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Can You Picture Things in Your Mind? I Can’t | Alex Rosenthal | TED
Can You Picture Things in Your Mind? I Can’t | Alex Rosenthal | TED
TED
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7:43 · Jan 22, 2026
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So
in
2015,
a
bride-to-be
uploaded
a
picture
of
a
dress
to
the
internet
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0:04
So in 2015, a bride-to-be uploaded a picture of a dress to the internet
0:11
-- (Laughter) And we all lost our minds.
0:13
If you see this as blue and black, say “Team blue.”
0:17
Audience: Team blue!
0:17
If you see this as white and gold, how?
0:20
How do you see that as white and gold?
0:24
(Laughter) Why does this break our brains so much?
0:27
It's because it puts us into confrontation with the fact
0:29
that two minds can perceive the same reality entirely differently.
0:34
I'd like to talk to you about two things.
0:36
One, our minds are much more different than we think.
0:39
And two, you should seek out minds that are different than your own,
0:43
because that's where the magic happens.
0:45
I get to work with a lot of diverse minds by virtue of what
0:48
I do.
0:49
I write and produce scripts for animation on a wide variety of topics,
0:54
and I create puzzles and games.
0:57
And a few years ago,
0:58
I had my own dress moment where I realized
1:01
that my brain works differently than almost everyone I know.
1:05
And I'd like to show you how.
1:06
So if you'll indulge me for a second, please visualize the following.
1:10
You can do it with your eyes open or closed,
1:12
whichever gives you the most vivid mental imagery.
1:16
A rocket ship crash lands on an alien planet.
1:20
A creature comes up to the hatch and knocks.
1:24
And someone opens it from within.
1:26
So now I'm going to ask you some questions about what you just saw.
1:30
What color was the planet?
1:32
What kind of creature was it?
1:35
And who opened the hatch?
1:37
I'll show you what I see.
1:42
Nothing.
1:42
That's because I have a condition called aphantasia,
1:44
which is where I don't have access to my mind's eye.
1:48
It turns out that the mind's eye is a spectrum.
1:50
On one end are about two to four percent of us with aphantasia.
1:54
And at the other extreme is hyperphantasia.
1:57
That's where you can visualize in exquisite detail,
2:00
sometimes even able to superimpose what you're imagining on reality.
2:04
That's about three to six percent of people.
2:06
Everyone else is somewhere in between.
2:08
But there's a huge range of experience here.
2:10
Everyone I do this with not only describes something different
2:13
but describes the experience of experiencing it differently.
2:18
So I went through most of my life assuming
2:20
that most people were
2:22
or everyone was like me,
2:24
that a visualization exercise like this is a figure of speech
2:27
that no one could actually do.
2:29
So imagine my surprise and fascination and apprehension when I learned about aphantasia,
2:37
the last, because it raised some scary questions like,
2:39
have I been working in entirely the wrong careers my entire life?
2:44
(Laughter) So aphantasia changes the way
2:46
that those of us who have it perceive information
2:49
and consume and process information.
2:51
So, for example, most people I speak to who have a mind's eye describe
2:55
the experience of reading a novel
2:57
as seeing scenes play out in their mind
3:00
and casting characters.
3:01
I can't do either of those things.
3:03
It's a much more conceptual experience for me.
3:07
And when something is out of sight, it's very much out of mind.
3:11
I have a five-year-old daughter.
3:14
I can't in this moment imagine her face.
3:18
That has a big effect on my memory.
3:21
And it's also not just my mind's eye, it's also my mind's ear,
3:24
though I think I have a little bit of a mind's ear,
3:26
but I don't have a mind's nose or a mind's mouth.
3:28
I can't, for example, imagine the taste of peanut butter.
3:32
And what's it like to think in the absence of a mind's eye?
3:36
It's a really tough question that's not
3:37
that far off from asking what's it like to be a dolphin
3:40
or a spider?
