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I'm still not entirely convinced the spectrum between aphantasia and hyperphantasia truly exists as distinct existential phenomena. I suppose I would self report as someone with hyperphantasia and I strongly suspect I would score highly on the objective correlates but if I really drill down into my mental imagery they seem to be very illusory (even compared to the other things floating around in my mind) and it is very difficult to say definitively that I am really experiencing those images in a fundamentally different way from someone with aphantasia. The objective correlates mentioned in the article to me aren't very convincing and it seems that they could simply point to another confounding factor that changes the way people self report their internal experiences.

Of course on the other hand I can't think of any way to build a stronger case for or against so I'm excited for more research into the subject

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In response to your statement that it's difficult to say definitively that you're experiencing those images in a fundamentally different way from someone with aphantasia, I can share my experience as someone on the complete opposite of the spectrum.

I do have imagery when I dream, but in my waking hours, I __cannot__ picture things in my head. I can reason about objects based on experiences I have with them (i.e. describe them), but there is no "illusory" reference image. There's just nothing. It's difficult to articulate my method of internal processing, other than saying I have a constant internal monologue that is used to bring to mind whatever it is I'm trying to imagine, but imagery is completely non-existent.

Additionally, I've never heard these described as possible symptoms of aphantasia until this article, but "Aphantasia is associated variably with a reduction in both autobiographical memory and face recognition" really resonates with my experience. I don't have many memories from childhood, my adult memories are often vague and more based on feelings that I have of a period in my life rather than concrete details, and I have a difficult time with recognizing actors even if I've seen them in a lot of films.

I also have an exceptionally strong musical memory (borderline encyclopedic). I can quickly memorize music and have near perfect recall even when years go by without listening to it.

I'm with you in excitement towards further studies of these phenomena, but just wanted to chip in with my personal experiences with aphantasia!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts :)

Can you describe your expectation vs reality? What do you think a “normal” person experiences?

My understanding is that most people remember past events in the context of their own experience of those events — when they remember, they recall into their minds some version of what they felt/saw/heard at the time, re-experienced from their own perspective. I've heard some people describe it like replaying a film, and they may even get a portion of the original emotional or sensory experience with it. I have none of that at all.

No way... really? I think I fall under aphantasia, but I never realized people could potentially relive memories like that.

Welcome in the SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) club. It is highly correlated with Aphantasia.

I'm thinking of a happy childhood memory. I'm with my grandmother down by the lake. We're getting into a boat.

I can see the way the sunlight reflects on the sand in the shallow water and off the oars in the boat (and what their flaking varnish feels like in my hands). The smell of the reeds, grass, and lake water is very clear to me, as is the voice of my grandmother telling me to be careful to not fall into the water. I can also hear a lawnmower somewhere in the distance, kids splashing around by the beach, and rustling of the reeds as they're caught by the wind.

It makes me happy, but also nostalgic. Most of the things from this memory are gone now. I believe the English word that best describes this is "wistful".

I know memories are peculiar and that parts of this memory are probably borrowed from other memories, or even made up, but it doesn't make it feel less vivid to me.

Are bad memories also vivid?

Yes, quite. They can be affected by the kind of tunnel vision you get when you're very stressed out. Like remembering a spot on the wallpaper, or a brass part of the handrails on the stairs where my parents gave me some bad news when I was four.

Unfortunately I can't seem to decide what sticks and what doesn't. I don't have perfect recall (far from it). I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday, but if I do I can probably still taste it.

Yes, but I think there's something even worse: things that haven't happened.

Anxiety is kicked in to overdrive when you can vividly imagine adverse outcomes to such a degree that they are indistinguishable from things that have happened.

Echoing SirRoderic here, but my understanding is that many others have the ability to clearly visualize their POV of past memories along with all or some of the sensory experiences associated with those experiences.

My lived experience is that I can remember key life events to some extent, but there is no visual experience with it. I don't remember what the last house I lived in looked like (less than 2 years ago) but if I were to visit it, I'd clearly recognize it.

One that kind of gets me is that I can't even picture my parent's faces. I can describe them, I have a ton of positive memories associated with them, and feel very strong feelings of love and affection for them, but despite having seen them yesterday for Easter, I can't picture them in my head. In some ways, that's strangely disorienting. It's frustrating to me to feel such a disconnect from things that are __very__ important to me.

