Achi news desk-
Memory visualization is a common occurrence for many people. A whiff of cinnamon and ginger might whisk you back to your childhood kitchen to relive eating freshly baked cookies, while hearing a certain tune might trigger images of dancing with someone special.
Mary Wathen has never had that experience. When the 43-year-old lawyer from Newent, England, remembers baking with her mother, no images come to mind. She cannot visualize herself as a child opening presents, her husband’s face when he proposed, or even the birth of her children.
“When people say they can pick up images, to me that sounds pretty weird,” Wathen said. “I cannot relive any experience I see. I only see it once in a while. I am guided more by feelings and thoughts than I am by images.
“Right now, I don’t have an image of the birth of my boys, but I can tell you everything,” she added. “I can remember the feelings and describe the room and each birth in detail, but I will never see her again.”
A year ago Wathen discovered that she and her mother used a rare form of processing called aphantasia – their brains do not form mental images to remember or imagine. (Phantasia is the Greek word for imagination.) “Until recently, I had no idea that other people saw images. I assumed everyone was like me,” he said.
Much like being left-handed, aphantasia is not a disability or disease, experts say, just an interesting variation in the human experience.
“I understand concepts, I understand things, I have memories, but they are not supported by any images,” Wathen said. “I’ve read aphantasia is best described as ‘You have the same computer hardware as everyone else, but the monitor isn’t turned on.’ That really resonates with me.”
The Dutch artist, Geraldine van Heemstra, is at the other end of this unique way of processing. She has hyperphantasia and can bring memories to life, often as if they were happening again in the moment.
For van Heemstra, letters and numbers have colours, and people often have colorful auras that surround their bodies – so remembering her daughter’s birth is an experience full of warm tones and bright lights.
“I remember a blue screen and then our daughter’s head with a little sunrise over her head, probably because she was screaming her lungs out,” van Heemstra recalled with a smile. “It’s just a very beautiful and vivid memory, with very warm colors.”
While such vivid imagery can be a boon to an artist, it also has significant drawbacks. “Having too much imagination can also be a problem sometimes, as you can overthink things and become very insecure,” says van Heemstra, who splits her time between London and Edinburgh, Scotland.
If she is nervous about going somewhere, for example, she may overthink and experience déjà vu. “I think that happens because I’ve imagined it so vividly,” he said.
Other times, van Heemstra can’t shut her brain off. “Last night, my son persuaded me to watch a scary TV series about a woman who smuggled cocaine into Miami and shot a child in the head,” he said. “Then all night every time I tried to sleep it was like cameras in my head going through all these very, very colorful and scary images.”
Aphantasia is not a medical condition or a disability
About four percent of the world’s population can experience aphantasia, says neurologist Adam Zeman, professor of cognitive and behavioral neurology at the University of Exeter in England and honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Zeman coined the term in 2015 after meeting a man who had once been brought back to life but passed away after heart surgery.
“We did a brain imaging study and found that when he looked at things his brain responded normally, but when he tried to imagine them, there was no activation of the visual regions of the brain,” Zeman said.
Since then, research has exploded, said Zeman, who wrote a review of the science on aphantasia published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.. One of the developments is a method of objectively measuring the inability to visualize.
“If you have images and you imagine looking into the sun, your pupils actually constrict a bit,” says Zeman. “By imagining that you are looking into a dark room, your pupils will dilate a little. However, people with aphantasia do not show that effect.
Van Heemstra has created a tool that moves with the wind, allowing her to capture images created by air movement. (Geraldine van Heemstra/CNN)
“If you have imagery and are read a very scary story, you sweat; however, people with aphantasia do not,” he continued. “But they sweat if you show them scary pictures. So the interpretation is that you need imagery to generate some sort of gut response to an emotional story.”
Researchers are now realizing that aphantasia can be linked to memory impairment, autism or face blindness where people cannot recognize most faces, even the faces of loved ones. People with aphantasia are also more likely to be working in science, math or information technology, Zeman said. And although aphantasia can be caused by brain injury, some people, like Wathen and her mother, suffer from the condition from birth.
“We found that it seems to run in families, so if you have aphantasia, your first-degree relatives are about 10 times more likely to have it as well,” Zeman said.
Another finding: Many people with aphantasia dream visually. How can that be? This is because the processes involved in the production of images during waking and imaginative production in dreaming are quite different, says Zeman.
