My Brain Doesn’t Picture Things | Hacker News Reader

My Brain Doesn’t Picture Things

nautil.us

37 pointsdnetesn60 comments

I can't visualize things when I'm thinking consciously about them. But I do lucid dream, and when I lucid dream, I can visualise things perfectly. When I'm designing complex robotic mechanisms, lying in bed half awake in the morning is by far the most productive I'll be. I have no problem designing 3D mechanisms in CAD, or painting, and I tend to think of myself as a very visual person, but if I close my eyes and try to visualise something when fully awake, it somehow escapes me. But even when awake, I can sort of see things in my subconscious - it's almost like they're in my peripheral vision. As soon as I concentrate on them, they disappear. The brain is a weird thing.

This reminded me of a strategy that Thomas Edison and Salvador Dalí utilized to facilitate creativity. They would sit in a chair while holding a metal object and allow themselves to fall asleep. Imagination and creativity flourished during the cross over from wakefulness into sleep; then, when they'd fallen asleep, the metal object would fall from their hands onto the floor waking them up and recording any useful creativity.

> But even when awake, I can sort of see things in my subconscious - it's almost like they're in my peripheral vision. As soon as I concentrate on them, they disappear. The brain is a weird thing.

I describe this as having the memory of imagining something. But your descriptions rings just as true.

When I try to concentrate and catch this memory/peripheral vision, it starts hurting my brain.

Sometimes this can also be a good thing. I think for me it's the opposite, when I read the news and they are telling about rape, torture, killing or all this horrific stuff, it's really hard not to have bad images in my head. When I see some of the bad things online on newssites or twitter/reddit it's also really hard to get those images out of my head again. That's one of the reasons I want to stop reading the news. I probably going to switch to reading a newspaper that's been published once a week, should keep me up to date and doesn't give me anxiety for the rest of the day.

the apollo app for reddit was great for this; it allowed me to put all those words into a filter list, then the app did the hard lifting of filtering out blocks of that kind of content from my feed, so i could keep browsing reddit to stay informed about interesting things in my field without stumbling across things that would derail me

I have the opposite problem where I feel overwhelmed with imagery and colors, sounds and vibrations or hums or harmonies, and psychedelic-feeling visuals at pretty much all times. Just thinking about trying to remember something usually involves a visual or emotional slideshow of sorts transitioning among various somewhat related images, concepts, colors, feelings, smells, sounds, etc until I get to what I was trying to remember.

My dreams are extremely vivid and sometimes bleed into wakefulness for several minutes; daydreaming can become entire out-of-body experiences. There are times where it can be difficult to distinguish between real memories and fantasies.

It also has significant downsides with negative imagery and intrusive thoughts.

But at the same time it is very helpful for being creative and finding intuitive understandings of things.

Oddly enough, actually taking psychedelics feels more like being able to focus this kind of thing!

Thank you for sharing!

What's really fascinating to me is that people fall anywhere on this spectrum yet we interact socially in mostly the same ways and usually we wouldn't notice from spending time with a person just how different their inner experience is.

I have the same thing and never knew until HN's discussion last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37718999

The article mentions Image Streaming, which I've been practising since. Interestingly, it seems to work! I've have been seeing vivid dreams, and have been able to randomly visualize shapes. Nothing to prove it "cures" aphantasia, but we'll see :)

This technique reminds me of kasina meditation, I haven't practiced it, but but I have read about cases where people developed hyperphantasia.

Wow, in summary what does the practice look like? What do you do?

So, first thing, I have this inner monologue talking to me everytime. I have to first shut it up. This happens when I'm very relaxed and don't think about anything. Then, I slowly focus on the visuals I see (which is nothing). Then, suddenly some shapes come and go, and I try to keep them in my head as much as I can. To influence a flow of visuals, I look at a light and close my eyes. You see the afterimage of the light (which is a "eye" thing, not a "mind" thing). However, this has helped to start seeing some stuff in the mind, even though it takes 10-20 minutes of focus (and mentally exhausting!)

Also, this subreddit has many information and anecdotal experience on this technique: https://www.reddit.com/r/CureAphantasia/

I have seen some shapes and a few colors for now. Most importantly, I have started to see vivid dreams in the last few days, which has never happened before (before that it was just a feeling not a visual. However, my father suggested this might just be that I have learned to remember dreams more by becoming more conscious about it, which is a possibility). It's too soon to judge. So, I'll keep doing it for a couple more weeks to see if it can help me see visuals rather than random flashes.

