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Comment by reedwolf | Hacker News Reader

I'm still skeptical that this is an actual thing. I think people might just be overestimating how clearly other humans can visualize something in their minds.

Do people with "aphantasia" see visual imagery in dreams?

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I have this condition and used to think `mind's eye` was just an expression!

In this tweet, I'm a hard 5, while everyone I have spoken to is a 1 or a 2 - https://twitter.com/premium__heart/status/122561067717752013...

I do see visual imagery when I'm dreaming, but cannot voluntarily bring the imagery back when I'm awake.

I think that this other image with simple geometric shape (a star?) that was circulating on Twitter was better for ranking the mind's eye; I think on your image, some people responding 1-2 may really be 2-3.

Myself, I'm 5 too. And it really pisses me off. I wish the mind's eye was trainable. Is it?

(And to answer GP's question, during the - infrequent - dreams I have, I'm usually a perfect 1.)

Nobody has proven that it's not trainable, so I'd assume that it is. But what's a good training method? Maybe a visual hobby, like video gaming?

I'm someone who is exceptionally good at visual things. For the apple, I can do way better than the example picture (1) on the Twitter image. I can not only do 2D, but 3D. I can rotate the apple in my mind and slice it and then rotate the slices etc. Found out about this by accident, while watching YouTube videos with visual puzzles, that were completely obvious for me with a single glance.

And I spend most of my free time on visual hobbies, like playing video games or watching movies. But maybe I'm just attracted to those hobbies, because I'm a visual type.

> Nobody has proven that it's not trainable, so I'd assume that it is.

I've never heard of a successful training regime, or even of anyone who successfully trained it, so that's an evidence against it being trainable.

> And I spend most of my free time on visual hobbies, like playing video games or watching movies. But maybe I'm just attracted to those hobbies, because I'm a visual type.

I'd guess the latter, because I also spend a lot of time on visual hobbies, like playing video games or 3D modelling, and it didn't help me in any way. I still don't have a mind's eye when I'm awake.

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. A good training exercise I can think of is to build complex Lego models according to the instructions. It's how I spend lots of my time in my early childhood, before I was allowed to play video games and watch TV. By touching the pieces and rotating them yourself you get good image training of how shapes look when you rotate them. Building things in a 3D space based on drawn instructions from only a single point of view should also help to build mental images.

If this a clinically accurate way to diagnose aphantasia, then I must have it, as I dont "see" anything. To me this smacks of a facebook share post, though....

If people are diagnosing themselves with this (or the star one I have seen elsewhere), then I think there is clearly confusion between hallucination and visualization.

Maybe a more straightforward test: can you watch a movie you've seen again, but in your mind? I can. (But I have trouble to keep the timing straight and will fast forward unintentionally to the parts that were interesting. I'm also constrained by my memory if it's about movies I haven't seen in ages.)

The few dreams i can remember are all about feelings. Like i am moving in an abstract world. I know what is there, i know what is happening, but i am incapable of describing it in term of senses. It just ...is ? Like i can only relate to it through how it makes me feel and how my model of their relationship with the world is. I cannot describe any physical or visual aspect.

And i am probably on the extreme of aphantasia

I can't see anything, except the static from my eyes. I can remember how it feels to touch things, their attributes, their smell and so on but that's it.

Sometimes, if I concentrate really hard, I may see a really short flash of a small part from a visual memory. But I can't say that I have any control over that, so it's not really helpful when trying to remember things.

Dreams are visual though.

I have no visual imagery in dreams either. I still have spatial awareness and can move about unimpeded, but there is no visual element to it. Other dream senses are uninhibited.

While conscious I can play back long complex pieces of music in my head, and can imagine fairly vivid tastes and touches. But I can't picture my wife's face.

I can't see an image but I can describe an image as though I've seen it which leads me to believe it's a deficiency in communication between the hemispheres of my brain.

I can still dream. As a teenager I learnt to lucid dream so I could use my sleep to visualize things. Interesting stuff.

Yes. Only voluntary visualizations are impaired. (N=2)

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