@Unsplash 如果让你想象哈利波特的样子，你的脑海中可能很容易就会浮现一个十几岁的黑发男巫，戴着眼镜，前额有一个闪电形的疤痕，手持魔杖。就好像有张照片出现在了脑子里一样。 这种视觉化的能力通常被称为“心灵之眼”（mind’s eye，又称“心像”），大多数人认为这种能力像呼吸一样与生俱来，但事实上，这并不完全正确。大约1%的人具有一种名为“心盲症”（aphantasia）的极端症状，他们无法在脑海中想象出任何东西。 认知神经科学教授乔尔·皮尔逊（Joel Pearson）表示：“试图想象苹果的外观时，他们什么也得不到，脑子里一片空白。而对于大部分人，比如我，当我想象苹果时，我对一颗苹果有非常全面的感知，我可以看到根茎，可以看到叶子，还可以看到上面的一滴水。虽然这种体验不同于手里拿着一个苹果，但我仍能感知到苹果。患有心盲症的人则没有这种体验。” 皮尔逊是澳大利亚新南威尔士大学（University of New South Wales）未来心灵实验室（Future Minds Lab）主任，自2008年以来，他一直在研究心理想象（mental imagery）和认知，包括心盲症的情况。他说，一直以来都存在一个主要问题，即如何准确测量它。 “过去几乎没有人研究视觉想象，因为实在太难测量了，只有问卷和采访。但问卷的问题在于，即使你和我都可以想象一个苹果，我们的想象也可能完全一样，但我可能会在填问卷时打4分，而你打1分，即使我们都有意识地在脑海中体验了完全相同的事物。反之亦然：也许我们的想象完全不同，但都打了2分。这是问卷调查所固有的元认知（metacognition）问题。因此，未来心灵实验室致力于设计新的心灵测量方法——客观、可靠的方法，就像心灵的显微镜或血常规测量一样。” 在未来心灵实验室的一个实验中，他们探讨了缺乏心理想象会如何影响患有心盲症的人在假想的紧张情况下的反应。 “在另一个实验中，我们让受试者进入一个黑暗的房间，在屏幕上阅读可怕的故事，然后测量他们的皮肤电反应。有想象力的受试者在阅读故事时会有不断上升的反应曲线，而会有患有心盲症的受试者……[查看全文]
Does Not Being Able to Picture Something in Your Mind Affect Your Creativity?
If I asked you to visualize, say, Harry Potter, you’d probably have no problem picturing him in your mind: a teenage wizard with black hair, glasses, a thunderbolt-shaped scar on his forehead and a wand in his hand. It would almost be as if you were pulling up a photograph in your head. This ability to visualize is often called the “mind’s eye,” and most people would say it’s as inherent as breathing. But it turns out that’s not quite true. Estimates say about 1 percent of the population lives with an extreme form of a condition called aphantasia. Those who have it can’t visualize anything in their head. Joel Pearson: So when they try and imagine and think about what an apple looks like, it's just nothing. It’s black on black. For example, when I think about an apple, I can catch up a conscious experience of an apple. I can see a stem. I can see a leaf. I can see a drop of water on there. It's not like holding an apple in my hand, but I have an experience of an apple. Someone with aphantasia doesn't have that experience. Montali: Joel Pearson is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and director of the Future Minds Lab at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He’s been studying mental imagery, including in the context of aphantasia, and cognition since 2008. One of the main questions, he says, has always been finding a way to accurately measure it. Pearson: Back then almost no one was studying visual imagery, because it was so hard to measure, right? It was just questionnaires and maybe an interview. The problem with questionnaires is that you and me could both imagine an apple. And our imagery could be exactly the same. But I might rate it a “4,” and you might rate it a “1,” even though we consciously internally experienced the exact same thing—or vice versa: maybe we have totally different imagery and both rated [it] as “2.” So that's kind of the inherent problem of metacognition when it comes to questionnaires. So a lot of what we do with Future Minds Lab is trying to develop new ways of measuring the mind—objective, reliable ways, like a microscope for the mind or a blood test to measure the mind. Montali: One of the lab’s experiments explored how a lack of mental imagery affects the way people with aphantasia respond in a hypothetical stressful situation. Pearson: We did another experiment, which was having people come into a dark room and read these scary stories on the screen. We found that people with imagery, when we measure their skin conductance response, get this nice escalating response during the story. Those with aphantasia get sort of...[full transcript]