Aphantasia and Psychedelics
psychedelirium.substack.com
psychedelirium.substack.com
I scored as hypophantastic, but I'm not sure if I'm skewing the results because I draw/paint too. So I'm not sure if I'm triggering some detail processing/recall function. I see nothing, but I know what I should be seeing. For a lot of the examples I could... I don't want to call it "visualise" details, but I could describe in detail what should be there, but its in fact blank. Not sure how relevant this is, but I'm also neuro divergent; some diagnosed: ADHD, severe dyslexia, occasionally migraine + auditory hallucinations, undiagnosed but obviously there is also tinnitus. Dunno if I'm also a bit on the spectrum becau I also need to take at least 2x the dose my friends do, and stuff like amphetamines have _zero_ effect on my headspace
Why? Because two of those drugs are agonists?
I wondered for a long time why everyone else experienced such strong visuals and eventually decided on my own it must be related to aphantasia. It’s nice to find out I might not have been a total crank with that hypothesis :).
So I think it's useful to talk about dosages here.
For example, I won't have OEV's until around 200-250ug of LSD, or 20-22mg 2C-B, or 3.5g mushrooms.
Marijuana gives me the ability to have closed-eye visuals ("mind movies") even in low doses, though I don't use it because it gives me panic attacks.
I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or texture.
But rarely, while lying in bed I get these full vivid pictures. It feels like a whole another visual field. I can't really control it, but these are fully detailed like a painting.
It's dizzying how fast I can imagine these when my mind decides to switch into this mode, and how it can switch from one painting to the next fully detailed picture in a fraction of a second. I normally have to strain hard to hold just a few outlines of simple shapes in my mind, evaporating the moment my focus wavers.
At least with LSD and psilocybin, that’s what visuals are. You don’t hallucinate things out of thin air on either one of those drugs, things morph and shift and wobble and waver and shimmer and so on.
At least in the dosage ranges I have explored, 7g dried mushrooms and 10 ‘hits’ of LSD which was probably at least 500mcg?
During one particularly strong mushroom trip I was seeing geometric patterns on surfaces that were very similar to ‘Navajo Print’ fabrics woven by Native Americans. It was uncanny, and I’m convinced to this day that those patterns were revealed to the indigenous Americans during psilocybin experiences.
https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-bl...
(Presented by Alex Goldman from Reply All)
I recall them mentioning: 1. the ethical challenge of arguing that aphantasia is something that needs “fixed” in the first place 2. The unknowns of what might happen to someone emotionally if they go from nothing to something. This might sound odd, but we know that hyperphantasia can be associated with schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric issues. 3. The implications of downstream cognitive “enhancements” that might result from this.
I have aphantasia, and I do not think I’d want it “fixed”.
My partner has hyperphantasia, and similarly she wouldn’t want it “fixed”.
Reminds me of the quote "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things." - Henri Poincaré. [As opposed to Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing]. If different things can be the same, then their physical form wasn't relevant and you can consider the abstract thing singular.
Although I don't feel like I'm missing out, I read that Nikola Tesla was able to work out how to construct the first A/C motor by constructing it in his mind's eye. That's pretty cool, I'd never have to draw any system diagram again except to transcribe for communication.
> Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery.
> Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers.
Hmm
Like, when I imagine a scene or object in my head, I am not literally seeing it. It's like some vague in-between thing. And that people who claim to have aphantasia just have a higher bar for what it means to "see" something.
Though I'm open to being corrected if there's some concrete experiment that can be performed that shows definitively that some people can not imagine things _at all_.
It would also be more valuable information if some area was damaged that was known to cause the effect.
They are not remotely similar.
It's to the point as we see it's hard to even talk about recall without recalling such words - e.g. "imagination" itself presumes images.
Some observations:
Someone told me to close my eyes and think about "an apple at a table".
Then I was told to open my eyes and tell what color the apple was.
The question didn't make sense to me:
I only thought about about the concept of "an apple on a table". When my eyes are closed it is black. Absolutely black. Blacker than a Norwegian winter night with cloud cover and no moon. There is nothing.
Until then I thought all this talk about seing things was just a metaphor for what I had also done.
But when I talk to others they will often immediately say it was green or red. Because they saw it.
Two extra observations:
Sometimes just before I fall asleep I can sometimes think images of stuff that doesn't exist: think 3d modeling with simple shapes.
And just after waking up I can sometimes manage to see relatively detailed images of actual physical things.
