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Comment by tempestn | Hacker News Reader

Often when I hear people describing their experience with visualization, I wonder if I have a mild form of this. I am able to visualize things, think of visual scenes, manipulate objects in my mind, etc. But it's never at a level of fidelity I would consider 'looking at an image in my mind'. It's more of a nebulous, hazy thing, impermanent and lacking in detail. Faces in particular are very difficult to visualize; I don't have any real difficulty remembering what people look like or recognizing them, but summoning a complete mental picture of a particular face is usually elusive.

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Yeah, threads like this make me wonder similar things. Lots of people here are using terms like overlay and superimpose that seem foreign to me.

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.

the way you describe your experience matches mine. i often suspect that people who seem to describe the “augmented reality” version are just using the wrong words to describe what you and i are experiencing... seems impossible to imagine visualizations actually overlaying my visual field like AR!! are they for real?

Chiming in as someone with fairly strong visual imagery (I think...)

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.

That’s until you hit trance states of consciousness. Then perception of “reality” changes quite a bit.

My strongest experience of something like this was always when half-asleep on public transit, commuting home in the evening. Those rare times, I was indeed "tricked" by what amounted to a lucid dream.

I knew I was on a bus, because the sounds and feelings maintained continuity with reality. But the details I saw were completely made up. My eyes were closed, I think, but it didn't feel like that was connected to my ability to see. Because of the swaying motion of the bus, I knew where we were, and the scene I was "watching" was based on that. I was able to move, and think normally about my day, and did not notice that I had fallen asleep.

Of course, I eventually woke up. Reality was significantly less pleasant than my dream. The dream bus had been much less crowded, and clean, and generally more atmospheric and warm-toned, even the sunlight.

Does that sound similar to what you meant by trance consciousness?

I've never had strong visual imagery, but recently I've been practicing visualizing mental images as well as attempting (and failing) to overlay those images over my vision.

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.

I have a very similar experience as you.

I like your description using multiple canvases.

Similarly, I described them as PIPs (Picture In Picture) but off screen canvases may be a better analogy.

> 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.

This blows me away. It's absolutely stunning to me.

Really? That's so freakin' cool!

Yeah, differences are astounding. I, for example, can imagine a ball in my hand, but there's just, er, an idea of a ball in my hand, no colors, no textures, no outline, just a feeling where it is and vague imaginary weight.

I have to distract from looking at my hand, if I try to imagine the ball in more details.

> does it feel like the images are taking the same path as ones that actually hit the retina?

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.

I’m the same with music. I can “hear” music played back in my head with every detail as though I’m listening to a recording. I can get the same rush as I do when listening to the actual recording, and I assume this massive reward I get from music has something to do with why I can remember it in such detail. No surprise that I’m also a musician.

Yeah it's weird; I have a fairly vivid recollection of a picture of page 606 of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", in a blurry photograph taken against a carpet (this is where Snape kills Dumbledore); I can generally remember where on a page I read a passage in a book; but there's no way I "see" the page.

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.

> 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'.

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.

[1] https://wh.snapsurveys.com/s.asp?k=148940557153

This is interesting, thanks!

It looks like a good try, but I wouldn't call that "quasi-objective". The answers are highly subjective in my view. I just don't know how vivid the so-called mind images are supposed to be, so I don't know what the "scale" of the answers is.

This describes my experience too. I remember books in general, as well as source code, by visual appearance of the pages of text and any illustrations, but without being able to 'see' them.

Obviously subjective but I feel I have very strong mind's eye visualization.

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".

Every time aphantasia comes up, I'm totally blown away by what people describe as their minds eye being.

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.

This is shockingly similar to my own mind's eye. In fact, I rely on it quite heavily in my day to day life. I need to visualize things in my mind in order to understand them -- whether if be a code structure, a system design, or a friend discussing their day.

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.

What I find doubly crazy is that this is an aspect of subjective experience that's relatively easy to describe, compared to others, and we're still only now realizing how much variation there is. I strongly suspect that the entire structure of thought varies greatly from person to person, but we're largely unaware of the differences because we've all implemented the same interface, so to speak.

I find that visualisation is unconscious. I can decide to focus on something and I have the feeling of a picture, rather than the picture itself. I can answer questions and gain an impression of where features of a picture are, but an image that I see somehow, not really. And if I shut my eyes, things are just black.

Agree. I can sort of apply algorithmic visual processes on images in my memory. Edge detection, object identification, primary color identification, etc.

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.

I can certainly see imagery, but never to the level it becomes hallucinatory.

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've got a similar issue visualising faces. Recognition is ok most of the time but it often feels like I'm using other cues more to differentiate between people. I can visualise things but like you it's hazy and never fully formed. I've often wondered if this might be affecting my dev work - people describe so much of what we do in terms of how we visualise things.

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