Q: I was surprised that everyone’s presentation was so good. Is it now strongly emphasized for researchers to share their research with a broader audience?
A: Thank you for your kind words.
It is true that funding agencies and government bodies often recommend that we actively engage in public dissemination of our work these days. Personally, I also enjoy doing this and find it meaningful. To the extent that some members of the public are interested, we can do our parts in sharing our knowledge, instead of relying only on journalists. If this helps to attract some students into pursuing science as a career, it makes it more personally rewarding still.
Q: Is it possible to use fMRI to visualize what the person is thinking?
A: Yes – see e.g. this (done in Japan) : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517004v2
Q: Language contains a large number of words. Does this mean that if spider signals exist, all 10,000 to 50,000 concepts of a language are unconsciously recalled every minute, or are related concepts simultaneously evoked?
A: Great question. In fact, some researchers have tried to map out not all the signals for common words and semantic concepts – https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17637.
And these signals, like the spider signal in my experiment, will in fact fluctuate slowly over time – mostly unconsciously.
Q: Is the brain area different for unconscious and conscious imagery?
Are there varying degrees of aphantasia, ranging from mild to severe?
How is unconsciousness defined in this context?
A: Great questions. When people engage in unconscious imagery, they also make use of the same visual areas of the brain. There may be subtle differences in the pattern of the activities between conscious and unconscious imagery. But one likely possibility is also that the difference is mainly in higher cognitive areas, e.g. a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. We usually define ‘unconscious’ as having no subjective vivid experience. And indeed, aphantasia comes in degrees.
Q: I think I might have aphantasia, but I haven’t had any awareness or difficulties with it in my life so far. On the contrary, I often feel that I am ahead of others in foreseeing and imagining things.
A: This is possible. In fact, many aphantasics do not have any difficulty performing visual tasks. Somehow, they can use other (possibly nonconscious) strategies, which may end up working better. In the laboratory, we are now trying to understand better in what ways their strategies may be different from others, and what may be the pros and cons, etc.
