Latest / Do You F*cking Mind? / Brain Fact: Aphantasia: When You Can’t Picture It

Transcript

Brain Fact: Aphantasia: When You Can’t Picture It · Do You F*cking Mind?

• 0:16
  Speaker 1: So the brain factor of today is a fantasia. Now,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: this is a condition that affects between two percent to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: five percent off the population, which is actually quite a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: bit when I think about it, And statistically speaking, that
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: would mean that a.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Few like thousand of you guys are listening here.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: If not, you know, a high number would likely have
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: a fantasia going by these statistics.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to get you to do something.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get you to close your eyes right
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: now while you're listening to this, and I want you
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to imagine something. Imagine that you're sitting on a bench
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: in a park and there's no one next to you
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: on that bench.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's just you, and you look up and in front
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: of you there's it's.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Quite a rich park. Okay, there's a lot going on.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: There's all these plants that are quite short. Then there's
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: really really tall trees, and then you look past those
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: trees and there's skyscrapers behind that park. Now, in this imagination,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I want you to ask yourself were their animals, were
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: their birds, pets? Were people walking past? Where the people
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: on roller skates?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: What was going on? How many people were around you?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Was it just busy with plants and trees, but there
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: was no one else around you but yourself. And now
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: open your eyes and realize that there are some people
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that actually would not have been able to picture anything
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: that I just mentioned. Okay, so that is a fantasia.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: It's the inability to visualize or very limited ability to visualize.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And this is also referred as image free thinking, or
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: some people refer to it as blind imagination. So it's
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: just an inability to picture something in your mind's eye.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So if you can't see something in your mind's eye,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: how does that affect you in your day.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: To day life.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: They did a bunch of studies on people with a
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: fantasia and a control group of people that did not
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: have a fantasia and this and one particular study was
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: where they got the participants in both the groups to
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: draw images based on photos that they had shown them,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: so photos.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Of rooms like I think it was like three different rooms, and.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Then the participants would then draw an image or an
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: image of each photo that they had seen. What they
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: found was that in the a fantasia group there was
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: substantially less detail in those pictures versus the control group,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: or really interestingly, the a fantasia group sometimes would use
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: words instead of images to describe what they recalled.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: So even though though they were saying, we've shown you
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Kitchen, for example, now you've got to close your as
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: imagine this kitchen, or you don't even have to close them,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: but imagine this kitchen in your mind's eye and recreate
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it via drawing. And there were some people in that
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: control group that instead of drawing these images, they were
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: writing down everything that they had seen, so you know, table, knives, sink.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Et cetera.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And this shows that they have a different way. People
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: with a fantasia have a different way of remembering things
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: that is a different kind of representation other than visual representation.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: So in this case with these participants, they were seeing
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: verbal representation. It can affect if you have a fantasia,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: It can affect certain aspects of your memory because a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: lot of the time visual visualization and imagery is used
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: to aid in our memories. So it can really affect
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: autobiographical memories, so these life memories of events in your life,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: because we rely quite heavily on visual imagery from our past.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So these memories, while of course you can still recount
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: these certain major things in your life happening, they might
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: not be as rich in detail or context if you
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: can't visualize the imagery around it. And because you don't
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: have the imagery around it, that memory might not be
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: as strong in your mind versus someone who can add
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: all these other components to it. Because the richer a
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: memory is, that is, with detail or with emotion, the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: easier it is going to be to recall and kind
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of keep that memory in your long term memory. Another
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: interesting thing is that this is not always in some cases, yes,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: but it's not always across all senses, so they can
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: you know, someone with a fantasia can imagine a tune
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: or a song, but not the imagery or the visual
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: images that go with it, or smells and things like that.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And they might also experience visual imagery in their dreams.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: So you'll hear of for a lot of people that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: have a fantasia but also have visual dreams. But remember
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: that it's very different to try and imagine something at will.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: So think, okay, right now, I've got to picture something
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: in my mind to now, So you're at will trying
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: to visually recall something versus spontaneous imagery when you're sleeping.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: They're two completely different processes of the brain. Another thing
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that people with a fantasia have reported is that they
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: are imagining concepts more so than this idea of an image.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So one person in particular, in an interview that I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: was watching on YouTube, describes it as a cloud of
