Modern scientists know much more about the cosmos than about the human brain. So, over the past few years, many have been actively discussing the features of the human imagination. Scientists have noticed that someone has an outstanding vision, which allows them to work in creative professions, while others, on the contrary, cannot imagine even the most detailed images. However, experts say that the aphantasia cure does not involve drug treatment. You can improve your vision with simple exercises.
Let’s Discuss The Term Aphantasia
Let’s say you have trouble imagining what a person you know looks like or remembering what your favorite fruit or candy tastes like; imagine a sparrow chirping and a dog barking, recreating a famous movie character, or imagining what your bookcase looks like. In this case, you need to consider the presence of such a rare phenomenon as a fantasy. It means that a person cannot wholly imagine anything, to extract a face, image, or form from memory and imagine it in his mind, even to recreate his favorite melody in his head – and that is a problem. The lack of imagination or its complete absence slows down a person’s actions and disorients him in many life cases and circumstances. This deviation is present in 3% of people worldwide.
How To Define Aphantasia?
You can determine the presence of aphantasia at home, for this you need to complete a simple text:
- sit on the sofa and close your eyes;
- come up with what kind of image you want to represent, for example, a red triangle;
- try to imagine.
If you succeed, then there is no problem. And if not, then you have an unusual unique feature.
How Does This Affect A Person’s Life?
Aphantasia can hinder development in many professions in many ways, which means that the circle of choice of the field of activity is limited. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is still little studied by science, but this is not a disease as such, but rather a non-standard property of the brain and generally does not affect the health of the body. You don’t need an aphantasia cure.
The activity of the cerebral cortex is responsible for the ability to visualize. The most important areas responsible for this are located on the forehead and crown of the head, as well as in the temples and the back of a person’s head. The result of their inefficient work is aphantasia.
The ability to fantasize develops thinking and allows you to create something new. Therefore, it is difficult for people with this disorder to create, invent, and of course, it will be problematic to write a book since it will be challenging for them to conceive the images of the characters in their book. However, history knows incredibly talented artists or filmmakers who have this feature.
People with this feature have vivid dreams that are much more colorful than ordinary people. They can use these images in their professional activities.
What Does Science Say?
The results of research and experiments have shown that people with aphantasia are not so susceptible to some mental disorders and diseases associated with stress, fear, and fear.
There is a great variety of special tests, thanks to which this “strangeness” in a person can be detected early. This deficiency in a person can be congenital or acquired as a result of experiencing difficult psycho-emotional life situations or operations on the cerebral cortex.
Francis Galton initially identified this phenomenon at the end of the 19th century, but then the world scientific community considered such a study irrelevant. Only in the 21st century did the great minds of the world seriously think about this problem and decide to pay close attention to it. Namely, thanks to Adam Zeman, who in 2015 gave this phenomenon a definition – aphantasia. His research has shown that some aphantasists can respond to images during sleep and sometimes during daytime activities, but when asked to imagine something, they cannot.
Since aphantasia makes it possible to study the nature of emotions, the reaction and behavior of a person in the absence of visualization, then the image itself (a frame of an event or something) acts as a catalyst for the emotions themselves. Therefore, ordinary people always react and show their feelings much more vividly than people with aphantasia.
It has been proven that many deviations in the psyche are corrected and treated by influencing the ability to imagine, imagine, and therefore directly “artificially” cause certain emotions that benefit the human mind. Imaging can be used to treat some mental disorders. Aphantasia cure by itself gives little results. History knows only one case when a person with congenital aphantasia learned to imagine vivid pictures while falling asleep when that part of the brain responsible for imagination is activated.
