I'm... halfway. When I try, I can generate images, but I only do so occasionally. Most of the time, my thinking is exactly like the author describes. Facts, ideas, connections, hunches, intuitions, etc. The images are kinda like a serialization of this, no more: they have exactly the data I put into them, and not really any more "detail".
But what really blew my mind was when I realized that people think with words. Its always "have an idea, then attempt to serialize it into some approximation in the form of linear sentence or words". I mean, I can chose to speak a sentence in my head, but it is strange and artificial. But from what I hear from others, apparently people actually think about things with words, and which words they have both enable and limit their thinking. I still don't exactly know how that works, but apparently its common?
I can imagine an image in my head (sort of) but I can't not think in words. It's hard for me to even understand what people mean when they say they are thinking but they don't have an internal monologue going on in their head. Brains are weird.
> But from what I hear from others, apparently people actually think about things with words, and which words they have both enable and limit their thinking. I still don't exactly know how that works, but apparently its common?
This isn't common at all, but the belief that it's happening is common.
What's actually happening is that people's thoughts automatically trigger language production, and they hear the words, the output of that process, in their head. But the thought comes first and the mental words are a side effect. Imagine your brain having an internal narrator who constantly reads your thoughts and shouts them out as formed sentences.
I'm not blind, but I think like you do. My thoughts aren't linear and I feel that words only appear when they are already leaving my mouth or the tips of my fingers.
I can formulate sentences in my mind, but it feels really slow and cumbersome.
> If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves.
Yes, with great detail.
> If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing.
Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!)
> And mom’s face? Of course.
Not at all!
I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind.
My experience with imagining faces: I get the overall head shape, hair... everything, but the features are blurry, wobbly, and kind of switch nonstop, like my imagined faces were made of constantly changing cutouts of a multitude of faces. It's disorienting.
I (think I) don't have any trouble recognizing people's faces. Sometimes I even remember strangers who I come across occasionally on my city... But I still struggle remembering/imagining the most familiar people around me.
Actually I think there's a reason for this. I took a cognitive science class once where our professor said that many believe that the portion of the brain responsible for recognizing faces is separate from the portion that does all other visual recognition. Perhaps that's why people have a hard time remembering what a face looks like. It's also why some people can lose their ability to recognize faces but can still recognize all other objects.
Same deal, although my visualization ability is weaker than most in general I think, faces are definitely the hardest.
For me the feeling is very similar to having a word just on the "tip of your tongue", where you know the word you want, you can feel it, its meaning, etc. You know you'd recognize it instantly if you heard (saw) it, but you can't quite bring it up.
Sometimes I can't even tell if I actually am visualizing a face or not, because it's like for a split second I feel like I can almost see it, but then when I focus on it, it's gone. And other times I know I have seen people's faces in my mind, but it's generally spontaneous, not when I actively try to pull one up. Kind of like seeing something in your peripheral vision, but not being able to focus on it.
I am the same with faces, but I have the same problem with everything I imagine. It's as though I can imagine things, but only in the same way you can look at a photo for 1/5th of a second. You get the general concept but no details.
I doubt I am special in this regard, but perhaps just on the lower end of the spectrum for normal. I cannot draw to save my life because I can't usefully imagine it in my head before it goes on paper.
I don't have a problem picturing faces, but it's not something I do by default. If you consider imagining something as setting up a camera shot on a scene, I usually find that faces are out of frame or in the background. Actually imagine the face is a more conscious action.
I can definitely relate! Faces and text just blur and morph in strange ways but all other characteristics are fine. I've always assumed (like Blake in the article) this was normal!
It's not uncommon, I don't think. A lot of people have trouble with faces (in various ways, and to various extents) despite having otherwise "normal" visual processing and memory.
I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions.
About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.
I'm so much the other way that it's scary, because it's a
vulnerability, one I didn't know about until it happened.
Musical/artistic family, multi-talented all around me. I'd keep my suburban-bicycled paper-route from getting boring by playing back in my head music I'd heard and liked. Stumbled into hardware, then software, as something I could do and do well and get paid to do it. Whatever it was I was doing -- songwriting, drawing, carving, circuitry, code -- I visualized/audialized it first, working it out on the sketchpad viewscreen of my mind before committing the work to physical fact.
