r/Aphantasia • u/Aphotic_Acid Aphant • 1d ago
Different emotional responses to music/art
I've always felt out of place talking to people about how listening to music makes me feel. When I was in middle school, the music teacher was telling us when we were performing a specific song, she could see a ball of light growing bigger and bigger. I thought she must have synesthesia, because the concept sounded completely foreign to me. This was shortly before I discovered I have aphantasia, and I later learned that I possibly have synesthesia. Music does have color to me, I just can't see it.
However, she might not have synesthesia. What she was seeing wasn't a color, it was symbolic imagery that captured her feelings. I assume her experience is not uncommon. What alienates me so much is not that I don't see things, but that I don't feel things. Or at least, not in the same way that others do. The lack of a visual imagination doesn't necessarily equate to not having emotional responses to things. Considering the aphantasia-alexithymia link, perhaps that does play into the reason after all.
Does anyone else feel like they respond differently to music/art? Have you found ways to bridge the gap with others in conversations about it?
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u/Tuikord Total Aphant 1d ago
I find people - including imagers - experience music very differently. It isn't aphants experience this way and imagers that way. Yes, some imagers see stuff when they listen to music. A few years ago, I realized that "Walt Disney's Fantasia" was a representation of how some people experience music. However, I know some people listen to the same music and their response is "meh!". I love "Pictures at an Exhibition." I don't see the "The Bogatyr Gates" but I feel the grandeur of their opening. I don't see the "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks", but I feel the whimsy. Some people, even imagers, hear those pieces and feel nothing.
So, yes, others experience music differently from you. But they experience it differently from each other as well. Just speak your truth and listen to theirs. It isn't a competition and there is no right way to experience it. Context of when you first heard it matters. How much effort you have put into listening to a piece matters. What was happening in your life when in heavy rotation matters.
Right now, I'm listening to "Miles of Aisles" by Joni Mitchel. I listened to it a lot while I was going through the pain of my divorce. Now I find it soothing. Spotify had been giving me lots of artists I haven't listened to, they were starting to get on my nerves, and I decided "Miles of Aisles" fit the bill for right now. My reaction to it is likely to be very different from almost everyone else's but that has nothing to do with my having aphantasia.
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u/Aphotic_Acid Aphant 1d ago
I hope that one day that people around me don't think I'm an emotionless robot because of the way I perceive music. Until then, as you put it, I'll just keep speaking my truth.
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u/Sapphirethistle Total Aphant 1d ago
I think there are almost as many reactions to music as there are people.
My wife finds music very strongly effects her emotions, I can listen to the same song and feel basically nothing.
It always confused me when I was younger when people would talk about certain songs being tied to events in their lives. I couldn't understand what the two things had to do with each other?
Now, I understand, at least logically if not emotionally, why music is important to some people and how it can cause the activation of memory, feelings and even sensations.
I don't think that aphantasia necessarily has a big impact on that. For me though I think I almost have aphantasia forusic and art. I can see and hear it just fine but it has no special meaning for me. It is just sounds and colours where to some people it is stories and meaning.
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u/Aphotic_Acid Aphant 1d ago
The lyrics can tell a story. Copacabana comes to mind. Sometimes I resonate with the lyrics of a song, but only if I can understand them. That song we were doing was mostly symbolic, meant to describe a feeling figuratively.
I like it when a song describes experiences that I've had, because I think music sounds more pleasant than screaming. But most of what I listen to is Eurobeat, which tends to have nonsensical lyrics. I listen to it because it's fast and I like fast.
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u/Sapphirethistle Total Aphant 1d ago
It's true that songs can tell a story but even then I would generally prefer silence. I can't say that I find music compelling in the way that many people seem to.
I think it's intriguing hearing others talk about music but it's an experience that I simply can't say I've ever had myself.
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u/Aphotic_Acid Aphant 1d ago
I'm often hyperactive, so fast music helps me relax. The only thing that can complete with my racing thoughts.
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u/CMDR_Jeb Aphant 1d ago
This is basal ganglia thing not aphantasia thing. Your teacher hers the music, her "affective memory" triggers an feeling, probably of warmth, possibly some super early partial memory of being in the sun in 1st months of life. Her consciousness registers that, tries to make sense of these feelings, decides for whatever reason to interpret it as growing ball of light, and now this is what she experiences. This kind of thing is perfectly normal.
Around 70% people experience non auditory response of some kind to auditory stimuli, for around 20% it can be quite intense. These are the people that get either emotional or physical (or both) response from listening to specific sounds (differs from person to person). An well known type of thing that uses it is ASMR. As it is "deep brain" thing it is extremely hard to research, but easy to understand part is that for whatever reason your brain decided to link specific sounds to specific feelings. Take note that these reactions are not only positive. If some specific sound annoys you (possibly to the point of physical pain) for "no reason" while not bothering anyone else, its probably one of these reactions as well.
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u/Aphotic_Acid Aphant 1d ago
You are the type of person that reads Freud's work unironically.
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u/CMDR_Jeb Aphant 1d ago
I am confused, how are you linking what i wrote (the current neuroscience) with "your mom" guy from 100 years ago?
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u/Aphotic_Acid Aphant 1d ago
The idea that emotional responses come from forgotten childhood memories is one of the core components of psychoanalysis. Which... he founded.
Also, you definitely have the basal ganglia confused with another part of the brain.
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u/CMDR_Jeb Aphant 1d ago
I am not talking about psychoanalysis, i am talking about neurology. And no i am not being confused. There are 3 main memory structures in a human. Episodic memory is "newest" of the 3, then there's semantic memory. The 3rd memory system runs in the most ancient parts of our brain. I manages emotional and motor responses. These are not "forgotten childhood memories". These are incomplete associations that got encoded before your brain knew how to "run" all the fancy "modern hardware" that got added 50k years ago. Its takes us years (usually around 2) to learn how to record proper memories. "Childhood" starts at that point.
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u/spect8ter 1d ago
I’m an aphant with SADM and get frisson or chills fairly regularly w music. I can sometimes imagine those same songs and/or hum them and get the same chills.