I was fascinated to look back and read Dave's 172 posting; I think it's an excellent insight into the confusion and perculiar problems that non imagers experience on discovering the majority of people experience the world in a fundamentally different way.

My personal experiences are remarkably similar to what Dave talks about with one important difference; I have always been an accomplished artist and regularly draw things from scratch. Friends and colleagues find it difficult to accept that I can create such convincing ilustrations from memory without the aid of mental images.

This has puzzled me, but on analysis, my approach to creating a drawing is more to do with muscle memory, and understanding the shapes that go towards the appearance of something, than working from image memory. I first truely experience the image I'm creating as the marks appear on the page. My approach to creating a piece of art is a scientific one where I understand the elements that go to make a convincing representation of something. I reckon that I would be far more successful as a police artist rather than a witness describing a suspect.

Dave said, "I wonder if perhaps I could shoot for a PhD in Psychology, focusing my efforts on study within this concept". I think you should go for it Dave. All too often I find people seem to be merely humouring me when I explain thatI can't create conscious mental images, but the reality is , out of necessity, a non-imager's perspective on the world and thought processes would seem to be radically different to the majorities.

Tony's excellent thread here has opened up a serious and much welcomed debate, and I would love a clinical study to be undertaken to measure the differences in brain patterns. I'd be willing to contriburte my experiences and, if locality permitted, take part in a few of the studies. Perhaps, if the tests showed any significant results, the rest of the world would take the subject more seriously.