And then I found out how easily the whole thing could be shut down. Stressed-out bowstring-taut -- pending divorce,
single-parenting, work stresses -- and it was enough to let
staph take hold, in my elbow of all places -- and suddenly the ibuprofen didn't keep the fevers down and my visualization got fevered and dissolved away and I couldn't code, couldn't create, because I couldn't visualize, until the antibiotics finished killing off the infection.
Yes, although I don't think I was able to "see" things in my head before or after. I got West Nile Virus about 10 years ago, and was physically out-of-commission for most of a year. The particularly disturbing part was that even after I recovered physically, it took several more years before I recovered my mental ability well enough to reason about anything complex -- like math, or code. I just couldn't follow equations that once made sense.
Now after a decade, I think I'm back to about 80-90% of peak. I don't know if the small decline is residual from the West Nile, or to be expected with normal aging from 35 to 45. The experience drove home how little we understand the brain, or viruses. Consider how primitive our understanding of medicine was 100 years ago. I think it's likely that 100 years forward they'll look back at now with similar disdain: "They didn't understand anything --- they just let viruses run their course and do their damage!"
There are a lot of basic assumptions about thought that don't apply to everybody.
My wife, for example, can't process "left" and "right" without great effort.
She's intelligent and is a gifted artist in a variety of mediums, and is not dyslexic in the least. But if you tell her to "turn right" in a car it's very confusing for her to translate that into which direction she should take.
Even more confusingly, she's a very good navigator, much better than I! I process "left" and "right" like a "normal" person and yet I'm legendarily bad at finding my way while driving.
I've tried to get her to explain the left/right difficulty and it's hard for her to put into words, because of course how can you explain how your brain doesn't work? The most she's been able to say about it is that she understands what her "left arm" or "left foot" is but can't translate that to what my "left" is, or vice-versa.
Anybody else ever heard of or experienced anything like this?
I would be curious to see how the HN community scores on this aphantasia survey embedded in the BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054. Perhaps there's a connection between programmers and this condition. Will you take it and report your score?
The survey is oversimplified, obviously, but it was devised by the Exeter neurologists who are studying this. I got the lowest score (8/40) since none of the questions make sense to me (no image on any of them).
I said vague and dim for most of them, but it feels like fleeting glimpses of bits more than anything else. I can't really imagine coloured objects, though I sort of label an object as coloured. Geometric arrangements are easy to imagine but I don't have a real picture. I have no problems imagining sound, music or voices. I'm not sure if I dream in pictures and rarely remember dreams. (I work in science)
Poses, colors, and movements of people is very shaky, but I can do landscapes OK. But something about the structure of the questions bothers me... It seems like they are implying that I am observing the image, rather then generating it. Like, "how clearly can you see ____?" means I focus a bit and add it to the image, until I can see it better, but very little of the details asked about pop up unless I think about them, take the information asked for, and intentionally integrate it into the image.
31/40, but when I'm asked to visualize something I don't immediately conjure up a detailed picture, it's more like a cursor going over a scene and adding details as needed.
For instance, until I was asked to "Rate how vivid the colours of that person's clothes look in your mind?", I hadn't even imagined his clothes being ANY color. Once I decided that he wore a green sweater, I could "experience" the green color vividly.
I heard the story of the Exeter research on NPR while driving back from the airport at night last year at it floored me! I never realized that other people could actually picture images in their minds. I also thought this was entirely metaphorical. I wrote to the researchers back then to be included in further research.
I'm a computer engineer.
Anyone know if there a community group of people with aphantasia?
I got 21 out of 40. Although it was strange - imagining a person was really hard, but imagining a sunrise / clouds / thunderstorm seemed really easy.
Even when the question was, "can you imagine their clothes" and the guy I was thinking of is well known for his, er, "drastic", clothes choices I couldn't do it. Much to my own surprise.
