Hacker News Reader

Do you have auditory imagination?

I am asking because I was struggling with memory techniques like memory palaces. Turned later out I'm a visual aphantast, but I can imagine songs, chords, sounds.

Maybe it's just the way you function, and you just need to use other strategies?

View on HN

I think of my memory as semantic rather than visual or auditory. I’m not sure how to explain it. No, I usually can’t play music in my head. I can imagine myself signing it though.

I don’t have bad memory, it’s specifically the task of reproducing the exact choice and order of words that trips me up.

This sounds pretty close to how my brain processes things. I too have aphantasia, so imagination/visualization is conceptual/non-visual. The way sound plays in my head is via imaginary humming or singing by me, it never sounds as if coming from some external source. I do get rare earworms, but again, it's more of a realization that I've been humming a song for a while.

No issues with memorization, however. Brains are weird.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com