Do you get songs stuck in your head?
Do you ever hear a previously unknown song by an artist you are familiar with and immediately recognize who it is from the voice or even the guitar tones?
Did anyone else know there are people who can not visualize their thoughts?
- Thread starter OSUIvan
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Do you get songs stuck in your head?
Do you ever hear a previously unknown song by an artist you are familiar with and immediately recognize who it is from the voice or even the guitar tones?
Songs stuck in my head? All the time. In fact there are times where I get something stuck in my head, a thought or a song, and it is REALLY hard to get it out and take a lot of effort to get it out. This usually happens when I'm trying to go to bed.
I recognize songs and singers yes. For example there is a new band ( can't think of the name) that is made up of a few broken up bands and I knew the singer right away even though the band name on my XM was not what I knew him from.
But when you hear the song in your head, it's you singing? What about the instruments?
Yes it is my inner voice singing, attempting to sound like the real singer. As for music, that is hard to explain I don't hear it but I know what it sounds like???
Yup. I can close my eyes and see my car parked outside my office. I figured everyone can do this, but it sounds like there is a small percentage of the population who is unable to do this.
I have never even thought about this and guess ignorance is bliss. But after reading this thread and trying it, I get nada.
Ha! I was just thinking about this. Hell, I've said it a million times. I just always thought it was a figure of speech, and what they were really doing was just trying to describe it to themselves just like I was. Maybe see a very vague, relatively nondescript, picture and then talking through the details.
This is fascinating. Thanks for all the "insight" @OSUIvan and @tcpoke. I need to go back and read all this more closely when I have more time.
I'm curious, do the English Doctors mentioned have a website or materials available?
I am interested in synesthesia, which is a condition that allows a few people to see letters of the alphabet or musical notes as colors. Several famous musicians, past and present, see music in colors and create "moods" in their music by shading it with color that others can hear but only they can see. I've read than Franz Liszt used to scream at orchestras he was conducting things like "It's too red! I want to hear more purple!" They thought he was crazy.
Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, Pharrell Williams and several other modern writers and players say they see music in color. I've even seen Stevie Wonder on a list of music/color synesthetes, which I don't understand because he was born blind.
I'm curious, do the English Doctors mentioned have a website or materials available?
I am interested in synesthesia, which is a condition that allows a few people to see letters of the alphabet or musical notes as colors. Several famous musicians, past and present, see music in colors and create "moods" in their music by shading it with color that others can hear but only they can see. I've read than Franz Liszt used to scream at orchestras he was conducting things like "It's too red! I want to hear more purple!" They thought he was crazy.
Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, Pharrell Williams and several other modern writers and players say they see music in color. I've even seen Stevie Wonder on a list of music/color synesthetes, which I don't understand because he was born blind.
do you have any artistic outlets? Draw? If I asked you to draw your house, what would you do?
At the risk of derailing the thread, (and without looking it up for confirmation), I have heard that Wonder is not truly blind. He is legally blind, but does have some degree of vision.
There isn't a site that I think you're looking for that has research just articles talking about it. That's what they're trying to do is survey as many people as they can and do more research. That is one reason I'm trying to spread the word because I'm really curious as to what causes it, can it be prevented from happening, is there a way that doctors can unlock "the minds eye".
So if any of you mention this in passing to someone and they say they can not visualize their thoughts feel free to give them my email and I'll get them in touch with the Dr's doing the research!
I have ZERO, my mom, and grandma are very good artists and I took art from 6th grade through HS but I was never good at it. now there are some people that are graphic artists and what not that have managed to over come not being able to visualize what they're trying to do, but from what I can tell it's pretty rare, and they dont have a full blank picture in their mind like I do.
If you asked me to draw my house it would probably not come close, I would get very few details right. an example I read once was if you and I saw a picture of an elephant and we were both asked to draw it, you would have a lot more details and features where mine would look like a very basic drawing of an elephant with little to no detail.
Fascinating. Truly amazing how different people can be and still be "normal" (whatever that is) people. The brain is an incredible adaptive thing.
Art, visualization, playing music by ear are all things that I've always taken for granted until recently - a few years ago developed some anxiety issues. After some research I found there's a reason so many "creatives" are insane, overdose, commit suicide etc. There is a door in your brain that is kind of just stuck open, and you are influenced to create, but you are also inundated with visions, emotions (positive and negative) and it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Everyone wants to be "artistic" but it can have a serious downside for a lot of people.
Sometimes I'll dream about a cool idea and cannot only visualize it, but can't get it out of my head. I mentioned before - This really made me a pretty spotty and average student, whereas my daughter tests out as a similar IQ but is valedictorian and a national merit scholar finalist. Her personality is a lot like mine too - but she just has much better, healthier balance between her inherited artistic side (me) and her inherited focused and academic side (her mom) than either of us did. She's a better musician than me too, which admittedly isn't saying much. But she hasn't shown a lot of interest in visual arts.
This is a really interesting conversation.