I'm aphantasic, though I'm not entirely sure that I have always been that way. I've recently been using Lumenate to meditate, and while it hasn't actually changed my aphantasia (yet?), I do get very strong abstract visuals when using the app. It's closer to the kind of thing you might see while on mushrooms than any kind of physical form. I absolutely suck at meditation usually as I just cannot switch off the inner voices, this seems better as it gives me something else to focus on.

https://lumenategrowth.com

That’s really fascinating! Thank you for sharing.

If you are interested in internal visions, try flickering lights with closed eyes. Around 10hz they create strong internal visuals after about a minute. There are several apps that can do this— luminate is one, but there are free ones, too.

(Usual warnings about photosensitive epilepsy apply)

Like many things in life, there’s a spectrum for this. Some people are aphantasic, or completely lacking in the ability to produce mental imagery. Tell them to visualize an apple, and they can’t. Others have hyperphantasia and can visualize the apple from a gray shade to full vibrancy. I suspect hyperphantasia was a bigger deal in the ole hunter gatherer times and being able to mentally simulate would be important to survival.

Hmm, I can barely visualize an apple. Like, I see the shape on a 2d plane in pieces. I noticed when I read your comment and tried to visualize the apple, instead, in my mind, I get an inner monologue telling me what an apple is. The color, the shape, the size. But I don't really get a visual.

Now, ask me to think about a song, and I can create the entire auditory experience of the song. Various instruments, in time. I can manipulate the songs key, slow it down, etc. But there are no visuals accompanying this.

I have honestly never really even thought about this. Can people really visualize faces and complex items in life like color and resolution?

> Can people really visualize faces and complex items in life like color and resolution?

for my organic chemistry class, it was almost a requirement, so that you could describe the interactions two molecules would have based on their physical properties, and determine the end result

curious, if you were asked not just to simply visualize something, but determine an outcome based on physical properties of objects, how does that process play out in your mind?

for example, if I were shown a square-shaped hole, and without being shown a cube, I was asked if a typical cube would fit through that hole based on shape and not size, in my mind i would picture one face of a cube and try to match it up with the shape i can see to determine 'yes it fits'

Not the GP, but I'm also aphantasic. To me, the square hole question is more like "cubes have square faces, therefore yes". Seems to me like touch typing (knowing shapes) vs. hunt-and-peck typing (search for shape, align).

For the "what happens if" question, it's similar: "based on facts from experience, what happens next?". I lack the requisite knowledge base for ochem specifically, but in software, I'm usually able to come up with "have you considered input X" when reading code that just isn't handled well. I don't have any visual reference when thinking about such things; I just "feel" that there's an unhandled edge case. There's nothing concrete that visually represents input values, but I guess a marble maze could work for folks though.

It's not just seeing apples, it's basicly like a movie "behind" your eyes sometimes, like movement and eveything. When I'm doing some "boring" stuff like cleaning the house I often have whole conversations in my head where I really see the people and the whole scene around it, like sitting in a cafe and talk to some friends or something like that. Now that I write this down it must sound really strange to someone who doesn't have this, I mean it even sounds strange to me now. :)

Visualisation and imagining the future are still pretty important I think, we just don't realize it. I think it dictates a bit how you work and what roles you are suited for(!).

Let's say, are you better at working things out in practice or are you good at planning things out and executing following a plan?

I have total aphantasia, in fact I still can't believe people can literally visualize things in their heads. However I have pretty good memory of my other senses, especially sound and smell and can "replay" conversations and music pretty well in my head.

>Some people ask me if my aphantasia can be cured. The easy answer is no, because you can’t cure what isn’t a disease, and anyway we don’t know enough about it yet to influence it.

I disagree there, aphantasia is at least a condition and we just began inspecting it seriously, I wish I could contribute in some way.

> People can actually invoke shapes and colors in their minds.

Please can some of you chime in. I have never been able to picture things and I don't have a voice in my head. Do you? I assumed my way is the norm, it's weird finding out that it might not be. What does picturing things even look like, is there a floating object in front of you?

On the voice thing I saw a Reddit thread where people were expressing surprise that some people don't have an inner voice when they read or think.

