Dr Reshanne Reeder

@kerblooee.bsky.social

578 Followers 417 Following

Cognitive scientist, mom, citizen of the world. Interested in mental imagery extremes and divergent perception. Got a cool theory or 2. The "Ganzflicker Lady" https://reshannereeder.com

UK academics should stop being "managed" by managers, who are, with very few exceptions, mediocre, incompetent, and with no academic vision. When I tell foreign colleagues and friends what happens in our universities, they are speechless. Managers who earn far more than £100k per year, who do not listen to academics, who patronise them as they were their children. I have recently seen full professors being dismissed in ridiculous top-down "meetings", where the manager expects only questions and not ideas. Managers who jeopardise the lives of staff and their families, determining the closure of entire departments. Managers who all speak the very same language, mumbling about "reshaping the future" or "transforming the University into agile institutions", and who want to "create universities of the 21st century in a rapidly changing times". You hear these bs from all of them, without exception. To cover cuts and redundancies. They are unable to even tell the truth, or describe things as they are, providing a bad example to our young students, who then think that an ethical behaviour, also in language, is not necessary. *These* managers are failing, not the academics. Managerialism is the single most important reason for stress in UK universities, in what would otherwise be a fantastic job where you teach young people and do your research. Until this is fully understood, even by academics themselves, the decline of the UK academic will contunue and a collapse is inevitable.
A Superlab mouse demonstrating the optogenetic equipment. Stimulation at different alternating currents either enhanced mental imagery to synaesthetic levels, or completely eliminated it
Narration: Depending on your recent experiences and memories, you can hallucinate the face of a loved one you saw last week, a character from a movie you watched last night, or something nonsensical from a memorable dream! (Image collage inside a blue cloud featuring Spongebob, a made-up horror movie scene, and a man emerging from an egg.) Narration: And once you look away, or turn the Ganzflicker simulation off, you are suddenly transported to the real world, where this colorful, bizarre world isn’t so fantastical anymore. (Cloud of odd visuals and shapes progressing to form the small flash on a television screen when it is turned off. The top half of a figure is floating head first out of the cloud of visuals.) Narration: The human mind is a very personal and unique space. In turn, each Ganzflicker experience is distinct from one another. These experiences- ranging from extremely vivid imagery to no imagery at all- provide researchers with a plethora of information about how the brain produces imagery. (image of outer space, brain in the center, surrounded by Saturn's ring. A squiggled line of diamonds- each a different color in rainbow order- is overlapping the image of outer space.)
Narration: You can travel to outer space… (stylized image of the milky way galaxy, surrounded by stars.) Narration: Be greeted by the letter A… (Image of a capital letter A.) Narration: Stare in the soul of a shadowy figure… (Image of a scribbly, shadowy head, merging with the milky way.) Narration: Become mesmerized by a mandala… (Image of a kaleidoscope-like mandala, shapes concentrated in the center and more dispersed the further out the mandala goes.) Narration: And even see… David Bowie?!? Now you’re talking! (Image of David Bowie, pose from the “Heroes” album.)
Narration: Welcome to the world of… Ganzflicker Narration: *Ganzflicker: the rhythmic alternation of two ganzfelds Narration: Basically, a bright red screen flashes on and off very rapidly. When you focus on it, vivid imagery can start to appear in 30 seconds or less! (text placed at the top of this long panel) (A rainbow gradient is progressing across a long, horizontal panel. More vivid imagery appears gradually the further you look right on the composition. Dots -> shapes -> stars -> human silhouettes -> human face -> attributes from a landscape of a castle in the sky.) Narration: But does everyone experience these wild induced hallucinations? Not exactly. Most people experience some form of imagery, though it’s not always complex or fantastical. Narration: Experienced imagery from Ganzflicker heavily depends on how well the individual can visualize. If they experience more vivid imagery, their hallucinations will also be more vivid and complex, and vice versa. (two figures, one on each side of the page. They each have a thought bubble above them of an apple. One is imagining a realistic apple, while the other is imagining a blurry image of an apple. An arrow is pointing inwards from each thought bubble. Next to each arrow is a small panel. Coming from the realistic apple bubble is a small panel with an image of a castle on top of a mountain. Next to the blurry apple bubble is a small panel with simple geometric patterns.) Narration: Those with aphantasia (the inability to visualize) have a 50% chance of seeing imagery from Ganzflicker. If they do, it’s typically very simple. (A head of a figure is looking at a red screen with no visuals on it. To the left of them is a thought bubble with nothing in it.) Narration: Depending on the individual, hallucinations induced from Ganzflicker can be as simple as an X in the middle of the screen or as complex as an entire forest landscape! (A progression of small plants/vegetation to large, evergreen trees)
