你能想象出脑海中的画面吗？我不能 | 亚历克斯·罗森塔尔

我们是否生活在一个力量、权力与武力的新世界中？

Are we living in a new world of strength, power and force?

唐纳德·特朗普的顾问斯蒂芬·米勒就是这样说的，而美国对委内瑞拉的打击表明，我们可能正进入一个新帝国时代。

That's what Donald Trump's adviser Stephen Miller says, and The US strikes in Venezuela suggest we may be moving into a new era of empire.

因此，本周每天，《全球故事》都将与我们世界各地的BBC播客伙伴联手，借助他们对各自地区的独到见解，探索这些新兴帝国。

So every day this week, The Global Story is joining forces with our BBC podcast cousins around the world with unmatched expertise of their regions to explore these new empires.

什么是势力范围？

What is a sphere of influence?

谁拥有势力范围？

Who's got one?

如果你如今不是捕食者，那是否意味着你会成为猎物？

And if you're not a predator these days, does that mean you'll prey?

请在bbc.com或您收听播客的任何平台收听《全球故事》。

Listen to the Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

您正在收听《TED每日演讲》，我们每天为您带来新思想与对话，激发您的好奇心。

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day.

我是主持人伊莉丝·胡。

I'm your host, Elise Hu.

对你来说，‘心灵之眼’意味着什么？

What does the mind's eye mean to you?

对我们许多人来说，当你闭上眼睛时，可能会看到一些东西，或者在脑海中描绘出画面。

For many of us, when you close your eyes, you might see things or paint pictures you can visualize.

但对一些人来说，那种内在的画面却完全不同。

But for some, that inner picture is completely different.

在这场引人入胜的演讲中，谜题大师亚历克斯·罗森塔尔——同时也是TED教育的主编——分享了我们构建心理图像的能力实际上因人而异。

In this fascinating talk, puzzle wizard Alex Rosenthal, who's also the editorial director of Ted Ed, shares how our ability to conjure mental imagery actually varies wildly person to person.

当我们跨越这些差异组建团队时，创造力和解决问题的能力也会随之提升。

And that when we build teams across those differences, the benefits for creativity and problem solving will follow.

所以2015年，一位准新娘把一张裙子的照片上传到了互联网，我们都疯了。

So in 2015, a bride to be uploaded a picture of a dress to the Internet, and we all lost our minds.

如果你看到的是蓝色和黑色，那就说‘蓝队’。

If you see this as blue and black, say, team blue.

如果你看到的是白色和金色，那是什么情况？

Team If you see this as white and gold, how?

你怎么会看到它是白色和金色的？

How do you see that as white and gold?

为什么这件事会让我们如此困惑？

Why does this break our brains so much?

这是因为它让我们直面一个事实：两个大脑可以对同一现实产生完全不同的感知。

It's because it puts us into confrontation with the fact that two minds can perceive the same reality entirely differently.

我想和你们谈谈两件事。

I'd like to talk to you about two things.

第一，我们的大脑比我们想象的要差异巨大；第二，你应该主动寻找与你不同的人，因为奇迹就发生在这些地方。

One, our minds are much more different than we think, and two, you should seek out minds that are different than your own, because that's where the magic happens.

由于我的工作性质，我有机会与许多不同思维的人共事。

I get to work with a lot of diverse minds by virtue of what I do.

我为各种主题的动画撰写和制作脚本，并设计谜题和游戏。

I write and produce scripts for animation on a wide variety of topics, and I create puzzles and games.

几年前，我也经历了一次‘裙子时刻’，意识到我的大脑运作方式与我认识的几乎所有人都不同，我想向你们展示一下。

And a few years ago, I had my own dress moment, where I realized that my brain works differently than almost everyone I know, and I'd like to show you how.

所以，请允许我稍作说明，请在脑海中想象以下场景。

So if you'll indulge me for a second, please visualize the following.

你可以睁着眼睛或闭着眼睛想象，哪种方式能让你获得更生动的心理图像就用哪种。

You can do it with your eyes open or closed, whichever gives you the most vivid mental imagery.

一艘宇宙飞船坠毁在一颗外星行星上。

A rocket ship crash lands on an alien planet.

一个生物走到舱门旁敲门，然后有人从里面打开了门。

A creature comes up to the hatch and knocks, and someone opens it from within.

现在我要问你们一些关于刚才所见的问题。

So now I'm going to ask you some questions about what you just saw.

这颗行星是什么颜色的？

What color was the planet?

那个生物是什么样的？

What kind of creature was it?

那谁打开了舱门？

And who opened the hatch?

我来给你们看看我看到了什么。

I'll show you what I see.

什么都没有。

Nothing.

这是因为我患有一种叫做心盲症的状况，这意味着我无法在脑海中形成视觉图像。

That's because I have a condition called aphantasia, which is where I don't have access to my mind's eye.

事实证明，心像能力是一个连续谱。

It turns out that the mind's eye is a spectrum.

在一端，大约有百分之二到四的人患有心盲症，而在另一端则是超象症。

On one end are about two to four percent of us with aphantasia, and at the other extreme is hyperphantasia.