Let's take a spinning cube as an example. I don't see it "in front of me" or as an overlay on top of my vision (I can do this tho, it's just not the default and I have to concentrate to create such an overlay). It's hard to describe, I can just see the cube and as soon as I try to focus on the soundings (to find out if there are any) they start to exist but they don't until I focus on them.

Imagine a videogame rendering engine, which only renders things the player is actively looking at, not just the field of view, but just the smallest possible point of focus.

I work with a range of people who do and don't possess the ability to visualise and have to change how I work with them accordingly. (To learn more about this field, look into Aphantasia.)

For example if I say: "it's the same as this (while holding up a production sample), but in blue plastic" I have one person who I work with who will need to see a picture of it to understand that, while others are simply "yep ok", and some people a bit in between.

For me personally, I can visualise an object, change it, rotate it, recolour/reskin parts of it, interact with it etc. all in my mind without any special effort. In terms of my work this means I tend to do it anywhere and not in front of my tools or software.

This kind of visualisation isn't limited to images, a composer friend can "play" and "hear" music, doing nothing more than reading the sheet music and moving his hands on a table - no where near a piano. He can practice while laying on a beach for example.

Also as a trend: I notice people who lack the ability to visualise are more easily fooled by edited imagery. Especially the recent-ish trend of making a body slender or larger by use of "facetune"/"liquify" style tools.

I make it a matter of importance to understand how a person "learns" very quickly as I notice this has a definite effect on their ability to work and follow direction.

As a someone who can visualize a lot of things and enjoys cooking and fine-dining - I’ve also noticed that I can visualize the look, taste and smell of the end result from the raw components. So, when given a set of ingredients I start by visualizing the different combinations, picking out one and then refining it whilst cooking.

And the same applies the other way around, when blind-tasting some sauces or foods. I get a mental imagery of the components from the taste, not 100% obviously but usually it’s pretty accurate.

Well yeah. You know what a light sabre looks like, right? Now hold your hand out and see yourself holding a light sabre. Hear the wum-wum sound.

How did you play imaginary games as a kid?

Voice in your head. What happens when you read a play? Don't see a guy holding a skull, talking about slings and arrows? Like a movie. If there's a sudden sound to one side, you turn your actual head that way.

In fact the movie analogy is the best description. I can see video of everything I imagine, in fact it's pretty much what imagination is to me. You see yourself winning the race? There you are, breaking the rope, Chariots of Fire playing as you slowly push your chest forward.

I do this with math as well. Geometry questions, I can move the lines around. Algebra, I can move the symbols around. To a limited degree of course, I need paper for anything complicated. But it's useful in a way that's hard to describe, because you can't explain it in words, you need to show someone the video with the constrained shape, eg a circle with a diameter and a point that moves on the circle, showing that wherever the point is there's always a 90 degree angle.

Smells, I don't often imagine. Mostly they are stenches and I prefer not to.

Another useful example: You can go to a store and look at something, a couch or a table perhaps. Then go home and have a very good idea of whether or not this item would (1) fit in your space, or (2) match the room.

Of course the abilities such visualisations give a person are on a scale, but the point is that these abilities have a lot of real world applications beyond play, and they can make work and life a lot easier than those that can't perform them.

I didn't play imaginary games I assume if I had visualization capabilities I probably would have! No, no voice either, and while reading I'm not visualize anyone doing anything, it's more of a "thing is happening, I understand". I do enjoy a lot of books though, I am able to read almost 100 fiction books per year.

I do want to say your writing and prose is so vivid and amazing, the way you're describing what's going on is rich and beautiful.

Thank you.

Those 100 fiction books a year... don't you turn them into a movie in your head? Part of the reason I'm not so keen on fiction is that there's not quite enough to make a movie, or too much. If I get a description of some guy in a book either I have to fill in his costume with some random clothes that aren't described, or I have to remember every little detail. Inevitably I forget something and the movie makes no sense.

Do you dream? That's kinda what movies in my head are like. Stuff has some form but is also partially fluid.

I have fully immersive dreams. It's not a movie, it's like reality with sight, sound, smell, touch, temperature, proprioception, etc. Also, there generally aren't any of the fantastical, psychedelic, or other "dreamy" things I've heard retold by others or depicted in cinema. It's mostly like each dream sequence is an independent simulation and there's almost no observation of a beginning, end, or transition. I can have lucid dreams, which mostly just introduce a mild emotional detachment.