But in some ways, it's freeing. I think I have a pretty strong resistance to traumatic imagery, because once it's gone, it's just gone. If I see something disturbing, it doesn't haunt me. I can't imagine terrifying things (at least visually), so when I compare my experience to friends who have hyperphantasia (or at least a decent ability to picture things), there's a lot that can get stuck in their heads that I just can't.

I try not to view the aphantasia as a good or bad thing. It's just part of how I am.

Serious question. Do you have trouble with reading fiction novels?

I don't read a lot of full-length books in recent years generally, but as a child I read tons of fiction... I was about to say "...so I don't think I have any trouble," but actually, come to think of it, most of the books I liked as a child were things like Redwall or Warriors, where all the characters were distinct species of animals and things like that.

If the characters are all humans, I think it's difficult to remember who's who because they're just random collections of syllables (names) tied to a set of facts — "Kirk, a human man, is a captain", etc. I think, though, that this may be more of an aphantasia/faceblindness thing (I have no "theater of the mind" and can't picture characters to distinguish them) than an autobiographical memory thing.

On the subject of memory, I will say, though, that perhaps I lack an interest in fiction books nowadays because no fond memories of reading them stick with me; even though I can recount the plot in excruciating detail, the most I might be able to say after the fact is "I liked/disliked that book" in a general sense, and that's just a memorized fact about my immediate feeling at the time. With a nonfiction book on the other hand I acquire information that can be useful to me afterwards.

Ha! This came up on Saturday. I have Aphantasia and I have never read a novel in my life. Even high school texts I read the summaries or watched the movies…

What’s the point of read a novel when you can’t picture a scene or characters in your head!

Compare this to technical books though. I’ve got a large collection and I’ve read through most, and can almost tell you what chapter a subject is in within every book, but tell me to “close your eyes and imagine…” I truely thought “close your eyes and imagine” as a figure of speech!

Well, I am very word focused and experience imagery by describing it to myself, so for me a novel is almost like replacing my internal monologue - I would say it's potentially more immersive for me to read than for someone without aphantasia.

In fact if anything I might blame reading a lot at a young age for my aphantasia.

Inner dialog. I used to have one when I was a kid, like a really loud and constant one, but I haven't heard him in at least 25 years.

... the brain is weird.

> I have Aphantasia and I have never read a novel in my life. Even high school texts I read the summaries or watched the movies…

> What’s the point of read a novel when you can’t picture a scene or characters in your head!

That's interesting! I don't have aphantasia but I think I meet the criteria for hypophantasia, and I find it's a major obstacle to enjoying some, but by no means all, novels. Scenes that are heavy on literal visual description are a tedious slog, but plenty of novels focus more on characters, ideas, and/or plot. And I don't find that my lacking a sense of what the characters look like, or failing to see the action in more than a vague and patchy way, is a big problem in those cases.

(I can even get something out of visual description if it's very impressionistic -- the book that comes to mind is A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr -- but of course that could be entirely down to the gap between aphantasia and hypophantasia.)

I wonder if you could enjoy a very dialogue-heavy novel, or a literary novel that focuses mainly on the inner lives of the characters. If you can remember, which ones did you start and give up on, before you gave up on novels completely?

Every time I've picked up a novel to "try again", it's just blank, and I think a heavy dialog book would just make my head explode.

It's funny though, listening to Snow Crash last year was the first fiction audio book I've ever listened to, and that was interesting. Especially because I only listened while running, while listening it was like I was retrieving memories - so still not "imagining with my mind's eye" but still picturing but with audio.

Related, this was recently published by the author (who has aphantasia) — a post describing a self-made Kobo enhancement that uses text-to-image generation to assist imagery-rich fiction. Here's the HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39842710

i have aphantasia and am a voracious fiction reader.

I do tend to skip overly disruptive paragraphs that don't advance a story.

Hey! I have aphantasia and read fiction books often. I have some trouble in reading stretches of text that describe details about an environment or character and I often skip to dialog. My reasoning is that there's little need for these details if I can't visualize them.