Narration: Hallucinations are complex phenomena occurring involuntarily to individuals with a mental disorder. They are often feared and unwanted. Narration: But what if they can be controlled? What if we could intentionally induce them in a secure way, so we can better understand them? Narration: In order for an experimentally induced hallucination to form, the mind must be presented with something specific that is visually very different from what it is accustomed to seeing. Narration: Sensory deprivation: The lack of stimuli (specifically visual). Participants engaging in this method of hallucination induction can be completely blindfolded or left in a pitch black environment. Either way, their mind must not be exposed to light. Narration: Ganzfeld: A uniformly colored, luminary visual field (e.g. a clear blue sky or a singular color on a screen). Exposure to ganzfeld can induce slight visual hallucinations. (Figure laying on the grass, facing a clear blue sky.) Narration: Sensory deprivation can be an unreliable method for the intention of experiencing induced hallucinations. Visuals aren’t always guaranteed, and it can take hours or even days for imagery to start showing up. (Figure sitting on the ground, blindfolded. Cobwebs are on the figure, signifying a long time has passed. A little spider is next to the figure.) Narration: Ganzfeld is also not very reliable. Though most individuals experience visuals, they are not very complex. Most experience colors and simple geometric patterns after a while. (Side view of a head, a cloud forming from their head that contains simple geometric shapes.) Narration: But is there a way to induce complex and vivid hallucinations almost immediately and comfortably? There sure is! (Two figures, shoulders up, next to each other. Exclamation marks next to one, and a question mark next to the other. They are both looking at the text bubble.)
For kids, both vivid internal imagery and mental projection (prophantasia) are extremely common. At the Superbrains! kids neuroscience workshop, I interviewed 25 kids about their mental imagery experiences and many of them could easily imagine whatever was instructed of them and more. In the above example, when asked to imagine an apple and to indicate how effortful it was, this 10 year old responded that they could see the colors as vividly as seeing a real apple, they could see their reflection in it, no mouldy bits, very refreshing. They could imagine it's tasty, red & green. When asked to imagine the apple actually in their hand, they could also see it and feel it as vividly as if it were actually there. It feels nice, with juice off it. They could also see their reflection in it when imagining holding it up to their face, and see red & green colors.
Future research on imagery extremes should go beyond classifying individuals based on vividness cutoffs, and take into account the multidimensionality of both extremes. Aphantasia is associated with SDAM, being "in the here and now", symbolic thinking, and neurodiversity. Recent research suggests hyperphantasia is just as multidimensional, and includes maladaptive daydreaming, immersive inner worlds like a "mind palace", the ability to project imagery into the external environment to enhance reality, and may also be associated with neurodiversity.
Implicit measures typically impose impoverished and constrained communication formats, reducing expression of complex subjective experiences into binary button presses ... Indeed such dichotomy seem highly problematic in light of the growing body of work on intersectionality.
https://youtu.be/J6kBAQvpRp4
Visual imagery vividness predicts the complexity of induced hallucinations, poster session 2 on Friday August 1st, salon 8
Content clustered by different themes, with complex experiences in red & purple hues, feelings/descriptive/abstract experiences in aqua hues, geometric experiences in orangey brown, and the most low-level descriptions (distortions, flashes) in pale green
Lasso coefficients for different topics of content described, showing that strong imagers describe city skylines, morphing faces, and unpleasant experiences, while weak imagers are more likely to describe simple patterns and color flashes, suggesting fundamentally different experiences for different inagery phenotypes
3 techniques were used to analyse content of ganzflicker hallucinations: 1) topic modeling, which identified simple hallucinations in weak imagers and complex hallucinations in vivid imagers; 2) deep learning models, which showed that different inagery phenotypes gave semantically distinct descriptions; and 3) sensorimotor norms, demonstrating vivid imagers describe seeing content with higher perceptual and motor strength
https://www.conftool.com/assc2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=48#paperID357
The spectrum of mental imagery, as described by individuals during interview: https://osf.io/hyefp/
As noted, anterior/posterior hippocampal specialization occurs. The anterior hippocampus, especially the CA1 and subiculum subfields, is involved in constructing scenes during temporal order memory tasks. This activity is linked to successful memory retrieval by integrating spatial and temporal elements (Aly, Chen, Turk-Browne & Hasson, 2024). Barry, Chadwick and Maguire (2022) found that the anterior hippocampus engages during the construction phase of autobiographical memory retrieval, regardless of memory age. This suggests a role of the anterior hippocampus in assembling general aspects of memories that are essential for imagining future events. McCormick, Ciaramelli, De Luca and Maguire (2023) revisited specialization along the hippocampal long axis and found that activity within the anterior hippocampus correlates with scene construction. Addis, Pan, Vu, Laiser and Schacter (2019) studied the involvement of the left anterior hippocampus in constructing specific and detailed imaginary future episodes. This activity was associated with the richness of episodic details in imagined events, emphasizing its role in episodic future thinking.
