Ep. 5: Imagine There's No... Picture?

0:06 Welcome to M4 Medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder. I'm Andrea Marciano and RN with 35 years of experience across various fields. From direct patient care in hospitals to home health, geriatrics, and injury medicine, I face life, death, and everything in between. And I'm Crystal Miller and RN with 13 1/2 years of experience. My work spans home health, Hospice, emergency care, geriatrics, and occupational health. From the chaos of trauma based quiet moments with patients, I've seen stories that defy explanations. We've been friends for over 25 years and as nurses we've shared countless stories that have left us and our families speechless. Now we're bringing those stories and many more to you in medicine, mystery, mayhem, and sometimes murder.

0:51 Each week, we'll uncover cases that challenge the boundaries of medicine, sharing the human stories behind the science. From puzzling medical mysteries to shocking real life crimes, we'll bring you stories that'll leave you questioning everything you thought you knew. While we're both experienced nurses, we want to make make it clear we're not here to give medical advice. This podcast is about storytelling, education and exploration, not diagnosing or treating medical conditions. This is medicine, mystery, mayhem and sometimes murder. Let's dive in. Hey Crystal, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Good. I'm glad. Anything interesting or exciting? Yeah. Anything interesting or exciting going on in your life? Zachary, my oldest son, sort of technically challenged me and Odyssey, my second oldest daughter technically to play Minecraft video game and play a modded version of it. That's called all the mod 10.

1:53 And the way that it works is it has quests in it. And there's one, there's a big ultimate quest, which is to get the all the all the mod star. Is that right? Yeah, sorry, honestly, sitting next to me. And so we've been working on it and Zach was doing it with us and he quit. And so now honestly and I are working on it on our own. And it was his idea in the 1st place. How about that? I was going to say he's the one who invited you. And probably some of those words, probably some of those words mean something to people who are gamers because I don't know half of the. Words you said, but the, the thing that is I don't know, it's, it's frustrating to a degree, but also like whatever is that a lot of the what you have to do to get this ultimate quest completed is like super technical and like mechanical stuff and engineering stuff.

2:46 And I don't mean like you don't need to have an engineering degree like kids can do it if they figure it out, but it's it is it's intense it's intense. And so we we were kind of counting on Zach for those portions of it because that's how his mind works. And now obviously, well, I guess Odyssey is mostly figuring them out, but I guess I figured out a few. So, but yeah, it's, it's still fun. It's just that's what's going on in my life. I'm just thinking about it, like I said, 'cause Odyssey sitting next to me, still playing. Oh, that sounds good. We've been remodeling our cabin for the last year and as you know, we had a very devastating collapse to our garage. So we had to shift from the cabin to the garage and then we've shifted back to the cabin.

3:31 Max has finished most of the flooring and we're about ready to put in kitchen cabinets, which means we're nearly complete. Hey, hey, that's exciting. I know it is so exciting. I did tell him though, that the new mirrors we put into the bathrooms I don't like and I said why? What's wrong with them? I said, 'cause I can see myself too well. I can see the Gray hair. I didn't used to be able to see it. I I need I need. The hairs. That's definitely the solution. That's right. What do you have? For us today, Crystal. I'm actually really excited to share this because I I've talked about it briefly in a few of our episodes, but I thought I did would dedicate an episode to it, and that is a Fantasia. If you've been listening to us long enough, you know that I live with a Fantasia, and what aphantasia is, is essentially the lack of a mind's eye.

4:27 So before I get into it, let me share my sources with you. Lives without imagery, Congenital aphantasia study by Doctor Ziman in 2015, and then the rest I'll put in the show notes. I also do want to point out that I in a subreddit dedicated to aphat, sorry, dedicated to aphantasia and people who are interested in it or who haven't. It's just, you know, lots of conversations around it. So I may take some anecdotal data from that subreddit. Nothing that will identify anybody or break confidentiality or anything, but just some of the things I've observed.

5:10 And then additionally, I thought I was going to put the rest of the show notes, but I do want to point out that really like two articles that I read that were not scientific studies. And one was What it's like to live with a Fantasia. And it was published in The Guardian in 2024. And the other one, the other one is called What It's Like to be Mind Blind. And it was published in Time magazine in 2022. So I just wanted to point out that I used those as well. And the Time magazine article is actually the one where I learned about a Fantasia exists at all. That Time magazine article opened up this whole new viewpoint on life for me, kind of like set me on a whole, like a whole different trajectory. And not in the sense of like, you know, I was going to be a lawyer and now I'm going to be a doctor, nothing like that. But just like my understanding of the world and my experience of the world has changed so much since learning about a Fantasia. So let me give you a little test. OK, so I want you to close your eyes for me. And now imagine an apple.