Not at all! I'm actually an avid reader of fiction and non-fiction! I actually host 3 weekly book clubs :)

I've had some pretty extensive conversations with a buddy in one of the book clubs about this specific subject when we were talking about the ways we interpret a particular series (Malazan: Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson).

When he reads, he sees things as if they were a movie in his head. He has hyper clear visualization of all of the characters, and visual descriptors are very important to his reading because they help clarify the mental imagery that he sees.

For me, I barely remember visual descriptors at all. I have to relate the way certain characters act in a series based on their personalities and relationships to others and visual descriptions of story elements (from character to setting design) don't really matter much to me aside from importance to the narrative or theme.

As a result, I tend to focus a lot more on the meta-narrative, themes, and motifs in a story. That's not to say that he doesn't (we often discuss those things), but we have drastically different experiences when reading. It really enhances the book club, because our perspectives and the things that resonate with us are so different!

For example, combat scenes can be incredibly visceral for him, whereas for me it's more or less a means to an end when it comes to narrative impact. I think in terms of the implications of the results, but he enjoys the fights themselves. I also tend to focus a lot more on the philosophical musings in the text, whereas he finds that dialogue heavy scenes can be a bit boring or less impactful.

Hope that provides some clarity on what reading for someone with aphantasia can be like! Happy to answer any further questions if you have any!

Now I am wondering how is the thought process of someone with Aphantasia and no inner monologue.

Being in that situation, two things that stand out are: when thinking about a topic, I do sometimes formulate my questions or hypotheses in internal words, but the "answers" come back in non verbal form: for instance I suddenly just "know" where the flaw in the argument is, or what (counter)example I need to think more about. The other striking fact is that when I am very emotional (eg angry), the internal monologue is suddenly very vivid :)

Language is a crutch for thinking.

It's good to be able to think, regardless of the need for words to do so, but even wordy thinkers do lots of things without word thinking.

Like juggling. Or playing an instrument.

Just because something is done in a way that they don't do it doesn't mean it's weird to be done that way.

How do you remember routes? If someone stops you on the street and asks for directions what exactly happens in your mind? It seems to me almost impossible to be able to navigate effectively without the power of visualisation, but it’s likely my own intuition is failing me here.

It's really hard to describe, and in my experience, people with mental images tend to have a hard time imagining it (and people with aphantasia seem to differ on how much they use an internal monologue, etc). In a nutshell, for me the directions either 'come out of nowhere' or there is a vague feeling of 'geometrical stuff happening somewhere in my brain, in a mostly non perceptible places'.

Sorry I don't have a great answer for this, but generally, just vibes.

I'm not great at articulating directions to people due to the lack of visualization, and if someone asks me if I know where the x on y road is, I can't ever imagine it, but my general spatial orientation is totally fine and I can pretty competently navigate in both urban and wilderness spaces.

There's like a abstract idea of where I am in relation to other things at any given point, but I don't really know street names or things like that because they're just not that helpful for my ability to get around.

It's strange that I find it so difficult to explain—our brains are just good at compensating for shortcomings I suppose!

What does it feel like when you are tired/relaxed, lying in bed, eyes closed? Do you get visually dreamy, half-awake?

What do you see when you close your eyes? Only ever Eigengrau?

Have you ever done psychedelic drugs? Opiates (medically)? Melatonin, Z substances, ...?

Can you picture memories at all? Can you picture pictures?

As someone with a sometimes annoyingly wild inner scenery, I would really love for a moment of peace closing my eyes, but I am always visually engaged as long as I am awake. There is no pause "seeing". Incidentally, I am very bad at memorizing music/lyrics. And funnily enough, I don't engage my fantasy much when reading, of all things.

>What does it feel like when you are tired/relaxed, lying in bed, eyes closed? Do you get visually dreamy, half-awake?

When I'm tired, my inner dialogue is usually less active than normal, though it's never quite silent. It's more of a difficulty focusing on the streams of consciousness that slowly fades over time until sleep takes me. Sometimes, if I'm fading in and out of consciousness, I will have some imagery, but as far as I can tell, only when actually sleeping.

This can result in moments where something vivid happens in a dream, like a car crash, where I suddenly jolt awake with my heart pounding rapidly. However, I can't continue to imagine the visuals of what happened. I just know that I dreamed I was in a car crash.

>What do you see when you close your eyes? Only ever Eigengrau?

