No, no lingering sensory information after the stimulus is gone. It’s like the mental sensory display mechanism is turned off: in the absence of a physical stimulus for physical sensory perception, there is no way to experience anything sensory in the mind.
I can get a song stuck in my mind, kind of, but it is not auditory—it is silent! And it’s not really stuck, I don’t think—it’s something that I find so compelling that some part of me wants to continue repeating it. Another part of me can stop it. It is not auditory, it is just words, and it is the same mental mechanism that is used for any other thought processes. And it cannot multitask, so if I start thinking about something other than the song (with my silent word thinking), then I can’t be singing the words to a song. Both my normal thinking and thinking a song are like conversations that I am having with myself, and I can’t talk about two things at once. They are not using any sensory channel, they only use the silent verbal channel, and that channel can only be occupied by one train of thought at a time.
About visualizing spaces with object shapes and positions: there is no visualization whatsoever, so no. People talk about seeing things on a “screen” in the mind’s eye. I have no sense even of there being a screen, much less anything on it. It is like a TV that is turned off.
I don’t believe that I have any way of thinking in concepts instead of words. There needs to be some vehicle for the concept, and silent words are the only vehicle that I have. When I am not thinking in words, the mind is empty.
About grocery shopping: I stand in my kitchen, look in the fridge and make a list before I go out. Otherwise I am screwed! If I don’t have a list, I’ll walk through the aisles looking at everything, wondering, is there anything I need? Or I might try to think about what i would like to eat, and wonder whether I have all the ingredients, and buy something that I’m not sure of. I might wonder if I’m missing anything for my morning smoothie, and remember that I used my last banana, but that is not any kind of an experiential memory—it is the memory, in words, of saying the words to myself “I need to buy more bananas” … because words and words alone are the fabric of my memory, as they are the fabric of all of my thought processes.
Yes, but very infrequently. Usually I wake up and know that I was dreaming, but have no way of latching on to any dream content, because my mind can’t re-experience any trace from a dream experience. The only traces that I have from dreams upon waking are either mental notes in the form of words, or emotional reactions in my body, e.g. heart pounding or solar plexus in a knot. Mental notes take the form of words spoken in the dream that were extremely compelling. So, for example, I know that I have visual dreams because once I woke up with these words lingering in my head from a dream: “Look, there’s a tornado coming this way!” I have no visual recall of seeing a tornado, because my mind doesn’t display visuals.
My favorite dreams were several that I’ve had in the past couple of years with this theme: in the dream, I have my eyes closed, and I see something in my mind! This is incredibly exciting to me. I wake up thinking the words that I spoke in the dream: I’m seeing something inside my head! It’s a picture of a woman! It’s in my mind’s eye! -- but I don’t know anything more than that, because those were the only words that I spoke about the mind picture; I don’t know whether it was a still snapshot or a video of a woman, whether she was riding a bike or sitting down, etc. Once or twice I’ve had a dream in which, with my eyes closed, the mind’s eye was seeing what I would have been seeing if my eyes were open—only I was seeing it with my mind, not with my physical eyes.
No, no lingering sensory information after the stimulus is gone. It’s like the mental sensory display mechanism is turned off: in the absence of a physical stimulus for physical sensory perception, there is no way to experience anything sensory in the mind.
I can get a song stuck in my mind, kind of, but it is not auditory—it is silent! And it’s not really stuck, I don’t think—it’s something that I find so compelling that some part of me wants to continue repeating it. Another part of me can stop it. It is not auditory, it is just words, and it is the same mental mechanism that is used for any other thought processes. And it cannot multitask, so if I start thinking about something other than the song (with my silent word thinking), then I can’t be singing the words to a song. Both my normal thinking and thinking a song are like conversations that I am having with myself, and I can’t talk about two things at once. They are not using any sensory channel, they only use the silent verbal channel, and that channel can only be occupied by one train of thought at a time.
About visualizing spaces with object shapes and positions: there is no visualization whatsoever, so no. People talk about seeing things on a “screen” in the mind’s eye. I have no sense even of there being a screen, much less anything on it. It is like a TV that is turned off.
I don’t believe that I have any way of thinking in concepts instead of words. There needs to be some vehicle for the concept, and silent words are the only vehicle that I have. When I am not thinking in words, the mind is empty.
About grocery shopping: I stand in my kitchen, look in the fridge and make a list before I go out. Otherwise I am screwed! If I don’t have a list, I’ll walk through the aisles looking at everything, wondering, is there anything I need? Or I might try to think about what i would like to eat, and wonder whether I have all the ingredients, and buy something that I’m not sure of. I might wonder if I’m missing anything for my morning smoothie, and remember that I used my last banana, but that is not any kind of an experiential memory—it is the memory, in words, of saying the words to myself “I need to buy more bananas” … because words and words alone are the fabric of my memory, as they are the fabric of all of my thought processes.
Have you ever experienced anything from a dream? Remembered words from it, or woken up afraid, so you know you were probably having one, or anything?
Yes, but very infrequently. Usually I wake up and know that I was dreaming, but have no way of latching on to any dream content, because my mind can’t re-experience any trace from a dream experience. The only traces that I have from dreams upon waking are either mental notes in the form of words, or emotional reactions in my body, e.g. heart pounding or solar plexus in a knot. Mental notes take the form of words spoken in the dream that were extremely compelling. So, for example, I know that I have visual dreams because once I woke up with these words lingering in my head from a dream: “Look, there’s a tornado coming this way!” I have no visual recall of seeing a tornado, because my mind doesn’t display visuals.
My favorite dreams were several that I’ve had in the past couple of years with this theme: in the dream, I have my eyes closed, and I see something in my mind! This is incredibly exciting to me. I wake up thinking the words that I spoke in the dream: I’m seeing something inside my head! It’s a picture of a woman! It’s in my mind’s eye! -- but I don’t know anything more than that, because those were the only words that I spoke about the mind picture; I don’t know whether it was a still snapshot or a video of a woman, whether she was riding a bike or sitting down, etc. Once or twice I’ve had a dream in which, with my eyes closed, the mind’s eye was seeing what I would have been seeing if my eyes were open—only I was seeing it with my mind, not with my physical eyes.