The Neuromantics – Episode 3

Welcome to the third Neuromantics podcast, brought to you by Sophie Scott and Will Eaves. In this month’s edition, we’re looking at visual representation, mental imagery, and the relationship between sensory awareness in humans and the cultivated idea of an “inner world”. Topics covered, uncovered, and discovered, include the gulf between visual and spatial recognition, how visualisation is linked to making things, the proximity of aesthetics to task specialisation, Impressionism, Milton’s blindness, and watching and acting in the work of the gay writer Saki (H. H. Munro).The two publications under discussion are: “The Blind Mind: No Sensory Visual Imagery in Aphantasia”, by Rebecca Keogh and Joel Pearson, (Cortex 105, 2018, 53–60: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945217303581?via%3Dihub) and “The Lumber Room” (1914), by Saki (http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LumRoo.shtml).