If I'm in total darkness, only Eigengrau (thanks for the new word btw!) but if I'm in light, I see kind of a reddish hue that is from the light passing through my eyelids I assume. There are no visuals associated with the eyes closing in a conventional sense. The whole "counting sheep" method of falling asleep never made any sense to me because I didn't realize that people could literally visualize sheep jumping.

>Have you ever done psychedelic drugs? Opiates (medically)? Melatonin, Z substances, ...?

Unfortunately, no. I'd love to try some, but in my field of work I have to maintain a security clearance so taking drugs could compromise my job security. In the past, I have been on a cocktail of anti-depressants + anti-anxiety medication that caused me to have vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, but those were with my eyes open, so it just seemed real to me. As soon as I mentioned those symptoms to my psychologist, I was immediately taken off the medications they put me on.

>Can you picture memories at all? Can you picture pictures?

I can't picture memories at all, but I can describe things from my memories. The way I process them is very strangely abstract. There is no visual portion to the memories at all. For example, as I mentioned in another comment, I can't picture what my parents look like, despite having had lunch with them yesterday for Easter. I can describe certain details about them, and have very pleasant associations with them, but I simply can't picture them. The descriptions I could offer up would be particular details I've explicitly observed and remembered about them.

I can't picture pictures either. If someone were to ask me to visualize an "apple" no picture appears, even if I spend a decent amount of time and effort trying to construct a visual. However, I can describe elements of what an apple is. It's sort of like the concept of a platonic ideal of a thing. I know attributes that are associated with the platonic ideal of apple, so by extension I can describe an apple. I just can't picture it. There's no visual reference in my processing for any element of internal thought.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with your visualizations! I'm kind of the opposite. My mind is constantly yapping and I find it hard to fall asleep at times due to the persistent monologue in my head. I tend to listen to podcasts or Youtube while I fall asleep because it lets my mind be quiet and get ready for sleep.

Thank you very much for the detailed answer!

I find your case especially interesting, since you are somewhat able to generate images in some situation. So, you know the difference, which is important for semantics.

It's honestly crazy to me how vastly different people experience base reality... and yet these things only recently became a wider conversation. Apparently we are still very much able to find agreement through these differences :)

Nevertheless, I really can't imagine (hehe) what it's like for you, especially with the memory business. For example, right now I am thinking about a random photograph of a chair and there is no descriptive narrative going on, it's all visual. My inner monologue really is only there for, well, talking to myself - the way I would do out loud. Our experiences are fundamentally different, it seems. I wonder which one of us would be more prone to false memories, is the less reliable witness.

It's funny, descriptions of close-eye hallucinations, I always think "Well, that's just a lazy Tuesday for me". I never did psychedelics, either, but I am really curious how they would affect me. But also I am a bit worried, if it's wise to add more fuel to my boiling mind soup.

Ha! And it's kinda assuring you still struggle to fall asleep, because of a non-stop talking mind. Guess I am not missing out.

If you don't mind a last question: Have you ever done an MRI? Like, is your brain certified alright? I wonder, because of your medication side effects, and because some maybe related conditions like face blindness (inability to recognize faces at all) have a discernible neuronal cause.

Yeah, I'm very fascinated by the ways that people can all have such different experiences with the way we process the world around us.

My internal monologue is very much like yours, where it's mostly talking to myself the way I would out loud, but there's a deeper layer of abstract... connections?

The analogy of a thought web seems to work well to describe it. It's like a massive web of interconnected thoughts where new patterns and connections are constantly being created to associate relationships between concepts in my head.

I think everyone more or less has that type of underlying mechanism behind consciousness, though that may be a big assumption. What's interesting about mine is that I can often come to conclusions based on lower level abstract reasoning, especially as it relates to visual descriptors, without necessarily being able to articulate how I arrived at those conclusions.

To answer your last question, I don't think I've ever had an MRI done. The reason I was put on so many medications was because in my early 20's I struggled a lot with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. They were severe enough that I self-admitted to an in-patient care facility to get treatment. During that 2 week period, I went from 2 medications (Zoloft + Wellbutrin) to 14 medications. During the time, I didn't realize that it wasn't normal or okay to be put on that many drugs at once in such a short period of time because I trusted the medical professionals and was in a particularly bad state of mind. In hindsight, I view what they did as incredibly abusive of the trust and faith I had in them.

