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In search of the mental image
10 years ago
(This is not fiction. I apologise if my writing style makes it seem so. I don't know how else to write...)
In search of the mental image
Or, trying to answer a question that I don't understand
A couple of weeks ago, an article popped up on the BBC about a thing being called 'aphantasia,'
that is, the inability to form a mental image - or in a literal and original sense, it is the inability to imagine.
I immediately thought 'oh, that must be horrific' and read on, like you do when you hear about a horrific thing
happening to someone else. How unpleasant, I thought, because if you ask me to draw a sunset, a mountain, a forest,
or a forest on a mountain at sunset, I can do all of these things - I can even produce a half decent face that, if
not actually much like the actual person, is recognisably a face - and I don't know what I'd do without that ability!
And tits. Let's not forget that I am a wiz at imaginary, if petite, tits.
Then it got to the aphantasia questionnaire, and it had things like:
If you read the above and thought 'yeah, what of it?' then please ignore this journal because it's a voyage of
personal discovery and pseudo-intellectual research that you are managing on an instinctual level. If however you
thought those answers should relate to some kind bionic eye for blind people then feel free to keep going because
you may enjoy the journey :)
And indeed, some kind of bionic eye is what I at first thought the answers related to, because they're phrased as if
looking at a mental image is like using your eyes to look at a picture, and that is not what happens inside my head.
I've never questioned this because it never occurred to me to do so - and I shall point out again that I draw relatively
well from memory, at least in an abstract sense of 'this is clearly enough like a boob that people think it is a picture of
a boob'.
There's a possibility that some of you are thinking 'how do you do this then, if you don't see in your head?' You guys
should have stopped reading, but I'll oblige you anyway cos I'm nice :)
Subjectively, I feel like I have a secondary visual screen, if you will, that is outside the viewpoint of my eyes,
and onto which mental 'imagery' gets projected. However... while that internal screen is full of knowledge about shape,
space, proportion, colour... and maybe if I studied a picture closely for a while I could then draw a rough approximation
of it from memory... I would never have said I could 'see' it. The word 'see' just doesn't correspond to my mental state.
I 'know,' I 'understand' and 'perceive' the projected mental impression, but I do not 'see' it in the sense of eyes and
visual cortex. To me, the term mental image, has always been figurative. It is not an image, it is an impression.
And yet the question isn't exactly ambiguous, which means whoever wrote it is under the belief that sight and mental
imagery are comparable.
Which is extremely interesting and potentially bothersome, because they and I are apparently very different in our mental
workings. So, clearly it was time to get my research face on!
The trail of analysis of mental imagery starts, it seems, with Sir Francis Galton, 135 years ago as he
conducts a survey on the clarity of mental images amongst his peers, and then the wider population. He asks his audience
to imagine their breakfast and queries:
"1. Illumination. -- Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene ?
2. Definition. -- Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any
one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene?
3. Colouring. -- Are the colours of the china, of the toast, bread-crust, mustard, meat, parsley, or whatever may have been
on the table, quite distinct and natural?"
Sir Francis' questions are not far off what the BBC asks, and I won't be surprised if the scientists involved based their
questions on his. To me however, the answers can only be:
1. The scene is dim if it is dark. It is bright if it is bright. I have no concept of the scene being dimmer or brighter
than the original, it is what it was. I am not 'seeing' it, I am recalling a placement of things under a given lighting.
I can if requested propose what it might look like under different lighting, but I do not see that either.
2. Not applicable. I can specify the shape, position and size of every object, but I cannot see a picture.
3. Not applicable. I know the colours, but I do not see them.
What the BBC omits, is that Sir Francis, 135 years ago, gets a huge slew of answers that say "I don't understand the
question" and "not applicable". Indeed, he writes:
"To my astonishment, I found that the great majority (my emphasis) of the men of science to
whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful
and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody
supposed them to mean."
...while one of his correspondents opines quite clearly...
It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see'
with my 'mind's eye'….. I do not see it… any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due pressure he is
ready to repeat. The memory possesses it.