6:15 Not the word apple, not the idea of one. The image, it's red skin, the highlight of light across the curve. Can you see it? Yeah, mine was green until you said red though. That's fair. OK, so some, so the majority of people can. They can make it shimmer, turn you? Probably. Yeah. You made it change from green to red, right? You can see a glint of a knife before you cut it. Others can't. When they close their eyes, the apple disappears. Not because they're blind, but because they've never been able to see it in their mind at all. That's so wild. I can't even imagine after we had talked, I think you and I talked about this about a year and a half ago, that you have a, a Fantasia. And when you told me, I, I thought, I can't even imagine closing my eyes and not having a movie going on. There's always something going on in there. I talk about this so much, but kids and my sister are probably sick of it.

7:11 But I've learned new things about it all the time because I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it in the sense that like obsession means I don't like, you know, practice hygiene or do my job or eat. Like I'm not that kind of obsessed. But I'm, it's very interesting to me. And particularly because, you know, I'm 49 years old and so for the last 48 years old, my reality, I had no idea that my reality was any different than everybody else's reality in this sense, right? And so, so when you say to me picture an apple, I, before I learned of a Fantasia, I believed that I was picturing an apple, right? I thought that the mind's eye was metaphorical as opposed to literal, right?

7:59 So, you know, you say picture an apple, and I'm like, yeah, OK, apple got it right. But really, in my mind, it's pitch black, black, black, black. So wait, OK, I still I know talked about this, but this is difficult to comprehend from my perspective. So when your eyes are open, you see an apple across the room. You know that's an apple. And then you close your eyes and you want to see an apple. The only way you can see it again is if you open your eyes. See it see it yes, but I can tell you all about that apple with my eyes closed I can tell you you know I can close I'm closing my eyes right now I can say OK apple it's green it's got a brown stem if I turn it around it's got the little brown parts that were stuck to the tree before we. It's where the flaming was.

8:52 But thank you. I'm like, that's heavy, right? Could you pick it from the stem? Yes, the little brown thing's where the flower was. You know, it I, I can see the little speckles if it's a Granny Smith, like I can describe this apple. I can see like even from my example, I can see the Sheen of where the wax is. You know, the light is hitting on the wax or whatever. But no, my mind itself is black black, pitch black, black hole, nothing. But you, when you say you can see it, just a second ago you said you could see it. How? What does that mean to you? It means that before a year and a half ago, I didn't have the language to explain what was really happening, and so for 48 years I just assumed everybody saw air quotes that way, that it was metaphorical. So you so you literally see nothing in your brain but you can describe it because you know what it looks like. OK for those of us who do not have a Fantasia that could make sense now.

9:44 Still hard to grasp. It's true, you know, it's a phenomenon that sits at the edge of neuroscience. And not only is it on the edge of neuroscience, it's like, it feels like it's like on the edge of my soul. And from looking, you know, from reading the subreddit on a Fantasia, a lot of people feel that way. And a lot of us are are discovering this, this phenomenon, for lack of a better word, in adulthood and some in late adulthood, right. And so it's this. As a matter of fact, my mom is 76. Nope, she's 77 and she just found out like she said like 6 months ago, she has a Fantasia 76 years old.

10:25 She had no idea people had real pictures in their mind. Oh my goodness. And does she think of it because you calling her of yours? Oh, yeah, because I tell everybody, all right. But that's how she discovered she had it is because you were talking about it. Yes. Yes. Because I mean, we'll get into this, but I had read that it might be genetic, that it might, you know, pass down through the genes. And so I wanted to ask everybody in my family, like none of my kids have it, by the way, but my sister Shawna has it, my mom has it, I have it. Who knows who else, right? Oh and I know Paige doesn't have it because Shawna was on when I was on Photoshop and she's like wait, so. Anyway, isn't that wild?

11:11 It's so wild. It's so wild. So. Is there is there a a male versus female difference? Nothing that's of any consequence. No. OK, so, so it's funny because so you can, I mean, I, we haven't even really started what I've, what I've prepared for this episode because there are so many conclusions and parallels and things that you can draw, right? Another example is we, we hear all the time about counting sheep, right? And I could never understand how or why that would put somebody to sleep because for me, it took work to think about what a sheep looks like and what it would look like jumping over a fence. And then all of a sudden I'm not I'm not counting anymore. Brain powered to also count them, right? And meditation is the same way, right? Picture yourself on a sunny beach or whatever. And I like, OK, I'm on a beach.