Both these only last for a few seconds to a few minutes.
Does this help?
I'm at least pointing out that I now know personally that there are multiple levels of visualisation, from me just "feeling" what it would mean to rotate a 3d object (it works, I can absolutely determine if it will fit but it is absolutely not visual) up to some close friends of mine that see vivid pictures of faces and can combine them with eyes closed.
For me who cannot see images except what I physically see it certainly is interesting to hear people describe remembering peoples phone numbers as text that they can see (I remember the feeling of myself saying it, not the sound) or memorising my name by mentally putting the image of ne next to their image of their brother who has the same name as me (!)
It really is funny, because I can draw. For example the famous "draw a bike" thing seems weird to me because I can't see myself making any of the mistakes from any of the drawings. Not because I can see a bike, but because I know it.
https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on...
I don't draw impossible bikes. Because I know what bikes are. That is what I mean. Not that I can make nice or even photographically correct images of them.
https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on...
As a result, I have excellent (if I do say so myself) drawings from life, some shockingly good portraits in oil, and also I can reproduce a few cartoon characters (which I’ve practiced extensively) almost perfectly. BUT, ask me to draw my mom from memory, and I can’t do it, like at all. I have, really, no idea what my own mom looks like.
I know if I close my eyes now there is nothing visible.
I also know if I have a good night's sleep and wake up late on Saturday I might be able to see images of things I am working on in the garden or elsewhere.
So I know seing nothing is my default and I know that seing something vividly can be possible.
Under normal circumstances, my imagination is also colorless and is more about spatial layout and shapes. Like an untextured 3D model.
It is helpful to have someone engage, for sure. I have a question for you: if you look at a 3d object that you can only see one side of, can you make inferences about the other side of the object? Can you rotate it in your head? Could you quickly be able to tell whether an object will fit in a particular hole, without actually trying it?
Obviously I cannot know for sure what the other side looks like without seeing it, but I can make a reasonable guess and yes, I can mentally turn around objects in my head to see if they fit.
I also enjoy woodworking and repairs and other activities that force me to think 3D, but I believe it would be much easier if I could think in images.
I think visual imagination is also related to spatial rotation abilities. For example can you imagine yourself in your hometown, then imagine an "animation" as you (from a first-person perspective) fly up vertically, then turn in various directions and sort of feel where the landmarks are in the mind's eye? Or does that sound nonsense to you? Would you agree that being faster at certain tasks (that require a visual scratchpad - e.g. imagining a tabletop and being told what happens e.g. add a triangle on the left, add a square halfway overlapping the triangle etc) indicates that someone has more vivid imagination?
But I do see images while dreaming. It's very distinct from imagining things while awake and unable to see them.
And I have had one waking experience where I saw images as clearly as if I was looking at a photograph while awake, in a dark room, with my eyes closed during meditation. It was very different from when I'm dreaming.
This is not a "language thing". Until the experience mentioned above, I had gone ~40 years with no idea seeing things in your minds eye while awake was a thing at all.
This is what I mean though. What do you mean by "see" exactly, if not imagine? You can imagine something so clearly that you are able to replicate it on paper, yet that is not the minds eye? I also see while dreaming, in a way that is more like my day to day experience, and not at all how I would describe imagining things.
> I saw images as clearly as if I was looking at a photograph while awake
If anything this is more mind's eye clarity than I have ever experienced. My mind's eye is nothing like looking at an actual photograph.
What is imagination if not seeing the thing in your head. Do people think others LITERALLY see an object like photons are hitting their neurons directly?
I see nothing, but I have seen once, and when I did, I did "literally" see an object as clear as if I was looking straight at it, or to be more precisely a I saw a whole scene.
But when I "imagine" something, there is unambiguously no visual whatsoever. I can't see lines, colors, points. Nothing, any more than if there was a wall between me and an object I have never seen.
But that doesn't mean I don't have knowledge of it.
> I also see while dreaming, in a way that is more like my day to day experience, and not at all how I would describe imagining things.
Then how would you describe imagining things? Because if you don't see something when imagining it while awake, then that sounds like aphantasia.
> If anything this is more mind's eye clarity than I have ever experienced. My mind's eye is nothing like looking at an actual photograph.
And yet what I experienced isn't even near the high end of reported experiences of people.
People who don't have aphantasia do report "actually seeing" things with various degrees of fidelity, in some (less common) cases clearly enough to "overlay" on objects with their eyes open.
