Patients with ‘imagination deficiency cognitive impairment’ Aphantasia account for 3-5% of the total population?
Entered 2023.09.12 18:10 Views 22 Entered 2023.09.12 18:10 Modified 2023.09.12 09:25 Views 22
Aphantasia is a cognitive disorder in which a person has the ability to think on their own but does not have the ‘ability to draw pictures in their mind.’ Although it is not exact, it is estimated that 3-5% of the total population has this cognitive disorder. [사진=게티이미지뱅크]A cognitive disorder in which a person cannot recall what he or she has previously seen is called ‘Aphantasia.’ A new study found that Aphantasia patients have ‘objectively explainable characteristics’, such as processing visual information slower than average and having difficulty absorbing visual information.
The research team at the Paris Brain Institute in France announced that this was the result of a survey and analysis of 117 people, including patients with aphantasia, patients with megalomania, and people with typical mental imagination.
‘Aphantasia’ is known to have been discovered by British geneticist and anthropologist Francis Galton in 1880, and named by Canadian professor Adam Zeman in 2005. Aphantasia is a cognitive disorder in which a person has the ability to think independently but does not have the ‘ability to draw pictures in their mind.’ Although it is not exact, it is estimated that 3-5% of the total population has this cognitive disorder.
Ordinary people have the ability to imagine a certain meaning and picture it in their mind without having to see it with their eyes. However, this is not the case for Aphantasia patients. Even if the person next to me says the names of famous celebrities like IU or Kim Hye-soo, I can’t picture their faces in my head.
Therefore, ‘Aphantasia’ can be expressed as ‘cognitive disorder with lack of imagination.’ Aphantasia patients may have innate problems in the brain area responsible for visualization, or may develop symptoms due to acquired thinking.
The research team conducted the ‘Mental Imagery and Visual Perception Test’ (BIP) on 117 people, including 44 patients with aphantasia, 31 patients with megalomania, and 42 people with typical mental imagination. This test is a special test that evaluates the connection between perception and mental images through various visual characteristics that can describe a scene, such as shape, color, location in space, and the presence of words or faces.
“Patients with aphantasia cannot mentally imagine what their parents, friends, spouses, etc. look like when they are far away,” said researcher Paolo Bartolomeo (PhD candidate, neurophysiology) and first author of the study. “But you can describe their physical characteristics.” This is because visual information is stored in some way.
According to the research team, patients with congenital aphantasia, not stroke, brain damage, or mental illness, very often recognize their unusual symptoms late. This disorder is cognitively impaired and does not cause other disorders. There is no particular reason to suspect that one is abnormal.
“There’s a very interesting aspect to talking to Aphantasia patients,” said Dr. Zhang Hao Liu, the study’s corresponding author. These patients’ perceptual abilities and ability to associate concepts and expressions are the same as those of other people. However, the speed at which they process visual information, especially shapes and colors, is much slower than that of megalomaniacs or those with normal imaginations. Patients have little confidence in the accuracy of their answers.
The results of this study (robing the unimaginable: The impact of aphantasia on distinct domains of visual mental imagery and visual perception) were published in the international journal Cortex.
2023-09-12 09:10:48
#eyes.. #Hard #imagine #Blame #disease
