Aphantasia: 'My mind's eye is blind'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
All in all, while I don't feel 'robbed' of this ability to visualize things, it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the human experience. I can't really visualize a future life for myself, let alone my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite mind-blowing, and I'm glad it's getting the wave of media attention that it is now (or else I would not have known).
But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.
So far I've boiled the side effects down to:
1. A complete and utter lack of direction. I literally get lost in suburbs surrounding my home (i'll very often take an extremely sub optimal route home from a store that is just 10 minutes from my home - a bit embarrassing tbh, gives my wife a laugh though). These are streets I've travelled for over 30 years. Apparently quite common with aphantasia.
2. An almost superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. People with aphantasia don't have the tendency to ruminate. I've had some traumatic experiences in my life and within a few months it's as if the experience never happened. I can recall details of it but the recollection is as if the experience happened to someone else.
Regarding no.2, photos are super important. There was a period of 10 years or so where I didn't take many photos, and that period feels like a black hole.
My sense of direction is fine to good, and as far as I can establish, it's common to visualise "metaphorically". So I'd visualise a route or 3d model as another might visualise honesty - I know what it is, I can precisely express it, but I can't picture it in technicolour. It seems to work well enough that hobbies over the years have included model engineering - including design, fell walking and geocaching. I never needed a 3d model to "see" a plan, even while drawing it, even though I cannot "see" it. Saying "I just know" seems completely inadequate, but that feels like how it works. I can pick up on potential problems where a) might interfere with b). Language gets difficult for this!
I can juggle a model but again metaphorically. I can do it quite easily and it never occurred to me in 50 years that images were an optional component for others. :)
The only other I've encountered with a similar lack of images among my friends reports just the same ability to do direction, map reading and spatial interrelation just fine, without seeing it. Just knowing seems to be enough to do the rest.
Rumination and regret is perfectly possible too - the feelings, the consequences is plenty enough to get that going. The pictures are better on radio also applies - not a literal picture but the feelings and the metaphorical. :)
Don't people misdiagnose things all the time? Unless not diagnosed, you could just not have it, and e.g. expect something super special/realistic when people talk about "seeing images" in their minds eye, which is not the case, and comparing with that.
E.g. even for us, without aphantasia it's not like what we envision with our "mind's eye" has the same richness, texture, reality etc to it as things we actually see (else, I guess, we'd had trouble knowing if we really did something or just imagined it).
If that makes any sense.
The article mentions varying ability to picture things. You may have good spatial reasoning but less visual imagination. I know that when I picture something in my mind it isn't always a clear image, often just a shadow of the thing I'm imagining. I find spatial reasoning has a different quality, it's like sensing the position of your arm but you can apply it to objects that aren't a part of you.
For example, once I've heard a song enough, I can just replay it in my head, and it feels the same as actually listening to it. Is that just as weird for you as being able to see a ball?
sigh you've got to be kidding me. You can actually replay a sound in your head??
well, i'll add that to the list of things my brain can't do :(
I've also never been able to sing along with songs. It always blows me away when my wife can just start singing along with a song she's heard a few times.
I'm starting to think I might be brain damaged.
Part of the reason why I didn't realise that others are literal about being able to 'see' with their eyes closed is that I can tell you spatial relationships more precisely than most people I know.
I know and can recall where things are in relation to each other with ease.
E.g if you asked me to sketch rooms in my house, I would be able to reproduce it in a huge amount of detail even though I can't 'see' them,by walking through what is where in relation to what and plot it out.
If I draw from memory rather than from sight or imagination, however, - something I learned as a child without connecting the dots - was that I do tend to draw in a much more 'sanitized' style. Clean lines etc. As if I'm drawing a diagram.
It's terribly easy for me to acquire earworms (aka "stuck song syndrome"), and I have to avoid listening to certain kinds of music too late in the afternoon/evening - otherwise I can't sleep for music turning in my mind.
I actually ripped out the stereo from my car years ago. I don't need it. If I want to listen to some music I just let the head play it. Same thing.
Which leads me to the surprise my wife gave me one day - she told me that the daughter said a strange thing to her, she (my wife) had asked what she was doing - she was just sitting there - and the reply was "I'm listening to music in my mind". That was astonishing for my wife because she didn't know it was possible to replay music in the mind. She had never heard about such a thing. Which sounds awfully like aphantasia for audio - although I think it would be limited to just music. It's hard to imagine not being able to 'hear' a sentence in your mind.
The funny thing is that my wife is an amateur musician, and her ear is very good. Better than mine, I think.
But I have experienced other things as well. Since I was a kid I play this game when I'm bored... let's call it "visualising". But not for images, for other sensory input. For example, I try to imagine really hard the taste and texture of a cake, the smell of coffee or a perfume, touching something fluffy with my hand, feeling hot or cold... It works, although I don't feel it physically in my body per se, it's just like... a very vivid memory of it. As if an invisible limb was experiencing this feeling again.
What if they just define their thoughts differently? When I say "I can't see a ball", I mean that while I can reproduce how it would vaguely feel like to see a ball (like the difference between tasting something and recalling a taste), and kind of trace its outline, I can't have a picture in my mind with a similar accuracy as actually looking at a ball.
Someone else might say "I can see a ball" even if internally they experience the same as me, because they might set their bar lower. Could it be that people with aphantasia are just more demanding for what they count as "seeing"?
It's incredible what friends, family and coworkers have told me they're able to do with visual imagery. A large portion of them could overlay imaginary objects over the real world. My wife, who may be hyperphantasic, can spend hours watching TV shows/cartoons she's created in her head. She has no idea what it's like to think without visualization.
I'm extremely jealous of their abilities to replay memories, old or contemporary, as films in their head. I can tell you basic facts about what happened in my life, I can't re-see those experiences.
Yeah maybe. How could we ever really know though? I guess we have to take them at their word. I would like to be able to visualise my son's face while I'm at work, but I get nothing just black, thank goodness for photos :)
I also wouldn't describe myself as able to let go of things easily. When I remember traumatic experiences I don't visualize them, I remember the feeling, the shame or the guilt or the embarrassment.
I completely agree with the photo thing though.
I, too, have a good sense of direction and am often relied upon to be the guide on hikes or backpacking trips in places that we've never been before. I know how to read maps and use a compass and orient myself but that is less visualize than it is analytical, IMO.
But! I also have the black hole effect that the GP described. I have an almost uncanny ability to just get beyond trauma and bad experiences and I'm seeing now that that is probably due to this black hole memory effect. I don't carry memories with me the way that other people do, but I've known that about myself for a while. It's caused some strife in my life, and it continues to do so, but I've taken to keeping a physical journal and making frequent notes about things that happen throughout each day. The act of writing this stuff down seems to force these things into my memory. I learned recently that my father operated similarly in his career, using a single sheet of A12 folded into quarters where he'd divide each quarter into an hour of work, with 8 folds in total representing the average day. When he worked 12/16 hour shifts, he'd add additional folds.
And, so... I guess that in light of this, I've always wondered if I'll have dementia or Alzheimer's late in my life. My paternal great grandmother lived well into her 90s, but my paternal grandmother succumbed to dementia in her mid 80s. My maternal family has some folks in their 90s, as well, and everyone there seems to have their memory in tact. But, my father has had his struggles and I've personally noticed that my mother is starting to struggle with conversational memory recall today.
E.g an example I often used is that I remember pieces of code by how they look on screen to the extent that the syntax and formatting is something I'm unusually obsessed with because it affects my recall, and that I remember pages from papers I read 25+ years ago by visual appearance and layout.
But I can't see them, even though I can recall them to the point that I know what they would have looked like had I been able to see them.
That's interesting. I wonder how your mind has learned to compensate. Maps are such visual things, you must be tapping into some other brain areas to store/retrieve this information.
> When I remember traumatic experiences I don't visualize them, I remember the feeling, the shame or the guilt or the embarrassment.
hmm, interesting. Maybe this part of my personality isn't related to the aphantasia.
Dealing with the trauma has opened up a richness inside my head that I didn’t realize I had. I can visualize almost anything I imagine, and I’ve began drawing. I’ve always had very good spatial reasoning, sense of direction and audible memory.
I’m still working on being fully present, though.
Are you sure? I am not a psych(atr|olog)ist, but that sounds consistent with some sort of dissociation. People can even be impacted by traumas that they do not remember at all.
I think psychiatrologist is my new favourite word.
Edit: Or maybe psycologiatrist.
* shrug * no idea tbh. others with aphantasia don't seem to share the same effect, so maybe it's some kind of other dysfunction.
1.While I do not experience visual images in my mind, I do 'form' what I can only explain as proprioceptive relationships between things. I can mentally rotate objects or my environment, but have no visual experience of it. This is a long-winded way of saying I have very good spacial understanding, direction and concept of how things relate to each other - I'm a hang glider pilot, motorcyclist, loves driving and hiking around, and never get lost.
2. I do relate with having a superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. I don't dwell on the bad for long, and tend to forget the bad experiences pretty quickly. My memory of accidents are also more proprioception and relation to things in my environment than visual.