...which sounds more like me. I can know a thing, and indeed I can count the sides on a dodecahedron (12x pentagons) on a
wireframe model on the secondary screen in my head (there are 30) and I spent much of my youth constructing 3D models out of
sheets of cardboard. My speciality was Transformers.
That transformed.
And in some cases, combined into bigger robots. In any of the configurations that the plastic models did. I even got the rough
measurements of the proper models and made them to scale with my actual proper toys. At age 12, a teacher told me that my models
were years beyond a GSCE (age 15-16, highschool equivalent) grade A+
So let me drop modesty and be blunt for a moment: I have a superb sense of space and shape and how a 2D mesh becomes 3D. And
yet I do not 'see' in my head. On the other hand, according to Sir Francis...
"Many men and a yet larger number of women, and many boys and girls, declared that they habitually saw mental imagery,
and that it was perfectly distinct to them and full of colour. The more I pressed and cross-questioned them, professing myself
to be incredulous, the more obvious was the truth of their first assertions. They described their imagery in minute detail,
and they spoke in a tone of surprise at my apparent hesitation in accepting what they said. I felt that I myself should have
spoken exactly as they did if I had been describing a scene that lay before my eyes, in broad daylight, to a blind man who
persisted in doubting the reality of vision."
This seems to reassure Sir Francis - evidently he was a very visual thinker and had set out to prove that everyone had a similar
internal mental landscape. In fact, he did the opposite (again, thank you BBC for making it seem rare and strange when people
do not close their eyes and 'see') and discovered that this range is totally normal. Some do, some do not.
In lieu of the beeb's article, various forums on the web are now abuzz with the phrase aphantasia. I will not profess for one moment
that this is my case; clearly it isn't. However the web is full of people who, like I do, describe a lack of image, but a sense of
space and shape, and an impression of 'wireframe' presences in their imaginary world. There are also some great discussions
about how to test a claim of having mental imagery 'like watching a video'. One that stuck with me, though I have lost the link:
"Imagine a 3x3 grid. In the top 3 squares, write CAT, in the middle write DOG. Finally, in the bottom row, write EAT. Fix this
image in your mind and let me know when you have it.
*wait for a nod*
What word is spelled from top right to bottom left?"
The interesting discovery was that a lot of people hesitate for a few seconds (try it on your friends!). Why? If I type out...
P|E|A
F|L|Y
E|A|R
...you'll read ALE without pause.
The most likely is that many people ad-hoc details into their mental images as required - but if they don't ask themselves or
get asked about a detail, they don't know what it is. They're probably totally unaware of this, because the human brain is an
amazing filler-in of details. Prime example is crime-scene reconstructions; people have a habit of 'remembering' things that
aren't in the original report. For example, you can put a knife in the hand of an actor mugger, when the original was actually
just using his fists, and some of the people present will nod and say 'yeah, he had a knife like that!'
I'd also like to query the scientists who launched the research on this point...
How come not everyone who reports great mental imagery can draw?
...because surely if they really do imagine 'like a photograph' then they can imagine the photo over a piece of paper and trace
it? Everyone can trace. I can't do this, but I also don't claim to have any kind of visual memory or imagination. I work by 'feel'
and 'shape' because that's all I know how to do - I decidedly cannot project a mental image onto reality. Although I can imagine
how it would look if that image were present, but it is not the same thing and cannot be traced.
However... my goal is not to debunk the possibility of extremely visual memory and imagination that feels or is like looking
at a thing. In fact I deeply envy those who report it, because it sounds outright fantastic. I want to be an artist, and a writer,
and this trait would be amazing in both those pursuits! If I could drop myself into a fictional scene and
see/hear/smell/feel/taste what's going on, I feel could render/describe it in much more vivid detail than I do now. Whether such a
sensation is a genuine invocation of the visual cortex, or reconstructed after the fact is irrelevent; the memory left will be
just as vibrant and can be tapped for information on a whim.
