"Kosslyn's work showed that there are considerable similarities between the neural mappings for imagined stimuli and perceived stimuli."
This makes sense. You'd expect similar brain pathways to trigger. In one case when using eyes, light waves hit the rods and cones of eyes, travel to the brain, and the brain processes the information and forms a picture for you. But in some situations, the brain can form the picture for you WITHOUT the eyes. It makes sense actually, now that I think about it, that the brain would not need the light waves. It must be quite complicated to interpret the light waves, may not be any more complicated to form the image without the light waves. Either way, similar parts of brain are likely used. Anyway, when you see with your eyes, the eyes are not forming the picture, they are just sending a bunch of info to the brain. The brain takes that info and forms the picture (at least according to science).
QUite likely the amount and skill of parts of brain responsible for this processing varies a lot between individuals. You would not expect one person to have the exact same experience as another. From what I see, and take into consideration that I have multiple anomolies associated with the fusiform gyrus area of my brain, my normal brain functioning just does not do picture like images. I am at the bottom of the continuum of ability in that area. I can almost see color in my mind, usually that's about it for doing it on command.
But like others here, I sometimes get spontaneous images kind of like sudden visions during times like meditation. These are very different in that they are fully formed and show detail and quality actually superior to my normal eye function, they give beyond 20/20 clarity with no bluriness at distance for instance, unlike my regular eyes. From a phenomenological perspective, although clear as if they could have come from actual eyes, they do feel slightly different, as if my mind knows they are from a diff source than usual, and as mentioned, the clarity would be a clue, but if such a vision where to continue for minutes instead of a second, I could see myself easily getting these visions confused with regular seeing because they are very very clear and immediate looking. I would note though that for the visions type images, they do feel different in a way that is hard to describe, kind of closer, more intense, more holistic, like there is less space between my awareness and them. I might describe it as more of a nondual type experience, similar to lucid dreaming, there is something that with normal vision is between me and eye originated vision, that is not there when the vision is not from eyes. But overall, such visions are quite realistic. This compares similar with intense dreams in which, even when you become lucid enough to question your current mental state, it's easy look around and decide the dream is in fact normal reality (whatever that is), the experience is realistic enough to confuse a person.
Now for sound based thoughts, an area which I am MUCH better at, yes sometimes I can hear them so close as to be almost as good as hearing them in real life, a song maybe, with all the voice's correct intonation, or someone's voice I know. I am excellent at copying sounds too, sometimes I can hear it in my head as good as hearing it out loud, which makes it easy to copy the sound as long as my tongue is capable of making the noise (some noises in some languages are hard to replicate for those not trained since childhood). So in that area, I can hear in my head almost as good as reality, sometimes better because in my head, i can keep replaying it as needed. Yet I still do perceive a difference in the sound in my head from the ones that travel through ears. My brain knows the origin is different, so although it can sound the same, there is an element of the experience in which I know I internally generated it and it came from inside.
Very rarely, I have had some psi like experiences with sound that it was much harder to identify origin of it. For those, I would often mistake them for coming through ears. I think because I knew that the conscious 'I' did not call them up, that experience of consciously calling them was not there, so I would tend to assume without much thought that it must have come through ears. However, on retrospect, I did realize there was a subtle difference in those experiences than normal ear based sound, just that the difference was too small to be easily noticed. Perhaps the other reason that the ear based ones can fool me is that in normal life, sounds often start and stop out of nowhere without any advanced notice so the brain is not confused when more of that happens. It's common to suddenly hear some strange sound you were not expecting. But for vision, if you suddenly see a whole 'nother scenery than a second ago, the brain is immediately questioning it as not normal and not properly contiguous with previous experience.
Anyway, for both visual and auditory, I expect internal fabrications skills exist on a continuum. For some, attempted internal fabrication of sound or vision is probably very rudimentory while in others, it can can be quite advanced with similar quality as to those generated from actualy eyes or ears. However, from reading NLP books, looks like it is common for peopel to see things as if pictures in their heads, maybe they are not as good a quality as from eyes and the mind knows they are not from eyes, but there are many many reports of people describing actual images in their thoughts such that they can draw them on a piece of paper later. I don't get that experience, there is nothing I could draw because there is no image picture like or other, it's just not there. I could however write the narrative down instead. From my experience and reading, there is a WIDE variety of ways that individuals experience their thoughts, probably more accurate to suspect that one individual will be similar to another.
My girlfriend says she doesn't think in images at all, just words and feelings. She can't imagine spatial things such as how items would look in our house for example.
I can't do that aspect of spacial either, gotta have the item placed in that spot in the house to get a good idea of it will look good, but other aspects of spacial I can do, although it comes through as more of a feeling, like will the car fit into that tight parking spot, trajectory of ball's current course to paddle, etc. What we call 'spacial' skills are actually a group of different skills all lumped into one category.
I think in abstract images, with little or no verbalization in my mind generally speaking, just flashes of abstract images and feelings that I can then translate into verbal concepts.
Yeah, that sounds so opposite of how I do it that it's hard for me to imagine! ;-P
ETA: OK your last post makes more sense. I now see the distinction you are making. I disagree with your conclusion however that there is a difference of kind. My experience is that what you are calling 'images' vs. 'image-like thoughts' are not actually different in kind but rather degree. The more relaxed and alert i am the more the vivid are the latter. The more harried and task-oriented I am the less vivid they are.
Yeah, strong evidence that such skills and tendencies are on a continuum with wide variation between individuals. NLP splits people roughly into catagories as to how they mentally process, either visual, auditory, or feeling. Most will excel and use one particular modality predominantly, another skill will be intermediate, and they may suck really badly at the third. When communicating with people, they tend to understand better if you use their preferred modality. This is a common tactic in sales as well. Studies suggest people will tend to trust you more if you present in a way that feels most comfortable to them using their preferred modality. There was a thread started on here a little while back by a guy who said he didn't care for long posts. An NLP practitioner might assume that he was probably not a verbal thinker in the first place, hence words may not be his preferred modality.
Visualizers have learned to access the more vivid concrete imagery capacity, yes. Another way to do that is through Jung's 'active imagination'. My hypotheses is that the more strong the sense of 'me imagining' is the less vivid inner imagery is [ETA: this explains my experience of this capacity changing from childhood to adulthood]. The more one reduces the sense of 'me imagining' and allows 'imagery' to spontaneously arise, the more vivid it is. this in my experience is true of everything in experience. The more relaxed alertness there is the more vivid all the senses are.
Good observation, made me realize the auditory is like that too, the more I kind of imagine or operate as if I am really hearing a real sound, the more clear it sounds. To imagine a different reality, it works better the more you believe in it apparently. Interesting observation, thank you.
-Eva
I think your observation of the hyper-real quality of vivid inner images is more evidence that 'seeing' is actually, if anything, more of an inner thing, more to do with the brain than the eye... hmm, interesting.