No 1 I never connected it to this, but yes, I have terrible sense of direction. I do okay if there are physical landmarks (Like lake to the west or hills to the east) and numbered streets help too, but I still regularly make wrong turns and don't realize it in cities I've lived for a long time.
No 2 I don't feel. I ruminate a lot. My memory is weak, but I still manage to ruminate on things.
I can relate to the lack of interest in fiction books others have written on this thread. I struggle to visualise what's going on with the characters/scenes so get bored (and frustrated) very quickly.
Oddly I can relate strongly to your point 2. My father is the same - emotions get switched off and practical mode kicks in. He's working on a solution to one of the problems as a result of whatever's happening around us, be it financial, logistical, or anything which could "help" in his eyes. It's not so much put bad experiences behind me, but rather put them in a mental box (ironically, I can't imagine) and not worrying about it.
For example. If I was told to imagine a barn, the first image to pop up is the barn. For no apparent reason, the barn is red.
How many windows does the barn have? No clue, didn't even realize that the barn had some windows. I can then sort of materialize the windows into a concrete amount (two for example). But do note that before I thought about the windows the 3D model of the barn existed in a state that can only be conjured by the imagination. The barn literally had an unknown amount of windows, not no windows or some windows, but I just wasn't thinking about the windows. The other weird part of this is that we don't consciously realize that the model is incomplete, yet if we took this incomplete model of the barn and put it in the real world we can then instantly identify this inconsistency and weirdness.
Also for no apparent reason the barn is sitting on a grass field and it's dusk.
If you can dream, the image is exactly the same as your dream. Blurry three dimensional objects that can materialize in greater detail as you focus.
There are some differences I can think of with my dreams. One is that of course it really does feel like you're there in a dream. When I imagine something while awake, it's more like a little model surrounded by nothingness in my head.
Another is that in dreams things are often strange, proportions all wrong, just general weirdness. Imagining while awake, you have control over the form.
There are people in this thread saying that they can essentially replace their reality with imagination while awake, "projecting" the scene in front of them. I can't do that, but I can imagine a scene well enough to get by. Maybe there's not so much Normal vs. Aphantasia at all, but a whole spectrum between the two extremes.
In dreams I enjoy the contradictory nature of things/people, like someone in the dream is themselves fully and also someone else; or a barn say is painted red and made of wood whilst simultaneously being entirely constructed of windows, and the windows can't be looked out of ...
I also voraciously read fiction, so I doubt you not liking it has anything to do with aphantasia, but find overly descriptive portions of text boring and will often skip them.
Also, you can almost certainly learn to visualize with your mind's eye, very few people have actual incurable aphantasia from what I've read. I did some exercises, image streaming, and it was starting to work. After a week or so I started seeing images. I had too much on my plate, so parked it for now.
If you told me to not picture a welsh corgi barking at a ball, my mind would instantly picture it. There is no control over this reflex. Literally if you had a mind reading machine and a gun pointed to my head and told me not to picture that corgi or you'd shoot me, it would be mind blowingly hard and near impossible. It's similar to the reflex that allows you to understand language. "Do not understand the words that are coming out of my mouth..." not possible.
Thus in knowing that we have limited control over it you should know that at least for some people the mind wanders... if we don't direct the mechanism to picture a flame or a sphere it will proceed to picture other things, it can't be turned off insomuch as your general ability to understand english can't be turned off. Therefore meditation is easier for you.
Also you can't get songs stuck in your head. Sometimes that part of your brain that builds these virtual scenes just decides to sing that one catchy song all the time.
As should be clear from this thread, aphantasia is a highly varied condition. It manifests in people in different ways. The fact that you read a lot does not mean that there is no association between aphantasia and not liking fictional books.
I've only ever experienced visualization once on a drunken night and thought my drink had been spiked.
https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photogra...
Then moved on to image streaming but it didn't add that much more:
http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm
There's still a lot of mumbo-jumbo feeling to it and the videos and writing, but it does work. 10 minutes a day, a little over a week, and I started to see things. I found it a lot easier to do just as I was going to sleep, first time it happened I'd forgotten to do it in the scheduled slot so did it just after I went to bed without the recorder. The recorder is useful to begin with to remind you to carry on speaking out loud.
It is frustrating to begin with.
A bit off-topic perhaps, but: how? When a thought comes into my head, that means I'm no longer thinking of tapping...
That's true. But at some point, you realize you are thinking of x when you should just be focusing on the sound (or whatever object/idea you chose). When that happens, you tap. Even if you were daydreaming for 6 minutes, you eventually realize you were straying.
You can substitute physical tapping with mental notes or whatever as well.
There are forms of mindfulness and meditation practice that don't require visualization, and in fact are quite the opposite. A typical exercise is to pay focused attention to a particular body part, sensation, or environmental aspect.
Keeping the eyes half-open during meditation is a common way of preventing falling asleep.
I'm utterly unable to visualise for the most part except for one experience that was totally revelatory to me during meditation years ago, which I after learning about aphantasia realises must be what most people experience all the time.. But the inability to get my minds eye to work has never been a hindrance to my meditation as far as I can tell. If anything I do not get distracted by visuals, yet there are more than enough other distractions so I'm mostly happy about that during meditation.
(I grew up with mediation, have tried many kinds many times and it does nothing for me so this kind of irks me. It's one of those real "if it doesn't work for you you're doing it wrong / not using enough of it" things.)
His experiences are very similar to yours. I want ask you about its advantages (if I may): Is it something about Aphantasia (absence of fantasy?) that could help with being better at HCI? Or, any other positives you see come out of it that helps you professionally?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/4gy4tu/please_s...
Especially this comment:
> I had aphantasia starting at 17 years old that resolved recently by taking vitamins and supplements. Specifically, big doses of B12, B6, Vitamin C, and Omega oils.
(I found it by searching for "B6". I took this vitamin for a while in its P5P form, and noticed that, even though I don't have aphantasia, it made my dreams much more lively. When reading your story, I immediately made the connection. DISCLAIMER: Do your own research and don't take medical advice from strangers on the internet; B6 in high doses can have lasting side effects such as neuropathy; B12, vitamin C are relatively safe)
Do you happen to use photos and written word more than others to try and make up for it? Is that even a remedy?
Aprantly the rest of the world goes around hallucinating 24/7. I find that frightening.
Edit: here is the introductory paragraph of Hallucination from Wikipedia [1]:
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and imagery, which does not mimic real perception and is under voluntary control.[1] Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted stimulus (i.e., a real perception) is given some additional (and typically absurd) significance.
Drawing from imagination is actually drawing from memory. In my case, even though I'm unable to visualize the object I'm about to draw, I can recall facts about its features, then rely on spatial and analytical thinking to "reason about" their forms, proportions, perspective, light, shade etc. From there, the visualization process happens and gets refined directly on the paper/canvas.
I have tried some exercises that started helping me with mental visualizations. I've seen gotten quite busy with other stuff, but I think that if I had pursued those exercises, it had the potential to help. One exercise is called "image streaming", and although I'm skeptical it helps with general intelligence as some people claim, I have heard some fairly convincing stories of people with aphantasia learning to visualize: http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/guaran4.htm
Edit: I'm now reading a lot of skeptical takes on the image streaming I describe above. So I'm no longer as optimistic that it would be helpful.
I can picture things to some extent, like I can imagine the Mona Lisa, but not really the full image, just more like a sense of the painting, with a myriad of elements of the painting floating like words in a word cloud. I can't see it in the setting of the Louvre really, indeed it's struck me all my mental imagery is basically black, like an edge detect effect - I can imagine a bit of white wall if I try, so perhaps I just need to practice.
I've been painting for some time, but always use imagery to paint from - so many times I've said something like "when you try to think of a rabbit you just can't remember what one looks like" and no one has ever said "can't you just picture it?"; but it strikes me that I can't.
I do have a relatively good ability to make up stories, and have always loved fiction books. My memories aren't really pictorial though; so I guess I can fantasise about being in a situation in the same way as I can recall being in one.
It can be, but it isn't really. Most folks can do a landscape or a general person from memories of what earth and people look like, in general. Few people can put their mother in a surrealist scene working from memory, though.
The imaginative part does depend on memory and experience and a good knowledge base. But once you have the idea, you might want to actually do research and work from reference photos.
But you might want to look up what a snake looks like if you want to make it look like a realistic snake. Same for other animals - there is a limit to the details humans tend to remember. You'll remember more if you specialise.
For example, these are mine. The first used numerous reference photos, the second many different koi photos, and the last, an onion.
[1] https://www.deviantart.com/disgruntled-peon/art/Fortunate-Si... [2] https://www.deviantart.com/disgruntled-peon/art/Things-by-th... [3] https://www.deviantart.com/disgruntled-peon/art/Sour-Onion-6...
However I know precisely where in relation to each other the window frames in my bedroom are, for example, and how they are shaped, and their colour, and how the panes are separated, and what colour the curtains are and how to reproduce the brushed appearance of the curtain rod, and so on.
I can't see it. But I know exactly where very small details are in relation to each other, so I can reconstruct it piece by piece mentally and put it to paper.