And so, in the fine tradition of scientists of yore, I shall experiment upon myself by sticking things in my eye - or more accurately,
I will attempt to insert things into my visual field by sticking noises into my ears. Let me explain that a bit more...
Binaural beats
Short version; this is a supposedly easy trick to push your brainwaves towards the frequencies associated with meditation, REM sleep,
alertness, or a number of other states of mind. The premise is that you wear headphones, with a sound that is N hertz different between
each ear. Your brain reconstructs the difference, and in the process, matches up its internal rhythm with that discrepancy.
Example, a 432Hz sinewave in one ear and 422Hz in the other results in a move towards 10Hz brainwaves, which corresponds to the low
end of REM sleep - right when you start seeing things in your dreams. This aural discrepancy can be melded into music, or a pure sinewave.
I will use the music because sinewaves hurt my ears.
With no evidence beyond this or any proof that it works, I picked a music streaming service and set myself up a playlist to start
at around 26Hz (reasonably alert and awake) and sweep right down to 8Hz (deep REM) over the course of half an hour. With this, I
stuck my headphones on my ears, blacked out my manlab as best I can, and flopped down on a beanbag in a classic meditation pose.
(Look for Technomind if you're interested in following my journey here.)
What follows is basically a stream of consciousness from the last 4 days.
-
Day 1, Session 1: Dark room
No 'images' to report, though meditation was deep enough to provide a line up of some of my characters and allow for some interractions
that I would consider 'spontaneous', in that they weren't consciously guided by me.
Track ended, opened eyes; elbows stiff from having arms locked straight. Drew a sketch of one of the more comedic character interractions.
Seems I have a perfectly good sense of shape and space with my eyes shut, I just don't have any impression of having 'seen' anything...
Day 1, Session 2: Impossible conversation
Oddity. I don't want to claim 'seeing' anything, but apparently either I or the binaural soundtrack put me down into a level of meditation
that is good enough to implant a false memory. But since I am pretty darn sure I have never talked to a dragon, I am reasonably certain that
it didn't happen. Even if I do remember the rain drifting down in the moonlight from the cage above us. Ahem. On with the experiment.
(Who needs drugs when your brain is this freaking odd?)
-
Day 2; Afterimage
Had read article about using after-images to get going, so sat in the dark and flashed simple, high contrast pictures on my tablet. After-
images can be sustained for perhaps 30 seconds, but they are simply that; my retinas complaining that they were shocked by the sudden flash.
Image inevitably slides away. Cannot 'imagine' it back into being. Although I know exactly what it would have looked like if I could, in no
way did I feel I was seeing it again.
-
Read an article about image streaming, that is, the process of narrating anything you do 'see' and translating it into words as quickly as
you can. Supposedly this will help concrete the image in my head. Assuming I get any.
Decided to try to ignore 'visual static'. Suspect this is rogue input from the retina due to light leaking through eyelids, or pressure against
the eyes, and is not what people mean when they say 'mental image'. Chasing after-images from bright objects seems like a red herring too.
Realised that eye and eyelid movements provoke more static, so will make an effort to keep them still and not chase the sparks.
Increased lowest alpha of playlist from 8Hz to 9Hz for next session. Don't like the 8Hz track, sounds creepy. 9 will do I'm sure.
-
Day 3, Session 1; Making hay
Somewhere in the mid-alpha frequencies, vague and fleeting impression of landscape; yellow/green fields, hay rolls, cloudy sky. Felt like I
was seeing a blink's worth of after-image. Strong sense that 'visual static' faded away during this moment; like daydreaming while reading
and suddenly realising you've no idea what's on the page despite having run your eyes along every line. I don't know if I 'saw' it,
but I feel like I saw it, if that makes sense. Will try to repeat.
Day 3, Session 2; Magic eye
Thinking of it like a magic eye picture; focus needs to be 6 inches beyond the 'canvas' of my eyelids. This helps with ignoring visual static.
Am pretty sure that the best way forward is to persuade my brain that there is absolutely zero input, thus allowing my visual cortex to spark
up whatever the hell it likes and show it to me.