3:41
And in the absence of being able to inhabit each other's consciousnesses,
3:45
we can communicate about them.
3:48
So for me, I'm generally much more aware of something's skeleton than its skin.
3:52
I'm very attuned to structure.
3:54
When I'm creating a game or a puzzle,
3:56
I'm first dreaming up the mechanics
3:58
and figuring out how they relate to each other,
4:00
how they map to a story structure.
4:02
And the details come later, often in collaboration with other artists.
4:07
I realize there's a leap of faith here in this idea
4:10
that our minds can be
4:11
so alien to each other,
4:13
and I struggle with that, too.
4:14
I can't understand what it's like to visualize any more than I can see
4:18
the dress as white
4:20
and gold.
4:21
But what's become increasingly apparent is
4:23
that the mind's eye is just one of many constellations we're starting to draw
4:27
in a night sky full of neurological diversity.
4:30
That includes having or not having an interior monologue.
4:34
It includes the autism spectrum, ADHD, dyslexia and a lot more.
4:39
Probably a lot of things we have yet to even give a name to
4:42
because we're just figuring all of this out.
4:45
The norm is to pathologize these experiences into a list of conditions
4:48
that depart from a so-called “normal” functioning of the mind.
4:52
I think we're thinking about this completely wrong.
4:54
There is no true normal out there, and difference is not deviance.
4:59
Rather, these are all clues towards a vast
5:01
and profound star field we're each individually blinded to
5:04
because we only have our one cozy,
5:07
inescapable mind as a single reference point.
5:11
It's no secret that different people think differently.
5:14
Many people on the autism spectrum excel at pattern recognition and logical deduction.
5:20
Multiple studies have shown students with ADHD outperforming, on average, their peers,
5:25
at creative problem solving and divergent thinking tasks,
5:28
and there are very similar findings for dyslexia,
5:31
especially when it comes to advanced spatial reasoning.
5:34
So if difference is in fact the norm, what do we do with that?
5:38
I say seek out minds
5:39
that are different than your own
5:41
and make something incredible together.
5:43
There's a wealth of research
5:44
that shows that teams of people from diverse backgrounds produce superior outcomes.
5:50
I'd like to propose a corollary to this:
5:52
diverse minds working together can produce wonders.
5:56
This comes with challenges and opportunities.
5:59
So in the last decade or so, companies such as SAP,
6:03
Hewlett Packard and JPMorgan have started programs designed to recruit neurodivergent talent.
6:09
And in the time since, they've reported corresponding gains in productivity, morale,
6:14
innovation and quality.
6:16
I see this in my own work as well.
6:18
Again, by the serendipity of working in visual fields without being able to visualize,
6:24
I wind up working with a lot of minds who are very different than
6:28
mine.
6:28
And that results in some weird and wonderful work,
6:31
such as a film noir animation about fractals
6:35
that I coauthored that was brought to life by a brilliant hyperphantasic animator named
6:40
Jeremiah Dickey.
6:41
Or this is one of my pride and joys.
6:43
It's a game that's a hybrid jigsaw puzzle and escape room in a box.
6:48
And the way it works -- yeah.
6:52
(Laughter) The way it works is you first assemble a jigsaw,
6:55
but you're missing big sections,
6:56
so you have to unlock them by solving puzzles
7:00
that are embedded in the illustration
7:02
and artifacts that you unlock along the way.
7:05
This was made in collaboration with two incredible artists, Rita Orlov and Senne Trip,
7:10
and our minds can be found in very different corners of the galaxy of
7:13
neurological diversity.
7:15
So am I working in the wrong fields?
7:18
No, I don't think so.
7:19
I think I'm exactly where I should be.
7:21
In fact, some of the greatest joy
7:23
and fulfillment in my life has been from coming to terms with the initially
7:27
jarring realization that my mind works differently than the people around me,
7:31
and recognizing that for what it is -- dazzling.
7:35
Thank you.
7:35
(Cheers and applause)
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