“People with aphantasia know what imagery is; they can’t call it during the day,” he said. “That lack of imagery usually affects all the senses, not just the mind’s eye.”
That is certainly true of Wathen, who cannot recreate an image, sound, smell, touch or taste. However, Wathen said she was often “led by emotions and felt things quite intensely” and would be able to describe a smell, taste or sound according to how it made her feel.
Wathen has a successful career as a lawyer and considers himself excellent at communicating complex information: “I don’t really rely on images in any way, shape or form, and don’t assume someone else does. .”
However, she does not enjoy fantasy fiction. “It’s just words on a page. I don’t go on a trip and visit places in my mind” – which also hinders her ability to role play with her children. She often watches her husband, who she has discovered has hyperphantasia, do so with ease.
“I watch with a little envy when I see them engrossed in pretend play like on a tractor or in a car race,” he said. “I’m much better at helping with homework or playing a real game.”
The most distressing aspect of aphantasia for Wathen, however, is the “fact that if I’m not with my children, I can’t see them. I can’t get an image of them. I can tell you in detail what they look like, their styles and even what clothes they have taken off this morning, but I have no image of them.
“It worries me to think that when I lose loved ones, my mother for example, I won’t be able to close my eyes and bring a picture of her.”
See too vivid
Zeman estimates that up to 10 percent of the world’s population has hyperphantasia, which is at the opposite end of the brain processing spectrum from aphantasia. People who experience highly vivid images are often in the arts and can experience heightened emotions, Zeman said.
Mary Wathen has not been able to see images in her mind since she was a child. (Mary Wathen/CNN)
“Imagery has been described as an emotional amplifier, so I think it would be a fair bet that people with hyperphantasia tend to have more volatile emotional responses than those with aphantasia, although that has not been studied good again,” he said.
Brain scans show that people with vivid images have “pretty strong connections between the front of the brain and the sensory centers in the back of the brain,” Zeman said. “If you have aphantasia, those connections are much weaker. So the difference between the two may be connectivity in the brain.”
There are clear advantages and disadvantages to being on both ends of the sensory spectrum, says Zeman.
One of the benefits of aphantasia, he says, is that it may be easier to live in the moment because of the lack of repetitive visual distractions.
“With hyperphantasia, we’re concerned it could make people more prone to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder),” he said. “People sometimes confuse what they have imagined with what has actually happened or allow themselves to constantly visualize scary outcomes that didn’t happen.”
For example, a mother whose children had left a car shortly before a collision with another was then plagued by vivid images of what might have happened if the children were still in the car with her, said Zeman.
People with hyper-visual brains often have synesthesia, says Zeman, where the brain experiences more than one sense at the same time, such as tasting colors, feeling sounds or assigning specific colors to numbers and letters.
Growing up with a different brain
Although many people with hyperphantasia are happy with their abilities, the condition can be isolating. In response to cruel teasing from her brothers and school friends, van Heemstra learned to hide her sensory abilities as a child.
“When I was little, I used to be very quiet about how my mind worked,” she says. “I could play with anything; like literally with a few sticks, we could build huge towns with rivers and bridges and plant trees, but my younger brother couldn’t visualize it. So he would say, ‘I don’t see anything, you’re stupid,’ and jump on him.
“It was also quite difficult at school, like with maths, where we would see the numbers in color,” said van Heemstra. “Even though I knew how to do the math and the correct answer, I didn’t like the result because the colors of the numbers didn’t go together, so I would change them.”
Van Heemstra and Wathen have never met or spoken to each other, but both told CNN that they are talking about their unique brains in the hope that it will help others, especially young children who may feel alienated in the school.
“It was so frustrating at school because I would explain something, and then I would be laughed at,” van Heemstra said. “I felt very insecure, and I think so many children can suffer from that, it doesn’t matter if they have aphantasia or hyperphantasia, because you are made to feel that you are so different.”
Many primary school teachers focus on promoting a child’s creativity, but if they are not aware of the differences in the way the brain processes sensory information, they could easily leave a student behind due to an appearance of disengagement “when it’s really not something for her brain. enables them to do,” Wathen said.
“It is so important for children to feel inspired and included at school,” she said. “The more aware we are of these things, the more sympathetic and empathetic we can be – all part of trying to live in harmony.”