I've mentioned elsewhere that prior to realising most people are literal about seeing things in their mind, I saw myself as a very visual thinker because of that. My spatial recall is well above average.
Imagine a blind person knowing where everything around them in places they are familiar with, I guess, except I have the benefit of being able to learn the spatial relationships through sight, and can also recall e.g colours though I can't see them.
I now realise I have not actually been able to visualise in my mind's eye (I can see vague shapes/colour but can't bring it into focus) and have to constantly measure or 'guess' at drawings. I've been wondering why many artists seems to be able to draw 'on the fly' or copy things so quickly where it takes me many checks and measures (which is improving in speed over time with practice).
It has left me feeling like I have no creativity or inspiration, but not being able to visualise explains a lot and gives me an avenue of focus to work on.
Can anyone provide good resources for developing visualisation capability? It appears from comments here it might be a condition that is treatable?
It actually gives me more reward from drawing than most people, because what I access when drawing (seeing what I imagine with my eye) most people can do without the hard part of learning how to draw. For me drawing is the only way, my sketches are the only existence of some of these things I've thought of.
But no, I can't draw or paint or sculpt anything, but that never bothered me, and has rarely impeded my career in computing.
Maybe, or maybe not. It could be a post-fact explanation.
What I'm getting at is a huge numbers of us feel "isolation" and "distance" (perhaps close to a majority), with or without aphantasia, so it might not be it at all that's the cause...
> But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.
I'm not sure how I feel about this right now, but it's not going to be bothering me for a while...
While working on lucid dreaming, I noticed that I could see hypnagogic images as I was falling asleep, or after I woke up. Not having this ability normally, I focused on it quite a bit and have had some really vivid images, some in motion. Not amazing to most of humanity, admittedly, but it was like magic to me.
If anyone is wondering, I use the SSILD method of inducing lucid dreams. I haven't been into it as much lately, but for a short while I was having three a week or so.
Edit. For a condition which supposedly affects only a few percent, the reaction to this article here and on Twitter contains a suspiciously high rate of people being surprised to find out they've got this and shocked that everyone else hasn't.
The more I read about this the more I feel that the variety in reported inner experience is more to do with the variety in reporting than of the experience itself.
I find myself able to relate to descriptions from both sufferers and non sufferers alike, but then again could often take extracts from each and be hard pressed to say who was claiming to be which.
I can recall memories or visualize things that have never happened. I'm not sure if my recall is reproducing what I actual saw, or reimagining it from something more schematic. I suppose mostly the latter, maybe with a little of the former.
I can do the same thing with imaginary sound, far more easily. I'm not sure if people with aphantasia have difficulty here, too.
And with great difficulty the other senses.
Fairly often, these sensory reconstructions happen involuntarily. Which is basically what "daydreaming" is to me.
As a side note, it can be really odd to read something like: 'She saw two doors in the room. She took the one on the left wall.' And my flow is broken and I have to stop and reimagine the room, because I saw the two doors on the wall ahead - what is the author going on about? Maybe they should not be so exact about a tiny detail.
For example when doing some shadowboxing I actually put fantasized people in front of myself which fight me and react to my moves, and I can see them as I see a real person until I remain focused. I often change also the location and the background to suite better my fantasy.
It's like shutting partially your eye system and making your mind go in full control.
edit: I said this to explain how much I can push it. But to make a simpler example, I _Very_ often fantasized at night, before bad and with eyes closed, of having an adventure in a post apocalyptic world and I can see everything in first person in my mind like I am really there and everything is real
Then I read a Reddit thread like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b8eojm/when_some...
It's totally foreign to me to think about "picturing" something in that detail. I can describe the physical attributes of an object if I think about it, and most of the time I just equate that to "visualizing" or "picturing" it. The thing that stands out to me in that Reddit thread (and other descriptions of how "normal" people visualize things) is that there is extra context. That's not something I understand at all, and so I'm convinced there is actually a fundamental difference.
If I write fiction I start to create the scenes and people in my mind as if I'm staging a play or building a level in a 3d engine. The words I write down are then a description of what I'm seeing, as if I'm writing a review of the play I just staged.
A further interesting line of thought: Can you re-hear sounds from memory? Can you re-feel touch? Re-smell? Re-taste? Can you re-experience emotions? With a bit of focus I can do all of those things, though it helps if the original memory is strong. My "inner ear" is especially strong, maybe even stronger than my "inner eye."
For me, I can picture whatever you might think of, enough to be able to copy what I imagine on paper or sculpture. However, this does not overlay with what I am seeing with my eyes as other people have described happens to them. What I see with my eyes, and what I imagine in my mind are in two different places. When I dream it can be very very realistic, as high detail as real life, and I can think it is real life (if you cannot visualize in your mind, what are your dreams like?). But when I wake up and open my eyes, there is no longer confusion. This is real life.
I also very very frequently can remember someone's face, how they act, what they do, and not remember their name. I can remember a whole conversation with them in video and not remember their name. But it feels like this type of visualization is different than picturing a sphere or some imaginary thing. It is a memory, a memory that I can manipulate, but based on reality.
Something I have always wondered about others, when you speak, is it just your thoughts in your language that you voice? Like, is your thought in language? I must translate my thoughts into language, and it is sometimes very difficult even though I am good at expressing myself. I do not usually think in language, unless it is some basic thing I am repeating to myself. It feels like some other people actually think with words.
Visualizations are "ghostly", have few details, like 0.1 - 10% of what I usually see. Detail level depends on amount of attention allocated to internal imagery. Picture is always moving, changing, in flow. It takes considerable effort to pin a scene and stabilize it though it increases resolution. I've asked around and some people report having sequence of static, very high-resolution, almost real life quality pictures, either from real experience or synthesized. And images flip, replacing one another. Other people say that they have very fast low-res flowing "movies" like me, often consisting of several independent streams in different "parts" of awareness, typically with only one if focus. It's not that imaginary stream is overlayed on real sensory stream, it's more like they are different kinds of perception, like seeing and hearing is, though visual imagery is closer to seeing because objects it deals with have similar perceptive qualities, like having spatial component and colors.
In my case imagined sounds are more detailed. When I'm remembering or simulating a conversation, voices are rather close to that of real people. Music can be recalled quite well too, maybe up to 20% detail level of original. On several occasions a had some excerpts playing unvoluntary playing in my head with like 90% detail level of original. Quite often I got some music stuck in my head. When I'm underslept it's usually some bad quality pop music from 80s-90s that I haven't heard since my childhood.
Tactile, smell and taste sensations can be and are emulated too.
I wonder, do people with aphantasia have dreams? Dreams are fully emulated sensory input, though I feel like they come from a bit different place then imagined input does.
Edit: actually mind's eye is not restricted with field of vision of real sight, it can encompass say 1km sphere around me with very very low level of detail. I think that kind of capacity is used automatically in daily life when you walk somewhere and you have automatically constructed knowledge of what's behind your back.
I rarely forget a face, and routinely remember random people on the subway. I don't say anything but I'm almost always the person who remembers the other person first, and it almost offends me that someone doesn't recognize/remember seeing me when I remember them. I can usually tell who people are based only on gait and body proportions. I recognized a girl once just from her hair color, and it wasn't something noticeable, just a very muted blonde almost brown/gray hair, but I only knew one person with her height and hair type.
I have incredibly powerful imagery. I woke up once after realizing in my dream after breaking a window that the glass shattered with incredible physical accuracy, both material properties, and physics. It's in dreams that I notice certain things, like how did I know water/smoke/fire/cloth reacts like that? how did I know light bounces in that way? how did I know that subway tracks looked precisely like that? Like I never took the time to study any of it, but the real world accuracy and a high level of detail is there. I can visually take objects and rotate them in my head, I think someone mentioned this and I can confirm. And I always found it suspicious people couldn't rotate something they see in a 2D picture in their head (or at least they would say something that implies they have no idea what it looks like from another angle).
Having said that, I think there are parts of my brain that is so stunted I sometimes wonder how the hell I got to where I am. I feel like I have several streams of information coming into my head, and I have to process them asynchronously. I zone out all the time because I'm having a "Doug" moment (if anyone remembers the cartoon), where I'm vividly daydreaming. The images are so strong, it seems to black out what I'm really seeing (but not really, its more like getting extreme tunnel vision and being hyper focused on your imagination). Traumatic memories are terrible. I see and pretty much re-live bad experiences over and over again. I can sit still, not move physically and play movies in my head for hours. To be fair though, I'm probably closer to the other extreme, and to me the benefits outweigh the cons.
(Edit: word choice)
My other senses are not as affected, I have perfect tactile recall, I can recall and imagine plenty of smells and tastes as well. I have elaborate tactile fantasies when I want to distract myself. No visuals.
I don't think it's actually different from aphantasics but I've had vivid dream-visuals (including being able to literally read in a dream, seeing every character, hearing every word in the low subvocalized reading-voice, being caught up in the story) and visual hallucinations.
I think there is very strong truth to this. Words get in the way when trying to share internal experiences. Also, by reporting and discussing your experiences, you affect them. Memories of past experiences, and expectations for future experiences, are both affected.
