Concept thinking and impairment of frontal lobes

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I was talking to someone about how I think, and how I don't think verbally or in pictures or in patterns or any of that, that its purely in concepts. He was quite interested in this and thought that this is actually because of impairment in my frontal lobes.

The way he described it is that the way I think is actually how people think at a lower level generally, but there's a layer in between this for people usually that is how they think about their thinking. Most people will either process things in pictures or words, or senses or some other manners, and then under that it will be processed down to the manner that I process things in directly. But I don't have that in between layer. I tend to be faster at processing information in, and slower at translating it out because of this - I don't need to translate as much to get information in, but the act of converting thoughts to anything else is a lot more manual than it is for other people - usually there is at least one type of thing that isn't so difficult as it is for me. People who think in pictures have to translate to words, but don't have to translate into picture. I have to translate to everything.

The frontal lobes tend to be what is used for all of this processing, its clearly abnormal in me in ways that affect how I process information, and the frontal lobes are one of the things that's abnormal in autistic people.

For me, it directly affects how I think about how I think.

This seems worth mentioning here.

Thank you for writing this. You've just described my mental structure exactly. I wish more people were aware of this cognitive style, because I very often find that it causes others (especially professors ) to develop high expectations for my work and then be disappointed. I can absorb information and ideas fairly quickly, but I'm a terribly, terribly slow writer because my understanding of them is never in a verbal or narrative form.

In the past, prior to a tonic-clonic seizure, I would lose the ability to think in words, and be forced to think in concepts until the damn thing was done. I always hated it, couldn't get anything done like that. Now, I can think in concepts and words while under the influence of mescaline, which is significantly more pleasant. Still can't get any work done in that state though.

I think in concepts, pictures, and patterns. It makes it near impossible to write essays! Strangely enough, it seems to cause EEG changes, so when my eyes are closed I am still in a super-alert brain state, but with the delta signature of meditation.

Weird...I was just about to start a thread in regards to this topic, talk about synchronicity.


I have always been a conceptual/abstract thinker with some visual aspect thrown in there. Only recently have I realized not everyone "thinks" like this. A bi-lingual person was mentioning how they usually speak in one language but think in the words of another language. This is one of the first things that made me realize my thought process must be a bit different. I was confused that someone actually thought in words, as this is something I never do unless I am thinking of something specific to say during a conversation. But as I go about my day to day things my "thoughts" are usually in the form of concepts/visualizations.


Perhaps this explains why it is so hard from me to get my thoughts & ideas & things I want to say out of my head and into words/language. I can type things out quite well, but as soon as I try to talk it all goes to sh*t .

I'm an extreme pattern thinker, but it all ties into concepts. In other words, concepts immediately form when I recognize a pattern, or I recognize a pattern immediately after a concept forms.

So I don't really know what I would put. But putting those concepts into words is another story. I find it almost impossible; words don't describe the concept accurately enough. Patterns describe it only to me, and then to no one else.

I said partial concept thinker but it's more that I find a way to visualize the concept in a manner that makes sense to me. Some of the more abstract concepts have some really weird visuals associated.

I am extremely interested in this topic. I have a hard time explaining why it is so diificult for me to get information back out of my head through writing or speaking. It is because it is in a form that needs a great deal of effort to translate. It is a slow and frustrating process because I know that I know the information, I just can't grasp it in a clear form.

I can't find any information on this, does anyone know anything about this type of thinking?

I'm a pure concept thinker and I wanted to ask others who have the same modality, do you find it an "effort" to think in words or to use your inner ego voice? I do. When I'm resting there is nothing going on in my mind that has words or pictures and it's very relaxing. My mind feels quiet even though I know I'm processing things.

I'd not say I'd ever think in words. I translate to words. I might never say those words, but its a translated layer, not the thought layer.

The translation takes effort, yes.

I do sometimes translate thoughts to words and then not communicate them to other people. I don't do that to pictures ever. Doing it to words gives me more practice with that translation. If I stopped doing that sometimes I think it'd get even harder to translate to words. I don't do that with nearly all of my thoughts though. It's just a way that I practice to keep myself more articulate.

I'm not sure what you mean by use your inner ego voice.

But yes, I know what you mean by not having words or pictures or any of those things but knowing there are thoughts there. I don't know how to explain that to other people.

Translating into pictures is particularly easy for me, so moving between concepts and pictures is what I'm good at. Between concepts and words, not not not.

I do not really understand the definition of "concept-thinking", so I don't know if I do it or not.
Is there any clear definition of what "concepts" mean inthis context?
I think primarily in pictures.
I translate my own pictures to language when I have to talk to others and I get in the pictures of other people and translate them to context for my own.
I do have a high processing "incoming speed" because of it, but it can also be confusing as pictures are very literally and I can miss the meaning easily, because people use a lot of idioms and when I see it literally (like "heart on the sleeve" - I do not know the meaning of it, but I have read it a couple times here, so I take it as an example), I do see it, but the person wants to communicate something different, but that is a "delaying factor".

I am more an abstract thinker, for me each word or definition has to have an image attached to it. When i'm trying to understand things I have the habit to draw lines and then make associations. It makes things more clear. I really can't understand how somebody could think in concepts.