Similar brief impressions that I was seeing the afterimage of having just seen landscapes. Nothing lasted very long, but narrated the contents
anyway; dark hills, lake, grassy shores, a plateau of land surrounded by clouds.
One longer impression of straight edges - a beam/fence, a floor, a bright orange light to the right, with round hills beyond/ahead and a dark
starry sky. Pretty sure my brain is trying to show me a rather anime-styled japanese inn. Intriguing but unsustainable and uncontrolled. And
possibly predictable. This is exactly what is often in my head anyway.
-
Read various accounts of mental imagery. Original article seems very biased, i.e, written by someone with a strong internal imaging system who
assumed everyone has the same. Lots of people describing things like I do; sense of space and shape, mental wireframes that can be detailed enough
to, for example, count the edges on a dodecahedron - but no sense of 'seeing' the object.
None of this is very useful, but it is somewhat reassuring that I'm not some kind of blind artist. Several professional artists have popped up on
various forums, pointing out that they have a successful career and a terrible score for mental imagery on the tests.
-
Day 4, Session 1: Iceland
Brief sitting with a different sound track. Not sure if binaural actually does anything, but it's soothing white noise if nothing else. More fleeting
impressions of 'I was just looking at...' sensations, mostly landscapes - probably because they can be very low detail. Momentary clear impression of
the texture of the ground; dark rock and stones with bright yellow/green grass, probably pulled in from a memory about an Iceland documentary.
Interesting.
-
Nothing so far has been what I would refer to as a clear 'mental image'... on the other hand, the concept of colour has been popping in to say hi,
where usually colour is kind of a property attached to a lump of space that I know has a specific shape and is called a car, or a house, or a banana.
The 'I was just looking at' sensation is quite distinct, and is closer to my dreams (crisp, clear, fully coloured/textured scenes that play out 'in
front of my eyes') than my regular mental surroundings. I have no idea whether this can be developed, but I am interested to find out!
Still no rush, tis early days; four of them to be exact. The human brain is a wonderfully plastic and malleable thing, but it will need time for my
neurons to re-wire, and before they can do that I have to tell them what I want them to do, and to do that I need to have the internal mental
language to describe it. Following the 'just saw that' impressions seems like the way forward. If I can get some focus on them, then my brain can
start to react to the fact that I'm focussing and try to provide more clarity.
Adventures in neuroscience, from the perspective of an amateur artist and software programmer...
-
Day 4, Session 2; Unplanned
Out of curiousity I took a moment to plonk myself down in the shower, close my eyes, and try to clear the static out. Within a minute, I had a remarkably
clear impression, with the water beating down on my head, that I was looking out of a car window towards a rainy sky. Droplets were running down the
window and shifting in response to movement beyond the frame of the car door - which is where my line of sight ended. I don't know if that was a
memory, or purely imaginary, or cobbled together from hundreds of car journeys in the rain, but it was the most dreamlike thing I've ever pulled
into my brain while I was awake. It even survived several involuntary eye movements. Colour me bemused.
Day 4, Session 3; Some kind of synesthesia?
Back to the original frequency dive soundtrack.
Sequence of brief impressions that seemed to relate to the music at the time. Particularly strong was a view of a landscape dotted with trees from above,
as the soundtrack was thudding in a soft mimic of helicopter blades. May be some form of synesthesia, or possibly suggestion via alternative senses.
I will select some specific 'nature sounds' for next session.
As yet, I have experienced no recurring scenes, nor anything to do with people.
-
In search of the mental image
Or, trying to answer a question that I don't understand
A couple of weeks ago, an article popped up on the BBC about a thing being called 'aphantasia,'
that is, the inability to form a mental image - or in a literal and original sense, it is the inability to imagine.