So say you went to the zoo with a sketchpad and sat down by the pachyderms. Do you think you could draw a much more detailed likeness of an elephant having the real thing right there as a reference?
I ask this because my drawing skills are poor at best, but I know I can do much better with the subject right in front of my eyes. However, I can still visualize what I'm drawing in my mind, it just doesn't have a high level of detail and clarity.
It would still be really bad, but yes sitting infront of it would help A LOT . In fact that's really the only time I could do something good in art class was when we were copying something.
For example, I love landscapes/bans/old buildings (big Bob Ross fan), I so badly wanted to do a Ross type painting with a brick farm house, but I could not get the bricks right, they just look awful. I just couldn't visualize how the bricks on a house were aligned and it really frustrated me. Looking back it makes sense why everyone in my classes didn't have problems with stuff like that and I struggled.
This describes me but I can see the house in my mind. I just can't draw it. If I am actually looking at it and copying it, I can do much better.
I think you are in the same boat as the majority of humans (including me). There is a reason that famous artists had people pose for pictures they painted. I'm sure there are artists who can just start painting a person they once new, and get a painting that looks pretty close to that individual, but most of them copy the live subject or use a photo of the subject while painting.
what about procedural things? If you golf, walking up to the tee box, addressing the ball, launching a drive. Or shooting free throws, etc. think about surgeons, in training they visualize over and over the simple procedures to try to minimize mistakes so the daddy surgeon doesn't berate them in front of the entire operating room. Can you do things like that?
Let's use free throws. I don't "see it" but I talk myself through it in extreme detail. Detail so fine that I can almost feel it or trick myself that I see it...but no true picture ever appears.
Just curious. What do you do for a living. Because, if you think about it, there are a significant number of professions that would seem to be impossible for you. Obviously, anything that involves art. Architecture. I would think engineering would be out. I don't think you could be a physician/veterinarian/dentist. Those are just the ones that pop into my head without thinking too much about it. What is interesting to me is that you (and Ivan) likely ended up doing what you do because it did not require you to have a "mind's eye". You likely never gravitated toward the professions I mentioned and you never knew why they didn't interest you.
Sales.
Engineering, in today's day and age, wouldn't be problematic. Architecture, no way. Art...can't do it but am studied in it from a historical perspective.
But I think you aren't quite understanding what happen is our, or at least my, mind. I quite often visualize a process, sometimes the most tedious of processes...there is just no picture. The conversations I have in my head allow me to account for everything that you see where if we described the same "thought" there likely would be no way to tell who "saw" it and who didn't. Even if it is a situation where you are trying to account for a certain level of unknown.
What I can't do very well is create something I've never seen or learned before. Like a house for example. If I had to do something like describe my dream house in detail I would greatly struggle with that. I am an architects dream or worse nightmare depending on the architect.
Think of it like this: You mind's eye works like a camera or a tv...mine works like very good descriptive writing.
I do play golf, and I played hockey growing up at a high level. The best thing I can do when playing a sport is not think about it, let my instincts take over. The best way I can do that is to get a song stuck in my head and concentrate on that song and let my body do what it knows what to do.
I work in IT as a sysadmin.
If you go to reddit.com/r/aphantasia there are a hand full of graphic artists there. Just like Mega said, the human brain is an amazing thing. Learning more about this... it's just crazy how our brains can adapt and still give us the ability to function normally and even be creative in some ways with out the minds eye.
I think the most fascinating part is you and TC just figured this out after 30+ years of age.
Without a doubt the most bizarre part of all of this for me.
I guess it just goes to show you don't miss what you've never had (or didn't know existed).
This is the craziest thing I've read in a long time.
The brain is an amazing organ.
The brain is an amazing organ.
My mother has synesthesia. She was on HBO a long time ago for her condition. Also, the National Enquirer called her a bizarre medical oddity. We have that one framed.
Man, that's intriguing. I'm looking forward to running into you and hearing more about her abilities. Overall, does she find it a blessing or a curse? As has been mentioned above, I guess it's difficult to judge since perhaps she never experienced her perceptions any other way.
Btw, I would never call your mom a bizarre medical oddity. You, on the other hand, I've had my doubts about...
Wow, this is fascinating. Something that has always really troubled me and given me great anxiety is the fear that if someone close to me passes, I will only be able to remember them through photos because if I close my eyes I can't "picture" them. I can describe to you what they look like, but no image appears and everything is just very dark. I guess I never knew a difference existed between thinking of something in great detail and actually visualizing it like a picture in front of you.
If we can pray the gay away I'm not sure we can't pray you guys into being normal thinkers. Maybe you just aren't trying hard enough.
If you'd like to be part of the study shoot me an email and I'll get you in touch with the Dr in England leading it. osuivan at gmail dot com
You might be asking too much there...
If I were to start over my education from scratch, I think I'd lean toward biological psychology. Roughly 100 billion neurons in your bran make 100 trillion connections and each of those average "firing" once per second -- some fire thousands of times per second when required.