12:10 That's the simplest way I can explain it to you is just like, OK, if you say so. I'm on a beach. OK, what's next? But meditation doesn't really work well for me. Holly Sue, my, my youngest sister, she once went on a 10 day silent meditation retreat where the whole time you just have to be silent. And I remember thinking there's no way I could do that. I'd be bored to death, right? But you all non event eventations, you can play movies and music and all these things in your head that you can actually like keep yourself entertained or busy or whatever, right? I can't, I can't do that. I would, I would go say I would go crazy. Wow.

12:52 So yeah, I just, it's wow. And it's kind of like it makes me think of how people have conversations going on in their minds. So I have conversations and pictures and it's just not quiet up there. One of the reasons why I listen to podcasts so much, because it can help focus me because that's part of the ADHD situation. And that's the thing I was going to ask you about too. Are is aphantasia linked to anything else like that? Yeah. The So aphantasia falls on a spectrum, and it's interesting because the ends of the spectrum are actually hyperphantasia and aphantasia. I want to back up just a little bit and and give you a little bit of history on this though, because the one of the most fascinating things about aphantasia, besides it the condition itself is that it was only rediscovered in 2015.

13:43 So scientists, modern day scientists have only known about this since 2015. And that's when a neurologist named Adam Zeeman at the University of Exeter met a man who could not picture his late wife's face. He remembered her, but he would ask to imagine her smile. There was only darkness. So Zeeman ran the standard test for a brain injury. Nothing. The man's eyesight was fine. His memory was fine, but the images of his mind were gone. There's actually there's evidence that this phenomenon was known about. I want to make sure I get the date right. It is as early as as early as 340 BC. There there's writings about this difference in visual imagery, but it really just went away and it didn't get like rediscovered, I'll call it, until 2015.

14:33 So we're talking 10 years ago, this phenomenon became known and then people, what doctors even did is he from that one man, he studied 21 other people that could reason, plan, remember, but not see it in their heads. And then once that study was done, the realization just just that the revelation spread like wildfire. People all over the world, you know, are saying, wait, that's me. Like what that? Is so wild. Well, it makes me wonder for sure. Two things came to my mind. First, back in the day when they were doing the pictographs on the the walls in the caves. Does one was one cave person have a blank wall because he can't picture anything? I don't know, maybe.

15:20 I was just thinking that and also that came to my mind. My partner has what he calls face blindness, where he cannot identify people very well if he's not with them. So he would, he used to be a teacher and he would see kids and when they were in his class he was good with identifying them. But when he saw them out of that environment, he would have a difficulty with it. And he also has difficulty with other people that if he doesn't know them really well, he has a hard time picking them out and saying, oh, that herald. But if he knows them really well, he sees them. Is that related at all? Did you see anything about that? I didn't see anything about that. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me. Because it sort of seems like the same part of the brain function.

16:08 I'll have to ask him. I'm pretty sure he has dreams all the time that he describes, so he must see something in his brain because he tells me the detail. What he says girl, I dream all the time. I dream. And as a matter of fact, I've seen this also a lot in the subreddit. It's the subreddit is fascinating, by the way. There are some kind of mean people in it that like the people will say, I'm trying to train myself to be able to see images and they're like, you can't train yourself, you're whatever. But I have seen a lot of people say, you know, why can't I? I, I myself personally, this is anecdotal, of course, it's just me. If I am in the process of being between sleep and wake, so either falling asleep or waking up, I can hold an image in my mind for that split moment, though it's gone as soon as I'm well, If I'm asleep, I'm asleep, but it's gone as soon as I wake up, right? Gone.

17:03 And I cannot recreate it at all. So there has to be we do dream, we do. So there's something that our there's somewhere in our brain that's making images. It's just not doing it on demand as I was, as I was looking into this subject, one of the things I saw was that when they've done studies, they've done fmris and an FM MRI is a functional MRI. So what that means is that instead of laying down and being very, very still, you're doing stuff while the Mr. is, is being done so that they can see where your, where your brain lights up essentially. And one of the things that they noticed is that for people with a Fantasia, they don't, their brain imagery centre does not light up when you say, think of an apple or whatever. Another thing that I, I'm sorry, there's a little bit all over the place, but it's because I get so excited about this incredibly mind blowing idea.

17:57 But another thing that I just, that I just found in doing the research for this episode is that people without a Fantasia, if I say to you imagine a bright light shining into your eyes, your pupils will dilate even though there's no bright light in reality. So you have a, so you have a physiological response to what you're imagining, even though it's not real. It's so it's so crazy. And it's another thing that's interesting to me is there is a test that's been used for decades that's just a, it's a questionnaire. Basically, it's called the VVIQ or the vividest visual imagery questionnaire.

