Some of us are devoid of all mental imagery, not just visual, but in all sensory modes. It's awfully quiet in my mind! I've never heard a peep, not the sound of a voice --my own or anyone else's --, no music, nada. No ear-worms possible. I can't imagine Boris Karloff doing anything, because I can't imagine Boris Karloff! I can't hear what Ronald Reagan, or anyone else, sounds like. Auditory imagery sounds like a mighty fine superpower that I would like to have!
I am completely mentally blind, no activity in the mind's eye at all -- I have no concept of a mind's eye. Chess is a good example of how I committed the Typical Mind Fallacy for years, enabling me to maintain denial about other people's mental imagery. I was so determined to not know that a big part of my mind was missing, that I consistently glossed over anything that other people told me about their own mental imagery... including this:
My oldest son and his father are both expert chess players. They would sit in the car and call out moves to each othe...
Yes, but very infrequently. Usually I wake up and know that I was dreaming, but have no way of latching on to any dream content, because my mind can't re-experience any trace from a dream experience. The only traces that I have from dreams upon waking are either mental notes in the form of words, or emotional reactions in my body, e.g. heart pounding or solar plexus in a knot. Mental notes take the form of words spoken in the dream that were extremely compelling. So, for example, I know that I have visual dreams because once I woke up with these words...
Hi Christina, I learn by memorizing words about things: verbal descriptions, procedures, narratives. There are a lot of things that I don't try to learn because my mind can't accommodate them effectively in words, e.g. abstract subjects like biochemistry and physics. There are a lot of things that I have to relearn from scratch again and again, such as medicinal properties of herbs, or the names and locations and characteristics of acupressure points. If a procedure is very complicated or hard to describe in words (too many words to memorize), I just do...
No, no lingering sensory information after the stimulus is gone. It's like the mental sensory display mechanism is turned off: in the absence of a physical stimulus for physical sensory perception, there is no way to experience anything sensory in the mind.
I can get a song stuck in my mind, kind of, but it is not auditory -- it is silent! And it's not really stuck, I don't think -- it's something that I find so compelling that some part of me wants to continue repeating it. Another part of me can stop it. It is not auditory, it is just words, and it is...
I am 100% bereft of mental imagery in a waking state of consciousness (I have fully sensory dreams when I sleep). It is dark and quiet in my mind all the time. Thoughts take the form of silently talking to myself. There are only words. No visual memory, no imagination -- I don't know what these things are, they are only words. Seeing things in the mind, hearing things, re-experiencing, exploring non-physical possibilities via imagination: these all sound like paranormal or supernatural experiences to me, literally, because what is normal and natural f...
That's the really sad part: no mental imagery with hallucinogens! Peyote, ayahuasca: nada, my hopes were dashed. The only effects with peyote, in meetings of the Native American Church, were a sense of connection and surrender, but there was nothing in terms of enhanced cognition. With ayahuasca, with a Huni Kuin shaman in Brazil, my mind dissolved into a state of bliss, but there was no imagery whatsoever -- my mind was as dark as always.
My first ayahuasca ceremony was a personal healing for me, to rewire my brain and activate the missing part of my m... (read more)