Fortunately, I didn't have a mental breakdown or anything—I just notified them of my symptoms and they removed a fair amount of the medications. I left the facility with about 7 medications prescribed, to which my normal psychiatrist immediately discontinued the usage of all but the original stuff I was on (which was clearly the right choice).

All that to say, I do have some mental health issues (though therapy and medication has helped alleviate them all), but I'm unsure of whether or not there's a discernible neuronal cause for the aphantasia in particular. I'm considering an appointment with my Primary Care Provider to discuss the worsening of my memory because I've become more and more concerned that the levels of memory loss I seem to experience seems far greater than normal. Maybe that will provide some more insight?

Appreciate your comments and thoughts! It's nice to hear the perspective from someone on the other side of the spectrum!

> I'm considering an appointment with my Primary Care Provider to discuss the worsening of my memory because I've become more and more concerned that the levels of memory loss I seem to experience seems far greater than normal.

Please do. Memory loss is a serious symptom. May be nothing, may be stress, lack of sleep, maybe it's something preventable. Could be as simple as vitamin deficiency, e.g. B12. Also, do you have a potential carbon monoxide emitter around? Like gas boiler for warm water/heating? If so, definitely get a CO-alarm, if you haven't already!

Thanks for the suggestions! I do have a CO alarm and don't have a gas line to the house so I doubt it's that. It may just be nothing, but I'd rather err on the side of caution, so I'll get some blood work done and see if it's something to be concerned with.

This entire post describes my experience precisely. One flip-side to the poor face recognition is that my brain occasionally massively over compensates, especially when I've not slept well, and I'll have an entire day where I'm convinced I know every single person I see - curious if you get this too given how aligned our other experiences are.

Edit: Oh! And one other oddness that I often wonder if it's related - I get exploding head syndrome. You?

Interesting! I don't think I've experienced the flip side of facial recognition! It sounds like a very strange phenomenon to have happen! I can pretty much always recognize the people I know in real life, but if there's a drastic change to their appearance, (i.e. shaved head, dyed hair, etc.) I simply don't notice that there's a change.

I haven't had any experiences with exploding head syndrome either, though I do suffer from insomnia sometimes. I've gotten better at managing it nowadays, but for a long time I was unable to get good sleep without medication like Ambien.

Fascinating that we have so much in common though! It's actually really cool to know that although I'm the odd one out when it comes to most of the people I know, there are other people out there with similar forms of neural processing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences :)

Thanks for replying! I also have insomnia - partly I think down to the constant internal monologue. I manage it these days with melatonin which works well for me.

> and it is very difficult to say definitively that I am really experiencing those images in a fundamentally different way from someone with aphantasia

The fact that you experience them at all is different than people with aphantasia. I don't have complete aphantasia, but it is extremely difficult for me to visualize anything or have any mental imagery. And even then, such imagery is very vague, and colorless. Mostly my thoughts are just words.

Recently someone asked what kind of tree I think of when I see the word tree. This was a very strange question for me, because I when I read or hear the word tree, I don't have any mental picture of a tree, just an idea of what a tree is.

People with Aphantasia don’t see images in mind, typically. The condition is technically that we don’t do willful visualizations and don’t usually see things in mind unless we dream or we are having hypnogogic visuals. That said, some self reported aphants say that they can visualize on psychedelics. Having talked to people about this for almost ten years it’s hard for visualizers to understand what it means to have a lack of what appears to be a common phenomenon.

I’m pretty convinced there is a spectrum just on my own experience - apart from having an internal monologue (which I think is just the ability to imagine speech) I can also imagine sounds, different accents and music almost to the same level of perception as hearing them, to the point where even though I love music, I don’t usually listen to it most of the time (in the car, while working etc.) unless there’s something I really want to listen to, because I am just imagining stuff in my head. Yet I usually can’t imagine imagery very well. I can do it (I wouldn’t say it’s to the point of aphantasia), but it feels more abstract and illusory than my auditory imaging.

My experience with auditory imagination is definitely different to most people I have talked to about it, and on the other hand many people seem to be able to visualise images far more vividly than I can.

