at a lower intensity. So it's almost like we're having the experience of seeing something in real time, even if we're just imagining it.

[Joel Pearson]

I think a good way to think about this is that imagery is like a virtual reality engine that we simulate things.

[Manning Nguyen]

But visual imagery has historically been really hard to study.

[Joel Pearson]

It's something that's inherently private. It's inside someone's own mind, and no one else knows what they're doing with their mental imagery.

[Manning Nguyen]

In order to measure Aphantasia, scientists can use something called the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire.

[Joel Pearson]

And it runs people through a bunch of questions. And it's simple things like, think of last time you saw a sunset. Now try and imagine that sunset as best you can. Rate that sunset in terms of vividness.

[Manning Nguyen]

But self reports aren't really rigorous enough to base a whole science off of. And Joel realized that there weren't a ton of good tests to measure visual imagery, so he started working on some.

[Joel Pearson]

So we've been on a mission to develop objective, reliable techniques.

[Manning Nguyen]

Like there's one where you can observe people's eyes and tell them to imagine looking at something really bright, like the sun.

[Joel Pearson]

So the pupil right in your eye, when you look at a bright light, it contracts, it shrinks down here, very tiny, so it's letting less light through. Turns out when you imagine bright things, something very similar happens. Your pupil changes, you imagine dark things, it relaxes and opens up again.

[Manning Nguyen]

And you can also put sensors on people's skin to see how they react when you tell them a story with visual details.

[Joel Pearson]

So I could ask you to imagine something very scary and see what your emotional Response to that is the stronger your imagery is, the stronger that response.

[Manning Nguyen]

Scientists can also use brain imaging technology like FMRI to see which parts of the brain light up when someone visualizes. And that's exactly what Adam did to study his patient mx in a brain imaging study.

[Adam Zemin]

Whereas you or I, assuming that you have imagery activate visual areas of our brain when we visualize, he was unable to do so. So when he looked at a famous face, his brain activated quite normally. But when he tried to visualize it, he failed to activate those visual regions of the brain.

[Manning Nguyen]

Adam thinks that MX lost his ability to visualize because of a stroke that happened during his surgery, which damaged parts of his brain. And other kinds of injuries can lead to aphantasia too. But something like 2 to 3% of people have aphantasia. An injury isn't the only cause.

[Adam Zemin]

There are a number of ways in which you can arrive at aphantasia, which makes sense given that we know quite a complex network of regions in the brain is involved in visualization.

[Manning Nguyen]

Other people have also developed aphantasia because of psychological reasons.

[Adam Zemin]

It can occur in the context of depression, of depersonalization disorder, and of psychosis.

[Manning Nguyen]

But the largest group of people with aphantasia are people who have had it for their entire lives. And this is where things get a little mysterious.

[Adam Zemin]

We don't know very much yet about the mechanism of lifelong aphantasia.

[Manning Nguyen]

We know it's associated with certain conditions.

[Adam Zemin]

It's sometimes associated with difficulties with face recognition, sometimes with difficulties with autobiographical memory, sometimes with autistic spectrum disorder, and sometimes with none of the above.

[Manning Nguyen]

Adam also thinks that there might be a genetic component.

[Adam Zemin]

If you have aphantasia, there's a roughly tenfold increase in the likelihood that a first degree relative of yours will have it.

[Manning Nguyen]

But scientists don't really know what causes someone to be born with it. And there doesn't seem to be any singular part of the brain that we can point to and say, yes, I see this person has aphantasia.

[Adam Zemin]

I'm sure aphantasia is more than one thing. I think it's a variation in experience, a feature of experience. And it can occur in a number of contexts.

[Manning Nguyen]

People with aphantasia can have really varied internal lives. Not everyone is bothered by it. And like we heard at the top, a lot of them don't even realize they have it until well into their lives.

[Adam Zemin]

So it raises the question of why we have imagery if we don't need it.

[Manning Nguyen]

What are these mental images really even used for? That's after the break.

