What it’s like to be unable to visualize anything | Hacker News Reader

What it’s like to be unable to visualize anything

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35 pointsKdparker11 comments

Original: https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-... HN discussion (176 comments with author comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894

I have a really excellent visual imagination. I can imagine myself walking or driving great distances, and I can imagine all the scenery, the trees, the colour of the sky. I can put things in the scene, take them out, rotate them. I don't have any sounds or smells.

I have trouble imagining what a person looks like. Especially hard is their face. I don't really have any idea what my mother's face looks like except that she has blonde hair. My dreams don't have people in them, not really. Sometimes there's the concept of a person, but I can't really see them.

Is there a name for this?

Edit: before this article, I didn't know it was possible to have a condition like this. I just assumed I was misinterpreting my imagination somehow.

My sister once related a dream to me that involved several people, some, famous people she hadn't even met. I couldn't recall one that really had anyone physically present. I remember a terrifying nightmare when I was very young that my father was in, but really it was just his trousers. I couldn't see any of him.

Not a medical practitioner here, but it might be worth looking into prosopagnosia, or face-blindness. It more generally includes trouble recognizing faces, but maybe also what you describe. It's sometimes hard to diagnose too, since there are many non-face signals that are useful in identifying people, e.g. gait, hair, voice, context, etc.

I might look into this. People are always surprised by how long it takes for me to notice them in a crowd

Face blindness is really quite frightening. I'm not sure if it includes not being able to imagine one's face as opposed to not recognizing them in person, but there's a documentary on face blindness somewhere that show people waking up everyday unable to recognize their children, husband, etc.

As much as it's frightening for the family members, I can't imagine how much more so it is for the victim.

Perhaps related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia ?

I also have the opinion that men don't remember details about peoples' appearance as readily as women do. I'm 99% sure my wife has green eyes, but that number was more like 60% for the first 5 years I knew her.

When I describe men, I tend to say they have blonde-ish hair, particularly if it's short, even if it's brown -- I guess because I'm seeing skin in there that gives me the impression that their head is a lighter color?

I'll notice immediately if someone gets a haircut, but I can't tell you what it looked like before.

I find it strange because faces are made of the same stuff than the trees and other stuff you can imagine well: lines and colors.

In 1880 Francic Galton did a survey[0] to determine the extent to which different people were capable of mental imagery and he identified much the same phenomenon. Some responses to his questionnaire:

_"These questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition regarding the 'mind's eye' and the 'images' which it sees….. This points to some initial fallacy…… It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a 'mental image' which I can 'see' with my 'mind's eye'….. I do not see it… any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it, &c."_

Also related, apparently some people can make it all the way to college without knowing they have no sense of taste[1]:

_"...I was stopped dead by the question of what a peach smelled like. Good. That was all I could come up with. I tried to think of other things. Garbage smelled bad. Perfume smelled good. Popcorn good. Poop bad. But how so? What was the difference? What were the nuances? In just a few minutes' reflection I realized that, despite years of believing the contrary, I never had and never would smell a peach.

All my behavior to that point indicated that I had smell. No one suspected I didn't. For years I simply hadn't known what it was that was supposed to be there. I just thought the way it was for me was how it was for everyone. It took the right stimulus before I finally discovered the gap."

    [0] http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm
    [1]https://www.quora.com/Is-going-for-a-Ph-D-worth-it-if-Im-extremely-passionate-about-a-field-but-dont-really-want-to-spend-my-20s-poor-toiling-away-in-a-lab-and-living-in-a-city-that-I-dont-particularly-want-to-live-in/answer/Mark-Eichenlaub?srid=slK&share=1

I think this confuses me more than clarifying anything. His descriptions make me think other people are better at this than I am. How do I know I'm "picturing" a beach when I say I am? I don't see sand and trees and water and lifeguards unless I specifically stop to think of them. When I think beach, I suppose I think sand. Then I'll say okay maybe there's some water, and maybe there's an umbrella, but I'm kind of "seeing" each item individually, if at all. Or, I see sand and water, then I think of an umbrella so I add that to the sand, and now I see sand and umbrella, until I remind myself to see sand, umbrella, and water. I'm not sure I visualize things the way he thinks I'm suposed to.

Whelp I might just might discovered something about myself when people ask me to imagine a beach in close my eyes and hear my self say I'm on a beach, on occasion when you have one of those flashes that happen due to pressure on your eyes I might associate a flash to an image.

The darker it is in a room the less likely for me to see any flash or associate any image with it.

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