The difference between real and imagined

Gary Ehlenberg sent a link to an interesting Quanta Magazine article discussing the differenced between imagination and perception (see this).

Some time ago I had discussions with my friend who claimed that she really sees the things that she imagines. She also has a very good memory for places, almost like a sensory memory. I had thought that this ability is very rare, for instance idiot savants have sensory memories.

So, do I suffer from aphantasia, inability to imagine sensorily? I have sensory perceptions during dreams. I can see and can hear in the hypnagogic state at the border of sleep and awake. In my great experience I quite concretely saw my thoughts and this led to the urge to understand what consciousness is. I can imagine but I do not usually see any images: only after emotionally intense discussions with some-one can I almost-hear the spoken words. So, do I suffer from aphantasia in my normal state of mind?

TGD inspired view of neuroscience leads to a model for the difference between the real and imagined percepts based on my own experience (see this, this, this and this). Imagined percepts would be generated by a virtual sensory input from the field body realized as dark photon signals. They would not reach the retinas but end up at some higher level in the visual neural pathway such as lateral geniculate nuclei of the pineal gland, the “third eye”. Pineal gland is a more plausible candidate. In some animals it serves as a real third eye located outside the head. Could it serve as the seat of auditory and other imagined mental images?

At least in my own case, seeing with the pineal gland would usually be sub-conscious to me. What about people who really see their imaginations? Could they consciously see also with their pineal glands so that the pineal gland would define mental image as a subself? Or could some fraction of the virtual signals from the field body reach the retinas? For the people suffering aphantasia, the first option predicts that pineal gland corresponds to a sub-sub-self, which does no give rise to a mental image but a mental image of a sub-self.

Also sensory memories are possible. Does this proposal apply also to these. My grandson Einar is 4 years old. He read to me a story in a picture book that his parents had read to him. Einar does not yet recognize letters nor can he read. He seems to have a sensory memory and repeated what he heard. Maybe all children have this kind of sensory memories but as cognitive skills develop they are replaced by conceptual memories, “house” as representative for the full picture of house means a huge reduction in the number of bits and therefore in the amount of metabolic energy needed. Could it be that aphantasia is the prize paid for a high level of cognition?Could this distinguish between artists and thinkers?

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.