When I had my experience I did "actually see things". Yes, I know they weren't there, but it looked as if they were, in high resolution, full colour, with motion.
EDIT: Also, people "imagine" things with other senses or without too, and people have or don't have inner monologues, or dialogues, in their own voice, or separate voices - the breadth of inner life is very significant.
For my part, I don't recall sounds either, but I "reproduce them" in inner monologue in my own voice roughly in proportion to my ability to reproduce them out loud, but others do recall sounds as they heard them, reporting various degrees of fidelity. The same for smells. Most assumptions about how people's internal life "must" be tends to fall apart once you ask enough people.
E.g. There are writers I know with no internal monologue or dialogue. I know others for whom writing is like listening in to characters acting out scenes and just transcribing it. In some cases watching them act out scenes and just describing them.
I still do have visual dreams though they are rare, I can no longer conjure any sense of an object while awake. I have a couple images from before this (my mother's face before she died) that I can kind of almost see, idk, or I have the feeling like I'm seeing them.
Call it whatever you like, maybe there is a natural distribution, I always thought of it as the cost I paid to stay alive, my own personal brain damage even though my surgeries were all cardiovascular.
On the other hand, you have a special claim to plausibility because of the surgery. Oh wait cardiovascular surgery? So, are we saying anaesthetic side effects? Or brain damage from reduced blood flow maybe.
I'll note that a lot of people's impressions and feelings about ... what it's like to be alive, generally ... undergo a radical transformation at about age 13, because hormones.
Is there any other way to get information on what people see internally?
The idea that great artists, for example, don't have dramatically different visualization than people who report not seeing sharp images or images at all seems like the theory in need of proof.
You can't just say the evidence is subjective so you're right. The evidence only ever could be subjective.
I still have people tell me I must be faking my colorblindness, or just treat me like I'm blind. Normally teenagers, theory of mind is tough at that age.
I'm not sure nice or just a smidge of humility/uncertainty in expressing doubt.
Propagation of information pre-internet was so low people just couldn't easily triangulation on some of these things.
Fwiw I generally agree with you, my wife brought this up to me just in the last few years and I was like, oh I just thought this happened to everyone around 13 like a reverse Hook (the movie) thing.
But I can't paint or draw worth a damn sense then and she can freehand paint hyper realistic pictures. I don't see how she could do that without the imagination version of a stencil.
After I found out it wasn't a normal part of puberty I just figured it was brain damage acquired during the surgeries.
Also, from what I understand fMRI shows enough of a difference I'm inclined to believe the other people who say they were born that way.
I'm looking at the brain scans in the article now. It's good that it's got 'em. Do they really mean what they're presented as meaning? It shows that some people, when told to imagine things, activate a bunch of brain regions. Some of those are also involved in actual looking, though not with clear purposes. Then there's also areas to do with memory and salience. I'll say that the people in this group are having a more emotional experience when they imagine. They give more of a shit, they pay more attention. I'm not sure that this qualifies as a skill, or an ability, or "seeing". But heck, what's seeing anyway?
For my part, while I'm not a great artist by any means, there was absolutely a time where I was well above average at drawing, despite aphantasia.
People struggle to draw things that are right in front of them - being able to see what you draw is not inherently a huge asset.
Obviously because each person is different a/b tests are somewhat impossible for qualia issues. All I have is access to my pre/post expierence. It seems aphantasia can be intrinsic or emergent and since mine developed potentially through damage or re-wiring during surgery I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest that the pathways and compensations are different or non-existent for my case but not for others.
By definition, this will always be the case until we have a deep enough understanding of the brain to diagnostically assess this.
What I can assure you is that I cannot see/imagine with my mind, and that many other aspects of my life make sense given this limitation, e.g. when people describe their experience of reading books and mental world building, it’s entirely foreign to me. Or when my brother describes his ability to create mind palaces, manipulate visual concepts mentally as if he were using CAD software, etc. it seems preposterous.
But I have to take his word that it’s something he can actually do. Such is the nature of this subject.
Until I discovered the concept of aphantasia in my early 30s, I genuinely thought that people’s descriptions of “visualization” were just a figure of speech. It was mind blowing to learn that people actually see anything more than nothing at all, and a lifetime of experiences and confusion about what other people described about theirs suddenly made sense.
I have similar feelings about those who claim to have an internal monologue or voice etc. It's all so alien to me. Outside of dreams or hynagogia, my "self" and internal experience is non-verbal, non-visual, and mostly lacking any other sensory qualia.