I immediately thought 'oh, that must be horrific' and read on, like you do when you hear about a horrific thing
happening to someone else. How unpleasant, I thought, because if you ask me to draw a sunset, a mountain, a forest,
or a forest on a mountain at sunset, I can do all of these things - I can even produce a half decent face that, if
not actually much like the actual person, is recognisably a face - and I don't know what I'd do without that ability!
And tits. Let's not forget that I am a wiz at imaginary, if petite, tits.
Then it got to the aphantasia questionnaire, and it had things like:
"Conjure up an image of a friend or relative who you frequently see; how clearly can you see the contours
of their face, head, shoulders and body?
No image at all
Vague and dim
Moderately clear
Reasonably clear
As vivid as real life"If you read the above and thought 'yeah, what of it?' then please ignore this journal because it's a voyage of
personal discovery and pseudo-intellectual research that you are managing on an instinctual level. If however you
thought those answers should relate to some kind bionic eye for blind people then feel free to keep going because
you may enjoy the journey :)
And indeed, some kind of bionic eye is what I at first thought the answers related to, because they're phrased as if
looking at a mental image is like using your eyes to look at a picture, and that is not what happens inside my head.
I've never questioned this because it never occurred to me to do so - and I shall point out again that I draw relatively
well from memory, at least in an abstract sense of 'this is clearly enough like a boob that people think it is a picture of
a boob'.
There's a possibility that some of you are thinking 'how do you do this then, if you don't see in your head?' You guys
should have stopped reading, but I'll oblige you anyway cos I'm nice :)
Subjectively, I feel like I have a secondary visual screen, if you will, that is outside the viewpoint of my eyes,
and onto which mental 'imagery' gets projected. However... while that internal screen is full of knowledge about shape,
space, proportion, colour... and maybe if I studied a picture closely for a while I could then draw a rough approximation
of it from memory... I would never have said I could 'see' it. The word 'see' just doesn't correspond to my mental state.
I 'know,' I 'understand' and 'perceive' the projected mental impression, but I do not 'see' it in the sense of eyes and
visual cortex. To me, the term mental image, has always been figurative. It is not an image, it is an impression.
And yet the question isn't exactly ambiguous, which means whoever wrote it is under the belief that sight and mental
imagery are comparable.
Which is extremely interesting and potentially bothersome, because they and I are apparently very different in our mental
workings. So, clearly it was time to get my research face on!
1880The trail of analysis of mental imagery starts, it seems, with Sir Francis Galton, 135 years ago as he
conducts a survey on the clarity of mental images amongst his peers, and then the wider population. He asks his audience
to imagine their breakfast and queries:
"1. Illumination. -- Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene ?
2. Definition. -- Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any
one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene?
3. Colouring. -- Are the colours of the china, of the toast, bread-crust, mustard, meat, parsley, or whatever may have been
on the table, quite distinct and natural?"
Sir Francis' questions are not far off what the BBC asks, and I won't be surprised if the scientists involved based their
questions on his. To me however, the answers can only be:
1. The scene is dim if it is dark. It is bright if it is bright. I have no concept of the scene being dimmer or brighter
than the original, it is what it was. I am not 'seeing' it, I am recalling a placement of things under a given lighting.
I can if requested propose what it might look like under different lighting, but I do not see that either.
2. Not applicable. I can specify the shape, position and size of every object, but I cannot see a picture.
3. Not applicable. I know the colours, but I do not see them.
What the BBC omits, is that Sir Francis, 135 years ago, gets a huge slew of answers that say "I don't understand the
question" and "not applicable". Indeed, he writes:
"To my astonishment, I found that the great majority (my emphasis) of the men of science to
whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful
and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody
supposed them to mean."
...while one of his correspondents opines quite clearly...
It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see'
with my 'mind's eye'….. I do not see it… any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due pressure he is
ready to repeat. The memory possesses it.
...which sounds more like me. I can know a thing, and indeed I can count the sides on a dodecahedron (12x pentagons) on a
wireframe model on the secondary screen in my head (there are 30) and I spent much of my youth constructing 3D models out of
sheets of cardboard. My speciality was Transformers.
That transformed.