The least realistic dream aspects are also what will invoke lucidity. My motor skills may break down and I start drifting or swimming when I want to walk or run. I might find it impossible to focus and read printed text or computer displays while it is important to do so. Or if I find myself driving, the dream will usually degrade and abort, with the car driving ahead and leaving me behind where I no longer see its path nor control it. If I've recently been playing video games in waking life, I might fumble for controls to walk and engage the surroundings. But otherwise, the dream sensory world is pretty much like real life, just with fictional places, people, and stories.

However, I am one of those folks on the aphantasia end of the spectrum in waking life. I have no inner voice nor inner vision. All my conscious memories and simulations are abstract for every sense. I might liken it to a 2nd or 3rd order derivative. While awake, I can't really picture loved ones or remember their voices in my mind. But I can think about their present or past location and interactions. I can recollect or imagine ideas of shapes, topology, movement, rhythm, melody, intention, or emotional context. But it's nothing like real sensation.

I've been a voracious reader at times in my life, but there is no movie or soundtrack to books. If anything, the literary experience is almost its own visual modality. It can be somewhat blocky, non-linear, or even atemporal. I do not experience reading as if listening to spoken words nor as seeing words in sequence. It is vaguely like looking at the page and feeling parsed grammatical structures and their semantics at the same time. I don't "see" printed words if I think of a book or think about writing. But I feel the rough outline of text and relationships of ideas. I think reading to me is almost like buffering in memories or knowledge. And, there is a meta-experience where I can reflect on and appreciate the written technique while consuming its content. But the literary meta-experience fades faster than the semantic content.

People around me consider me to be very creative and imaginative. But I'd say my imagination is stilted. I don't think I'll ever produce a novel or a play or a music composition. I can easily come up with vignettes or deviations in the context of an existing story, but don't seem to have the capacity to create a whole piece from scratch. I've dabbled in drawing and writing as hobbies, but my output is very representational. I might render a landscape I like by hand, or capture a moment in verse. But I seem to have no inner drive to imagine and create entire landscapes or stories on a blank slate. With my career, I have done large scale and long term work in service of problems presented to me by employers, but I think I'd draw a blank if I tried to just "create software" of my own volition.

I've been thinking about it for a couple of minutes and here's the best description I can make in computer terms.

For sight, it's a cross between off-screen rendering and overlay rendering. It doesn't feel like part of the world around me and it's not part of the streaming surface my eyes see so to speak. It's like a separate, independent layer that gets "halfway-composed", but with a stencil buffer that tells me it's not real. Bandwidth is restricted by focus, I can imagine and animate visually complex scenes but the more constraints I put in the harder it is to keep track of everything and not have a rendering glitch or artifact.

If I want to picture something specifically as part of my field of view (part of the world I'm seeing with my eyes), it's overlaid, but somewhat glitchy or ghostly and skipping frames, like it doesn't belong there.

For audio, I can replay, remix, compose, "infinite jukebox" and essentially deep-fake anything I've ever heard and it's overlaid on top of what I hear. Unlike for visuals there's no stencil buffer, so I can't tell the difference (except that it doesn't correlate with other senses, like loud noises rumbling your body for example). By default it's in mono, making it stereo or directional takes a significant effort. That processor tends to have a mind of its own sometimes and is vulnerable to earworms, like an infinite jukebox that just won't stop playing. Controls can be a bit iffy, like music seeking having trouble if it's not to a position that's correctly aligned or music "skipping" if I have trouble switching over to the next part of the song.

Finally, the act of imagining something is like ordering my subconscious with an AI prompt, but without text. Sometimes it decides to imagine stuff I didn't order or screws up what I've ordered, which can make me twitch a bit if it's something unexpected and that I don't approve of and need to actively suppress. If I'm particularly tired or stressed out, my brain can have trouble distinguishing between a real stimuli and a fake one, so I guess that's effectively hallucinations, but usually like echoes or corner-of-the-eye stuff rather than full-blown lala-land.

I can picture things in two ways: I can picture whole scenes, or I can imagine something existing in my vision, like I can imagine a ball lying on the floor or I can imagine a painting hanging on the wall. In both cases the pictured thing definitely feels more internal than what my eyes are perceiving. So it’s not quite like I’m superimposing a floating object in front of me on top of my vision, it’s like a post-processing filter or something.