If "me" is rooted in any perceptual qualia, I think and experience a vague mixture of a spatial awareness, proprioception, topology, and emotion. I can barely summon sound memories like music, and this could include lyrics. This recall is very faintly rooted in auditory qualia. Like the ghost of an echo down a distance corridor. Moreso, I can "feel" such music memory as a hint of proprioception, i.e. the after-thump of bass in my body or the after-tingle of a cymbal in my ear. But it utterly lacks the presence and richness of real listening.
I can think about words and phrases I've either heard or read, or try to arrange some words to write or speak later. But they're fleeting concepts, neither visual nor auditory in quality. They're not like the sound or music memory above. They're also not visuals of typography. In fact, I've more than once had words in my lexicon that I could neither pronounce nor reliably spell. I could readily match them to parsed words when reading, but would be unable to express them.
Finally, I have a relative with schizophrenia. I've witnessed how she behaves when hallucinating and/or having delusions. She often seems to experience her thoughts as if being talked to over her shoulder, or can manifest a fear into seeing dangerous threats. Her experience seems a kind of polar opposite to mine.
I wonder how it is to be somewhere in the middle of this range. It must be different from hers, to be useful but not schizoid. And it also seems like it must be a lot more vivid and accessible than my usual experience.
For my part, I have experienced both aphantasia - for my entire life - and seeing images clearly. Once, during meditation. No drugs involved. No health issues. Not during puberty.
The two are not remotely alike.
I also see images regularly while dreaming. That is different from both experiences.
I'm digging around in the Wikipedia article on "burden of proof", quick, head me off at the pass before I quote it.
Heh, it mentions "burden tennis". It all devolves to who's got the status quo on their side and who's making the extraordinary claim, or not. I can see why fistfights are a popular way to resolve disagreements.
I personally found out about my aphantasia when reading an article in Scientific American titled “When the Mind’s Eye is Blind”. A whole lifetime of experiences clicked into place.
So it’s not surprising that there would be an outpouring of new discoveries after more people learn of the concept.
Learning about aphantasia is how I learned people experience anything other than nothing visually in their mind’s eye.
I always wondered why people would talk metaphorically (because I assumed they must do, because clearly you don't see things that aren't there other than while dreaming... or so I thought) about images of people they knew fading, or forgetting what they looked like.
And then suddenly I was told it wasn't metaphorical.
And then a few years later I had my one experience of seeing vivid imagery outside of a dream.
It also keeps coming up because people get all weirded out at the thought that this is a thing, and start insisting the distinction isn't real.
But having experienced both: Imagining things without visuals and with is nothing alike.
And I knew that before the experience I mentioned too, because images while dreaming is also wildly different from how I imagine things while awake.
I’m quite convinced it’s a real distinction. I have nearly zero visualization. The main thing for me is that I may get a fleeting glimpse of part of an image if I focus, but it evaporates instantly. I can’t hold it for any amount of time whatsoever.
On the other hand, I have very strong internal audio. I can play back music I haven’t heard for years or even decades. I hear the different instruments come in, the timbres, etc. It’s obviously not the same as music hitting my eardrums, but it is full, detailed audio which I can pause at will, rewind and pick apart. I’m told there are people that can’t hear any sound in their heads at all...
It's just another way for attention seekers to feel special.
Similarly I don't hear sounds that are not produced by difference in air pressure hitting my ear drums. Again, that would be an hallucination. But I can certainly imagine sounds, again in great detail, including musical melodies and different instrument timbres.
Then, I get to the part about dreaming. I don't dream often, which also seems like a sign that I have it. That said, on some of my dreams, all sensations feel very real. Images, sounds, conversations, faces, colours, emotions... Those are hallucinations for all practical purposes though.
Except the fact that I have those vivid dreams seems to say I don't have aphantasia.
Not that it will make a lot of difference in my life, but where does that leave me? :D
That's what I always assumed from reading about it in the past, where it was mostly "I can't imagine things in my mind". Well, I can certainly imagine things.
Now, the guide in the top comment talks about actually seeing things. I don't. As in, really not at all, for any interpretation of "seeing" I can think of.
I wouldn't even describe it as fuzzy - it's just not an image at all, it's more abstract thought and abstract perception.
Hence my confusion.
