Maritza van Dop graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry on 7 September, for her study of the role of polar proteins in the development of plants.
Proposition: ‘People that lack visual memory learn differently, not necessarily less’
‘People with aphantasia are not very able to visualize something mentally. I had never realized other people could do that, when the “count sheep” for instance. It has nothing to do with being able to recognize things, because if I see a sheep, I know what it is. And I can usually describe the general characteristics of something I’ve seen earlier. I just don’t picture it. Maybe there is an image stored somewhere in my brain, but I can’t access it consciously. Sometimes, for example, I see images in my dreams, although they are fairly vague.
People can have various degrees of Aphantasia. If you ask them to imagine a blue ball, some people can see a vague shape. I can’t even see that. That is what I mean in my proposition by “lack of visual memory”.
In the course of my research I examined cell patterns under the microscope. At the start, if someone asked me to draw them afterwards, I would find it difficult. I could only work out what they ought to look like based on my knowledge about them. So I first have to remember details about visual information in words or concepts, and perhaps that is more demanding of my memory than it would be if I could picture what I had seen.
It doesn’t mean that I am less able to learn things. And I don’t experience it as a handicap or a lack. I have other strategies for remembering things and retrieving them from my memory. I remember more in words, sounds and concepts. Aphantasia has only recently started to come in for some attention, and research on it is still in its infancy. I try to contribute to research, by filling in questionnaires, for instance.’