18:37 And as 16 questions, you know, picture sunrise, a friend's face, a shop, you know, you rate each on a scale from crystal clear to no image at all. And it, I mean, obviously it's very subjective. And I think that, and I know that, that, that the results of this test are, are treated differently now because again, we have to go all the way back to the idea of until 2015 when this was named essentially by Doctor Zion or Zeman. I don't know how to say his name, but I'm saying it like Simon in German. But anyway, I digress. You know, they didn't we with a Fantasia didn't know that our way was different. So when you, if I had taken this, if I had taken this test, I don't think I would ever say no image at all before I found out I had a Fantasia, right? That would never, I would never rate it no image at all because in my mind's eye, Hardy har har, every time I say it now in my mind's eye there I'm, I can, I'm picturing a sunrise, right? It's got yellow and some purple and some orange. And so anyway, so we have to take those, those subjective tests now with a little more grain, a few more grains of salt because there wasn't this idea of aphantasia to measure against.

19:53 And again. Oh, I was just going to say, and as you mentioned it, like most things, it's on the spectrum and I wonder if there's associating factor. So with many things, if you're tired or hungry or sick or things like that, it will affect your ability to do lots of things. So I wonder if there's a way you say that if you're dreaming and you have that split second of imaging, it just sounds like there's just not that cross input. So that's the way they describe it. Yeah, that's the way they describe it. They kind of describe it like someone's calling but no one's picking up the phone. So with the with the with the FM RIS and the the pupils dilating and whatever it is going into a pinpoint, I guess.

20:39 Oh, OK. Constricting. Yeah. Constricting or contracting. They found, you know, that's where they were able to see that because the the people in the study with aphantasia, that there was no physiological response. There was no reflex. Their eyes stayed neutral. Right. And so this was the first evidence that it isn't simply a lack of imagination. It's a measurable difference in neural feedback. So the top down signals that that normally light up the visual cortex never never quite make the trip. Yeah. So there it's estimated that about 4% of of the population of the world has a Fantasia. So it's a very small minority speaking on the the communication between the frontal lobe where we plan and the occipital lobe where we see. It's quieter in those with aphantasia and the most recent studies that came out of the University of NSW suggest it's a failure of feedback loops.

21:36 Like I said, the top down traffic from memory and imagination that recreates images inside the visual system fails. So it's not. So aphantasia isn't damage, it's disconnection. The hardware works, the signal just never paints the picture and so. Well, that's where the one person, oh, sorry, I was just going to say the one person who was saying that they can train if it seems like this is could be trainable if you work. On. Input Now also, you know, I I always think of things related to stuff like handedness. So I'm left-handed, but I'm very ambidextrous because the world is right-handed. Yep. So I know that one of the things I actually build those skills in myself because as a nurse, I've always thought, oh, if I have a stroke, at least I'll have strong brain on both sides of the hemisphere.

22:26 So I mean, that's how we nurses think, isn't it? It's like, oh, wait, I'm doing this one. This helps because if but I wondered if there's a way that you can develop your your visualization air quote muscles if you will. I don't know. That's a great question. Research published in Cortex and Nature Scientific Reports found that aphantasics, as they're often called, are aphantasians. I've heard of called aphants. You pick, I don't care, but that they recall fewer visual details from an autobiographical memory, but are accurate in facts and order. And it's funny that I say that because because often Holly Sue, who by the way is hyperphantasic. So if you say picture an apple, she's like she's, I mean, she'll give give you down to like the cellular details. I mean, that's a little bit of exaggeration, but like she's very like hyper fantasic and and. I think I lend.

23:26 I think I lend towards the hyper versus the A Fantasia because I can go into all kinds of detail and a lot of it depends on whether I care, but that's fair. But she tells stories all the time that are out of order and like, missing details. And you know, it's probably because she's just picking out the parts in her head that she wants to say out loud, right? So let's go back to dreams for just a second. Some a fantastic stream visually, like I do. Others dream only in sound, only in touch, only in abstract motion. So again, this machinery for imaging exists, but it's only engaging when the consciousness is off and maybe they're not in the same system.

24:10 We don't actually know. That's the other thing is that right now neuroscience has does not know if those are the same system, if there if there are two systems for imagery in our brains or if you know, we have one that's yours works better than mine. You know what I mean? We don't know. OK, this is I was going to say, this is where it gets exciting. It's all exciting to me. Well, let me just interject here for a moment. I believe that this could be one of the reasons they're finding that eyewitness testimony and courts is just bogus because it's so inconsistent and unreliable. And I wonder if this a Fantasia of the spectrum of the ability to see things effects it because I played this game because this is the kind of person I am of matching faces.