If it were all basically the same, why would one be so massively different to me?

Sounds to me like you are more trained in one style of thought than another. That doesn't seem so strange to me. Personally I'm not very good with accents or music but I also don't have very much background at all with those things. On the other hand I consciously trained my skills in visualization from a young age.

I have some degree of Aphantasia. One of the definitive property for me is that when visualizing an object, it will only have properties explicitly defined. e.g. if visualizing ball on table, the concept is visualized but ball won't have any color until it is defined.

This is a classic, because Galton wrote "Statistics of Mental Imagery" in 1880, inventing survey research in the process, precisely because he found that the people he talked to about it strongly resisted believing that the spectrum between aphantasia and hyperphantasia truly exists.

The original paper is quite readable: https://galton.org/essays/1880-1889/galton-1880-mind-statist...

All this tells me is that people report a wide range of levels of ability pertaining to some skill. You could find similar ranges of abilities in any skill but that doesn't necessarily mean there is anything fundamentally different about the people in that spectrum of ability except insofar as developing that skill has changed them. There could of course be a fundamental difference but I haven't seen anything to convince me of that.

Well, that's a different proposition: I think that if you were to query you'd find that people who experience strong mental imagery have done so as long as they can remember, and don't have the experience of needing to develop it as a skill. It's true that such data isn't in Galton's study; perhaps it's in others, but more simply, we can ask:

Anyone reading this who has strong mental imagery (video like): Do you remember ever not having it? consciously or unconsciously, did you ever have to work to develop it?

Do you have the same level of imagination for all sensory modalities?

I don't.

I can imagine sounds so intensely that it has on at least one occasion become indistinguishable from real. I can also easily do this overriding of real sensation with imagination, with my sense of which way down is.

I can't imagine a smell at all, even though I can recognise them upon experience — if I want to decide which herb or spice to add when cooking, I need to open the container and sample some in order to decide.

I can't visualize colors, outside of dreams, so I'd say our experience is fundamentally different.

I would self-report as having hyperphantasia, but I also have face blindness. I looked up the vividness of visual imagery questionnaire (VVIQ) test, and the first few questions involved picturing a person - starting with the head and shoulders! Well fuck me. That part in my mind's eye is somewhere between blurry and Picasso. (The features don't hold still.)

This is a complicated topic. To me the ability to hold a coherent (not necessarily still for reasons I won't elaborate on fully to keep this message somewhat short but essentially there is a large kinesthetic component that I suspect a very large percentage of people, myself included, rely on to visualize) 'image' in the minds eye is the measure of hyperphantasia. But 'image' is the wrong word because the 'image' we see in our mind is probably more of a rational reconstruction in our mind spurred by some sort of impression that first formed the memory that the image is reconstructed from. Aristotle wrote about this and more in "On Memory and Reminiscence", I am not correctly conveying the idea.

If you could accurately form an image of a realistic face in your mind then barring some sort of motor issue you would I argue by definition be able to draw it on paper by using the image in your mind as a reference (obviously the technical skill of using a pencil to dutifully create lines which entirely match what is attempted might be lacking and it might be a poor picture in a technical sense but I think it would still be recognizable as a realistic face). The difficulty in drawing a realistic face is that you don't actually know what one looks like, or, more accurately, you have the ability to recognize what a realistic face in general should look like (perhaps due to some inbuilt neural circuitry) but you don't have the ability to recall it in all of its detail. Because you can't recall it you can't form that image in your mind. Anyone who can't draw a realistic face doesn't actually know what a realistic face actually looks like, they can only recognize it. I don't think this would be a controversial view among talented artists for instance because many well regarded treatises on the subject of drawing essentially put forward this idea.

I guess what I am trying to say is that your ability to visualize a face is probably not much better or worse than your ability to visualize any other object of similar complexity except that you would be much better at recognizing that the face you visualize isn't very accurate. If you weren't able to recognize that it wasn't accurate you wouldn't have critiqued it and if you did you wouldn't have remembered the critique anyways.

To close by detracting from everything I have just written: You can also draw a very convincing face by memorizing a complex set of rules that doesn't rely at all on visualizing anything so who is to say that isn't the thing that happens when someone draws a realistic face which puts this whole business of visualization into some doubt

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