For that reason, and without having digested the scientific literature, I would recommend against labeling oneself as having (or not having) aphantasia.
But then, I feel that way about pretty much all labels, especially ones related to cognition. They're fine for communication, but not for your internal perception of self.
I've got an incredible sense of direction too and I tell people it's because I've got a little google maps in my head.
Imaging something is clearly not the same thing as actually seeing something. And yet I can imagine shape, 3D positioning, color, texture, movement, etc.. all the while NOT seeing it (and NOT hallucinating it). So do I have the condition or not?
You don't have it.
I don't think visually most of the time, but I can picture things if I want to. I can even build whole "scenarios" in my mind and play them out, visually.
It's a bit like lucid dreaming, I think.
In my case of not having Aphantasia is to be able to mentally reproduce an image with eyes open. If this image requires too much effort or has my interest for some reason, I still can see, but I am distracted by what I am visualizing at that moment.
That distraction is like when playing a videogame or watching a movie: you never see (or remember) what is around the monitor or TV because you are focused in playing/watching.
I guess it feels like being able to project holograms internally.
But I can also "move the camera" off the dash and to 3rd person over-the-shoulder like in a racing game, and continue the drive.
That's what accounts for so many people wondering if they have aphantasia.
For example, can't you picture yourself on your commute home? Like if a camera was filming you going home today?
How do you forsee things?
I can plan my whole day perfectly without getting one image in my mind.
Thinking visually is simply too slow, so I only do it when I consciously try it.
So for me as example: I listen to metal and while I don't have super high quality sound in my mind, I can for the most part play a whole song in my head even the very intricate solos. If I knew the instruments and could play that we'll I could play it off the track in my head. However I can't imagine anything visual at all. No simple geometric Shape, no colors, not even a dot on a white backdrop.
I think most people are just shocked this is a thing and theyre too quick to say they have nothing when they probably have something. I'd give detailed tests like asking to imagine a tree and ask how many branches it has or what kind it is.
Any rate in sure in a couple years well have some nice professional tests to take for a more precise understanding.
For those in the thread that can work on imagery in a visual manner, does it feel like the images are taking the same path as ones that actually hit the retina? To be more precise, could your visualizations be roughly matched by an idealized Augmented Reality headset? If that sounds close to most people's experiences thats weird to me because my vague visualizations seem to never interfere with my actual visual plane, but rather a more abstract in-brain space.
Love discussions like these, subjective experience is crazy.
I think there are generally a variety of ways things can "appear". However it's never the same as true AR. For example, with true AR, you could be fooled into seeing something that's not there. But I can't fool myself (deliberately) with my own mental images.
Having said that, it subjectively feels like the stimulus originates in a different part of the brain at a low level, but eventually both "mental visual" and "true visual" stimulus are unified to some degree.
Like yes, I can visualize a ball in my hand, but it'll always be in a different layer from my actual visual input of my hand. Like two different layers in Photoshop.
Also, beyond the AR concept, one of my favored types of visualizations is what I call "playing myself a movie". It's pretty much what you would imagine, basically watching a movie with my mind's eye. I can watch the movie and look at "real things" at the same time. Works great for falling asleep as well.
I agree, it's a super fascinating discussion.
Whenever I do visualize images, they feel as if they are positioned behind just my forehead or at the top of my head. Sometimes I imagine this as a sort of "canvas" on which I can imagine or draw images. With your example of visualizing a ball, the ball and my hand can be on the same "layer" on this canvas, but do not affect my vision at all.
What I find interesting is that I can actually move this canvas around spatially or create new ones. On each canvas for example, I can imagine a different rotating object. As well, each canvas retains its image as a form of short-term memory. So I can switch focus between different imagined images or compositions.
I'm curious - with more practice - how mental imagery can aid in memory. Recently I learned a song in a language I do not understand, and the words of the song would appear on my mind's "canvas" almost like karaoke or like reading off imaginary flashcards...
It's always interesting to read about how other people's experiences are similar or different to my own. The minds eye is endlessly interesting.
This blows me away. It's absolutely stunning to me.
Really? That's so freakin' cool!
Ditto for other "visualized" things; I just have no idea whether the qualitative experience I have of "visualizing" things is anything like what other people do.
Whenever I read about this phenomenon, there doesn't seem to be a good quasi-objective metric of this subjective capability to visualize -- there's no test or questionnaire I can use to see how my abilities rate against others'.
I think there's room for some experimentation / science here and probably a viral online quiz that would get some lucky content creator a solid stream of interest for years.
There certainly is. The Vividness of Visual Imagery questionnaire, or VVIQ [1]. It's been referenced in most of the recent aphantasia research I've looked at.
For me it is not like AR.
It is kinda like PIP. Picture in Picture.
If my eyes are open while while visualizing the more deeper I go into the visualization the less my true visual field is apparent. If I get really deep into a visualization my true vision fades to almost nothing unless I am jerked back to visual reality by a loud sound or if the visualization exercise is over.
It seems more like working directly with the visual models that exist in my brain.
For example when you see a ball you see the object and it's light rays hit your eye then it goes to your brain. Your brain says, "that's a ball".
To know it's a ball the brain compares the object with it's model of ball. If it matches it must be a ball.
When visualizing it's like working with the basic model of what a ball is. I can slowly increase the detail of the visualization but there is an upper bound where other details start to disappear.
Honestly, after writing this I feel "simulation" is perhaps a better description than "visualization".
It's so intense that I have to exert conscious effort in order to not get locked in a reverie. If I'm too deep in thought, I literally can't see anything. Not to confuse this with some AR type overlay, just that my focus in purely on the mental imagery to the exclusion of the outside world. Come to think of it, I wonder if this is something my brain developed as a coping mechanism, as I routinely sleep with my eyes open.
I also have absurdly vivid dreams that sometimes span multiple waking sessions; I liken them to movies.
On the other hand, and I believe a direct consequence this: I am absolutely horrible with directions -- and let's not even get started on my attention span.
I can only imagine how people with aphantasia experience the world. I wonder if they are more "present" than those without it.
It's sounds...so freakin' interesting, and it's always shocking to me that I went nearly 30 years before I found out that most people have this...cool superpower I never knew about.
I can remember or imagine voices like they're really hitting my eardrums. The more familiar I am with the voice and especially with what it says (like phrases the person commonly says), the easier it is. I used to routinely say goodbye to my mother before leaving home every day, and on the days after she passed away I would remember her voice on leaving like she was really speaking to me. As time's passed though, my memory of her voice has faded somewhat, so I can't really do that now.
I have been able to imagine visualizations like I can really see them, but for that I need to be on the brink of sleeping. Right on the point that you can dream while still being aware of reality.
Anything more than that seems to be primarily the domain of my actual visual system. I can observe things like light, shading, fine details when I'm actually looking at something but those are almost never present in "minds eye" visualization.
Maybe its because I've trained my minds eye to be a more abstract interface over the years. And by getting better at holding a complex system in spatial memory, the ties to the actual visual system are weaker.
Instead, it feels more like a background process. The more I focus on a mental image the less I "see" the visual input to my retinas. I've attempted to figure out how many visual streams I can see at the same time and I struggle to imagine more than three. If I focus very intently on all of them it seems I don't see any of them in great detail.
Certainly if I block out my visual input or focus on some unchanging imagery it becomes far easier to make my mental imagery more intense and detailed, but they can also be disrupted quite easily again by some new visual stimuli or an errant thought.
I used to know a girl who I suspect might have some kind of "hyper-phantasia." She said that when she thought back on memories it was literally like hitting the rewind button on a VCR.
Personally, I can imagine my apartment in detail down to the relative placements of most objects, proportions, the colors, the way the wind enters if the window is opened. I can do similar for past apartments going back 8 years as well as my parent's home. Hell, I can imagine the Reno's steakhouse from my hometown that I haven't been to in over 13 years in much the same way.
I do not consider myself to have aphantasia, however none of the "visualizations" I mentioned are hallucinations as some comments in this thread imply. I do not perceive them with any of my senses, including visual, as if I was there now. Rather it is more of a complex conceptualization in my mind.
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and imagery, which does not mimic real perception and is under voluntary control.[1] Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted stimulus (i.e., a real perception) is given some additional (and typically absurd) significance. , from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination
Based on your description of your abilities, have you considered that what you're describing is spatial thinking, rather than visual imagery? It is common for people with aphantasia to retain strong spatial cognition.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29175093
https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...
It's why I tried the Augmented Reality methaphor in another comment. Something that your visual system is processing but isn't actually there.
Regardless I hope the distinction I was drawing comes across clearly.
Regarding spacial thinking, yes it seems fairly accurate however where I would expect it to break down would be recollection of colors, touch, sounds, tastes, or smells. But I don't feel I experience such a breakdown in ability to recall those either albeit in the same conceptualized not-connected-to-my-realtime-senses way.
Out of the examples given in this thread I would say faces are the most challenging object to recall. Though, depending on the distinction of the features I can also do that without much difficulty.