I get 30/40. I have very good visualisation of places and landscapes but have poor visualisation of people's face (especially relatives, it's much easier to recall the face of celebrities or people that are unknown to me or to recall imaginary people from books).
I'm also good at visualizing writing. When I was a student, during tests, I would see in my mind's eyes the place on my notes or in the book related to the question.
To go to sleep, I quickly imagine a lot of beautiful landscapes repeatedly, spending maybe a few seconds in each landscapes.
When I remember a book, I usually remember how I pictured the scenes of the book. Even 12 years after reading the dune books, I can remember the gom-jabbar pressing on Paul's neck, I can remember Alia's tapping her finger with the same rhythm as the baron Harkonnen. I can remember Siona running from the wolves.
I took the test and apparently I fall into the lowest five percent for richness of mental imagery.
I recall being frustrated by exhortations to "close [my] eyes and imagine" things as a child, as if I was being asked to do something evidently impossible.
And I always assumed that the counting sheep thing was mostly about the counting and that nobody could actually see sheep when they did it. Do people really see sheep?
Notwithstanding my apparently poorly functioning mind's eye, I've never had any problem with spatial reasoning, and have scored +2sd in tests with a spatial ability component. I find myself able to "feel" the forms in a way that seems to have nothing to do with vision.
Surprised no one's linked this yet: SSC's "what universal human experiences are you missing out on without realizing it", which describes this phenomenon in particular:
Basically, there are a lot of cases where people assume something is part of everyone's internal experience but which can be refuted with detailed, literal comparisons of your first person accounts.
For me, it was alcohol. I have never actually liked it, in the sense of "enjoying the sensation of drinking it". The best drinks to me are merely "bearable". I always assumed everyone was pretending as some excuse to get drunk.
My wife has multiple sclerosis. Aphantasia is one of the complications she's experiencing. Without being able to visualize she's had to resort to using a notepad and paper to write everything down. She's always been creative and it's been very hard on her to come down with this.
I just realized that when I imagine things they are rather sketchy. For example, when I imaging a beach, it is very abstract. When I try to describe what present on it, I do not use an object from the picture, I first remember what could present on the beach like a left towel and then sort-of add it to the mental image.
In school I also had troubles with drawing. I could draw regular shapes like cubes, spheres or beams, but drawing an animal was a nightmare.
A probably related thing is that I do not get why people drink. I do it occasionally for a social aspect, but I do not remember that I ever experienced being more relaxed from it or having any special fun. I just feel more and more intoxicated :(
As a child, my dad had the "Mega Memory" tapes around the house and I remember listening to them. Very early on in the lessons, the instructor talks about using basic association because we "think in pictures." As an example, he noted that if he said the word elephant, people picture an elephant, not the word "e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t." I must have been eight or nine at the time and remember being terribly confused because I couldn't really picture of an elephant in my head. I suspect I do have aphantasia to a certain degree.
Unlike the author, I do dream visually (in fact, I tend to have very vivid dreams; the most vivid ones are difficult to separate from reality, even if the subject matter is something fantastic like being part of an interstellar military or something). If I'm in a state between waking and sleeping I actually do have much more of a mind's eye, but when I'm fully awake I don't have pictures in my head...but I remember what it's like to visualize things mentally because of my dreams.
I have at least something of a "mind's ear" in that I can hear music in my head (the detail is usually not as rich; it's often just the melody with lyrics). Additionally, I have a very good memory for song lyrics and when I listen to music the concept of tuning out or not being extremely aware of the lyrics is something that friends I have described but that I rarely experience. I can usually only tune out lyrics in music if it's a song that I'm already very familiar with.
One aspect that I find interesting is that although I can't really picture places I still have spatial awareness in my mental concept of them. For example, if I remember one of the houses we lived in as a child I can "place" various objects in and around the house in their correct spatial relationships without picturing the objects themselves. Do other people with aphantasia also have this experience?
My experience is closer to yours than to the author of the original post.
1) I have a phonological loop and can easily imagine music.
2) My visuospatial sketchpad (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddeley%27s_model_of_working_...) is almost entirely spatial. I don't know the color of the floor in my kitchen, unless I paid attention to it specifically and verbally in the past. But I can use memory palace successfully.
