It's not as much "society-as-a-whole" as "academics-as-a-whole" - the overrepresentation of clever & weird & often also neurodivergent does tend to create pockets of emotional immaturity...

Either my best joke went over everyone's heads or they're busy having a crisis over discovering all their Harvard prof heroes are perverts 🤣

Working on it 😁

Thanks, I've been waiting for this preprint!

Do you think perhaps the reason for no between S vividness effects could be due to lack of variability in the sample?

Also, I was really interested to see the Lord of the Rings data - was this scrapped completely now in favor of novel stories?

Thanks for this! I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work in simulated trauma - I'd be more convinced by a meta anslysis of clinical samples... I remember Emily Holmes saying she's worked w clinicians and many rave about it. Haven't looked too much into it yet, though!

This basic idea was also proposed by @mmonzel.bsky.social et al, I just added a tetris analogy. Speaking of, has anyone tried 'tetris memory blocking' in aphantasia? 🤔

In sum, aphantasia is not an episodic memory impairment per se, but an inability to disengage from current external reality. 8/8

Visualizers often ruminate inwards, strengthening episodic memories, future & atemporal imaginings. Whereas aphantasics are constantly "playing tetris" with external reality [see below], hindering inwardly-focused rumination and the consolidation of episodic details. 7/8

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Indeed, I proposed this in another bluesky thread [below]. 6/8

bsky.app/profile/kerb...

This is in line with another study [below] showing that aphantasics are unable to transport themselves both to the past AND the future. In this case, aphantasia is better characterized as an inability to disengage from external (sensory) reality. 5/8

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Monzel et al also found more early visual activity during memory retrieval in aphantasics & weaker connectivity between hippocampus & visual areas in visualizers. This supports a different idea: that aphantasics have difficulty disconnecting from the 'here and now' to mentally time travel. 4/8

However, @mmonzel.bsky.social et al. (2024) [see below] found reduced hippocampal activity during autobiographical memory retrival in aphantasics, which supports the memory impairment hypothesis. That should be the end of it, right? Well... 3/8

doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

The authors challenge the 'episodic memory impairment' idea put forth by @andreablomkvist.bsky.social (2023) [see below], by arguing that if aphantasia were a memory disorder, impairments should be comparable to amnesia, which they clearly are not. 2/8

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/IMNFYI...

The human mind is a very personal and unique space. In turn, each Ganzflicker experience is distinct from one another. These experiences- ranging from extremely vivid imagery to no imagery at all- provide researchers with a plethora of information about how the brain produces imagery.

You can travel to outer space... Stare into the soul of a shadowy figure... Be mesmerized by a mandala...

Welcome to the world of… Ganzflicker!

Experiences heavily depend on how well the individual can visualize. If they have vivid imagery, their hallucinations will also be more vivid and complex. Hallucinations can be as simple as an X or as complex as an entire forest landscape!