Could that not be explained by simply storing that information as "textual" data? As in: using spatial imagery to recall the layout of a room, and basic knowledge to recall the color of the walls.
> ...touch, sounds, tastes, or smells.
These other senses are considered separate from the topic of Aphantasia. It seems there are many people with good visual imagery, but none of the other senses... as well as people with zero visual imagery, but some or all of the other senses.
I have zero across the board, unfortunately.
Could you explain your taste or smell imagery? My recollection only goes as far as "I remember liking this dish more than most things".
Imagination lets me recreate the scene, object or face in my mind in order to probe and ask questions, but it no longer seems linked to my senses.
Compare this to the phenomenon of "face blindness." My friends who suffer from this genuinely cannot describe what makes Angela Merkel's face (for instance) different from others because they lack the facility to remember it. But I can, because I don't have face blindness: Merkel's face is wrinkled, craggy even, with crows feet that resemble smile lines.
What can I do that an aphantasia sufferer cannot?
You're exactly right: I know what a Sphere looks like but I am missing the bit that the rest of the world seems to have where they can conjure up an image of it. Even less abstract objects like a desk or Angela Merkel's face, I am quite unable to picture.
To answer your question, if I ask you to picture a barn in a field, you presumably have no difficulty in doing so. You've probably even made assumptions about things like the colour of the barn, the weather or surrounding terrain and have a sort of portrait with a barn at the centre, but I can't do that. I am having difficulty describing what I get but it's nothing close to anything like that. I know my barn is made of wood and I know it's in a field but that's about as far as I can get.
I'm happy that this is getting discussion because obviously it's quite strange to find out that a) you're not wired the same way as the majority of the world and b) that your self-diagnosis isn't a medically recognised condition. I'm excited to see what research comes out over the next few years.
Personally I wouldn't describe it as a medical condition, it has no adverse effects at all, and I wouldn't want to "cure" it. Whats wrong with having a spectrum from no imagery to vivid imagery and accepting that mentally healthy people can be anywhere on that spectrum? This tendency to classify any variation between people as normal or abnormal is completely unnecessary in this case.
PS not meant as a personal attack at all :)
So I can say that my two daughters have hair the same colour as mine (hopefully never to go bald like me!), and the colour of their eyes, but I simply cannot close my eyes and picture their faces no matter what I do. If you can picture people's faces, picture places you've been or even stare at some object in front of you right now then close your eyes and "see" a picture of it, you probably don't have aphantasia
I wonder: Given a graph paper and one point on that paper could you manually color in one at a time those surrounding boxes that a larger square (eg 5x5) or a equilateral triangle (aprox rasterized) or a rasterized line between two given points emerges? If yes, how would you do it? Would you need to run an algorithm of "which box to color next" in your head? Or could you just color in an entire region because you already know aproximately which boxes need to be colored? Do you know/guess which boxes you need to color before taking the pencil into your hand?
Because, given such a graph and a task to color some of the boxes to render a figure, if you know which boxes to color by just looking at the paper is the same as seeing the boxes colored in your mind, isn' it?
What about flow diagrams on a white board? And what about coding? My coding process involves a somewhat visual process of imagining how functions connect to eachother. Is it just a logical or linguistic (like uh, using word tokens) process for you?
I can dream a sphere. (Once had a semi lucid dream, but not really in control of that)
In an extremely relaxed state maybe I can visualise a sphere, like once a year, by accident, for a few seconds.
I feel like after a long time of practice I can sorta flicker a sphere, in order to describe it, but not really.
I cannot recall, visualise and describe a sphere, that's just not possible not a real thing to me. But I can logically tell you what a sphere is, without recalling it visually.
My wife can. She also has an idetic memory. She can picture anything she wants according to her.
Pretty sure I have this, but I've never really considered a struggle. Once read something about it being a potential outcome from a stressful childhood, which I had.
Similarly I have a shocking memory. Literally need to focus to remember more than one item from a store. Can't remember more than one name at a time, also requiring effort to remember just one.
Oh well. As an aside, I'm fairly successful considering background etc. :)
With a beach, I know that there's probably sunshine, there's some water, some sand, it's probably hot, maybe some wind, some waves, some seagulls. But I don't see any part of this, so if you ask me for specific details they just don't exist and I couldn't tell you whether, for example, the beach in my mind is short or long.
When it comes to faces, I can't picture them and find myself often forgetting/not recognising people with whom I'm only tangentially familiar. I couldn't describe a person's face to you at all, but if you asked 'do they have a big or small nose', I might be able to recall that (usually not though). I'm more likely to be able to recall distinct features - skin colour, hair colour, etc., than I am features where there's a sliding scale (nose size, etc.) This even applies to people close to me such as my own immediate family, partner, etc.
> I couldn't describe a person's face to you at all, but if you asked 'do they have a big or small nose'
The day I told my wife about this, she had me try to describe a woman who'd just sold us food a few minutes prior. I've seen this woman many times, but the only thing I could really conjure is that she was old. I don't have face blindness, no problem recognizing people, unless, like you mentioned, I very barely know them.
> This even applies to people close to me such as my own immediate family, partner, etc.
After that, my wife had me try to look at her face, then look to a piece of paper and immediately draw. Of course, artistic ability and aphantasia are totally different things, but it really cemented how little visual information gets retained. As soon as I looked away, all I knew was factual information like "curly hair", "mole next to nose".
The way you're describing "knowing what a sphere is" and being able to describe it, is how I explain to people what aphantasia is like.
Consider the possibility, even if unlikely, that you yourself have aphantasia. It is common for people with aphantasia to not realize they have it until a conversation like this -- they simply assume they are experiencing what everyone else is experiencing, and that the concept of "visualizing" something is more metaphorical than it really is.
Can you really see a sphere when you're not looking directly at one, in any sense of the word? Or do you just know what a sphere looks like?
I treat the world as a narrative, so a sphere is part of a very clear story. Indeed, A one of type object.
If it helps, there's an objective way to classify this under development in Australia, involving colour bias in people with stereoscopic vision: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124346-people-with-no-...
But if I try to see the stuff, it's as though there is a brief flash, and I see an outline for a second or so, and then it isn't there. But I know what's there.
I don't think I was ever strong on this front, but I think my ability has been declining gradually. I'm 33 now. I remember arriving in a new country at age 23, and I could recall everything that happened when I arrived: my drive in, arrival at my new house, standing in the rain.
I can still recall much of this, but I have a memory of seeing it and having great visual recall of this. But, how accurate is a memory of a memory? I didn't take any notes, so it's hard to say for sure what I could in fact recall.
One odd point: I used to get the most vivid images while lying in bed with my eyes closed, falling off to sleep. The most fantastic scenes would flow from one image to the next. I think it actually helped me sleep. These were also notable in that I couldn't visualize that way during the day.
One day I had to take antibiotics for an MRSA infection. I recall the images that night were dark and foreboding. I haven't had colourful images since then.
Sometimes at night I get glimpses of them. It's as though the images are happening in the background, and I can catch them but without colour. And I can't always see them, so I can't follow, and the images stop.
Haven't found anything in the literature about antibiotics causing this though, so I'm not too sure, it may have been coincidence and instead just gradual decline that crossed a threshold around then.
Has anyone had gradual decline of mental images, loss of pre-sleep visions, or had either of these precipitated by antibiotics?
I think these images were called Hypnagogia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
I can do this, (also for simple 3d shapes needed to solve school geometry problems) without closing eyes, because i seem to do that independently from visualisation.
But sometimes i see very vivid images just by closing eyes, after having some intense new visual experience
- as a child when i was playing checkers the whole day i would see the game board
- after the first time being in a forest i could see forest any time i would close my eyes for several days
-after seeing the "What Dreams May Come" movie i could see images in the painting style (and it was the only case when i could control the images).
- after playing a new computer game the whole day i can see images from that
But the intensity of the effect have declined over time, presumably because it is harder and harder to find new visual experiences.
> I recall the images that night were dark and foreboding
could this be related to fever? I remember as a child i was seeing really chaotic images when having 40 temperature.
I wonder if there is aphantasia for sound too. Several times i was able to listen music as if played by a real orchester, but simply noticing it, was making the music stop leaving only an outline.
I’m not sure though. I’m pretty convinced that blindness changed my brain in a very dramatic way. I learned to move around in the dark, orient myself with sound, and learn to understand spacial relationships in a totally new way.
Now, it’s almost as if my brain used vision, but doesn’t really need it anymore. And that includes seeing things in my mind’s eye, which I can hardly do at all anymore.
Also, I remember as a kid if I played video games I would see images of them when I closed my eyes. I don't think that happens now. Maybe those brain pathways got pruned....
Aphantasia is just the tip of the iceberg - there's a whole laundry list of 'abnormal is normal' mental stuff out there.