3) I wonder if for me it's just an undeveloped habit which could be improved: I have dreams with pictures and colors once a few months, and sometimes I see pictures when I'm half asleep, but it's really hard to put myself into that state intentionally.
Notably, ~gwillen there pointed out Francis Galton's 1880 study of the matter – where he started with the idea that mental imagery was a hoax, as he himself did not experience it. His surveys convinced him that it was instead common, and that only ~3% of people lack it entirely – very close to the 2% estimate Ross passes along from a 2009 study.
So: still surprising people, but known for quite a while.
As someone without a mind's eye it's hard to imagine how much this "visualization" resembles normal vision. I remember from reading up on this earlier that some people can even superimpose things on an empty sheet of paper, or in the air. That would almost seem like a hallucination to me.
Key quote from the article IMO: "I thought “counting sheep” was a metaphor." I've always thought the same way about daydreaming, only a few years ago did I realize it's actually something more precise than just 'not paying attention'.
Normal vision is your display, "mind's eye" is offscreen rendering/renderbuffer(s). Length, resolution, color depth, scene complexity varies by person. Not a part of your normal vision, just a readable/writable visual information in your brain. Can be overlaid into real world with some effort sometimes.
This topic is fascinating, what else some people have that others don't.
I can definitely visualise things in my head, but it takes effort to resolve things into clearer detail. It's more hazy and abstract than normal vision. I've never really thought about it until now. I would be fascinated to know if other people have a mind's eye on par with regular vision.
The resemblance is no coincidence. The difference between the mind's eye and hallucination is awareness and control. Pathology is the experience of having a normally functional system backfire against you in some way.
> I do have the ‘milk voice’—that flat, inner monologue that has no texture or sound
Sorry to tell you this, but my inner monologue does have texture and sound :P It sounds pretty close to my voice (or how I imagine my voice, I guess) and my inflections when speaking (even across languages). Even when I read other people's writings, I kinda hear myself in my mind.
> However, most of my friends and family describe what they “hear” as music—not as vivid as the real thing, to be sure, and not as many instruments—but “music” nonetheless.
That reminds me of an anecdote with my older brother: I was very young and I remember telling him I could hear music in my mind when I wanted to, just like if I pressed PLAY on a cassette player. He looked at me like I was crazy (note to self: test if he's aphantasic).
I still can, and (I think) I can reproduce it in high polyphonic detail (even details I don't consciously remember!) I perceive my aural imagination (aurination? audination?) as vivid as the real thing (though real sound kind of "overpowers" my imagination, like my imagination was playing through earphones close to my ears, not quite plugged in, but inside my head!) It's much clearer than my visual imagination, which is more blurry and fleeting.
I think my visual imagination is quite detailed (I am a graphic designer) but I assume my aural imagination is pretty average. I can usually only imagine very basic melodies. However on many occasions, in the half sleep before waking, I have been able to aurally imagine multi layered music at a very detailed level, and it somewhat carries over for a few minutes after fully waking. I wish there was a way to tap into this during the day.
I've sort of developed something similar to the inner "milk voice" Blake describes in these last few years, spurred on (I think) by a bit of research into mindfulness.
One tenet? concept? component? of mindfulness is observing without judging, being fully in the moment and fully experiencing it.
The goal of (the various flavors of) mindfulness isn't to eschew emotion and become a Vulcan or anything. Emotions are great! The goal is to more fully experience our lives, including our emotions, by also being mindful observers of them...
The last chapter in Oliver Sacks' book "The Mind's Eye" discusses this phenomenon and how people who became blind adapted and compensated. Highly recommend it. He suggests a phenomenon like this is primarily biologically predetermined.
