How your brain affects your mind with Alex Rosenthal and Susan G. Wardle

How your brain affects your mind with Alex Rosenthal and Susan G. Wardle

From TED Health by TED

May 26, 2026 · 19 min

About this episode

This episode explores how perception affects the mind, featuring discussions on aphantasia and the science of seeing faces in inanimate objects.

Picture this. You're scrolling late at night and a reel pops up advertising a seemingly magical wellness product with some scientific-sounding marketing language. Do you stick around and maybe even believe it? Or do you scroll away? In this episode, Shoshana explores the mind, and how perception affects it. She shares two talks about how different people can experience reality in wildly different ways. First, Alex Rosenthal shares how having aphantasia prevents him from generating mental images, then Susan G. Wardle dives into the science of perception and why some people see faces in places that don’t exist, like clouds and even potato chips. Talk featured Can you picture things in your mind? I can't | Alex Rosenthal What it means if you can see faces in objects | Susan G. Wardle Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Shoshana

Guests: Alex Rosenthal, Susan G. Wardle

Topics covered

  • perception
  • mental imagery
  • aphantasia
  • science of perception
  • reality
  • wellness products

Keywords

  • brain
  • mind
  • perception
  • aphantasia
  • wellness
  • reality
  • mental images
  • faces in objects

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