A partial list: they vary from the various kinds of color blindness to anosmia (unable to smell!) to blind people regularly having vivid visual hallucinations (Charles Bonnet syndrome) to hearing voices (something like 10-20% of people occasionally hear voices) to lack of inner monologue to musical anhedonia (being unable to enjoy or be moved by music) to ASMR to misophonia to the nasal dilation cycle to 'intrusive thoughts' like 'the call of the void' to hypnagogia (hallucinations while falling asleep) to being aware of one's facial expression when talking to synesthesia to faceblindness to crying (I was shocked to learn that many women report shedding physical tears from sorrow on a weekly or monthly basis) to repetitive PTSD-like school dreams to long-running elaborate daydreams ('maladaptive daydreaming')...
(There's also the funny little lifestyle ones. Like, do you take shoes off or not? Do you take 'navy showers' or let the water run the entire time? Cereal then milk or vice-versa? Do you eat the same thing for lunch every day?)
Interesting that you put specifically “being aware of ones facial expressions when talking” as one of these quirks. I definitely have that, but thought it was related to the autism. I wonder how many of these quirks might just be effects of being just on the cusp of AS.
One of the things that nags me about such an inventory is how “good” it is in the sense of promoting happiness. I’m perfectly content with my quirks, in fact talking it over with my girlfriend I’m starting to think that it might explain my excellent explicit memory(fwiw I feel I have a weak implicit memory) But reading through the thread, there are a number of people who are upset, feeling like they have lost out on something precious. I guess without guidance as to how these things can be leveraged as a strength, I’m not sure I see the utility in highlighting these cognitive differences. In the same vein as studying the differences in race or gender. Not that I don’t find them extremely interesting to think about.
Prosopagnosia and misophonia are interesting, prosopagnosia both in terms of recognition but also how it affects sexuality (think demisexuality), and misophonia both in terms of existence and what pitches people find intolerable.
Aphantasia is also interesting in that there's a visual form and an auditory form, and my preliminary survey results show a large correlation with autism for the visual but none for auditory. More generally, it's also interesting how it interacts with things like depression, anxiety, and mindfulness as well as things like DP/DR.
I became interested in sensory differences because I do not feel hunger or cold (more common than you'd think, interoception differences), and then discovered I have aphantasia back before it had a name, but also have CEV of at least level 4 and can conjure it up with effort just by closing my eyes which is apparently far from the norm.
I have a suspicion quite a lot of revealing stuff has been written throughout history on these things, just with the author assuming everyone's like them. To take CEV as an example, Jung's "active imagination" as described in the Red Book sounds a lot like CEV level 4, and also resembles how some people describe shamanic journeys. I can also see how maladaptive daydreaming can start off slowly, lead to a paracosm before ending up with Gondor.
Gwern, bit of a tangent but I think actually related: have you by chance looked into thought loops at all? Obviously there's the psychdelic variety, but I'm also thinking of those described by sufferers of anxiety, depression, and especially anorexia.
> repetitive PTSD-like school dreams
I'd really like to know how common this is. I'm now almost ten years removed from my school years, but the vast majority (90%+) of my dreams are based there.
If I'm not "seeing" something, I'm "hearing" it.
If I want to think about sound, I hear it.
If I want to think about an image, I see it.
But if I "just" think a thought, it doesn't have a form like a video, audio or text; it's just ... I don't know ... an amorphous idea?
It is an important concept in the philosophy of mind.
To my surprise, a lot of them said they don't really think in a language or voice.
I've got a King Arthur's damn round table up there having a roiling debate most of the time (not the norm), but I was surprised that so many people don't really have any sort of representation or "source" from which internal ideas originate.
I'm Norwegian, but have lived in the UK for 19 years.
I find myself switching languages mentally all the time. My "voice" is different, and when I think in English, I think with an accent even though I don't really "hear" my voice when I think (it is very strongly distinct from sound).
And some tangential thing, when I visualise things, I visualise them through my left eye (faces, especially. since you almost always see them, well, face-to-face), as if a projector projects them through it and I remember left parts of things better as if they're recorded using my left eye. I occasionally think about it, but haven't come up with an answer for myself yet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's pretty normal in my experience as someone who went to art school. My best guess is that your "visualization" is a high-level representation that actually isn't detailed enough for the purposes of putting down on paper.
Most artists rely on rules of thumb (head proportions, etc.), practice, and looking at references to be able to draw people, animals, and other "difficult" things.
Thank you for letting know. It explains a lot.
But what is the distinction between "visualisation" and "high-level representation"? It's still a relative thing, I presume, since there is no standards for it and it's certainly not in the same "level" across all artists.
And drawing / painting for the majority of people is 95% education and practice. Some people have a knack for it, but almost anyone can learn to draw high fidelity people / cars / faces / animals with proper tutelage.
Also if I read a menu I am attracted more by the sensation of the words themselves than a visualization of the food they actually represent. Mushrooms in a white cream sauce simply sounds delicious (as verbiage), though I'm not terribly fond of them.
Anyone similar?
"Psychologists now recognize three basic types of visual thinkers. To determine what kind of visual thinker you are try imagining a triangle. Do whatever it takes to image that shape in your mind, How did you do it?
Some people cannot "see" a triangle in their minds until they draw it on a piece of paper or trace its outline on a table with the and of their finger.
Some people need to close their eyes, apparently because seeing interferes with their visual imagination. When their eyes are closed, however, they can "project" the triangle on the inside of their eyelids. Did your eyeballs move as you drew the triangle?
Some rare individuals can bring up the image of the triangle with their eyes open, superimposing the triangle on whatever they are looking at. A subset of this latter group can make the triangle change size, color, and perspective; they can make it twirl, jump, and pass through other figures. Steinmetz and Tesla clearly fell into this last category."
Elmer Sperry was notoriously good at mental visualization, to the point that he could supposedly just draw the projected outline of his mental images onto paper.
A lot of figurative art in previous centuries was also based on drawing bodies from memory. I think you can infer that some painters could really conjure an image (the configuration of a body) in their mind before drawing it, just like Sperry. But the feedback loop approach is equally valid!
Isn't that what the "mind's eye" is?
Your experience sounds similar to mine, but I feel like there's two distinct levels to the mind's eye.
There's the level you describe, where it doesn't feel like you're seeing through your real eyes but I find it's also possible to have images that feel very much like they're coming in through your eyes – almost as if there's a tap on the optic nerve.
For me these images are for the most part only visible with my eyes closed and most visible when falling asleep. I also cannot precisely control them in the same way I can instantly imagine a shape, instead I have to influence them indirectly bit by bit with lots of effort (but I usually get there – I'm practising to see if it can become easier). These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake.
To go into more detail on the process: when I close my eyes I don't see black but a sort of vague mix of colored blobs, a little bit like this but darker [0]. As I start to think, I pick out patterns in the blobs that look like the thing I'm trying to imaging, until eventually they sort of become full images that evolve on their own. They become vivid enough that I feel like the muscles in my eyes are straining to try to focus on them. It's not that dissimilar to those deep-dream images (but much less creepy!).
Is this something that happens for you too?
[0] https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/colored-no...
I always thought everyone could do this. It makes me realize how far we are from grasping the true depth our brain abilities.
This is also why creating a true is very far. We must first understand, then replicate.
Am I supposed to literally see a triangle? I can't do that. As far as I can tell, I'm "imagining it." The triangle doesn't interfere with anything I see, it's not really anchored to anything visual, and, while I can alter it, the triangle is not specific. It's a fairly ephemeral imagination or idea that I can conjure up. Most importantly, I'm not "seeing it," I'm "picturing it" or "imagining it"
Here's the book that the quote is apparently from: https://books.google.com/books?id=dZyPAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA52&ots=...
I can draw a world map from memory with well above average accuracy, but I can't picture it even if I mentally trace the outline I would put on paper.
Beyond the people with extraordinary natural ability, perhaps the rest of us just need to be taught what others can easily intuit?
I work with adults doing art work quite a lot. They are often upset that they can't just do it, they've not tried before, or last tried decades ago, but some how expect to just rock up and be great at creating something "artistic" without doing any practice or learning towards it.
I'm one of the "omg I might be aphantasic" set here today, but I've never really tried picturing things in that way I don't think, so perhaps I can but just haven't learnt to.
This hasn't been any hindrance to my career in software, as once I grok something sufficiently it turns into an abstract knowledge tree that I work through on a subconscious more than conscious level.
I do lose track of things around the house constantly, but I'm not sure if this is a side effect of poor "where'd you leave it last" visualization or just everyday absent-mindedness.
Most people imagine voices in their head. When reading, writing, or imagining a conversation, especially an argument, or preparing for a meeting.
When I'm reading, or writing, including coding, I hear the words in my head.
The speech doesn't sound like real sound, just like visualising doesn't look like real images. (Dreams are different - they can sound real, and I've heard some amazing music in my dreams.)
I have friend who doesn't hear anything in her "mind's ear", and had no idea until recently that other people do.
After someone admitted to hearing imaginary voices (me), after asking other people she was astonished to find this is normal and she's unusual. Nearly everyone has an internal voice.
This freaked her out as she wondered if other people experienced auditory "voices in your head telling you what to do" style hallucinations, and wondered if they sound like real voices (they don't, but there is some resemblance).
She simply had no conscious experience of a mind's ear with speech.