24:58 I found this game online my time years ago where I would be shown faces really fast and then I would have to be able to identify the person. And I was very good at it. And they said every time I did it, the feedback of the game was you were you have a better identifying recall for faces than most people do. So I bring this up because many people remember very little correctly. They don't get the hair color right, They don't get the eyes, face shape, things like that. And I wonder if that's part of this sort of spectrum, if you will, because if they tie together at all. But I don't remember other stuff very well. So it's just it's funny to me.

25:45 And this is another way to look at the brain that is such a mystery because we, as you say, don't know. But it just makes me wonder what part things are connected. Yeah, well, and it's like you said, mystery. That's exactly what it is. And you know, if, if you think about some of your, let's say, scariest memories or saddest memories, when you look at those images in your head, that amplifies your emotion, right? You pick your loved one, smiling, your limbic system response as if they were there. You remember a day you were really scared and that your, you know, your body responds to that.

26:27 You know, it's been studied. There's this 2021 study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B that showed that visual imagery strengthens emotional response to stories or threats. So without it, fear and empathy can feel blunted. Some aphantasics report less vivid flashbacks after trauma. For them, the horrors stay factual, Others still an aching distance and positive memories, like remembering happiness in grayscale. I know for me, it's like I can get scared by a horror movie very easily. And of course that's set up that way, right? Jump scares, music, what have you. But I can't really, I can't really like scare myself with a Horror Story, if you will. But I don't know how it's to put it but like. Going to say what you're describing is part of the horror is seeing it and if you're describing how you describe you experience it is that your movie is off. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

27:20 My movie's off and I'm trying and I'm just, I'm trying to say it out loud. I'm trying to recreate it with words which is a very scary. No, and, and there's some plus to that. Sometimes I wish that some of the things that were really scary or upsetting could just become words to me. Well, that's right. And that's the thing. Studies show that a Fantasix report less PTSD or less severe PTSD. And I think that's because they can't, I they can't recall it. I mean, in fact, there's no other way to put it really. They don't replay the visuals that most of us do, where we see every step of the way the entire time, forever and ever, potentially. Exactly, exactly. Another thing that is fascinating is, you know, a lot of people question well, are aphantasics just dullards, right? Are they just not creative?

28:06 Are they, are they dumb? The answer's no. Creativity persists. There are writers, architects, mathematicians, artists, many of them thriving with aphantasia. You can Google famous people with aphantasia and you know one of the you know, one of the most famous people that in my I mean, I'm sure in my circle anyway, that has aphantasia major that just found out just like I did. Poor guy John Green turtles all the way down. Or course history. Say that tells me that the people who are successful at those artistic things, to me, since they can't visualize it in their mind, to me that's more successful because they're they're not already having a set image in their head.

28:48 But I'm not sure I'm explaining that very well, but it seems pretty amazing to me so. What artist said in the 2024 interview with the Guardian Quote I can't see the painting in my mind. I just start and find it on the canvas. close quote again. I have a Fantasia, but I also have a creative writing degree, right? I have a bachelor's degree in writing and rhetoric, and I've written a lot of things and they've come from my imagination. So it's just it's just crazy. Like, think about it this way. I can never picture my mother's face, right? If I want to see my mother's face, I have to get a picture. I have to FaceTime her or I have to go to her house, right? Let's talk a little bit about the rest of the things that are associated with this.

29:30 OK, so it turns out my friend that you can have multi sensory a Fantasia that is where you not only do not have an inner sorry, a mind's eye or a way to inner imagery, you also do not have voices in your head. Like you don't can't play music in your head. You can't hear like your brother saying that one thing he said to you when you were in kindergarten, like all of those things also gone. There are people. For you the. Record I yes, I was just going to say I'm one of those that I have complete aphantasia. So if I, if I say to you, imagine that you just put a lemon in your mouth and imagine like the taste and the feel and all of that sort of thing, odds are you will kind of start to salivate and kind of feel that pucker in your mouth, right? No, not me.

30:27 I'm just like, OK, I know what that's like, but I can't feel it. I don't have any, any physical or physiological response to it. Same with, you know, you talked about having an inner monologue all the time or even a dialogue. There's no dialogue in my head. Now, what's fascinating and which what makes this so hard to understand and even to explain is that I do have conversations with myself in my head. I just don't hear them. And so how does that work you you may ask? I don't know it just, it's just how it works. That's so wild. Huh. It Yeah. So I don't, I don't know. As soon as you said that about having a lemon in my mouth, my mouth did start just watering and that is just wow. When you said you don't hear voices in your head or you don't hear your brother or whatever.

