They’ll look in all the familiar rooms

[erika]

I realized tonight that I may very well have a rare neurological condition that has as of yet been unidentified.*

I cannot visualize anything.

(Visualization: The ability to form mental images in your "mind’s eye," retain or store them for future recall, or for synthesis into new mental images beyond your current or past direct experiences.)

Stealing from a page I found which Dan said:
Imagine a red square. Can you see it? I can't. I know intellectually what a red square is made of, but I can't see it unless one is in front of me.

Obviously, I may be totally excited/freaked over nothing. Maybe nobody can really visualize (although spr0cket claims she can, heh).

So OF COURSE my next step is to write a poll and find out how common this possible "syndrome" is among my lj friends.

(Please take this test to determine right-brain/left brain dominance first, unless you already know which side of your brain is dominant.)


[Poll #652144]

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by the way: how this came to me was that I started reading theferrett's livejournal as a link from the_xtina, and quite a few entries back he wrote about something whereupon someone else (ravenclawdrew) commented that Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek) was in Independence Day as the big haired scientist.

So I IM'd spr0cket and mused that I wonder if I have a borderline face recognition problem because of my inability to visualize.

Then she basically went 'wait, WHAT?' And I said "yeah, I didn't get that Mike Myers played Fat Bastard AND Austin Powers AND Dr Evil either." (Haha, laugh if you must.)

Then I googled "inability to visualize" and basically realized that there is NOTHING out there for that. There is nothing on Wikipedia, there is very little on Google. And sprocket suggested I do a poll to see if other people have the same issues.

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(Another page I've found on this for further reading:
Somebody asks Google Answers about it. Salon Health & Body describes someone who writes in with the same problem as an isolated developmental disorder. A blog post about it. )

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Oh, and I found a page on some kooky visualization self-help guru who said:

An interesting point about those who "can't visualize," however. Many people have told me of this "limit" over the years and so I frequently ask them if they can remember the color of their first car. They ALWAYS remember. How is that possible unless they visualized the color? I have a hard time believing that they heard, felt, smelled or tasted the color. Didn't they have to see it to know what it was? Perhaps they need practice visualizing so they can develop this skill more fully."

Let me explain to you how I "see" things. Let's say you think about a fabric—plush, for example. You can think about it without actually feeling it in your hands like it was there, right? And you know what it would feel like if you were to have it in your hands.

You also know that plush feels differently than silk, I'm sure.

That's sort of what seeing colors or images is like for me. I can describe them, but I don't actually see them—I just know what they would look like IF I saw them. Just like you'd know what plush felt like if you felt it, and you can even describe it, even though when you describe it you're not actually feeling the sensation of the fabric plush at the time.

Now do you think that it's impossible to recall something, even something visual, without actually experiencing it?

Gah, that guy is an idiot.

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Feedback is totally welcomed.

*(I'm completely serious. Although I'm not sure if it's rare, the fact that there's almost nothing (and I mean a mere 3 appropriate results) when I googled it is a huge clue. Although it could just mean that everyone has problems with this and I'm totally overreacting.)

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Edited to add: On an 'OH THAT'S WHY' note, I have just realized that this is why I hate puzzles.

Comments

[spr0cket.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be really interested in how other people respond to this. :P

[sashwap.livejournal.com]

i'm with you, heather. this is really fascinating stuff, and i've been totally absorbed with reading about neurological disorders recently and i haven't come across inability to visualize.

[soshesays.livejournal.com]

I, uh, think this is weird. Because I can visualize things, but I am overwhelmingly left-brained according to that quiz (3:15). But then again, I frequently find myself telling people, "I can't tell you what it looks like or where it is, but I'd recognize it if I saw it." I don't know, whatev.

How would you describe a color to someone who had never seen it?

[erika]

Like a blind person?

[nightingayle.livejournal.com]

It's simply the way your brain processes things. You don't learn visually. We had a whole workshop on it at work, and I was ASTOUNDED to discover that I don't process or remember anything auditory. It made a pile of things make total sense, like my phobia of the phone, or the fact that if I'm not watching a singer's hands or a guitarist's fingers, it's all just noise, for instance. The woman giving the workshop said that kids with an auditory disability (which I am leaning towards) will read lips to help understand what people are saying, which I DO ALL THE TIME. It was crazy.