If you said that to me, I would imagine the exterior of my house. But one of the things I am trying to work out is whether my definition of "imagine" is different. I would think of, and sort of see different details of the house at different times. Sort of like picturing one part at a time, but perhaps more like remembering than picturing. I know the overall layout, but I don't know if I literally "see" it.
I've tried a few times to actually _see_ something in my mind, and there have been moments, usually when I'm close to falling asleep, where I have actually seen something vividly. So much more vividly than usual, that I remember thinking that if this is what other people can do easily, then sketching must be far easier than for me - you'd just copying down what you see in your head!
Edit: I remember thinking the illustration on the Wikipedia page might be a good way to think of it. I picture things with less vividness/detail, so I'm not sure whether I really see them.
Ironically, the Wikipedia image is not loading for me right now, so I can't see that either :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
Yeah that's where I'm at as well. I can answer yes to that question but I'm not sure my answer means what GP might interpret from it.
> Sort of like picturing one part at a time, but perhaps more like remembering than picturing. I know the overall layout, but I don't know if I literally "see" it.
Similar here, though in my case I wouldn't necessarily call it "remembering". I can "picture" a completely made up house and it will "appear" similarly in my mind.
> there have been moments, usually when I'm close to falling asleep, where I have actually seen something vividly
Same, or during actual dreams.
> I remember thinking the illustration on the Wikipedia page might be a good way to think of it.
If you mean the one with the apple inside the heads, it doesn't help me at all. I can't relate to any of the pictures in it. :D
I think by default I imagine things the same way as you - not images, not words, but just knowing how something is. I think perhaps that is similar to what I called remembering. When I think of something that way, I can think of, for example, a whole house. But I don't see anything.
But, if I try to picture something instead, as an actual image, I can actually picture smaller specifics parts of something. I think when I do that I am actually doing what people are talking about when they say they are picturing something, or seeing something in their mind's eye. All I get then is like an outline, or faded details, and I can only do small details at a time. Between a 3 and 4 in the Wikipedia representation of aphantasia. It sounds to me like you aren't able to switch to seeing something at all.
A while ago, after reading about someone curing their aphantasia, I thought about this a lot, and I think at the time I suddenly remembered something that made me think I could picture things clearly when I was a child. I also know that I see things when I dream, so I decided I should be able to get the ability back.
I used to try quite often to picture things in my mind, and would do some of the tricks like having eyes open a crack, and just waiting to recognise things in the patterns on my eyelids, etc. Occasionally I would suddenly see something as if it were really there. Like a 2 on the scale. The one thing I remember now is that I saw an entire chair, well enough that I could have sketched it. Have you tried often, or I guess practiced?
Edit: I tried some of the things this person described. They took a Better Living Through Chemistry approach that I didn't want to try though, so I skipped all drugs/chemicals/teas:
https://old.reddit.com/r/CureAphantasia/comments/vrih14/how_...
Shane Williams (an aphant) hosts a podcast where he interviews people using a set of questions designed to probe their inner sensory world. From it I’ve learned, for example, that some people can taste food when reading a menu, or have a conversation with a deceased loved one and actually hear their voice. One of his prompts is whether guests can place themselves inside a photo of a carnival (which he provides); many say they can smell the cotton candy or hear the chatter of the crowd.
It’s striking how little we really know about the variety of inner sensory experiences: Discovering Your Mind – Aphantasia and Beyond https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-your-mind-...
A favorite research paper compares brain activity in identical twin sisters, only one of whom is aphantasic: The Neural Underpinnings of Aphantasia: A Case Study of Identical Twins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.23.614521v2
I've also once seen super-vivid (far higher fidelity than dreaming) images, while lucid during meditation, and able to "look around", so I don't think we can't (or at least not universally so) - but I've not managed to find a way back to that experience even years later.
But I do occasionally have a vivid dream, and though I can't be certain I could swear that I remember more vivid dreams as a child/early adolescent. But by the time I was entering college I rarely remember my dreams and the ones I do remember are like those I described above with little visualization.
It's really interesting to hear about how others perceive these sensory experiences.
Psychedelics, like mushrooms, do nothing for me. Mushrooms, I've never had a high better than say a light buzz from alcohol, generally nothing. I never get the wavvy or beer goggles from alcohol. I could be absolutely smashed, drink a micky in a couple hours and still pass a field sobriety test; and im a cheap drunk. THC doesnt do much of anything. Opiates take alot; any amount of morphine and nothing. Still feel the pain. One time I had Dilaudid. That helped with the surgical pain maybe 50%; from intolerable to tolerable. Nothing though, no hallucinations or anything. Maybe at some peak I was feeling a wierd flush or wave feeling in my body but nothing significant.
