Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #aphantasia
Most recents (5)
I'm very pleased to share that my recent work with the wonderful @Becca_Keogh_PhD, Sarah Robuck, and @ProfJoelPearson on episodic autobiographical #memory and #imagination in #aphantasia is out now in Cognition (authors.elsevier.com/a/1fHsW2Hx2pisH).
Thread below!
Thread below!
1/ What do you see in your mind’s eye when you remember the places you’ve been and the things you've experienced in your life? That first time at the beach, that summer picnic in the park- can you conjure those memories back again? What happens when you try to imagine the future? 
2/ Episodic memory and future prospection are functionally similar: both are everyday cognitive processes involving the reconstructive simulation of events and scenes, typically accompanied by anecdotally vivid online sensory replay (or 'preplay') in the form of visual imagery.
New work w talented @Becca_Keogh_PhD @marcusew8 shows that even without visual imagery those w #aphantasia can successfully perform lab-based & clinical visual working memory tasks. But they report different strategies & don't show the #VWM oblique effect
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
We used 4 types of working memory tasks in the lab.
Despite equivalent performance data (top row), aphantasic mnemonic strategy was very different (bottom row)
The eyes have it: The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength. New preprint from the dream team @LachlanKay1612 @Becca_Keogh_PhD @thandrillon biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
The pupil does not only adjust to ambient light, it encodes internal variables and responds to illusory brightness. Here, we show that it also tracks the strength of mental imagery!
We asked participants to perform a mental imagery task of shapes of different brightness and complexity. We recorded the pupil size during the task and focused on the pupillary light response, the difference in pupil size between bright & dark images
Podcast by @PillaiVisakan: The Untypical Podcast.
Visakan interviewed me recently about aphantasia (reporting a lack of visual mental imaging) and that should be up soon.
He's got some interesting conversations in there. open.spotify.com/show/1cOsDxbQj…
Visakan interviewed me recently about aphantasia (reporting a lack of visual mental imaging) and that should be up soon.
He's got some interesting conversations in there. open.spotify.com/show/1cOsDxbQj…
.@PillaiVisakan's podcast interview of me about my aphantasia and #aphantasia in general is up on Spotify (and I assume elsewhere): open.spotify.com/show/1cOsDxbQj…
.@PillaiVisakan thought about your 'math' question more: when doing internal math, I do imagine the tracing of numbers. It's akin to me drawing numbers/symbols w/ my hand; I have a tactile sense of tracing stuff, almost like short-lived sparkler tracers in air. But nothing visual
I’m not sure what magic caused this to appear in my timeline but it gave me a nudge at a point where I really needed a nudge (or maybe a good hard shove). It also spoke to a core fear: that I’d get there and nobody would believe me. How can this be a problem now at 48?
But of course it wasn’t just now - it’s been at least since university DVD probably before. It was just never noticed because I could gut through things and was basically quiet. The more I read about ADHD, the more things made sense.
So anyway, I went in yesterday. I had bad allergies as a cover story in case I lost my nerve. But they listened to me and now I’m going back next week to see where it goes.