Anyway, there's a wee test you can take to see what your learning strong points are.
Check it out. (http://www.cdedstudents.com/html_asp_files/students_center/tutorialcentre/LearningStyles.pdf)

It seems as though you likely have a "visual disability." Obviously, i'm not an expert at ALL, but this is the first thing I thought of when I read your entry.

I have information relevant to it but I can't access it from home, but if you google "visual perception learning disability" or "visual memory learning disability" you will find a million things. You might want to put "adult" in there, although it may or may not make a difference.

It's likely not a disability for you in that it doesn't affect much, same as my auditory "disability" (which, I don't think either of us has a real DISABILITY) doesn't really affect me. However, it could help you understand and not feel like a freak :)

Some good info:
http://www.allaboutvision.com/parents/learning.htm
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/process_deficit/visual_auditory.html


Anyway, I hope that helps! And maybe I'm totally wrong! But you can try some of my words in google to see if you find something different from what you found before.

[nightingayle.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'm reading my friends list backward, and in your last post (oh, hug!), you said your memory is so bad you have problems functioning...... perhaps it's a disability after all? In which case, there's all kinds of help for you, grants and everything. Believe me, you can improve your memory.

[erika]

Although I love your theory and would be ecstatic if that were the case and I could simply point and say "oh yes, this is totally what my problem is"... I'm actually much more a visual learner than I am anything else.

I learn best by reading alone in a calm environment, love reading, don't like doing math in my head, and ironically am great at recognizing faces when I see them. I just can't call the image up like a photograph.

I think the key difference would be that I have no problem recognizing anything I've seen before. I also don't have any of the symptoms listed on either of the two pages you linked at the bottom of your comment. (aside from needing glasses, which I got at age 8)

So while I can understand that this could be lumped in with learning disabilities and different styles of learning, it feels both more and less than that.

[proemial.livejournal.com]

Re: auditory crap. Took me my third try into university before realizing why I just couldn't "get" lectures. Then I took my entire degree through distance ed/self-directed and it all fit together.

Odd, since I play violin. But I'm always just watching my teacher's fingers on the violin.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I didn't answer the last 2 questions as I use both my right and left halves-of-brain and none of the last options summed up how I felt. I can visualise objects without any difficulty, but I can't do faces. I can neither remember faces NOR names; instead I rely on someone having a distinguishing characteristic in order for me to recognise them. I try to rely on body language for my dinstinguishing characteristics (ie how someone moves), because you can dye your hair but you can't change how you walk into a room. To remember names I rely on mnemonics, but I'm still not great at remembering them as names aren't very important to me, so I only really try to remember them in order to be polite.

I stink at recognising people in photos.

[erika]

You probably have face-blindness (prosopagnosia). I actually have ran into a lot of stuff about it, and what you just described are the classic symptoms. (Obviously IANAD.)

[kyra.livejournal.com]

If you're concerned that this might be a problem rather than a difference of terminology, may I recommend that you see a specialist? While it may be conforting to find other people out on the internet who have similar perceptions of sensory experiences, we're not necessarily qualified to give you the feedback necessary for a diagnosis.

[erika]

I can't imagine that there would be anything a neurologist can do for me, besides study me, but I have already emailed one nearby, actually.

Mainly this entry exists because I'm limited as to what I can do with real people (as opposed to LJ people!) at 3 in the morning on a weekend.

And I'm not really sure if it's a problem, it's more just a burning curiosity. Like I mentioned above, I'd probably have a better memory if I could visualize things, but the lack appears irreparable.

[quixotic.livejournal.com]

hi there.. wandered over here from faceblind. i'm on there, but i'm not certain if i have mild faceblindness, or something more general, like this.. like you. i have a lot of trouble recognizing people, but i can recognize people sometimes. i can't visualize their faces though, or really anything. (i do dream in images, but not daydream -- i daydream conversations). i have one other friend i've spoken with who claims to be similar, and a lot of other friends who think it's totally weird when i describe it to them.

i think that you and i are very similiar if not the same in this area -- but i can remember what color my first car was. i can remember it because i encoded in textually and auditorally -- the same way that i know it was a 1989 chevrolet cavalier and that it was boxy. i memorized its description.

-a

[zannah.livejournal.com]

Ha! I was totally going to mention face-blindedness (though I didn't know there was a community for it).

Oddly enough, while I am highly visual (I can visualise things without even closing my eyes), I have a *huge* facial recognition issue. It's caused some problems in the past when I've failed to recognise people I've known for quite some time. :) I do okay if I see a person and remember what they are wearing (and they are still wearing it when I see them next), but aside from family and very close friends and immediate co-werkers, I have difficult time with facial recognition. I read an article about a man who was face-blind several years ago - it was extremely enlightening, IMO.

