{"id":3949,"date":"2018-04-21T02:44:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T02:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/21\/aphantasia-a-life-without-mental-images-bbc-news\/"},"modified":"2018-04-21T02:56:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T02:56:37","slug":"aphantasia-a-life-without-mental-images-bbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/21\/aphantasia-a-life-without-mental-images-bbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Aphantasia: A life without mental images – BBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-34039054<\/a><\/p>\n

This is how my brain has worked as long as I can remember. It’s neat to learn that there’s finally some research on the subject \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

And here’s a well-written first-hand account of aphantasia (although the author’s experience differs from mine; I have plenty of mental audio, and to some extent other senses):<\/p>\n

https:\/\/m.facebook.com\/notes\/blake-ross\/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind\/10156834777480504\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can\u2019t \u201csee\u201d my father\u2019s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago. I thought \u201ccounting sheep\u201d was a metaphor. I\u2019m 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamned mind.<\/div>\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
If you tell me to imagine a beach, I ruminate on the \u201cconcept\u201d of a beach. I know there\u2019s sand. I know there\u2019s water. I know there\u2019s a sun, maybe a lifeguard. I know facts<\/span> about beaches. I know a beach when I see it, and I can do verbal gymnastics with the word itself.<\/div>\n
But I cannot flash to beaches I\u2019ve visited…I have no capacity to create any kind of mental image of a beach, whether I close my eyes or open them, whether I\u2019m reading the word in a book or concentrating on the idea for hours at a time\u2014or whether I\u2019m standing on the beach itself.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-34039054 This is how my brain has worked as long as I can remember. It’s neat to learn that there’s finally some research on the subject \ud83d\ude42 And here’s a well-written first-hand account of aphantasia (although the author’s experience differs from mine; I have plenty of mental audio, and to some extent other senses): https:\/\/m.facebook.com\/notes\/blake-ross\/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind\/10156834777480504\/ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-11H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3949"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3953,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3949\/revisions\/3953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}