这意味着你能想象出极其精细的细节，有时甚至能将你想象的画面叠加到现实上。

That's where you can visualize an exquisite detail, sometimes even able to superimpose what you're imagining on reality.

大约有百分之三到六的人属于这种情况。

That's about three to six percent of people.

其他所有人都处于两者之间，但这里的体验范围非常广泛。

Everyone else is somewhere in between, but there's a huge range of experience here.

我与之进行这项测试的每个人不仅描述的内容不同，而且对这种体验本身的描述也各不相同。

Everyone I do this with not only describes something different, but describes the experience of experiencing it differently.

因此，我一生中大部分时间都以为大多数人——或者所有人都和我一样，认为这种可视化练习只是一种修辞手法，没人真能做得到。

So I went through most of my life assuming that most people were or everyone was like me, that visualization exercise like this is a figure of speech that no one could actually do.

所以，当我了解到aphantasia（心盲症）时，我感到既惊讶、着迷，又有些不安——后者是因为它引发了一些令人担忧的问题，比如：我是不是一辈子都在从事完全错误的职业？

So imagine my surprise and fascination and apprehension when I learned about aphantasia, the last because it raised some scary questions like, have I been working in entirely the wrong careers my entire life?

因此，心盲症改变了我们这些患有此症的人感知、接收和处理信息的方式。

So aphantasia changes the way that those of us who have it perceive information and consume and process information.

例如，大多数拥有内心视觉的人在阅读小说时，会描述脑海中浮现出场景并为角色配音的体验。

So for example, most people I speak to who have a mind's eye describe the experience of reading a novel as seeing scenes play out in their mind and casting characters.

但我完全做不到这两件事。

I can't do either of those things.

对我来说，这是一种更加概念化的体验。

It's a it's a much more conceptual experience for me.

当某物不在视线内时，它就完全从脑海中消失了。

And when something is out of sight, it's very much out of mind.

我有一个五岁的女儿。

I have a five year old daughter.

此刻，我无法想象她的面容。

I can't, in this moment, imagine her face.

这对我记忆的影响很大，而且这不仅关乎我的内心视觉，还涉及我的内心听觉——虽然我觉得我有一点内心听觉，但我没有内心嗅觉或内心味觉。

That has a big effect on my memory, and it's also not just my mind's eye, it's also my mind's ear, though I think I have a little bit of a mind's ear, but I don't have a mind's nose or a mind's mouth.

例如，我无法想象花生酱的味道。

I can't, for example, imagine the taste of peanut butter.

在没有内心视觉的情况下思考是什么感觉？

And what's it like to think in the absence of a mind's eye?

这是一个非常棘手的问题，几乎等同于问：做一只海豚或一只蜘蛛是什么感觉？

That's a really tough question that's not that far off from asking what's it like to be a dolphin or a spider.

在无法进入彼此意识的情况下，我们仍可以就这些体验进行交流。

And in the absence of being able to inhabit each other's consciousnesses, we can communicate about them.

因此，对我而言，我通常更关注事物的骨架而非表皮。

So for me, I'm generally much more aware of something's skeleton than its skin.

我对结构非常敏感。

I'm very attuned to structure.

当我创作游戏或谜题时，我首先会构想其机制，并思考它们如何相互关联、如何映射到故事结构中，而细节则会稍后出现，通常与其他艺术家合作完成。

When I'm creating a game or a puzzle, I'm first dreaming up the mechanics and figuring out how they relate to each other, how they map to a story structure, and the details come later, often in collaboration with other artists.

我意识到，这种想法——我们的思维可能彼此如此不同——需要很大的信念跳跃，我自己也对此感到挣扎。

I realize there's a leap of faith here in this idea that our minds can be so alien to each other, and I struggle with that too.

我无法理解什么是可视化，就像我无法看到那条裙子是白色和金色的一样。

I can't understand what it's like to visualize any more than I can see the dress as white and gold.

但越来越明显的是，内心之眼只是我们在充满神经多样性的夜空中开始绘制的众多星座之一。

But what's become increasingly apparent is that the mind's eye is just one of many constellations we're starting to draw in a night sky full of neurological diversity.

这包括是否有内在独白。

That includes having or not having an interior monologue.

这还包括自闭症谱系、注意力缺陷多动障碍、阅读障碍，以及更多可能尚未命名的状况，因为我们才刚刚开始理解这一切。

It includes the autism spectrum, ADHD, dyslexia, and a lot more, probably a lot of things we have yet to even give a name to because we're just figuring all of this out.

主流做法是将这些体验病理化，归入一系列偏离所谓正常心智功能的病症列表中。

The norm is to pathologize these experiences into a list of conditions that depart from a so called normal functioning of the mind.

我认为我们对这个问题的理解完全错了。

I think we're thinking about this completely wrong.

世界上并不存在真正的正常，差异并不等于异常。

There is no true normal out there, and difference is not deviance.