[erika]

EXACTLY! That's what I meant by the whole plush thing--of course I can remember what color my parent's first car was. It was white. I just don't see it when I say that.

I remember it textually, factually, auditorially, by touch, by the general "sense" of "car" object. You know what I mean?

I am usually pretty good at recognizing people, but I can almost never put faces to names, and it's really hard for me to recognize people out of context unless I've seen them often in context.

Strangely enough, everyone who has written that they can't visualize dreams in images except me.

[jodawi.livejournal.com]

Try searching for visual imagery deficit
http://www.google.com/search?q=visual+imagery+deficit

[terka.livejournal.com]

that's very interesting and strange!.
but everyone visualizes things differently. i should ask melissa about this. i'm pretty sure she can visualize different things in her head but she has a really hard time thinking of how things might look. hmm. i'm explaining that all weird. for example, if i tell her to imagine what the room might look like if we paint it blue, whether she thinks it will look good or not, she has a hard time doing that. while i can.
i'm a very visual person, yet i have a bad memory. i will recongnize faces and forget names.
and learning for me is extremely hard if i have to read it, diagrmas and people showing me makes it a lot easier.

[terka.livejournal.com]

oh, and i will sometimes recongnize the face but not be able to figure out who the person is...but this tends to happen with people i met a few years back and haven't seen. like people from high school.

[erika]

Knowing that everyone visualizes things differently may be why no one has really realized that some people don't actually visualize at all.

It gets chalked up to a difference in terminology--especially since a lot of the language we use is visually oriented and thus someone speaking in such terms can be perceived as having an ability they don't.

I'm unsure as to whether it runs in families--it seems like it does, since my younger sister has great difficulty visualizing as does my older brother and my father. Just as great visual skill runs in families.

[sashwap.livejournal.com]

ok, i have a question. (i'm just a random internet guy, got to this through spr0cket posting about it.)

you say you don't see things when you dream. what do your dreams consist of?

also:
aren't brains crazy? i recommend reading this AWESOME book i just finished, called "right hand left hand: the origin of asymmetry in brains, bodies, atoms and cultures" by chris mcmanus. it's written by a guy who spent his life studying this kind of thing. though it doesn't touch on your condition, it might help you better understand what's going.

[sashwap.livejournal.com]

oh, also read "the man who mistook his wife for a hat" by oliver sacks. it's a series of case studies by a neuorologist.

[joham.livejournal.com]

Very left brained here, I am 0:18 on those questions.

What on earth does my right brain do all the time?

There must be something in it - I can remember people's faces years later, but I will forget your name literally the second you have told it to me if I've never met you before. It's annoying!

[erika]

You do too have a right brain. Otherwise you would not be able to fantasize your own porn so well.

[antastra.livejournal.com]

I wonder if mirror neurons (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html) are involved.

[erika]

Huh. Like... mine don't need to literally visualize an action before I comprehend what it's about, so I never got the skill?

[nightingayle.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this a lot. I closed my eyes this morning and tried to visualize a thing. It seems as though I have my actual eyes and my mind's eye. When I visualize... a red square, for instance, I still "see" the black behind my eyes, but somewhere else in my brain is a fleeting an awareness of what a red square looks like. I really can't articulate if I'm "seeing" it or not. I can see how people would assume it's a terminology issue.

[erika]

There are people, like my mother, who apparently actually see the object that they're visualizing (and the table it's sitting on, and the bowl that it's in). Then there are people who can't go quite that far--I'm assuming you fall into that category. Then there are people who can't visualize anything at all, but have no problem with conceptualizing, which is along the lines of what you're talking about.

[antipropeller.livejournal.com]

I can almost, uh, sensualize? the feeling of felt, too. That is, perhaps, weird.

[sashwap.livejournal.com]

another thing i thought of: i have, as far back as i can remember, always visualized sounds. all sounds, music too. to me, every sound had a shape. they're very faint in my head, it happens on a very subconscious level. i can immediately recognize them, but it'd be hard to draw any of them. sometimes if i hear a song then later forget it, i can remember it by thinking about its shape rather than what it sounded like.

i've heard of people who visualize numbers in much the same way. i wonder if you can do something akin to that, visualization of non-concrete things.