For each item on this questionnaire, try to form a visual image, and consider your experience carefully. For any image that you do experience, rate how vivid it is using the five-point scale described below. If you do not have a visual image, rate vividness as ‘1’. Only use ‘5’ for images that are truly as lively and vivid as real seeing. Please note that there are no right or wrong answers to the questions, and that it is not necessarily desirable to experience imagery or, if you do, to have more vivid imagery. Perfecting clear and lively as real seeing 5 Clear and lively 4 Moderately clear and lively 3 Dim and vague; flat 2 No image at all, you only “know” that you are thinking of the object 1
The first stimulus participants saw was a large, filled black rectangle. Participants were first presented with the instructions: With your eyes open, imagine a red 5-pointed star, and attempt to see this star out in front of you in the black space below. They were given as much time as needed to imagine the star within the filled black rectangle. On the next page of the form, they were presented with the comparison stimulus (see Fig.1a). The comparison stimulus was a picture with 6 panels of different variations of a 5-pointed star against a black background: 1) blank (only the background), 2)a faint gray outline of a star, 3) a defined gray outline of a star, 4) a gray-filled star, 5) a faint,red-filled star, and 6) a bright, red-filled star. Participants were then asked to choose which image (1-6) most closely matched their mental projection of a red star.
Hold your hand out in front of you, and with your eyes open, imagine an apple sitting in your outstretched hand. Can you see it? Can you feel its weight? How realistic is your projection?
A meme of the conspiracy theorist from 'Ancient Aliens': I'm not saying it's imagery, but... it's imagery
"A second clinical research tradition attempted to establish an empirical association between behavior therapy outcome and individual differences in imagery ability (Beere, 1972; David, McLemore, & London, 1970; Dyckman & Cowan, 1978; Kazdin, 1975; McLemore, 1972; McSweeney, 1976). The majority of these studies indicated that, with pretreatment imagery ability assessed by self-report as the independent variable, few meaningful relations with treatment outcome were observed."
Anil: Magic is just science we don't understand yet - Arthur C. Clarke! Hakwan: Who wrote science *fiction* Anil: A precursor to science *fact*!
Does "fluffy black Persian" even do my boy justice? I argue it rather does him dirty.
Fyo would appreciate being stroked front to back in firm but gentle repetitions.
A spatial layout of features: eyes above a face above a very floofy chest
Look at the luscious fur, that poofy chest, those goofy, globular yellow eyes that stare through your soul, behind you, and into the food bowl
Our stimulus, my boy Fyo, the fluffy black Persian cat
Table 3. Summarizing the percentage of individuals who found CBT effective for all mental health conditions together, and individually for each mental health condition separately. Bayes Factors indicate whether imagers and aphants found CBT differently effective.
If CBT exercises included a visual imagery component, an equal number of aphants considered it effective versus ineffective, whereas more imagers considered CBT with visual imagery effective. If individuals took part in CBT without a visual imagery component, more than two thirds of each group felt that it was effective.
Typical imagery controls reported a higher lifetime prevalence of intrusions as part of their mental health condition (74%) compared to individuals with aphantasia (31%).
We did not specifically seek to match aphantasia and typical imagery control samples as we recruited indiscriminately from our online resources, but our demographic distributions are quite similar between the two. No differences in: gender, English proficiency, SES, or education. Moderate evidence for a difference in age, with aphantasics having a slightly older median age (42 vs 37 years).
It is a goddam pie in a barm