Variability in language — from person to person, and for any particular person, from context to context — is all around us. It’s a routine aspect of our mental lives, amazingly complex in its details, but in no way surprising as a phenomenon. Similarly for variability in factual and procedural knowledge: impressively intricate, but familiar.
But now it turns out that more and more of our mental lives is open to variation. As a way into the topic, consider an NPR Radiolab segment from 2024 that came by me on KQED-FM a while back, on the phenomenon of aphantasia.
Quick summary from Wikipedia:
Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images [lack of a “mind’s eye”].
The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but it has remained relatively unstudied [AZ: maybe because it affects only 1 to 4% of the population]. Interest in the phenomenon was renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 by a team led by the neurologist Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter. Zeman’s team coined the term aphantasia, derived from the ancient Greek word phantasia(φαντασία), which means ‘appearance/image’, and the prefix a- (ἀ-), which means ‘without’.
… Aphantasia can be considered the opposite of hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery.
anauralia has been coined for the absence of auditory imagery, in particular the lack of an “inner voice” — an internal monologue (a “mind’s voice” corresponding to the “mind’s eye”).
What the NPR show introduced into the discussion was some research on the mind’s eye, or phantasia (and, I assume, inner monologue, or auralia, as well), suggesting that this mental phenomenon shows considerable variability; the details of how the mind’s eye works differs from person to person. It’s just that these differences have to be teased out by careful research; we pretty much all get along with one another in daily life without any mind’s-eye hangups. Meanwhile, I was a teenage musician when I discovered, to my surprise, that not everyone could play through music in their heads to find some particular bit of it; not everyone has the inner phonograph that I have (it’s scratchy and seriously flawed, but it can do several musical instruments, singing voices, and some orchestral bits; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is with me forever).
What else? Well, obviously, memory, perception, and the construction of self and identity, areas where some variability has long been recognized. But the details, doctor, the details!
April 13, 2026 at 1:00 pm |
I have dozens of pieces I can play in my head, but sometimes I get stuck in one that I thought I knew, and just can’t remember how it gets to the next thing, which is very frustrating.
April 13, 2026 at 1:03 pm |
Yeah, the mental phonograph is fragmentary and cranky.