---
author: TED
date: '2026-01-22'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojttMNOW6zM
speaker: TED
tags:
- aphantasia
- neurodiversity
- cognitive-differences
- perception
- mind-eye
title: 当大脑看见不同：从‘那件裙子’到‘失明’的认知边界
summary: 本次演讲以著名的‘那件裙子’视觉错觉为例，探讨了人类感知差异的普遍性。演讲者分享了自身患有‘失忆症’（Aphantasia）的经历，即无法在脑海中形成视觉意象，并阐述了‘心眼’（mind's eye）的谱系。文章进一步将讨论扩展到更广泛的‘神经多样性’（neurodiversity），包括自闭症、ADHD和阅读障碍等，强调差异并非偏离，而是人类认知的宝贵财富。最终，演讲鼓励人们拥抱并寻求不同思维模式的合作，指出跨文化、跨思维的团队能产生卓越的成果，并分享了企业招聘神经多样性人才的积极实践，肯定了接纳自身独特性所带来的‘耀眼’价值。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: psychology
area: society-thinking
project: []
people:
- Alex Rosenthal
companies_orgs:
- SAP
- Hewlett Packard
- JPMorgan
products_models: []
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
### 认知差异的起点：“那件裙子”现象
2015年，一位准新娘在网上上传了一张连衣裙的照片，引发了全球范围内的热烈讨论。这张照片的颜色在不同人眼中呈现出截然不同的效果：有些人看到的是蓝黑相间的裙子，而另一些人则坚称是白金色。这种现象之所以令人费解，是因为它直观地展示了一个事实——即使面对同一现实，两个人的感知也可能完全不同。这种差异不仅令人着迷，也触及了我们对“现实”和“感知”的根本理解。
Original English
So in 2015,
a bride-to-be uploaded a picture
of a dress to the internet --
(Laughter)
And we all lost our minds.
If you see this as blue
and black, say “Team blue.”
Audience: Team blue!
If you see this as white and gold, how?
How do you see that as white and gold?
(Laughter)
Why does this break our brains so much?
It's because it puts us into confrontation
with the fact that two minds
can perceive the same reality
entirely differently.
### 心灵之眼的谱系：从失忆症到超忆症
本次演讲将探讨两个核心观点：首先，我们的思维方式比我们通常认为的要更加不同；其次，我们应该主动寻求那些与自己思维模式迥异的个体，因为“魔法”就发生在这样的碰撞之中。得益于职业的特殊性——撰写动画剧本、设计谜题和游戏——我得以接触到各种各样、思维迥异的人。几年前，我也经历了一次属于自己的“裙子时刻”，我震惊地发现，我的大脑运作方式竟然与我认识的几乎所有人都不一样。
Original English
I'd like to talk to you about two things.
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.
I get to work with a lot of diverse minds
by virtue of what I do.
I write and produce scripts for animation
on a wide variety of topics,
and I create puzzles and games.
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.
### 体验的差异：“心眼”的缺失与看见
为了更好地说明这一点，我邀请大家做一个小小的可视化练习：想象一个场景——一艘火箭飞船坠毁在一颗外星球上。一个外星生物来到舱门前敲门，然后有人从里面打开了门。现在，我将提出几个关于这个场景的问题：星球是什么颜色的？那是什么生物？谁打开了舱门？
而我所看到的，是“空无”。这是因为我患有一种名为“**失忆症**”（Aphantasia）的疾病，这意味着我无法调用“**心眼**”（mind's eye）——我无法在脑海中形成视觉意象。研究表明，“心眼”的能力并非固定不变，而是一个谱系。约有2%到4%的人患有失忆症，无法进行心理成像；另一端则是“**超忆症**”（Hyperphantasia），这部分人群（约3%到6%）能够极其精细地进行视觉想象，甚至能将想象叠加于现实之上。绝大多数人则介于两者之间，体验着巨大差异。每个人不仅对同一场景有不同的描述，连体验过程本身也截然不同。
我曾一度认为，进行可视化练习不过是一种比喻，没有人能真正做到。因此，当我了解到失忆症的存在时，我既感到惊讶、着迷，也有些担忧，因为它引发了一个令人不安的问题：我的职业选择是否一直都错了？
Original English
So if you'll indulge me for a second,
please visualize the following.
