Thread by @mariachong

My neighbor (older, mechanic, military veteran) told me he admired how I write things. That he couldn’t picture things in his mind. I asked if he could think of and see a red ball. He replied no. He never could. (Smart man who can fix anything.)

https://twitter.com/garyrosenwsj/status/1524817062513856512

He asked me if I could. I told him I could visualize anything, like a fork, a house full of furniture room-by-room, or even whole worlds with people. Sometime I drift away into the past, or future. He looked shocked. I love learning how people’s minds are so different.

I have another friend (Harvard grad, advanced degree) who mentioned she also has this. I have never asked either of them deeper questions, but I am interested in how does one write or repair things without the ability to picture concrete objects. What does that feel like?

I wonder, for me, when I see a blue fork and it can turn into a field of poppies or a map of Russia or a hundred faces—is this a visual process at all? Or is it just a consequence of words triggering what feels like a visual process as the way the brain constructs reality? #fMRI

Sometimes I visit places, like the home I lived in during kindergarten. I walk through room-by-room. I can mostly remember the exact layout of every vacation home I’ve stayed in & their furniture. Where excerpts are in books. Don’t need maps/GPS if I drive somewhere once. #weird

I’ve always scored as an extreme outlier in spatial reasoning tests (where you flip objects). I also use stories & memory palaces to remember information, even abstract symbols. So maybe it’s a function of spatial reasoning (ability to imagine 3D objects/space) AND storytelling.