It definitely doesn’t feel like my eyes are seeing whatever I’m picturing, it feels like it’s happening inside my head.

May i ask out of curiosity. Do you see dreams? I personally can see shapes if i concentrate while im awake and close my eyes and can spin them around like looking at a 3D model in some kind of viewer for instance. It's not perfect and how long i can hold that mental image for depends. I can do this with my eyes open too, similar to augmented reality but much fuzzier and again limited to the length of time i can hold that image for in my mind.

I'm more of an artist than a coder, but do both. I find it harder to code than i find creating 2D or 3D objects in something like blender for instance. But visually i can mental map nodes etc. to assist me in coding.

As for voices, inner monologue or attaching voices to comments i read is pretty much natural thing for myself. I assume we all did that to some degree but clearly not. It's interesting how we see our world and understand it. In your case it must be different. I'm intrigued really how you make sense of things without visually creating associations in the mind etc.

I very rarely dream, but I have had dreams, and definitely seen people, places, things in there. So I think I have relegated shapes/colors/visuals to just dreams. Clearly I am wrong.

Wait, does this mean daydreaming is people actually seeing things? Do you daydream? When I daydream I like to create 'what if' scenarios and follow them to conclusions.

> and close my eyes and can spin them around like looking at a 3D model in some kind of viewer for instance.

> But visually i can mental map nodes etc. to assist me in coding.

This is amazing! I've daydreamed (ha!) about having an ability to render objects in my head and manipulate them like a computer but you already do that. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'm envious.

I'm not artistic, just a normal software person.

So I am in this middle ground, where like you I cannot for the life of me actively picture anything in my mind's eye. I close my eyes and it is black, blank, and lifeless. My wife, for example, can close her eyes and recall my face perfectly. I have read about some artists being able to essentially trace what they are picturing in their mind's eye, though it seems that some incredibly talented and famous artists also have had aphantasia!

Anyway, the middle ground for me is that despite not being able to conjure vivid (or any) mental imagery, I have vivid dreams and daydreams. So it seems that if I am tired or my mind is wandering, some mental canvas unlocks, but not while I am alter and paying attention.

> Wait, does this mean daydreaming is people actually seeing things?

Yes, they are usually seeing similarly to seeing in a dream. Seeing with the minds eye as they say. You don't usually lose awareness of your surroundings, what you are seeing in reality just becomes more of a background process while you visualise a daydream.

Thank you for sharing... today feels like having a 'life altering' view. I think this will also help me relate to and work with people around me when presenting, remembering, etc. in terms of expectations.

Check out /r/hyperphantasia. I’m between a 2/3 on the scale and can visualize anything with a slight grayish hue. It’s not just visuals either, I can remember smells and reexperience it. The best way to describe it is like a kind of out of body experience where your mind goes somewhere else. It’s a separate plane of existence, like an astral projection. It’s a nice evolutionary quirk that was probably necessary in survivalist times. The whole future thinking aspect of it probably stopped early humans from demise. Otherwise if you really wanted to know what hyperphantasia is like, I think there are drugs that would give a similar experience.

This… isn’t normal?

What is being described here is a result of outside electromagnetic waves being used to influence his nervous system.

Humanity is already under electromagnetic surveillance and sabotage and our science and tech is hindered so we can't defend ourselves.

Religion is organized fraud to prevent scientific progress, but attacks with radiation are done to scientists also.

Read my posts.

The voice thing still surprises me. I have a constant monologue and I honestly can't separate that from "thinking". I was always aware mine was more random/silly/manic than most and likely faster, basically a chatter box that won't shut up vs the calmer "can stop and listen" type voice I presumed normal brains have. But I struggle to imagine not having an inner voice at all. I have brief moments if I'm really in the zone or absorbed by a book or a film where it quietens or fades away but as soon as I actively think anything it's immediately back. Is it not really boring not having one? Like how do you talk to yourself to think things through? Can you even do that? If it's not obvious I have ADHD, specifically inattentive, so getting lost in my thoughts is my default state.

On the picturing things side, I don't know how to describe it. I can just imagine objects, models, layouts etc in my mind and turn around like in modelling software. It's completely separate to my vision, the images are in my "mind's eye" or mental space and it doesn't have anymore impact on my visual awareness than any other kind of thinking. I can take the models from my mind and overlay them on my sight but it takes much more concentration to imagine things that way. It's easier to build/edit in my mind and then check against vision.

