For me these pictures present quite the opposite. Dreaming I am full of joy while juggling the stones like a wizard (Though the positions don’t make much sense, but I can see them at least), only to wake up and struggle to hold 3 stones in my mind. This world is full of surprises.
But even in my dreams there is only this focus area view available, never the ogs Birds Eye’s vision.
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Interesting, it sounds like hardly anyone is visualising in the literal sense of seeing pictures. Thanks for so many fascinating replies!
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hardly anyone able to do Columnar Addition by visual imagination only
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From answers it seems that the chain and logic from a move to the next is a big component in the vizualisation. The ability to re-create the game or position not simply by static positions but by how you walked in the game.
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“What do you see in your head when you visualise (anything)?” is actually a fascinating question.
I’ve been reading recently about neurology and related science (reading in a hobby way, not scientific papers!) … and it seems that while “how the brain works” is still mysterious, there are many things that we do think that we know. One of them is “steps in the visual pathway” … and the existence of these kind of maps into what I personally experience when I “visualise”.
In particular I don’t “see” anything at all. If I close my eyes and visualise a cross-cut sequence, I can be conscious of the black sensation that I see (with the strange after-glow lights from closing my eyes) and I can “process visually” the cross cut sequence. It’s as if it has to get generated somewhere in my brain conceptually, then be fed into the visual pathway for “taking note and simulating what next”, but there is no mistaking it for actually seeing.
This seems to contrast with the interesting picture posted earlier, which seem to imply the poster actually has a visual illusion of sorts while they are visualising.
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I’m assuming you mean this image that I posted:
I agree that there is no mistaking it for actual seeing. It’s not like a head-up display overlay on the image coming from my retina. I think the “image” is indeed generated further down my visual cortex.
[Visual system - Wikipedia]
I just tried to capture what I think I see in my “mind’s eye”. Don’t take it too literal. It’s just that I think an image is the most suitable way to portray my imagination of a part of a game position, and I didn’t spend much effort making that image.
I might add that it takes conscious effort to “refresh” such an image in my mind to maintain some sort of permanence (albeit a bit stroboscopic perhaps). Without such an effort, images in my mind are more like brief singular flashes that quickly fade (for example, when I imagine the color red, which somehow ends up having a rectangular shape like a monitor).
The required effort of “refreshing” the image in my mind is much reduced when I’m reading variations while looking at the actual position on a go board.
But I suppose different people use different mental strategies for reasoning or recollecting, because it suits the wiring of their brains better.
I think my brain just happens to favour using my visual cortex for many things. I’d say that is because I’m quite visually inclined. As a kid, I even had eidetic memory. After studying something from a book (e.g. for a school test), I could often not only recall some statement from the book, but I could even remember the location of it on the page. Also I could draw portraits of familiar faces or the shapes of my favourite cars fairly well from memory.
This is the fascinating thing to me … I find that this is the case too, and it feels like I can experience the “reading” as going into the visual system, but I can tell it’s not going in “right at the beginning”.
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