31:18 So if there's a lot of things, we've had one or two communication and conversations between us in our lives. And when you're not with me and I think about it, I hear your voice. You don't hear that. Like if you thought of something I said, you would know I said it, but you don't hear my voice, correct? Wow, I can't even imagine. Well then tell me this. You sing and you know songs you can hear yourself, right? But could you not replay that back in your head if you wanted to? Do you know what I mean? Not at all no no that's actually funny you asked that because I asked in the subreddit with total a Fantasia why don't I sing off key and because like even acapella I can sing on key.

32:03 And I I got to be honest with you I don't remember the answer but basically they were like it's not related. Stop trying to relate everything to a Fantasia. Oh, OK, well I can sing off key outside of my my body and inside of my body I can say at demand. So that's pretty amazing. Hey, hey. Right. I just, I just can't even imagine, huh? Yeah. So well, so if it's dark, if it's dark in there, it is. Is it boring? Is it boring in there? I don't know. Because sometimes my chatter gets so high that I have to when I'm doing work, like at the job I used to have.

32:43 You're familiar with if I was building, say, a a deck for education and it had no sound to it, I'd have to have something playing in the background. And I know part of this is ADHD, but in order to focus I have to have multiple forms of input to quiet the things that are going on in my head. OK, so nothing's going on in my head in that sense. I get there's nothing to quiet. I can certainly I don't, I don't even know how to describe it because it's just how my brain has always worked, right? I guess there's no overlap of anything in my head, so I kind of have to, I kind of have to go into the Dewey Decimal System and find the thought that I'm looking for and then I can bring it to the forefront.

33:27 But again, I don't hear it. I just retrieve it and analyze it I guess and make it so. Wow, wow. I just I just cannot like cannot comprehend. Yeah, it's like I said, I on the flip side, I cannot comprehend the idea of seeing and hearing and feeling things in your mind. Like I truly, I cannot stress this I enough. I truly, truly believed all of this visualization stuff. Was metaphor. Yeah, I get that. Because why would you think anything else? Yeah, like, and so sometimes, not all the time and not nearly as often as I used to, sometimes I feel like I got ripped off, right? Like I got the short end of the stick and I feel like a little jealous.

34:11 But then I hear about things like overwhelming chatter and things like that. Then I'm grateful I don't have that. I'm grateful I don't have to relive traumatic experiences visually, you know, in my head. I can, absolutely. Relive. I absolutely relive those experiences just at a moment's notice or when I don't want it or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Well, and The thing is, is it's not to say I don't have any trauma, right. Like I do have trauma. I bad things have happened to me in my life. I do remember them. I do not like them. I didn't like them then, I don't like them now. But yeah, there's nothing there's, I don't do any reliving. The most reliving of it I can do is like, yeah, I remember he was standing there. He was doing this, He said this and I was, you know, on a quilt. There you go.

35:01 That's the memory I. Mean I can say. More, I was in a cabin. I guessed that right, but. No, I can remember every single detail, like about our granddaughter who who died and I was doing CBR. I remember everything that was in the room. I remember having taken off the necklace she had on that was not choking her, but I took it off just in case. I see it on the floor. I see her clothes. I see all of the things. I see the moment that I handed her to the paramedics and all of that in my brain just whenever it's not all the time anymore. I mean, it was initially of course, but but I don't, I can call up every single detail. I call up the drive to the hospital.

35:41 I can remember hearing the helicopter landing on the hospital roof. I all of that and visualize even that's what's actually now they say that I remember hearing the helicopter, but I could even visualize it because I knew what it would look like. And so I did in my mind, even though I didn't see that actual helicopter, I've seen those. So I can envision it landing. I can hear the chopper blade slow. And I could, you know, all of those things, Which is kind of interesting that even though I didn't see that in that moment, I could visualize it because I have seen it. But it was also a whole picture I was creating, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean that I use that metaphorically. That's right. Well, so with people who have discovered that they have a Camtasia, First off, you said there was somewhat like 4% of the world that has it.

36:30 I feel like this is likely to be something like autism in the spectrum. Is that because more people are hearing about it? The numbers will go up because people are becoming aware, right? Because if you didn't know until you were 49 or 48. This. This was even a thing. It never occurred to you. If someone said do you have any Fantasia and they explained it and like if they didn't explain in a lot of detail, you'd probably say no. Or even if you didn't realize that they were not metaphorical images, then you still, as you said, might not have put yourself on that list. And I'm really interested to see what the numbers will look like in maybe even 10 years when the knowledge of it and maybe the treatment, they might develop some treatment if people want to.

