Join us for a conversation with neurologist Dr. Adam Zeman as we explore the fascinating world of human imagination and mental imagery.
Drawing from his groundbreaking research on aphantasia and hyperphantasia, and celebrating the release of his new book “”The Shape of Things Unseen,”” Dr. Zeman will guide us through the latest discoveries in how our minds create, process, and experience mental imagery.
The event will feature an in-depth discussion of current debates in the field, including important conversations about terminology and the nature of unconscious imagery. Dr. Zeman will share insights from his extensive research and clinical experience, addressing how individuals with varying degrees of mental imageryโfrom those who experience no visual imagery to those with exceptionally vivid mental picturesโnavigate their inner worlds.
Dr. Zeman will also discuss findings from his latest book, exploring how imagination permeates every aspect of our daily lives, from memory and planning to creativity and consciousness. The talk will conclude with an audience Q&A session, offering attendees the opportunity to engage directly with one of the field’s leading researchers.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to explore the frontiers of imagination research and understand more about how our minds shape our experience of reality.
His book is available here:
I have a suspicion that the Dear participants of the conversation are unfamiliar with the technology of developing inner hearing and inner singing in professional musical education, which I have undergone. As a result of these trainings, I watch your wonderful video with the sound turned off, only reading the subtitles; the inner voice pronounces them at the volume with which I want; it can even be deafening.
As far as I know, the inner voice is associated with the accompanying ideomotorics of the vocal cords. My late wife, a singer with an alto voice, became hoarse when she listened to singers with high voices. That's why for me a musician without an inner voice (I've already met one in the group Aphantasia) is like a blind artist (although there are such people too).
I join the previous commentator, as I also do not play any games that require visual memory, including cards and dominoes. Mnemonic memorization does not help me at all! I also cannot draw, that is, I draw at 79 years old the same way I drew at the age of 10.
However, my question is Next: how do Dr. Zeman and his Associates collect facts for statistics and studies? What I have does not fall under any of the questions of various questionnaires about the degree of visualization that exist on the Internet: If I try to imagine something, a misty shadow of it appears and it disappears instantly. However, if I deliberately place this something in the back of my head, I can see it in a very small size, but in a fairly sharp image; although also unstable. Already since childhood, when trying to imagine something, I noticed that this something can appear in different parts of the head. This phenomenon is not mentioned anywhere. I would call it: intracerebral panoramic imagination. I think it is worth investigating.
19:13 Dr. Zeman discusses Aphantasia, nudging people towards STEM. I have found my experience to be the opposite. I cannot manipulate numbers in my head. When faced with doing titration calculations in Chemistry at school, I could never see a way forward. I cannot see the next move in algebra or geometry or chess or draughts. This became stark to me when seeing a talk by Steven Pinker, who was rebutting the idea (See George Lakoff and Lera Boroditsky) that language shapes the way we think. (Pinker is not thinking widely enough about this subject, BTW.) He used an example of non-linguistic thought to demonstrate that we think outside language boundaries. He illustrated his thesis using the 3D, segmented and angled shape matching exercise. He said that humans visualise the shape and turn it around in their 3D mind's eye to make a match. I remember thinking (I'd not heard of aphantasia or understood that it describes my experiences at this point) NO WE DON'T!
The reality is that I don't, and indeed cannot do this. Instead, I look at the angles and number of segments or size of the return portion of the shape to catalogue where shapes are the same and where differences lie. And I am good at this task.
It interests me if others have similar experiences with Mathematics and Chess et al.