Adrianna Tan
Some of you may know I have #Aphantasia (I have zero visuals in my brain. Picture an apple.. and I cannot)
Yet I have an incredible sense of direction. I am not ‘seeing’ directions in my head, instead I am ‘feeling’ them in some way other than imagining a map and manipulating space in my head. I don’t know what it is or how it works, but I am never lost, anywhere.
Adrianna Tan
The one good upside is this is really good for grief. Cookie’s face never pops into my head, I am incapable of it. So I only feel sad about losing her when I remember to look at a photo of her.
Adrianna Tan
I also have zero visual dreams, which seems to surprise people a lot.
socks
@skinnylatte i'm now imagining a tiny pigeon flying around inside your head and pointing you in the direction you need to go
Adrianna Tan
@socks that is the best explanation but I can’t imagine the pigeon either
Adrianna Tan
@sumisu3 I can feel space and perceive smells in my dreams. Like the tightness of a smoky bar but no visuals but I know I’m there
Jeff Smith
@skinnylatte I was thinking about this last week and had intended to post a question to you about dreams. You have dreams though, right? How would you describe them?
Adrianna Tan
@scott very rarely. I once navigated my way back to a village I had been to only once from a crowded Indian city I had not been to
scott f
@skinnylatte No exceptions? My sense of direction is almost always strong, but was defeated by Prague's winding streets once on a pre-smartphone trip.
Adrianna Tan
My theory is because I can’t visualize things I pay attention to lots of things. Like I will be like oh I’ve been on this corner before with this funny shop or mural, so if I take this way I’ll get back to that place I had been to. But it also works when I’m sort of in an area I haven’t been
jbaggs
@skinnylatte Maybe a weird question, but have you ever changed environments drastically, and then had to have your sense of direction re sync?
Adrianna Tan
@jbaggs on my first trip to Kolkata, India, as a 16 yo who had never been there, I didn’t know anything about the place or map but kind of felt like I intuitively got it and was not lost (and in fact was the only person to make it back the first day without getting horribly lost)
Adrianna Tan
@Legit_Spaghetti oooh good points. Thank you for sharing. Lots to think about!
Legit_Spaghetti
@skinnylatte Brains are super, SUPER weird. But once I realized how my brain was doing what it was doing, and how my kids brains are completely different, and how literally everyone I've ever met is walking around with this wild and wonderful network of thought that's been haphazardly McGyvered together over billions of years and yet seems to be working surprisingly well, it's given me a whole new appreciation for the human condition.
3/3
Legit_Spaghetti
@skinnylatte But you can do everything other people can do, your brain just uses different parts to accomplish those tasks.
For example, you speak a lot of different languages, and you express yourself well. I bet your language centers are doing double duty in ways other people's language centers don't. Or when you say you "feel" your way around an area, that sounds like your motor neurons are being used to create a sense of "placefulness." Like the city is an extension of your body.
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Legit_Spaghetti
@skinnylatte I've a hunch about how that works.
Evolution has selected for people whose brains could use their different parts to do things slightly outside of their original scope. Like how some folks use their visual cortex to do math.
You have a fully functional, working Visual Cortex: when you look at things, your VC makes sense of them. Working as intended.
Your brain doesn't make any off-label use of your VC, like the kind of deliberate hallucinations others can conjure, or math.
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Adrianna Tan
Maybe related: I can learn new languages and new musical instruments at a pretty intense and unexpected speed. I somehow just.. *feel* music and *hear* language really well. Like getting on a bike after years and immediately knowing how to ride a bike; I feel that way too with languages I have never spoken, and musical instruments I have not touched. It’s pretty much been one of the main constants in my life.
For example, when I write in any language I feel I can *feel* when it feels right, sometimes even before I write it down. A bit like what people say about sensing colors with words, but not colors really: rhythm and flow.
This also means many of my other skills or senses are not as well-developed.
Adrianna Tan
@Wifiwits that are literally all of my instruments also
MattChippytea
@skinnylatte I have an old friend who’s like this. Always a pianist the next thing I know he’s playing guitar, really well, at a gig. Turned out he’d learned it to a really proficient level in about 18 months. Oh and trumpet, clarinet and French horn.
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