37:18 I don't know. Some of it I'd be happy to have what you're experiencing, and others of it I'd be very sad to miss. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I was saying when I sometimes feel jealous, right? Like I got ripped off. But then I also like, I kind of feel lucky that I don't have all these other things. I wanted to bring up another thing that was another question I asked on the subreddit. Little bit of back story. So, you know, there are a lot of movies that are adaptations of novels or books, right? Like that's, that's a known thing, if that exists. And one of the things that a lot of a lot of conversations I've had with my family and, and then also on, on the subreddit were when I read a book, I don't, there's no movie in my head of the book.

38:02 I, I can't explain that to you because I can see how that doesn't make sense. Like how are you even processing the story? I don't know. I am, I can tell you lots of books and lots of plots of books I've read that don't have movies, right. Like I am a voracious reader. I love to read. But one of the things that I learned about myself is that when there is a book adaptation, as long as it's close enough to what I think I read in the book, like those characters become Canon for me. So great example is Harry Potter, even though I don't like JK Rowling for the Harry Potter series, as far as I'm concerned, all those actors, they're, they're the characters, that's what they look like. They look exactly like, you know, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe and and etcetera. And so there was a lot of variety in the subreddit when I asked about this, though a lot of people, they do take the time to kind of sketch in their mind what a, what a character should look like.

39:04 And so they can see differences if they don't like the way it's cast or whatever. And then there are a lot of people who don't care either way, just they, they never even think about what the characters look like. I mean, obviously we remember differing things. I don't even know how, like I'm thinking about, for example, just this is the one I'm thinking about for no good reason. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, right? Count of Monte Cristo. Cool, great book, love it. What does the Count of Monte Cristo look like? Dude? Probably longish hair maybe, and some old timey clothes. All right, there's The Count of Monte Cristo. I picture Dracula and Rangs, which she didn't have, but still, that's kind of what comes to my mind.

39:47 So when you're trying to visualize characters in a book and you say you can't, I do. And when Tom Cruise was put in as the actor to portray Jack Reacher in the Reacher novels, and Jack Reacher was this big, burly, really tough, 6 foot two guy and everything else, and they put Tom Cruise into it, I couldn't watch the show. Because that wasn't the right character because I had a fully different vision of who he was. And they took Tom Cruise out of the role, which I imagine was from feedback, like what I'm saying, and have a different person in it who matches a lot better and I could watch it. Do you know what I mean? It matters to me that my I can understand if my vision of something was wrong, but when they so clearly described the character and the person they put into the character was absolutely 100% not that, it didn't work for me. You couldn't have a 7 foot tall Hobbit, right? Like obviously I'm going to watch that and be like, I don't think so, right.

40:52 But again, I was trying to come up with an example of where there are two characters that are similar and and one of my favorite books of all time is the myths of Avalon. There's a movie adaptation of that. And I mean, I'm fine with the characters fine, sure, whatever. But when I'm reading the book 1 might ask how do I tell, for example E Grain or Morgain apart right? How do I know in my mind who's who or I don't? I can't answer that other than I just do. Well, and it's funny too, because they also have voices, right? So different people.

41:35 Different characters would have. Different voices and you can't hear that either. So yeah, I would. No, I don't know if you would. Say, yeah, if you were to say describe E grain, I'd be like, she's a lady and she's a mom and she probably has hair. And then like, OK, describe Morgane a different lady. That's funny. You should definitely go into book descriptions. You should be you should be the writer for that. On the Some people were in a story and they did stuff, yes. The end. Yeah, Excellent, excellent. Wow, That's just so amazing to me.

42:16 I know you haven't covered the layers of this over the last year or so. And I'm glad that some of it doesn't feel like a dip to you because I remember when you first found out and you were so mad that it's not fair. This isn't right. How come I and I'm glad that some of it has been an adjustment that you've been able to to take a little bit better because I would feel completely ripped off, especially if I were to lose it now where I've had my entire life. And then all of a sudden, if I couldn't see things, which I imagine when a person may have a neurological or burn injury, it makes me think of things like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and stuff where maybe that part gets damaged. But then they also have hallucinations. They're still seeing stuff.

43:00 But it's maybe it's not on demand. If you, if you want to describe it that way. The brain is just the most wild and crazy thing. And the fact that either anyone, either, either one of us have brain activity, not just the two of us, but generally people. The fact that either of us have brain activity is shocking. No, but that our brains do so much that they do and don't have these disconnects and bigger ways more often. And of course they do with brain injury and illness and disease and things like that. But just every day I often will be walking across the room and not run into anything and think, wow, my brains really working well today.