And in some cases, combined into bigger robots. In any of the configurations that the plastic models did. I even got the rough
measurements of the proper models and made them to scale with my actual proper toys. At age 12, a teacher told me that my models
were years beyond a GSCE (age 15-16, highschool equivalent) grade A+
So let me drop modesty and be blunt for a moment: I have a superb sense of space and shape and how a 2D mesh becomes 3D. And
yet I do not 'see' in my head. On the other hand, according to Sir Francis...
"Many men and a yet larger number of women, and many boys and girls, declared that they habitually saw mental imagery,
and that it was perfectly distinct to them and full of colour. The more I pressed and cross-questioned them, professing myself
to be incredulous, the more obvious was the truth of their first assertions. They described their imagery in minute detail,
and they spoke in a tone of surprise at my apparent hesitation in accepting what they said. I felt that I myself should have
spoken exactly as they did if I had been describing a scene that lay before my eyes, in broad daylight, to a blind man who
persisted in doubting the reality of vision."
This seems to reassure Sir Francis - evidently he was a very visual thinker and had set out to prove that everyone had a similar
internal mental landscape. In fact, he did the opposite (again, thank you BBC for making it seem rare and strange when people
do not close their eyes and 'see') and discovered that this range is totally normal. Some do, some do not.
2015In lieu of the beeb's article, various forums on the web are now abuzz with the phrase aphantasia. I will not profess for one moment
that this is my case; clearly it isn't. However the web is full of people who, like I do, describe a lack of image, but a sense of
space and shape, and an impression of 'wireframe' presences in their imaginary world. There are also some great discussions
about how to test a claim of having mental imagery 'like watching a video'. One that stuck with me, though I have lost the link:
"Imagine a 3x3 grid. In the top 3 squares, write CAT, in the middle write DOG. Finally, in the bottom row, write EAT. Fix this
image in your mind and let me know when you have it.
*wait for a nod*
What word is spelled from top right to bottom left?"
The interesting discovery was that a lot of people hesitate for a few seconds (try it on your friends!). Why? If I type out...
P|E|A
F|L|Y
E|A|R
...you'll read ALE without pause.
The most likely is that many people ad-hoc details into their mental images as required - but if they don't ask themselves or
get asked about a detail, they don't know what it is. They're probably totally unaware of this, because the human brain is an
amazing filler-in of details. Prime example is crime-scene reconstructions; people have a habit of 'remembering' things that
aren't in the original report. For example, you can put a knife in the hand of an actor mugger, when the original was actually
just using his fists, and some of the people present will nod and say 'yeah, he had a knife like that!'
I'd also like to query the scientists who launched the research on this point...
How come not everyone who reports great mental imagery can draw?
...because surely if they really do imagine 'like a photograph' then they can imagine the photo over a piece of paper and trace
it? Everyone can trace. I can't do this, but I also don't claim to have any kind of visual memory or imagination. I work by 'feel'
and 'shape' because that's all I know how to do - I decidedly cannot project a mental image onto reality. Although I can imagine
how it would look if that image were present, but it is not the same thing and cannot be traced.
I want it thoughHowever... my goal is not to debunk the possibility of extremely visual memory and imagination that feels or is like looking
at a thing. In fact I deeply envy those who report it, because it sounds outright fantastic. I want to be an artist, and a writer,
and this trait would be amazing in both those pursuits! If I could drop myself into a fictional scene and
see/hear/smell/feel/taste what's going on, I feel could render/describe it in much more vivid detail than I do now. Whether such a
sensation is a genuine invocation of the visual cortex, or reconstructed after the fact is irrelevent; the memory left will be
just as vibrant and can be tapped for information on a whim.
And so, in the fine tradition of scientists of yore, I shall experiment upon myself by sticking things in my eye - or more accurately,
I will attempt to insert things into my visual field by sticking noises into my ears. Let me explain that a bit more...
