Shane's Brain > Quotes

“my favorite responses came from a man with aphantasia that said “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something because I don’t know what it would be like to see those things… so I feel like I do relive a memory because I didn’t lose the memory, I have the memory, I just don’t see it. And that’s normal for me.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“Based on my research, it is my belief that, like snowflakes, no two minds’ eyes are alike. Because of this, there can be no end or final synopsis of this subject matter.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“A very elaborate file system searchable by keywords. If the keywords are not right, I’m not going to know what you’re talking about. For example, I’ll have a conversation with my wife and she’ll say, ‘remember such and such and such and such’ and I’ll be like ‘no… no… no…’ and then she might finally say one right thing and I’m like ‘Oh! You mean that thing! Yes. See, I had it stored under what you just said, not that other stuff’.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“remember a conversation when I was young about whether I dreamt in color or not. I remember being confused by the question because I couldn’t tell. My dreams are not tangible in that way. I can’t tell what they are or what color they might be. bizarre or absurd in some way.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“One of the main reasons that aphantasia has gone so unknown and unstudied for so long is that everyone just assumes that everybody is having the same experience in their minds. I know I did. I just assumed everyone was like me. Looking back now, I wonder how I didn’t discover it sooner.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“Some people describe that they hear an inner monologue throughout the day in their own voice or hear themselves talking about all of the things they have to do while they are trying to fall asleep.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“People with aphantasia, after learning about it, always express the sentiment that they thought that those words and phrases, such as “picture it in your mind” or “I can see it in my mind” were just metaphors and figures of speech.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“I don’t think of it as a disorder at all, I think of it as an intriguing variation in human experience.” Having aphantasia is not a disability or a handicap. It’s just a difference.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses

“For those with aphantasia it’s a little tricky and hard to explain how memory works. One person describes it as “an awareness of events that happened.”
― Shane's Brain, Aphantasia and Beyond: Exploring the uniqueness of your mind's abilities and senses