I can't imagine what it's like without one. Most of my thinking has imaginary speech going on, including when I'm coding or reading.
I also have a friend who _stopped_ having the mind's ear speech after a stroke. She said she'd been trying for years to quieten the internal dialogue through meditation, and then after the stroke she finally experienced it.
I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to actually 'listen' to a voice when reading I imagine the reading would get terribly slow. Since I was a child I've always been able to read much much faster than any kind of speech or audio narrative. In elementary school I used to drop by the library every day, borrow up to four books, read them, get new books the next day. An inner voice would be like slow motion, it would take forever to read a book.
(And I was surprised when book commentors complained about e.g. names in a story that are difficult to pronounce. Until I understood that their inner voice is actually trying to pronounce it - which breaks up their reading.)
Like what someone wrote about visualising barns, it's not like a real voice.
Even though it's faster than real speech, it doesn't sound rapid in the same way as Youtube at 2x. And if I skip my eyes around a large block of text, it seamlessly picks up the words in each location instantly.
So I don't think the reading happens by internal listening. I think the reading is visual, and the internal speech is more like an output of the reading process, giving an auditory feel (and a bit of an accent) to the words.
Discovering 3D rendering was a huge thing for me- suddenly, rather than having to work incredibly hard to visualize things in my head (or do mental rotations on them), I could build a model world and move things around until I saw what I needed (this was super helpful for molecular structures, but also for neural network architectures and complex workflows).
I don't really think it has caused me many problems, except that I tend to get lost very easily. Luckily, we have near ubiquitous GPS now and Google Maps.
On the other hand, I have good mental auditory capabilities. I can, say, play "air on the g string" in my head right now with near perfect fidelity, or just imagine new music in real time as if I were simply hearing it. Some people apparently can't do that, but can do the visual equivalent.
So, eh, you've got what you've got.
For me, I wish there were a way to easily get the music I imagine outside of my head. The best I've been able to do is whistle it, sing it, perhaps each "track" and record it; I've played around with 4-track recording too. Tried trackers, but always get lost in the nuances, or trying to create a particular sound or whatnot...
But it's the same way with my visual side; I can think of things, but anything beyond technical drawing I am pretty weak at doing (and the only reason I have some success with technical drawing is that I took a few years in grade school doing it as an elective).
But it was a strange topic, so I never really discussed this topic with anyone. Based on what I am reading, I don't think I have aphantasia, or maybe it is a spectrum and I have it to some degree. But it is refreshing and also kind of sad at the same time to hear that others experience visualization drastically differently.
I'm still very much a dreamer and a thinker and haven't had any issues with my ability to visualize things. But hearing about how some of you are able to bring up vivid images sounds pretty magical. I do wonder if some of this is about how we as individuals explain things. Maybe what I am experiencing is actually normal but others describe it in a different frame of mind than my own.
Regardless, it is an interesting subject.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_...
Then there were the careers I was drawn to: creative things like graphic design, drafting, etc that I utterly failed at. I had ideas of what I wanted to do, but the step between transforming the thoughts onto paper was always a fight. I studied photography in school, and could never convert it into a profession because I found being creative enough to get clients wasn't coming to me - I would be burnt out on small projects for no reason I could fathom.
I ALWAYS assumed people who visualize chakras or meditate with a object focus were just faking it.
I remember reading about this a year or so ago, and telling some friends. One of them immediately recognized it as why I utterly failed at some MMO raid mechanics.
So there is probably an unending list of ways this has impacted my choices, and I can only hope young kinds get a chance to learn they have this and get some guidance on what effects this will have on certain tasks based on the level of visualization they have.
It has a double edged effect though: I also can't really visualise her face, and that really depresses me at times because it feels like I'm forgetting her memory (I have to remind myself that I'm not really).
* Being more in the moment. An example of this is being better at mindfulness, as well as simply not living in the past or worrying about the future as much.
* Less prone to trauma. You've already mentioned this, but not remembering scenes with full sensory information appears to provide a level of protection in some people when it comes to traumatic memories that are otherwise relived and unable to be processed.
* Being better at abstract thought. Lots of people's memory is largely a kind of first person chronological narrative, made up of scenes on a timeline. Some people with aphantasia report they remember in a far more abstract structural manner, not merely confined to the visual. This is obviously also somewhat of a double-edged sword when it comes to remembering say past events.
* Thinking faster on your feet. Without the added visual element, it seems possible to be be more linguistically dexterous and witty because there's less delay between thought and words.
I hasted to add this is all a generalisation, and more about a propensity to be better than you'd personally otherwise be at these things as opposed to a superpower. I don't think it's coincidental that in Francis Galton's original paper on this, he found people with aphantasia are disproportionately represented in what we'd now call STEM.
I have an aphantasia and I'm a programmer, and I've personally found I'm much more able to reason about complex systems than average, and the way I think about them seems markedly different.
It would be interesting to study vividness of visual imagery and PTSD in first responders.
If I can ask people with aphantasia...
How do you remember things? When I remember the past I see the ephemeral image of what I was seeing then. And there is a thin line between memory and fantasy - I can play with my memories and let them play out some other way than they happened.
How do you read the books without imagining what is happening? How else do you convert letters into meaning?
What happens in your head when someone says "a car"? I see a vague image of a car - right now it's a red sports car but I have no idea why and I am not sure about the brand and it's kind of general car without specific features but if you ask me, I can immediately imagine the details of wheels or whatever - and some other day it might be a black BMW.
How do you imagine your future? I can see myself sitting in a place (inspired by a photo I saw and liked) with big wooden bookcase in a bright room lit by setting sun - and that image makes me feel something and motivates me to work towards it.
And fear is also visual - like when I see myself getting hit by a car when I am on a bike, with the blood and dirt in wounds... I could continue like this for long time - it feels like seeing things inside my head is so "normal" that I cannot imagine functioning without it. It is fascinating though.
I don't. As I mentioned in a previous post, without photos to look at, my past is a complete, impenetrable, black hole. I've been aware of this for a very long time, but never thought it strange (I don't know any different). The tape in my head is non-visual and seems to only stretch a few weeks back. Photos are the only way for me to relive these moments.
>How do you read the books without imagining what is happening? How else do you convert letters into meaning?
I was a voracious reader as a child, reading dozens of novels per year. I can't see the story, but I still like hearing it. By the sounds of things I am missing a very large part of what makes reading enjoyable (this makes me sad).
>What happens in your head when someone says "a car"?
I unlock the "car" concept in my mind. This does not include an image. I guess it's the same for you if you think of something with no embodiment such as a taste.
> How do you imagine your future?
I consider things that I think will make me happy and work toward them. No images are part of this.
>And fear is also visual
For me it is visceral. I don't see anything, but am filled with an unpleasant sensation or dread if the fear is strong enough.
I am not sure if my "analytical visualization" is weird, and other people can visualize things more vividly by simply thinking about that, or the dream like visualization i sometimes see is weird, and it changes the bar i put on calling something visualization.
Can you please, for crying out loud, investigate this anecdotal report of Aphantasia attenuation following vision therapy for Amblyopia, Strabismus & Stereo-Blindness in a 70 year old:
http://www.strabismusworld.com/practical/interview-how-bill-...
To quote the relevant interview section:
"MICHAEL: On April 9th, 2015, you reported another new and delightful phenomenon had occurred in your vision. This might give us a clue as to what happened in your brain.
BILL: Because of the congenital amblyopia and suppression of the bad eye, my brain developed abnormally. I was never able to visualize arithmetic problems or to spell words in my head but if I wrote them down on paper, I was an ace at it. Fortunately, my school didn’t conduct spelling bees or I would have been awarded the dunce cap.
Recently, the problems and words started appearing in my head just as though they are written on paper. I can spell a word simply by reading off the letters that I see in my mind’s eye. I think that when my lazy eye turned on fifteen months ago, the now unsuppressed new image in the visual cortex stimulated my brain’s neural plasticity to begin creating new neural passageways and my new ability to visualize is a product of this. Is this compatible with current theory?"
Anecdotal, sure, but come the hell on, Science should investigate this, we don't have much other clues as to the causes & treatment.
Since then if I do have them it's as though they're faded and behind a screen, I can only glimpse them and it's hard to keep them going as I can barely see them.
In regular life I recall once having had more vivid visualizations when remembering, but it's hard to know. How reliable is a memory of a memory? If I had these, I had lost these long before hypnagogia went away.
I have excellent spatial recall though, and can "visualize" a day in terms of the spatial placement of things and events. I just can't see it.
I can also visualize something rotating or in motion (or my minds eye in motion) for a few seconds. I often feel a little dizzy when I do this.
Can most people create a mental image and hold it for a long time?
My mind's eye isn't like a framebuffer that I render to. Trying to visualize a direct analog of a still image is difficult, feels unnatural, and requires concentration.
Moving scenes are easier, even if the objects are unchanged. It's easier still when the nature of the objects change too. I think it must exercise the brain's simulation and prediction hardware - it's easier to render and it has a smaller memory footprint. I can "look" at a sphere, but after only a short while it starts to change, move, or rotate as though my camera is changing position. It might spontaneously change color from "red" to "blue", or start to squish into a spheroid. Or change into a scoop of mint chocolate-chip ice cream. Or other elements might come into view.