Binaural beats
Short version; this is a supposedly easy trick to push your brainwaves towards the frequencies associated with meditation, REM sleep,
alertness, or a number of other states of mind. The premise is that you wear headphones, with a sound that is N hertz different between
each ear. Your brain reconstructs the difference, and in the process, matches up its internal rhythm with that discrepancy.
Example, a 432Hz sinewave in one ear and 422Hz in the other results in a move towards 10Hz brainwaves, which corresponds to the low
end of REM sleep - right when you start seeing things in your dreams. This aural discrepancy can be melded into music, or a pure sinewave.
I will use the music because sinewaves hurt my ears.
With no evidence beyond this or any proof that it works, I picked a music streaming service and set myself up a playlist to start
at around 26Hz (reasonably alert and awake) and sweep right down to 8Hz (deep REM) over the course of half an hour. With this, I
stuck my headphones on my ears, blacked out my manlab as best I can, and flopped down on a beanbag in a classic meditation pose.
(Look for Technomind if you're interested in following my journey here.)
What follows is basically a stream of consciousness from the last 4 days.
-
Day 1, Session 1: Dark room
No 'images' to report, though meditation was deep enough to provide a line up of some of my characters and allow for some interractions
that I would consider 'spontaneous', in that they weren't consciously guided by me.
Track ended, opened eyes; elbows stiff from having arms locked straight. Drew a sketch of one of the more comedic character interractions.
Seems I have a perfectly good sense of shape and space with my eyes shut, I just don't have any impression of having 'seen' anything...
Day 1, Session 2: Impossible conversation
Oddity. I don't want to claim 'seeing' anything, but apparently either I or the binaural soundtrack put me down into a level of meditation
that is good enough to implant a false memory. But since I am pretty darn sure I have never talked to a dragon, I am reasonably certain that
it didn't happen. Even if I do remember the rain drifting down in the moonlight from the cage above us. Ahem. On with the experiment.
(Who needs drugs when your brain is this freaking odd?)
-
Day 2; Afterimage
Had read article about using after-images to get going, so sat in the dark and flashed simple, high contrast pictures on my tablet. After-
images can be sustained for perhaps 30 seconds, but they are simply that; my retinas complaining that they were shocked by the sudden flash.
Image inevitably slides away. Cannot 'imagine' it back into being. Although I know exactly what it would have looked like if I could, in no
way did I feel I was seeing it again.
-
Read an article about image streaming, that is, the process of narrating anything you do 'see' and translating it into words as quickly as
you can. Supposedly this will help concrete the image in my head. Assuming I get any.
Decided to try to ignore 'visual static'. Suspect this is rogue input from the retina due to light leaking through eyelids, or pressure against
the eyes, and is not what people mean when they say 'mental image'. Chasing after-images from bright objects seems like a red herring too.
Realised that eye and eyelid movements provoke more static, so will make an effort to keep them still and not chase the sparks.
Increased lowest alpha of playlist from 8Hz to 9Hz for next session. Don't like the 8Hz track, sounds creepy. 9 will do I'm sure.
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Day 3, Session 1; Making hay
Somewhere in the mid-alpha frequencies, vague and fleeting impression of landscape; yellow/green fields, hay rolls, cloudy sky. Felt like I
was seeing a blink's worth of after-image. Strong sense that 'visual static' faded away during this moment; like daydreaming while reading
and suddenly realising you've no idea what's on the page despite having run your eyes along every line. I don't know if I 'saw' it,
but I feel like I saw it, if that makes sense. Will try to repeat.
Day 3, Session 2; Magic eye
Thinking of it like a magic eye picture; focus needs to be 6 inches beyond the 'canvas' of my eyelids. This helps with ignoring visual static.
Am pretty sure that the best way forward is to persuade my brain that there is absolutely zero input, thus allowing my visual cortex to spark
up whatever the hell it likes and show it to me.
Similar brief impressions that I was seeing the afterimage of having just seen landscapes. Nothing lasted very long, but narrated the contents
anyway; dark hills, lake, grassy shores, a plateau of land surrounded by clouds.