Wow .. I am able to visualize things, but the part of this where he describes the work that it takes to 'chit-chat' is exactly my experience. Right after we were married I had nearly that exact conversation with my wife. She would ask 'how was your day?' and I would be unable to answer. When she pressed, thinking that I was just grumpy or worse that I was withholding something, I would become frustrated, without really knowing why, and attempt to come up with something to tell her - but it was very much just a list of bullet points from the day. I was finally able to realize for myself and then communicate to her how incredibly difficult it is for me to both remember and then come up with an explanation for what I did (or even worse - 'how I'm feeling') today. It's gotten a little bit easier through practice, and she is much more understanding now. It's comforting to hear that experience from someone else. Chat-chat is absolutely abhorrent to me - I feel entirely incapable of participating in it. He quips about the social oddness of leaving a party for two hours to think up an answer to a simple friendly question - yup, I've done that.
I'm also aphantasic and the fun part of reading this was the differences between our internal experiences. I have a great sense of direction and I love navigating and exploring new places.
I don't really have a mind's ear, either, just the "milk voice" as he calls it, although when I started studying Chinese and learning the tones, I had this crazy experience where I heard a melody in my head for the first time. Now I'd say I have something like a speaker that sometimes plays music, but I can't really control it. (Great, now I can get music stuck in my head.)
I have a similar experience with episodic memory, which is strange, because generally I have a great memory. In high school, I could read a chapter of a book and remember it word for word the next day (but my memory was not photographic!) I've always been deeply unsentimental and, instead of being sad about it, my attitude has always been "destroy the past to create the future."
Not only can I imagine the beach, but sometimes I don't snap out of it until an hour (or more) later. At this point I have imagined an entire plot with myself as the main character and multiple other characters. The "movie" starts off at the imagined beach, including the bright sun making me squint, the feel of the sand under my feet, the smell of the salt water, etc. Next thing I know an hour (or more) has passed by. In this time I have befriended my fellow imaginary beach goers and joined them in defending the beach from a zombie invasion.
I had a similar experience to the author. Except that it was when I learned that not everyone experiences these intense fantasies. I experience a psychological concept known as Maladaptive Daydreaming. I find it difficult, and at times impossible, to stop visualizing through my minds eye.
[+] [-] kazagistar|10 years ago|reply
But what really blew my mind was when I realized that people think with words. Its always "have an idea, then attempt to serialize it into some approximation in the form of linear sentence or words". I mean, I can chose to speak a sentence in my head, but it is strange and artificial. But from what I hear from others, apparently people actually think about things with words, and which words they have both enable and limit their thinking. I still don't exactly know how that works, but apparently its common?
[+] [-] Orthanc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|10 years ago|reply
This isn't common at all, but the belief that it's happening is common.
What's actually happening is that people's thoughts automatically trigger language production, and they hear the words, the output of that process, in their head. But the thought comes first and the mental words are a side effect. Imagine your brain having an internal narrator who constantly reads your thoughts and shouts them out as formed sentences.
[+] [-] _98fj|10 years ago|reply
I can formulate sentences in my mind, but it feels really slow and cumbersome.
[+] [-] taralx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaoD|10 years ago|reply
Yes, with great detail.
> If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing.
Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!)
> And mom’s face? Of course.
Not at all!
I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind.
My experience with imagining faces: I get the overall head shape, hair... everything, but the features are blurry, wobbly, and kind of switch nonstop, like my imagined faces were made of constantly changing cutouts of a multitude of faces. It's disorienting.
I (think I) don't have any trouble recognizing people's faces. Sometimes I even remember strangers who I come across occasionally on my city... But I still struggle remembering/imagining the most familiar people around me.
Am I alone in this?
[+] [-] Grambo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkurz|10 years ago|reply
http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff_intro.php
There's lots more information about Face Blindness (prosopagnosia) on the http://faceblind.org site.
[+] [-] tempestn|10 years ago|reply
For me the feeling is very similar to having a word just on the "tip of your tongue", where you know the word you want, you can feel it, its meaning, etc. You know you'd recognize it instantly if you heard (saw) it, but you can't quite bring it up.
Sometimes I can't even tell if I actually am visualizing a face or not, because it's like for a split second I feel like I can almost see it, but then when I focus on it, it's gone. And other times I know I have seen people's faces in my mind, but it's generally spontaneous, not when I actively try to pull one up. Kind of like seeing something in your peripheral vision, but not being able to focus on it.
