![]() ![]() ![]() I think of this idea because I know for me and my cousin it is hard to remember our childhoods. A study with people and aphantasia and long-term memory might be a good idea as well to see if it is even possible for people with aphantasia to deep-process things in the way others can. What other parts of the brain change with the connection? It could also help in discovering why there are mental images, or why mental images are more vivid in people with mental disorders, or why creating mental images helps with long term memory. We need to figure out why this bad connection occurs. Of course, further studies need to still be done. Meaning that it the lack of images is not poor metacognition, people with aphantasia really just can’t create mental pictures. In the brain of a person with aphantasia, there is less feedback from the frontal cortex to the visual cortex, saying that the feedback link between those areas is what causes mental images. ![]() In a normal neurotypical brain, mental images have activation from the visual cortex as well as the parietal and frontal areas of the brain. In simple terms, this means that the brain’s ‘what’ pathway is damaged and the brain’s ‘where’ pathway is slightly faster. After all the tests, the results showed that people with aphantasia have impaired visual object imagery but above average spatial imagery. They tested these hypotheses with a bunch of different questionnaires, one of the main ones being the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). The main question though was trying to learn if people with aphantasia really can’t form mental images or if they have poor metacognition (meaning that they have the images just not the ability to access them). Recently a study by Rebecca Keogh and Joel Pearson was conducted to try and figure out what aphantasia is and how it affects people’s minds. In his tests, he discovered that some of the other scientists had no idea what he was talking about, he referred to them as having a mental deficiency. Galton ‘discovered’ it when he was working on his mental imagery vividness test with fellow scientists. But the first findings of aphantasia was recorded in 1883. The term ‘congenital aphantasia’ was created in 2015, by Zeman, Dewar, and Della Sala. Aphantasia is a mental phenomenon meaning that some people can’t create mental pictures. I am smart, just like everyone else my aunt, cousin, and I just have aphantasia. I guess according to Galton, I’m an idiot (especially with the counting sheep thing). ![]() I laid down and counted in my head ‘one sheep, two sheep, three sheep’. Anyone with the ability to form pictures in their head would obviously know to imagine sheep and count them, that didn’t even cross my mind. Like, when I was a kid and had trouble sleep, my parents told me to close my eyes and count sheep. Everyone can do it, right? I mean Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, said that the better the picture than the more intelligent you were. Like to remember the words ‘elephant’ and ‘piano’ you could create the image of an elephant playing a piano. But how do pictures relate to memory? Easy, by making pictures to associate with words. It shows up in study tips on how to deep process and then shows up in long term memory because of the deep processing. One of the main pictures in cognitive psych so far seems to be mental imagery (excuse the pun). ![]()
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