The changes aren't random - it feels like the scene takes input from a stream of thought just on the edge of consciousness. Maintaining the integrity of the scenegraph - the state and location of the objects requires constant corrective input to return it to its desired configuration. This is a separate and distinct act from the concentration required to "view" the scene in greater detail.
The bigger the scenegraph, the harder it is to stop the motion. I can visualize what starts to feel dreamlike in its detail and complexity, but it becomes impossible to freeze the scene.
There's some work being done in this area under the name Image-Streaming: http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm
My experience is that I only see black, but I can still think/reason about things.
In the interest of cataloging other cognitive functions:
1) Sense of direction - Terrible. I get lost very easily - I do better if I am really focusing hard on the path I take, but that is never the case and I frequently find myself lost without a maps app, even after only a couple turns.
2) General Memory - Very poor. Was below average at spelling. Terrible at trivia.
3) Forward Digit span - Well above average. 9 digits.
4) Ability to rotate 3d objects - Above average. Took a spacial rotation test in university and scored in the top few percent out of several hundred participants.
5) Ability to slice 3d objects on a plane - Well above average. Aced a test in university(300 participants, only 1 other individual aced it).
I'd literally always assumed this was just how peoples brains worked, I'd be interested in hearing if this is or isn't similar to other people.
Their failure to draw an accurate bike is in fact proof they don't have a photographic memory, rather than they can't visualise one. That is to say, they're entirely capable of visualising a bike that is incorrect from an engineering design perspective.
It's very hard for me to remember colors, if someone cut their hair I'll notice it easily, but if they change color (e.g blonde to brown), I'll have an unsettling feeling but it's very hard for me to pinpoint what has changed.
When I'm asked to describe a person I'm extremely unlikely to give hair or skin color, and I can't even tell the color of the eyes of anyone of my family right now, I just don't know.
When I remember colors it's more like I remember a textual description. My eyes are green, I know because I remember it being written on my ID, not because I've seen them in the mirror this morning.
I would assume that most people have some form of non-visual, database-like memory for each person.
(I sometimes lose the ability to recognize people when they change their haircut, when they wear a different type of clothes, or when they meet me in an unfamiliar setting.)
I used to get a lot of push-back about ideas at work in ways that confused me. I have started to develop a habit of stating the obvious, what I think doesn't need to be said and I usually would leave unsaid. It has been surprising to me how often the things I was skipping over are viewed as novel ideas.
I've always thought that "visualizing" something is a metaphor for "think about it" or "list the properties you know".
This explains so much, at least for me.
How I always skip the long visual descriptions in books since they add nothing to the story; there is no visual component to reading a book. Why meditation is nearly impossible unless I manage to think about nothing, which is extremely hard. How I can recognize faces but not describe them, even those close to me, other then a short list of features that stand out.
Or how I can recognize a smell, but I can't tell you what the smell of a hamburger is unless I actually have one in front of me. Why people describe dreams or memories like watching a movie, while it's more a combination of emotions, situation descriptions and something that feels like the echolocation of a bat. What some people mean when they can hear a person speak or have a discussion in their head.
It explains why it's so easy to recall emotions and factual information, but nearly impossible to recall anything else. Why my "now" is so strongly affected - emotions experienced in the current moment tend to influence the vague feelings of the past, as if it's always been that way. Why it's always been so difficult to work towards certain goals, unless they're divided up into sub goals that are so close as to be easily attainable. Anything further in the future is nearly incomprehensible. Why it's so easy for me to navigate through bad experiences, but not for others, because beyond needing to process the emotions, the rest will fade away like all other experiences.
Some of those might be because of something unrelated. But somehow, reading this article, has answered a ton of questions I didn't even know I had.
My mind is truly blown.
Though one aspect I don't have: If I think about a song I know well, I can play it in my mind. The experience is almost, but not completely, like hearing the song in reality. So at least there's that. And that also explains why music is so much more "real" then anything else to me.
Has somebody with aphantasia tried any mnemonic techniques to remember things? Do you have problems recalling events long after they occur (like events from your childhood)? Do you ever daydream?
I have very vague memories from childhood (and in general). It's all quite abstract, with the spatial sense substituting for real imagery, and perceiving 'silent' voices when recalling conversations. There's no smell, taste or physical sensation. If I remember an embarrassing situation, there is the an emotional component (cringe), but even the emotional component is usually quite weak
Daydreaming: Not in the way that I think people mean when they talk about daydreaming. I'll close my eyes and think sometimes. I usually get bored with that pretty quickly though, since it's just inner monologue/dialogue without any real sonic component
I can't visualise while awake, but I have visual dreams.
In other words, while I can't imagine my family members' faces, I also don't think many people can.
If not proven otherwise, I now assume that most people forget the visual memory of faces after a few seconds while preserving the ability to recognize people.
Obviously this excludes people with photographic memory.
Speaking out loud what you want to see seemed to be important from what I remember.
I wonder what this test encompassed, and if its available online-- anyone know?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Qu...
I tried memory palaces, place this there, place that here - but really it just failed for me, I couldn't remember any details about the place. I've remembered a full pack of cards just by repetition before (a while back!) but memory palaces just didn't work for me at all.
Maybe that's down to aphantasia??
I have aphantasia too and I really like Photoshop or other graphics software because it can be my temporary mind's eye
Do any other people here with aphantasia do this too?
If I concentrate hard I can very clearly hear music as if I'm listening to it, though I often need to subvocalize to keep it on track
"This is why my favorite thing to do is drive and listen to music. I have thousands of songs I have coded to mental movies, all of which are (to me) incredibly exciting. It's legitimately more pleasurable than sex. I don't have much drive towards TV and books because I have this. I've never actually asked if other people can do this. AFAIK, it's just a me thing."
(Although maybe he's just really bad at sex.)
And from there it's possible, with effort, to do it while awake and with eyes open. If you've ever read Roald Dahl's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", I've found the experience remarkably reminiscent.
I'm not sure if it's the same mechanism as aphants have, as it still feels far more laboured than what they describe and very much still in the realm of closed-eye visuals, but I've found it's better than nothing.
I am a pro artist and my visualization is mediocre at best most of the time. I'm not aphantasiastic but I am sure not one of those artists who can imagine an entire drawing perfectly and "trace" it onto the page. Every now and then the right neurons connect and I can visualize stuff, sometimes sober, sometimes not. Smoking a sativa-dominant strain of marijuana sometimes gives me a huge boost to my internal visualization but I almost never do this because it also tends to make me super paranoid. There's a graph to be made similar to the XKCD Ballmer Peak one. [1]
And then there is that one artist at Termite Terrace[2] who got in a car accident, hit his head, and suddenly had that imagine-and-trace skill. Brains are weird.
1: https://www.xkcd.com/323/ 2: the unofficial name of the 1940s Warner Brothers animated shorts studio
I do still see dreams, but extremely rarely. They're very different from any sort of pseudo-visualization I might be experiencing consciously, much closer to the actual visual sensation I get with eyes open. It's also much harder to remember anything about them.
Just recently I had my first experience of a lucid dream, which was pretty exciting. Unfortunately, the only thing I remember about it is the realization of what it was and then flying around (somewhere, no idea where) for a while until I woke up.
I also remember that it was a visual sensation, though I don't remember the visuals themselves.
It kind of goes to show you how moritifyingly behind we are in understanding and articulating our cognition. Autism was right up there until a few years ago. I believe there's a lot we still have to open up to ourselves. I'm not religious, but maybe exploration of the self and mind is more warranted than our society currently expresses. Of course, it's easy to slip into quackery, but I almost wonder if it'd be worth a few more nut jobs if we collectively self analyzed more deeply. Maybe there's a lot out there to our happiness and evolution were missing out on if it's taken this long to realize there's a sizeable number of people who can't sense internally.
Funny side note - despite having Aphantasia I have two degrees in physics. I could never follow in class (literally couldn't imagine what the prof was trying to hand model) and animated gifs made everything instantly understandable. The agony I felt in those programs seemed a little more justified after I was told about Aphantasia. A little.
If I'm thinking of a plane flying it will spin out of control, if I'm thinking of sheep jumping over a fence they will stop moving or the fence will fall over.
So imagining not only one sheep but a number of sheep on a field jumping over a fence is something I can only just barely approximate with such considerable mental effort that it even makes me feel slightly anxious. This seems entirely unlike what the exercise apparently is meant to accomplish.
I would describe myself as having essentially no mind's eye. I don't "visualize" anything, ever. If I imagine a tree (or someone asks me to visualize one) I mostly have descriptive words, but no "images".
But I can dream, and that definitely is a distinctively visual experience. Does that mean, when someone asks you to "visualize" something, you have an visual experience akin to dreaming?
I think I get what you're saying, but I'm bewildered why recommending more philosophy within society warrants insulting people who are religious, grouping religion with quackery, and grouping philosophy with quackery. I'm not religious either but this was a weird direction to go with your point.