About twice a month, I dream I am driving a car. I start with everything well under control, but during the course of the dream, I lose control, and the car invariably ends up in a ditch or on the roadside. These perilous nocturnal journeys are, I believe, a residue from a minor driving lessons trauma. I eventually terminated my driving lessons because I failed to gain a proper overview of the roads, and my brain does not understand mirrors.
The mirror issue is not new. During my primary school CITO tests, all my errors were related to mirroring and other spatial perception issues. After sharing my mirror complex with my friends and receiving abundant scorn, I decided it was worthwhile finding a cause. Thus, I found my way to the obscure world of impaired cognitive faculties. One such impaired faculty is scientifically known as afantasia. The word, derived from ancient Greek, means “without perception”. As is the case with many deviations, this affliction is a spectrum.
As if everyone has a projector and slideshow in their head, but nature forgot to insert the plug in the socket for a small number of people
A simple test is to think of a good friend. How focused is your image of this person? Is it a high-definition photograph or a vague sketch? Approximately two per cent of all people see (almost) nothing during this test. That includes me. As if everyone has a projector and slideshow in their head, but nature forgot to insert the plug in the socket for a small number of people. The so-called mental eye is lacking.
Recent studies show that this group of people with afantasia also have a different memory than those with an imagination. Generally, childhood memories will be relived as if they were a film. In my case, they represent a list of experiences, and my memories are driven more by scent, sounds and feelings than images.
This personal search proves that how one goes through life is influenced by so much more than meets the eye. I am fascinated by the thought of all the various reasons there may be for individual differences. I can barely imagine them.
Oscar Delissen is a fourth-year Food Technology student. He is currently studying in Bolzano, Italy.