I'm also better at certain types of mental picturing than others. Visuospatial thing like floor plans, 3D models, visualising a street route etc are easy and natural for me. Colour I can do to an extent but it's harder and I need to reference reality more. 2D is a little harder than 3D, no idea why. Non technical images like art are harder too. Though that could just be the 2D thing as technical images are easy to imagine 3D. Landscapes and faces are easier too now I think of it which backs that up.

I learned early on not everyone can do it. We had Tech classes in S1-2 of high school (11-13) where we learned 3D technical drawing. It made immediate sense to me, I just turned the object in my head and drew it from different perspectives. But I learned that wasn't something most of my classmates could just naturally do. Lots of them learned it with practise but it took a while and some of them just couldn't do it.

I can somewhat do this, but I think that the idea is overstated in many people's perceptions -- that is, it's not that I can always clearly see anything in my mind or hear or smell things in my mind, it's only in specific situations and specific moods.

I enjoy cooking for example, and if I really like a meal somewhere, I can slowly start to break down the components that provide the taste, the smell, even the texture (i.e., cooking techniques) for the meal.

Music is a bit easier for me even without a ton of familiarity, but I can hear the notes quite easily in my mind, scale them and find their "friends" (not sure what the real musical term is), I just lack the physical ability to hit some of the notes in my mind.

The point of this is that it's not an omnipresent feature for everyone, and I'm willing to bet it's much more isolated as I'm describing, but I don't insist that I'm accurate in this bet. I don't think that I really trained for this directly, at least not in all subjects -- I did play an instrument as a child, and while I couldn't recite the different scales or tell you which notes to play by name, I could just show you with my instrument because it "sounded" right in my head, and if my teacher corrected me and showed me, it was easy enough after awhile to "hear" the right note in advance.

With visualizing items, again it's nothing that I would train on and it's not something I do all the time, but it does happen; remembering directions to some place in my city I might just give the basic directions without thinking of what it looks like, but if someone is unfamiliar with my city, I can "see" the various places they'll spot on the way, almost to the point it's like going on a walk in my mind through this place.

The visualizations typically start out very amorphous for me unless I'm _very_ familiar with the subject; usually only a few vague aspects of the image appear, and as I remember other details, the picture becomes more clear. It's maybe a bad example, but imagine watching a painting come together one layer at a time, or a Timelapse of an artist doing a painting. Or maybe some game where only part of the image is shown at first with some blurring or distortion, and over time (as I think of more details), it becomes more clear.

> What does picturing things even look like, is there a floating object in front of you?

For me it’s like switching to another reality.* I can reproduce actual reality in the alt reality of my mind’s eye if necessary.

I have noticed some limitations though. I have trouble imagining altered faces - e.g. it’s hard for me to remove a facial feature; I guess I don’t know what to replace it with and would need to study human faces to determine a replacement. But maybe it’s just me.

* That’s what people do when they are daydreaming.

I can't visualise anything at all, but I have multiple inner voices constantly chatting, often to each other rather than me. It's infuriating at times, but also the only thing I've ever known. I'm incredibly jealous of people without an inner voice.

I can’t picture objects or colour, but have vivid dreams. Also it’s normal for me to hold conversations with myself in my head. Post-covid I had a few days with no inner “voice” and it was terribly lonely.

Couple of search terms: aphantasia, subvocalisation. These topics have come up here a few times, I see they're doing the rounds on Facebook atm.

Thanks, I think I'll be going down some Wikipedia holes this afternoon.

Start a conversation with yourself outloud and finish it in your mind. That is your "inner" voice.

> I can even draw an above-average impression of one on a piece of paper for you. But I can’t visualize it mentally

This is interesting, I would have thought that if one can describe and draw something, they'd be able to mentally visualise it.

My sense of visualisation is often not so strong, in the sense that I don't get to imagine vivid situations during the day, unless I'm recalling something I've seen. What I've noticed is that when I'm sleepy, it becomes exponentially easier to visualise things I've never seen.

I'm curious if anyone else has that happen.

I've been able to control some of my dreams, though that's off-topic and something that was recently discussed here.