Dreaming feel reminiscent to what an Audiobook feels like when thinking about the dream after waking up.
for me, as long as my consciousness is still in control, i have no closed-eye visuals akin to what others see. the more i lose control/consciousness, the more visuals i get but only over a certain (high) threshold.
dmt is the only substance that consistently gives me visuals but only at close to breakthrough dosages where i effectively lose consiousness. and they are never "things", they are always the known patterns, ie just raw signals and nothing meaningful - but my mind interprets them in whatever it thinks sensible.
otherwise i hallucinate like i dream or think - in an abstract, non visual way, the only thing i "see" are white flashes in nothingness
If you ask me to imagine a red apple, i can, but i have the image somewhere other than my actual vision... If i close my eyes I can't manipulate that space to show the apple.
I have no idea if the technique you linked works, but anyone stumbling across this should be aware that it has very real and potentially serious risks - if rubbing them at all increases your odds of keratoconus, just think what 10min/day for months will do.
I haven't been working on this quite as much recently since there seems to be a connection with the meditation causing an ocular migraine with aura.
On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall vivid (at least to me) images of the past. For example, I can still picture a scene of me and my dad picking apples in my grandparents' garden years ago, just after my grandmother passed away. I recall the cold November weather, the grey sky, the felled apples laying on the ground, some rotten. I can still remember what I was wearing that day. Similarly, I do dream a lot, most often accompanied with clear images of places and people, fictional or not. Even though I am utterly incapable of drawing these memories and dreams (I tried), I would still qualify these things as "image", and I can't fathom them being any clearer.
Am I just misunderstanding the exercise or is there something here?
_Close your eyes and ask someone else to read the instructions for you. If you really want to take it stop reading here._
.
.
.
Imagine a room with a table in it. Someone comes in, puts a ball on the table and the ball falls down from the table.
- What age was the person that came in?
- What hairstyle did they have?
- What was that person wearing?
- How big was the table? Describe how it looked like.
- What color was the ball?
... and similar questions.
In my experience, people with aphantasia will say "I don't know" or "I didn't pay attention" to almost all of these questions. For me personally, everything is "blank." There was no ball to see there, and the person did not have a face. I just experience "feelings" or "sensations" of the scenario, like in the matrix movie. At most some wire frames. Most other people would say, for example, there was a big brown table with metallic legs in the middle of the room, and the person that came in had a blue T-shirt.
I would only take that seriously from thoughful, detail-oriented, intelligent people who have demonstrated critical introspection abilities before. Otherwise I'd assume they are making it up post-hoc. People often swear up and down in witness testimonies about what they saw and it just turns out to be complete post-hoc fabrication of their mind, even if it seems true to them. Similarly I think they post-hoc think it was a big brown table but this is like a language model completing the sentence.
It's been shown how in split brain patients the language center of the brain can make up totally unsupported justifications for actions that "explain" its experience, fully unrelated to what actually happened.
You are right, in that this test might not live up to the highest of standards. But then there are variations in the details. For example one of my friends who happened to be a soccer player said more details about the ball. Other people described familiar objects such as their own kitchen table. You can also tell if someone is starting to think about the answers vs. when they are recalling from memory.
Overall, this method is often (IMO) a better indicator than the typical "apple test" as the context is more natural. Anecdotally the difference between the aphantasia group (incl. those who didn't know this condition existed) and the average response is just too large to ignore.
Perception and experience are very hard to describe. We constantly automatically fill in things that weren't observed or explicitly imagined. It requires conscious effort to notice how foveation and saccades work, the blind spot, the less vivid color perception the further we are from the center etc.
People will claim a lot of things but if there is no external "ground truth" to test against, people tend to overclaim. They will tell you they can imagine a penny or the apple logo or whatever it is, but then fail these objective tests.
If you can pass or fail the aphantasia test simply by saying words that are up to introspection, it won't be a useful test. Most people under most circumstances simply say what their concept of a normal person is supposed to say.
There is. I think the definition is still being worked on. Here is an overview, but I don't see your particular case: https://aphantasia.com/article/science/aphantasia-definition...
Since you can recall scenes you saw, it might not be Aphantasia. Not being able to create visuals of random stuff might be called differently.