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[Manning Nguyen]

Unexplainable we're back. I'm Manning Wen. Before the break, we were talking about people who don't have the ability to picture images in their minds. And a lot of them live perfectly healthy lives. Which raises a bigger what is imagery?

[Emily Holmes]

Even for One really important thing that imagery does is allows you to imagine things that aren't there, either in space or in time.

[Manning Nguyen]

Emily Holmes is a psychology professor at the Uppsala Institute in Sweden, and she studies imagery. Emily's found that the world inside our heads is really closely tied with our emotions.

[Emily Holmes]

The more you use imagery, the more it kind of cranks up the volume on your emotional amplification.

[Manning Nguyen]

Emily and her team have done studies where they tell one group of people to think of a concept in words, and then they tell the other group to imagine the same concept but using an image instead.

[Emily Holmes]

People who imagined the scenarios had a far stronger emotional effect than people who merely thought about them in words. So if those scenarios were negative events, like slipping on the stairs, they'd become, for example, more anxious. And also the converse if those scenarios were positive events, like a picture of chocolate cake and the word eat, then people also had more positive emotions.

[Manning Nguyen]

It's similar to Joel's experiment where people with sensors on their skin heard scary stories. That study shows the same thing.

[Emily Holmes]

Simply by manipulating instructions to think in imagery rather than words, those people who think in imagery have a far more powerful impact on their emotions, both to make them more negative, but also to make them more positive when exposed to the same information.

[Manning Nguyen]

The question is why? Why would our brains be wired to use images to intensify emotions?

[Emily Holmes]

There are all sorts of reasons in mental imagery where having a mental imagery might be really powerful and that might be something we want to happen, like we want to read a poem, imagine a sunset, and feel moved.

[Manning Nguyen]

But Emily's found that intensifying emotions can also have a downside.

[Emily Holmes]

There are studies going back, for example, to the 1990s that show that people who use imagery a lot tend to score higher on measures like anxiety or tendency to feel fears and phobias. If imagery causes a powerful impact on emotion, it actually can be really disruptive and cause micro fluctuations all the time in daily life.

[Manning Nguyen]

Emily's also a clinician, so she works a lot with patients struggling with ptsd. And there a key defining symptom is intrusive imagery, the kind that just pops up where you don't want it to.

[Emily Holmes]

And in that case, people can have images of difficult events, stressful events, and traumatic events that have happened in the past. When those images pop to mind, they might just be milliseconds long, but they can cause a huge emotional reaction.

[Manning Nguyen]

In this case, aphantasia could be particularly helpful.

[Emily Holmes]

If someone had a difficulty forming mental images, then it would stand to reason it would be very difficult to have intrusive images, which could be protective.

[Alice Coles]

Actually.

[Manning Nguyen]

The idea that having little or no visual imagery could actually be protective against PTSD or help dull traumatic memories, it's just a hypothesis, but it's an interesting question.

[Emily Holmes]

One of the things to say about mental imagery is that we need to do so. So so much more research. We really are at the base camp of our understanding.

[Manning Nguyen]

And studying mental imagery can help scientists learn how our brains make sense of the world.

[Emily Holmes]

By opening up the doors to the science of mental imagery, it starts unlocking keys to, okay, could we think about this problem in a different way? Could we create a technique that isn't just talking to somebody, but actually working with this problematic imagery? I think that's really exciting. I think it means that there are all sorts of innovations, particularly for mental health treatments, that are on the horizon and out there, yet to be explored and implemented.

[Manning Nguyen]

Imagination is a powerful tool, but it's not just limited to visual imagery.

[Emily Holmes]

It's like smelling with the mind's nose or hearing through the mind's ears. We can imagine the sound of the tune Happy Birthday, for example, even though someone's not actually singing that.

[Manning Nguyen]

Our brains can also use abstract symbols, concepts, verbal thoughts, all sorts of strategies to imagine the world.