> My sense of visualisation is often not so strong, in the sense that I don't get to imagine vivid situations during the day, unless I'm recalling something I've seen. What I've noticed is that when I'm sleepy, it becomes exponentially easier to visualise things I've never seen.

I can somewhat relate. If I close my eyes, I have only a blank, black space and canon conjure up any mental imagery. But I dream and daydream in varying degrees of vividness. So it is kind of like, if I am actively trying to do it, there is no mental workspace available to drawn the image, but under those conditions of lower consciousness/attention, suddenly some imagery appears. So this is also interesting, because I can tell the difference. Some people disbelieve that I have this partial form of aphantasia, and of course I cannot conceive of how to convince them, but I know at least for myself that it is possible to have vivid mental pictures, because of these different times when the canvas is blank and when it is filled.

I wish I could recall vivid mental images on demand!

So regarding your first point. There are two (at least) ideas about how mental representations exist, depictive and propositional. Depictive is like thinking about a cat and having the actual image of the cat depicted in your mind to some degree of vividness. Propositional is like having a representation of features in your neural networks, and seeing or thinking about a cat activates the diverse set of catness neurons in your brain and you get a sense of a cat but maybe don't see an actual cat anywhere in your mind's eye (because maybe like me you don't have a conscious mind's eye).

It seems reasonably likely that these are complementary rather than competing models of brain construction, and some people tend more or all the way one way and others the other way. See, e.g., https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1504933112

I'm very similar to you - I can't consciously visualize - I just get a blank when I try. But I can lucid dream, and then I can visualize perfectly, even designing complex 3d mechanisms. When I'm fully awake, I'm sort of aware those visualisations are still happening in my subconscious, but I can't access them consciously.

I think I have something like that. When I'm sleepy, I like to close my eyes and "take a ride" picturing myself looking out the window of a bus driving on a country road, I'd see in mind's eye high definition images of the scenery I pass by, individual flowers, a resting deer, a snowy mountain in the distance, a pretty girl riding on a bicycle, sometimes the scenery will suddenly change from one season to a different one, or one type of landscape (e.g. wheat fields) to a different one (e.g. river bank), like those AI generated "predict next frame" videos ... it's a super relaxing experience. What I find interesting is that I do not feel like I'm in any way "directing" this movie, I continue to be curious to see what will arrive next in my "field of vision" and I have no expectations one way or the other (to be clear, if I do form a volition to see, say, a panda running by the bus, I will succeed; the point is that volition is not needed for new unanticipated images to arrive on their own)

I get something similar, like a visual free-association thing while falling asleep. It seems related to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_cinema

> I 'm curious if anyone else has that happen.

When I am still fully conscious but drifting off, with my eyes closed, I can make some image actually replace the "black" we normally see when we close our eyes.

The image just quickly fades in and replaces the "black". This started happening involuntarily a couple of years ago and, shortly after, I could also do it voluntarily. It is not completely effortless and it lasts for a few seconds though.

I did a bit of searching and it seems that this is a normal experience while being in a so-called "hypnagogic state".

So, what you are describing might also be a result of being in that state.

When I am fully awake, a visualization is more like an imaginary overlay on top of whatever my retina is actually sending to my brain (thankfully :P).

I'm glad this now has a name. I realised I couldn't do it when I was pretty young, after the first few times I encountered the concept of "counting sheep". Like, what sheep? Even if there are sheep, surely my eyes need to be closed in order to fall asleep? Can other people really see sheep whenever they want to see sheep?!

Unlike the writer of the article, I would definitely "fix" this if I could, a mind's eye sounds like a very useful thing to have. (I have other deficiencies/differences which I wouldn't choose to fix, though.)

No, because that would be called hallucination. The "internal" image is different.

So can you, or can you not, see a sheep if you close your eyes? And if you can't, can you really say that means others can't either?

This is difficult to debug.

It's not the same "seeing" as with your eyes open.

To people with hyperphantasia, apparently it's pretty close.

But regardless of whether it's a 4K HDR sheep or a sheep seen through sunglasses in a dark room, the idea that anyone (let alone most people) can conjure up a sheep in their mind is quite strange to me.

I think I'm aphantasic, probably not 100%. But I also wonder if perhaps this helps in abstract thinking; as it comes more natural.

For a potential cure:

Search for 'aphantasia image streaming' on Youtube. I'm in a hurry now, maybe I will provide a link later.

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