One longer impression of straight edges - a beam/fence, a floor, a bright orange light to the right, with round hills beyond/ahead and a dark
starry sky. Pretty sure my brain is trying to show me a rather anime-styled japanese inn. Intriguing but unsustainable and uncontrolled. And
possibly predictable. This is exactly what is often in my head anyway.
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Read various accounts of mental imagery. Original article seems very biased, i.e, written by someone with a strong internal imaging system who
assumed everyone has the same. Lots of people describing things like I do; sense of space and shape, mental wireframes that can be detailed enough
to, for example, count the edges on a dodecahedron - but no sense of 'seeing' the object.
None of this is very useful, but it is somewhat reassuring that I'm not some kind of blind artist. Several professional artists have popped up on
various forums, pointing out that they have a successful career and a terrible score for mental imagery on the tests.
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Day 4, Session 1: Iceland
Brief sitting with a different sound track. Not sure if binaural actually does anything, but it's soothing white noise if nothing else. More fleeting
impressions of 'I was just looking at...' sensations, mostly landscapes - probably because they can be very low detail. Momentary clear impression of
the texture of the ground; dark rock and stones with bright yellow/green grass, probably pulled in from a memory about an Iceland documentary.
Interesting.
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Nothing so far has been what I would refer to as a clear 'mental image'... on the other hand, the concept of colour has been popping in to say hi,
where usually colour is kind of a property attached to a lump of space that I know has a specific shape and is called a car, or a house, or a banana.
The 'I was just looking at' sensation is quite distinct, and is closer to my dreams (crisp, clear, fully coloured/textured scenes that play out 'in
front of my eyes') than my regular mental surroundings. I have no idea whether this can be developed, but I am interested to find out!
Still no rush, tis early days; four of them to be exact. The human brain is a wonderfully plastic and malleable thing, but it will need time for my
neurons to re-wire, and before they can do that I have to tell them what I want them to do, and to do that I need to have the internal mental
language to describe it. Following the 'just saw that' impressions seems like the way forward. If I can get some focus on them, then my brain can
start to react to the fact that I'm focussing and try to provide more clarity.
Adventures in neuroscience, from the perspective of an amateur artist and software programmer...
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Day 4, Session 2; Unplanned
Out of curiousity I took a moment to plonk myself down in the shower, close my eyes, and try to clear the static out. Within a minute, I had a remarkably
clear impression, with the water beating down on my head, that I was looking out of a car window towards a rainy sky. Droplets were running down the
window and shifting in response to movement beyond the frame of the car door - which is where my line of sight ended. I don't know if that was a
memory, or purely imaginary, or cobbled together from hundreds of car journeys in the rain, but it was the most dreamlike thing I've ever pulled
into my brain while I was awake. It even survived several involuntary eye movements. Colour me bemused.
Day 4, Session 3; Some kind of synesthesia?
Back to the original frequency dive soundtrack.
Sequence of brief impressions that seemed to relate to the music at the time. Particularly strong was a view of a landscape dotted with trees from above,
as the soundtrack was thudding in a soft mimic of helicopter blades. May be some form of synesthesia, or possibly suggestion via alternative senses.
I will select some specific 'nature sounds' for next session.
As yet, I have experienced no recurring scenes, nor anything to do with people.
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However, I do feel that the last four days have dumped me into deeper levels of meditation than I've had before, and the faint imagery that I seem to have evoked is entirely new to me. This may be because it's the first time I've actually gone looking for it, though. Definitely need to have further sessions, with and without binaural soundtracks...
Cool little side note: Horror movies use this in theaters with ultra-low frequencies to make you feel uneasy. (If you notice in the movie "Poltergeist" several times through out you can hear a decending note, that "fades" into lower inaudible frequencies. This is basically causing a dissonance and leaving you feeling uneasy.
And now I have a cracking headache... but I'm hoping it relates to neural rewiring to beef up an underused part of my brain. I like to believe that concentration headaches make you better an concentrating next time :)
i love this stuff, its so freaky and cool! :D