The success of every single connection is dependent on having the correct chemical environment to ensure correct electrical conductivity. It doesn't take many things being "a little out of whack" to cause some serious problems.
Aphantasia and synesthesia seem to have an unknown organic cause since people who have them don't show any signs of chemical imbalance. Their brains just seem to be "wired" differently, which is amazing.
When I was a kid, they were still teaching that we only used 10 percent of our brain. Now we know that we use it all, but we don't understand what all of it does and how it does it. All our thoughts, dreams and actions are an orderly mix of chemicals and electricity. The brain is truly the final frontier on earth.
Here's something that my or may not be related..this is long...but bear with me, because I want to see how others "see the years"....
For years, I have "visualized the years". What does that mean?? Well, I had this conversation with my mom and my wife the other night. My mom never knew why I was able to recall dates of when things happened back in like, the 80s, or how I was good at keeping track of future events in my head. But here it is...
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Ok, the first pic is of a calendar my dad brought home from work (he worked for the RR) when I was 6. I found that pic on a google search from memory. Haven't seen that calendar in years. That formed the way I see the months in a given year...in my mind it looks just like that with the train pic in the middle. It's crazy, but it's always there.
The months of the year go from left to right, with January on top and May at bottom...then the summer months are in a horizontal line over to August...not in a block as in the pic, but just a line going from left to right..then September starts back up on the right and ends in a vertical column with December. Then my mind flips back over to January on the left and the "counter-clockwise" movement continues...
The hand written diagram just shows how I view the centuries in a "stair step" fashion. It's how I'm able to compartmentalize data. The decades are in columns of 10, 10 years to a column, like "1920 to 1929", then I jump back up to 1930. But, when I was born, this shakes it up a bit. Since my mind was "forming, I start the "stair step drop" with the decade of the 80s being below the 70s. Why? I don't really know. Perhaps because there's more information in those two since I was alive then and therefore this allows me to focus up on certain events, or it's just signifies it's importance to me since I was a part of it. 1990 to 2020 are on one column, probably because that was my higher learning years, high school through medical school and residency...so I keep all this in a 30 year column. Then it appears that I will line up 2020 with 2010 and start the rows going back right at that point.
Whatever the reasoning for this, it's always allowed me to correctly identify events within a certain decade. WW2 takes up the 40s, the 50s with all the cool cars and promises of a bright future, the peace time, and rise of the Soviets into a Cold War enemy. The 70s with Nixon and Carter and the "gas shortage". The 80s with Reagan, cocaine house boat parties, and cool GI Joe toys and playing Nintendo and Atari....Star Wars sequels....blah blah blah...
Seem crazy? To me it's completely normal...and it's just the way I think.
For years, I have "visualized the years". What does that mean?? Well, I had this conversation with my mom and my wife the other night. My mom never knew why I was able to recall dates of when things happened back in like, the 80s, or how I was good at keeping track of future events in my head. But here it is...
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[/IMG][/URL]=http://s1193.photobucket.com/user/OSUJACK/media/Mobile Uploads/2016-08/89CB7D96-087B-491C-84C6-F7E86B3D0CB7_1.jpg.html]
[/URL]Ok, the first pic is of a calendar my dad brought home from work (he worked for the RR) when I was 6. I found that pic on a google search from memory. Haven't seen that calendar in years. That formed the way I see the months in a given year...in my mind it looks just like that with the train pic in the middle. It's crazy, but it's always there.
The months of the year go from left to right, with January on top and May at bottom...then the summer months are in a horizontal line over to August...not in a block as in the pic, but just a line going from left to right..then September starts back up on the right and ends in a vertical column with December. Then my mind flips back over to January on the left and the "counter-clockwise" movement continues...
The hand written diagram just shows how I view the centuries in a "stair step" fashion. It's how I'm able to compartmentalize data. The decades are in columns of 10, 10 years to a column, like "1920 to 1929", then I jump back up to 1930. But, when I was born, this shakes it up a bit. Since my mind was "forming, I start the "stair step drop" with the decade of the 80s being below the 70s. Why? I don't really know. Perhaps because there's more information in those two since I was alive then and therefore this allows me to focus up on certain events, or it's just signifies it's importance to me since I was a part of it. 1990 to 2020 are on one column, probably because that was my higher learning years, high school through medical school and residency...so I keep all this in a 30 year column. Then it appears that I will line up 2020 with 2010 and start the rows going back right at that point.
Whatever the reasoning for this, it's always allowed me to correctly identify events within a certain decade. WW2 takes up the 40s, the 50s with all the cool cars and promises of a bright future, the peace time, and rise of the Soviets into a Cold War enemy. The 70s with Nixon and Carter and the "gas shortage". The 80s with Reagan, cocaine house boat parties, and cool GI Joe toys and playing Nintendo and Atari....Star Wars sequels....blah blah blah...
Seem crazy? To me it's completely normal...and it's just the way I think.
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