相反，这些都是一些线索，指向一片广阔而深邃的星群，而我们每个人却因只拥有一个舒适且无法逃脱的单一心智作为参照点，而对此视而不见。

Rather, these are all clues towards a vast and profound star field we're each individually blinded to because we only have our one cozy, inescapable mind as a single reference point.

不同的人有不同的思维方式，这并非秘密。

It's no secret that different people think differently.

许多自闭症谱系人士在模式识别和逻辑推理方面表现优异。

Many people on the autism spectrum excel at pattern recognition and logical deduction.

多项研究表明，患有多动症的学生在创造性问题解决和发散性思维任务上的平均表现优于同龄人，关于阅读障碍的研究也得出类似结论，尤其是在高级空间推理方面。

Multiple studies have shown students with ADHD outperforming on average their peers at creative problem solving and divergent thinking tasks, and there are very similar findings for dyslexia, especially when it comes to advanced spatial reasoning.

因此，如果差异实际上才是常态，我们该如何应对？

So if difference is in fact the norm, what do we do with that?

我建议去寻找与你不同的人，一起创造非凡的东西。

I say seek out minds that are different than your own and make something incredible together.

大量研究表明，来自不同背景的人组成的团队能产生更卓越的成果。

There's a wealth of research that shows that teams of people from diverse backgrounds produce superior outcomes.

我想为此提出一个推论。

I'd like to propose a corollary to this.

不同思维的人携手合作，可以创造出奇迹。

Diverse minds working together can produce wonders.

这既伴随着挑战，也蕴含着机遇。

This comes with challenges and opportunities.

因此，在过去十年左右，SAP、惠普和摩根大通等公司开始推出专门招募神经多样性人才的项目，此后，它们报告了生产力、士气、创新和质量的显著提升。

So in the last decade or so, companies such as SAP, Hewlett Packard and JPMorgan have started programs designed to recruit neurodivergent talent, and in the time since, they've reported corresponding gains in productivity, morale, innovation and quality.

我在自己的工作中也看到了这一点，同样因为偶然地从事视觉领域的工作，却无法在脑海中形成视觉图像，我因此与许多思维与我截然不同的人合作，这催生了一些奇特而精彩的作品，比如我合著的一部关于分形的黑色电影风格动画，就是由一位才华横溢的超现实主义动画师杰里米亚·迪基赋予了生命。

I see this in my own work as well, again, by the serendipity of working in visual fields without being able to visualize, I wind up working with a lot of minds who are very different than mine, and that results in some weird and wonderful work, such as a film noir animation about fractals that I coauthored was brought to life by a brilliant hyperfantasic animator named Jeremiah Dickey.

或者，这是我的另一件引以为豪的作品。

Or this is one of my pride and joys.

这是一个结合了拼图和密室逃脱元素的盒装游戏。

It's a game that's a hybrid jigsaw puzzle and escape room in a box.

它的运作方式是这样的。

And the way it works yeah.

它的运作方式是：首先你拼装一幅拼图，但缺少很多大块部分，你需要通过解决嵌入在插图和沿途解锁的物品中的谜题来解锁这些部分。

The way it works is you first assemble a jigsaw, but you're missing big sections, so you have to unlock them by solving puzzles that are embedded in the illustration and artifacts that you unlock along the way.

这款游戏是与两位杰出的艺术家丽塔·奥洛夫和塞娜·特里普合作完成的，我们的思维位于神经多样性星系中截然不同的角落。

This was made in collaboration with two incredible artists, Rita Orlov and Senna Tripp, and our minds can be found in very different corners of the galaxy of neurological diversity.

所以，我是不是选错了领域？

So am I working in the wrong fields?

不，我不这么认为。

No, I don't think so.

我认为我正身处我该在的地方。

I think I'm exactly where I should be.

事实上，我生命中一些最大的快乐和满足感，来自于接受并正视最初让我震惊的发现——我的思维方式与周围的人不同，并承认这一点的真正意义。

In fact, some of the greatest joy and fulfillment in my life has been from coming to terms with the initially jarring realization that my mind works differently than the people around me and recognizing that for what it is.

令人惊叹。

Dazzling.

谢谢。

Thank you.

那

That

这是亚历克斯·罗森塔尔在TEDxT 2025上的演讲。

was Alex Rosenthal speaking at TEDxT twenty twenty five.

如果你对TED的遴选标准感兴趣，可以访问ted.com/curationguidelines了解更多信息。

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com/curationguidelines.

今天就到这里。

And that's it for today.

《TED演讲每日》是TED音频合集的一部分。

TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.

本次演讲由TED研究团队进行事实核查，并由我们的团队——玛莎·埃斯特瓦诺斯、奥利弗·弗里德曼、布莱恩·格林、露西·利特尔和坦西卡·苏恩马诺旺——制作和编辑。

This talk was fact checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estevanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tansika Sungmarnivong.

本集由露西·利特混音。

This episode was mixed by Lucy Little.

特别感谢艾玛·陶布纳和达尼埃拉·巴勒雷佐的支持。

Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniella Ballarezo.

我是伊莉丝·胡。

I'm Elise Hu.

明天我会带着一个全新的脚部灵感回来。

I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet.

感谢收听。

Thanks for listening.