You can do it with your eyes
open or closed,
whichever gives you
the most vivid mental imagery.
A rocket ship crash lands
on an alien planet.
A creature comes up
to the hatch and knocks.
And someone opens it from within.
So now I'm going to ask you
some questions about what you just saw.
What color was the planet?
What kind of creature was it?
And who opened the hatch?
I'll show you what I see.
Nothing.
That's because I have
a condition called aphantasia,
which is where I don't have access
to my mind's eye.
It turns out that the mind's
eye is a spectrum.
On one end are about two
to four percent of us with aphantasia.
And at the other extreme
is hyperphantasia.
That's where you can visualize
in exquisite detail,
sometimes even able to superimpose
what you're imagining on reality.
That's about three
to six percent of people.
Everyone else is somewhere in between.
But there's a huge range
of experience here.
Everyone I do this with
not only describes something different
but describes the experience
of experiencing it differently.
So I went through most of my life
assuming that most people were
or everyone was like me,
that a visualization exercise like this
is a figure of speech
that no one could actually do.
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?
(Laughter)
### 信息的感知与处理：失忆症的影响
失忆症深刻地改变了我们这些患有此症者感知、吸收和处理信息的方式。例如，大多数有“心眼”的人在阅读小说时，会想象出具体的场景，并在脑海中为角色“选角”。而我无法做到这两点，我的阅读体验更为概念化。俗话说“眼不见，心不烦”，对于我而言，‘看不见’就意味着‘很难记在心上’。我有一个五岁的女儿，此刻我无法在脑海中‘看到’她的脸。这对我的记忆产生了巨大影响。
这种差异不仅体现在“心眼”上，也体现在“心耳”（mind's ear）上，尽管我似乎还有一些心耳功能，但我的“心鼻”（mind's nose）和“心口”（mind's mouth）则完全缺失。我无法在脑海中想象出花生酱的味道。那么，在没有“心眼”的情况下思考是怎样的体验？这是一个非常棘手的问题，其难度不亚于询问“海豚或蜘蛛的感受是什么？”。由于我们无法真正进入他人的意识，我们只能通过沟通来理解。
对我而言，我通常更关注事物的“骨架”而非“表皮”。我非常关注结构。在创作游戏或谜题时，我首先会构思核心机制，弄清楚它们如何相互关联，以及如何映射到一个故事结构上。细节则在后期出现，往往需要与其他艺术家合作。我理解，要接受“我们的思维可以如此陌生”这一观点，需要一定的“信念飞跃”，我自己也在努力适应。我无法理解可视化是怎样的体验，就像我无法理解“那件裙子”为何是白金色一样。
Original English
So aphantasia changes the way
that those of us who have it
perceive information
and consume and process information.
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.
I can't do either of those things.
It's a much more conceptual
experience for me.
And when something is out of sight,
it's very much out of mind.
I have a five-year-old daughter.
I can't in this moment imagine her face.
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.
I can't, for example,
imagine the taste of peanut butter.
And what's it like to think
in the absence of a mind's eye?
It's a really tough question
that's not that far off from asking
what's it like to be
a dolphin or a spider?
And in the absence of being able
to inhabit each other's consciousnesses,
we can communicate about them.
So for me,
I'm generally much more aware
of something's skeleton than its skin.
I'm very attuned to structure.
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.
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.
I can't understand
what it's like to visualize
any more than I can see
the dress as white and gold.