[Emily Holmes]

It's a bit like using a navigation app on your phone. You could either choose to have the map of the world and navigate it, or you could choose to take the written list of instructions. But a lot of times we can solve the same task in different ways, and there's no right or wrong. You know, the human brain is excluding, exquisitely wired up to solve problems.

[Manning Nguyen]

This is why I wanted to talk to Alice, the woman I spoke to in the beginning of the episode. She doesn't Just have Aphantasia. She's actually a professional artist.

[Alice Coles]

Like, I was drawing before I could talk, before I could walk, like, you know, I was. I had a. I've had a pencil in my hand for as long as I can remember.

[Manning Nguyen]

When she first found out about her Aphantasia, she started doubting herself as an artist.

[Alice Coles]

This is why I can't get anatomy yet. This is why I can't picture what this pose would look like in my head. This is why I feel like I'm so reliant on references. If I could visualize, I would be a better artist. And I sat with that for a while, and then I realized that's simply just not true. Because, first of all, all the masters throughout all of history have used references.

[Manning Nguyen]

Alice relies on references, too. She's also built up knowledge over time about anatomy and human proportions and what colors go well together that she doesn't need to visualize.

[Alice Coles]

It's more about muscle memory and knowing the different relationships between proportions and things like that than it is about drawing a picture that you see in your head.

[Manning Nguyen]

So it's kind of like the analogy of using Google Maps versus reading the directions. When Alice is figuring out what to illustrate, she's using the written directions.

[Alice Coles]

Someone else might see their image, but my brain will say, okay, I'm going to do an eight and a half by 11 piece. I'm going to use my friend Momo as a reference. I want her to be facing to the left. I'm going to incorporate amethyst crystals coming up from the bottom left and spiking upwards towards her. And the whole piece is going to be pale lavender pastels and some light gold, light silver tones.

[Manning Nguyen]

Over time, Alice started seeing that Aphantasia wasn't something that she had to overcome. It can be a strength.

[Alice Coles]

I think one of the beautiful things about that is I'm not generally tied to an image that's popped up in my head. So there's a lot of exploration. And I always like to think of it as the characters. They come out of the page. I'm not putting them there. I'm just kind of releasing them from the page.

[Manning Nguyen]

Aphantasia is also something that helps her quiet her mind.

[Alice Coles]

When I'm stressed and struggling, especially with art, I can just take a deep breath, close my eyes, and it's just black. It's like this void that I can just sink into and allow thoughts to come to me.

[Manning Nguyen]

And as she's leaned into her own unique creative process, Alice doesn't really stress on what she's missing anymore.

[Alice Coles]

I'm pretty glad I don't visualize. Honestly, I think I have an overactive imagination. And like, I would rather not visualize. I'm okay with it.

[Manning Nguyen]

Every single one of the researchers that I've spoken to has emphasized that Aphantasia isn't a dysfunction, it's not a lack. Some researchers didn't even want to call it a condition. It's just a variation of human experience. People live fine, full, creative lives without visual imagery. Because there's more than one way to think.

[Alice Coles]

If we start opening the conversation of I don't visualize, where else can we start recognizing each other's differences? Being someone that's like, neurodivergent, like having ADHD or autism or somebody that struggles mental illness? I have bipolar or people that deal with anxiety, depression. Our brains are different, but everyone's brain is different.

[Manning Nguyen]

This episode was reported and produced by me, Manning Nguyen. We had editing from Brian Resnik, Noam Hassenfeld, Katherine Wells and Meredith Hodnot, who scored the episode along with Noam. Richard Seema did our fact checking and Christian Ayala did our mixing and our sound design. The rest of the Unexplainable team includes Bird Pinkerton and Tory Dominguez. To read more about some of the topics we cover on the show, or to find episode transcripts, check out our [e-mail] unexplainable and if you have any thoughts about the show, you can always email us@ unexplainableox.com or you could leave us a review or a rating, which we would love to Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back next week.

[Emily Holmes]

Sam.