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: words that are bunched together to represent where things are.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So they know it for a word, and attached to
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: that word is another word. Attached to that word is
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: another word. So if you ask this person to imagine
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: or describe what their bathroom vanity looks like, they would
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: be able to tell me aspects of it, what is
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: on there, like a list of things. But they're not
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: doing this through visualization, whereas someone without a fantasia could
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: literally think instantly, you could think, my bathroom vanity, you
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: know where things are kept, you know if they're going
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to be in the doors, if they're sitting on the vanity.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: How many things are do you have your hands? So
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: what does that hands look like?
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: You've got all of that in your visual imagination, whereas
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: someone with a fantasia is simply going back to these
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: concepts and these word clouds. So that's one of the
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: common ways that they will recall something. This was discovered
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties by Sir Francis Galton, and he
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: discovered it because he was asking people to visualize things
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: like a breakfast table, and he realized that there was
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people that just were not able to
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: visualize their breakfast table at all. And in most cases
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: this occurs from birth, but most people don't even discover
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: that they have this until they're teens, early to late teens.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: That's a common time for people to realize that they
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: have a fantasia. And the reason for this is that
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it's not until they hear other people explain visualization in
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a way that they that it actually pings something and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: they're like, wait a minute, I've never thought a lot
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: of people that have a fantasia. They say that they've
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: always heard people talk about visualization, but they never made
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the link of like visual to visualization and imagine to image.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So they thought, here, I am using my imagination, but
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: not with visual images. So a lot of people will
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: live into their teens sometimes later and think whoa, whoa,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: what do you mean you see an actual image?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about? You know? So it's it's
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: often as a child.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: You know you're working with what you've got, and you
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: don't really notice the deaficet, especially because when you talk
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to other children, they're not describing things in such rich
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: detail versus how maybe someone would in adulthood, so it
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: might not be noticeable until they're a lot older.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: And it normally okay.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Scientists don't know what causes it, why it happens, but
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: we know that it is often through birth. It's something
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: in the genes that's causing this, and it can also
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: be caused through.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Trauma or a brain injury.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And when I say trauma, that could be physical trauma
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: or it may be emotional trauma as well may cause
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: something like this. They find that in people with a fantasia,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: your visual activity is normal when you're seeing things in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: front of them. So when you wire someone up or
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: when you're putting someone through an fMRI and watching the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: activity of the brain when they're getting someone to actually
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: look at an image, the visual activity is normal within.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: The brain regions as anybody else.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: But they found that when they asked the participant to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: imagine something, whereas normally the visual areas in your brain
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: would light up when you imagine something, because it's all
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: linked to imagery, they're finding that other areas of the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: brain are lighting up instead, and one area in particular
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: is the semantic retrieval part lit up, and this is
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: because often they're using words to imagine a face, for example,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: or words to imagine the room instead of images. It
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: also can affect your memory in the sense of using
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: imagery to help jog your memory.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: So if you look at me, for example, when I
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: go for.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: A walk or a drive, or I'm going somewhere new,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I semi consciously but very subconsciously, I use imagery to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: help create landmarks in my mind and create like a
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: map of where I've been, so a building, a certain tree.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: You know, when I turn a corner, I like kind
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: of you know, cement the image of what that corner
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: look like when I turn. And I don't do this
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: that actively, but I know that when I'm returning and
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to find my way back, that's when I'm
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: pulling out all these images of this map that I've
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: laid out in my mind. And I've always done that
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to get places. So you can imagine that someone who
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't have this visual representation is going to either use
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: a completely different way of finding their way back, or
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: they might have difficulty in finding their way back due
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to the fact that they can't use visual imagery.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: So that is the brain factor of today. There's currently
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: no known way of treating.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It as it stands, but of course there's always going
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: to be, you know, more research and study is done
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: as to also the cause, because we're really in the dark.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Science is really in the dark about what exactly causes
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: it as well.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Hopefully you found that interesting.