43:42 Well, and from from what I remember and I, I was just looking for it, but I can't find it. But from what I remember, the reason that Doctor Ziman was studying this was because he had a patient, this patient who could not picture his late wife's face knew onset after a brain surgery. And so that's that's why this came back into the picture because somebody did lose their Fantasia, right? Their ability to see those visual images and reported it to their neurologist who then studied it so. Well, they think that in this case, in his case, he actually did lose it. Or did he realize he never had it? No, he lost it. And they didn't know how or where or what was affected. Correct.

44:25 Correct. Well, that's frustrating. So, yeah, So it's not, you know, some, some speculate it's congenital, some thinks, thinks, some think it may come after a trauma or a brain injury. But there's really, there's really no conclusive evidence at this moment that points to any of those one things. It's very, very thin evidence there. Nobody has yet proven that imagery can be trained from nothing. Although there is a study from 2023 that says hints it's still not, it's very thin, but hints that weak imagery might strengthen with practice or no feedback. But that means that you had to start with that weak imagery, right? Not the blackness that I experienced, but who knows? You know, where there's always, there's always innovation in science and, and we just, we learn new things everyday. So I want to leave you with just one more fun exercise that I learned about from from God guide that I found on that subreddit guide to a Fantasia.

45:21 I don't know who wrote it, but you can find it on the a Fantasia subreddit. So I want you to picture a ball on a table. Something hits that ball and it rolls off the table. It just. Rolls. Yeah, just picture that. You got it. OK. Well, yes. What color is the ball? Yellow. What color is the table? Brown. But it didn't just roll, it bounced off. It was. OK OK, but answer my questions. What was the table made of? Why did the ball move? Because something hit it. What hit it? I envisioned like a smaller ball that like a a golf ball hit a rubber ball. OK, so see how you have all of those details.

46:04 If you were to ask me those questions, here's what my answers would be. Truly, what color was the ball? Ball. Ball color. What color was the table? Table color? What was it made of? Able material? I don't see a picture. It's just a ball on the table that rolled. Oh my. Goodness, why did it roll? Yeah, because I think it did, because I totally envisioned something, like I said, along the size of a golf ball hitting a bigger ball because that would make it go. But because my golf ball was hitting it, it went off to an angle because the golf ball has a different mass, so it went kind of bouncing off into a different direction. I don't know where the golf ball went. I didn't see that, but it was. That's so wild. I mean, I even see the little dimples on the golf ball. Yeah, Nope.

46:48 But I like if you like. Here's the thing. If you said, OK, but but really, what color was the ball? It, it wasn't like I, I can lie to you and be like, oh, sure, OK, OK, it was white. But no, there's, there's no ball. There's no like that's, that's, that's how I want to end this. Like this is how hard it is to understand because you and I both definitely just imagined a ball on a table rolling off, right? It happened. We both imagined it, and it was so vastly different how we imagined it. It's fascinating and frustrating and weird and wild and cool all at the same time. Really is. Wow. Wow.

47:28 And I, I just, as we've said before, I'm not seeing all of that because it just is. Yeah. Well, get your Fantasia on if you want. Yeah. Please let us know if you have any experience with a Fantasia, whether it's or even hyperphantasia. I'm fascinated by that as well. Like Zach also has it. So Holly and Zach, you know, if you ask them to describe something they're picturing, they'll get into some of the craziest details. If you look online also that the Apple test that I opened up with, it's a very, very basic test. Obviously it's not like scientifically sound per SE, but it does show, like you say, picture an apple and it shows gradients of Asia spectrum of where people picture an apple a lot. You know, there's the, the no imagery whatsoever, plain blackness.

48:17 And then there's like sometimes there's a fuzzy outline, maybe that's grayish or whatever. It's all the way up, you know, to a full bright red apple and. So then even the shadow on the table and that sort of thing, right? Right, exactly. It's the all these details that are just like hyper, right? And so, yeah, we'd love to hear your experiences. We'd love to hear if you're finding out about it right now. We'd love to hear your response. If you're finding out about it right now and it hurts your feelings, I'm sorry. I understand. I've been there. So yeah. So that's that's a Fantasia for you. Thank you very much. Very interesting. You bet. Do you have an idea for an episode of this podcast? Just want to say hi?

48:58 You can get in touch with us at our M4 pod. That's OURM the #4pod@gmail.com. We read every e-mail, and sometimes we even respond just like real professionals. Because we are old. Friends with new twists and lots of body bags.