### 神经多样性：超越“常态”的广阔星空
但“心眼”只是我们正在绘制的夜空中，浩瀚“**神经多样性**”（Neurodiversity）图景中的一个星座。这包括是否有内在独白（interior monologue），自闭症谱系（autism spectrum）、注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）、阅读障碍（dyslexia）等等，可能还有许多我们尚未命名、正在探索的现象。
传统观念常常将这些差异病理化，视为偏离所谓“正常”思维模式的“失常”。我认为我们对这一问题的看法完全错了。根本不存在绝对的“正常”，差异本身并非“偏差”。相反，这些差异是我们通往一片广阔而深邃星辰的线索，而我们每个人都因只拥有自己那个舒适、无法逃脱的“单一思维”作为参照点，而对这片星空视而不见。
人们思维方式不同已是公开的秘密。许多自闭症患者擅长模式识别和逻辑推理。多项研究表明，ADHD学生在创造性问题解决和发散性思维任务上，平均表现优于同龄人。阅读障碍者在高级空间推理方面也表现出类似优势。
Original English
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.
That includes having or not having
an interior monologue.
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.
The norm is to pathologize
these experiences
into a list of conditions
that depart from a so-called
“normal” functioning of the mind.
I think we're thinking
about this completely wrong.
There is no true normal out there,
and difference is not deviance.
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.
It's no secret that different
people think differently.
Many people on the autism spectrum
excel at pattern recognition
and logical deduction.
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.
### 拥抱差异，共创奇迹：合作的巨大潜力
既然差异是常态，我们该如何应对？我的建议是：主动去寻求与你思维模式不同的人，然后一起创造出不可思议的东西。大量研究表明，来自不同背景的团队能产生更卓越的成果。我想在此提出一个推论：不同思维模式的个体协同合作，能够创造出令人惊叹的奇迹。
这既带来了挑战，也蕴藏着机遇。在过去十年左右，SAP、惠普（Hewlett Packard）和摩根大通（JPMorgan）等公司已启动了旨在招募神经多样性人才的计划。自那时起，他们报告了在生产力、士气、创新和质量方面的相应提升。
我在自己的工作中也深有体会。再次受益于我在视觉领域工作却无法可视化的“机缘巧合”，我常常与许多与我思维差异巨大的人合作。这催生了许多奇特而美好的作品。例如，我共同创作了一部关于分形的黑色电影动画，由一位名叫杰里迈亚·迪基（Jeremiah Dickey）的杰出超忆症动画师将其变为现实。又比如，我非常自豪的这款游戏，它是一个混合了拼图和密室逃脱的盒子。它的玩法是：你首先组装一个拼图，但缺少很大一部分，你必须通过解决嵌入在插图和解锁的道具中的谜题来打开它们。这款游戏是与两位才华横溢的艺术家——丽塔·奥尔洛夫（Rita Orlov）和森内·特里普（Senne Trip）合作完成的，我们的思维分布在神经多样性宇宙的不同角落。
那么，我是否在错误的领域工作？不，我不这么认为。我认为我正处于我应在的位置。事实上，我生命中最 the 多的喜悦和满足感，就来自于我逐渐接受并理解了——我的大脑与周围的人不同，这一最初令人不安的认知，对我来说是“耀眼”的。
Original English
So if difference is in fact the norm,
what do we do with that?
I say seek out minds
that are different than your own
and make something incredible together.
There's a wealth of research
that shows that teams of people
from diverse backgrounds
produce superior outcomes.
I'd like to propose a corollary to this:
diverse minds working together
can produce wonders.
This comes with challenges
and opportunities.
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.
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
that was brought to life by a brilliant
hyperphantasic animator
named Jeremiah Dickey.
Or this is one of my pride and joys.
It's a game that's a hybrid
jigsaw puzzle and escape room in a box.
And the way it works -- yeah.
(Laughter)
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.
This was made in collaboration
with two incredible artists,
Rita Orlov and Senne Trip,
and our minds can be found
in very different corners
of the galaxy of neurological diversity.
So am I working in the wrong fields?
No, I don't think so.
I think I'm exactly where I should be.
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 -- dazzling.
Thank you.
(Cheers and applause)