[+] [-] DanWaterworth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beeboop|10 years ago|reply
I doubt I am special in this regard, but perhaps just on the lower end of the spectrum for normal. I cannot draw to save my life because I can't usefully imagine it in my head before it goes on paper.
[+] [-] stordoff|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hupriene|10 years ago|reply
Imagine an image split vertically down the middle. The left side of the image is solid black. The right side is the right half of your mom's face.
Does that make it easier? It does for me.
[+] [-] southclaw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heed|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blakeross|10 years ago|reply
About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.
[+] [-] crb3|10 years ago|reply
Musical/artistic family, multi-talented all around me. I'd keep my suburban-bicycled paper-route from getting boring by playing back in my head music I'd heard and liked. Stumbled into hardware, then software, as something I could do and do well and get paid to do it. Whatever it was I was doing -- songwriting, drawing, carving, circuitry, code -- I visualized/audialized it first, working it out on the sketchpad viewscreen of my mind before committing the work to physical fact.
And then I found out how easily the whole thing could be shut down. Stressed-out bowstring-taut -- pending divorce, single-parenting, work stresses -- and it was enough to let staph take hold, in my elbow of all places -- and suddenly the ibuprofen didn't keep the fevers down and my visualization got fevered and dissolved away and I couldn't code, couldn't create, because I couldn't visualize, until the antibiotics finished killing off the infection.
Anybody else gone through this?
[+] [-] nkurz|10 years ago|reply
Yes, although I don't think I was able to "see" things in my head before or after. I got West Nile Virus about 10 years ago, and was physically out-of-commission for most of a year. The particularly disturbing part was that even after I recovered physically, it took several more years before I recovered my mental ability well enough to reason about anything complex -- like math, or code. I just couldn't follow equations that once made sense.
Now after a decade, I think I'm back to about 80-90% of peak. I don't know if the small decline is residual from the West Nile, or to be expected with normal aging from 35 to 45. The experience drove home how little we understand the brain, or viruses. Consider how primitive our understanding of medicine was 100 years ago. I think it's likely that 100 years forward they'll look back at now with similar disdain: "They didn't understand anything --- they just let viruses run their course and do their damage!"
[+] [-] _Adam|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|10 years ago|reply
My wife, for example, can't process "left" and "right" without great effort.
She's intelligent and is a gifted artist in a variety of mediums, and is not dyslexic in the least. But if you tell her to "turn right" in a car it's very confusing for her to translate that into which direction she should take.
Even more confusingly, she's a very good navigator, much better than I! I process "left" and "right" like a "normal" person and yet I'm legendarily bad at finding my way while driving.
I've tried to get her to explain the left/right difficulty and it's hard for her to put into words, because of course how can you explain how your brain doesn't work? The most she's been able to say about it is that she understands what her "left arm" or "left foot" is but can't translate that to what my "left" is, or vice-versa.
Anybody else ever heard of or experienced anything like this?
[+] [-] blakeross|10 years ago|reply
The survey is oversimplified, obviously, but it was devised by the Exeter neurologists who are studying this. I got the lowest score (8/40) since none of the questions make sense to me (no image on any of them).
[+] [-] xioxox|10 years ago|reply
I said vague and dim for most of them, but it feels like fleeting glimpses of bits more than anything else. I can't really imagine coloured objects, though I sort of label an object as coloured. Geometric arrangements are easy to imagine but I don't have a real picture. I have no problems imagining sound, music or voices. I'm not sure if I dream in pictures and rarely remember dreams. (I work in science)
[+] [-] kazagistar|10 years ago|reply
Poses, colors, and movements of people is very shaky, but I can do landscapes OK. But something about the structure of the questions bothers me... It seems like they are implying that I am observing the image, rather then generating it. Like, "how clearly can you see ____?" means I focus a bit and add it to the image, until I can see it better, but very little of the details asked about pop up unless I think about them, take the information asked for, and intentionally integrate it into the image.
[+] [-] frooxie|10 years ago|reply
For instance, until I was asked to "Rate how vivid the colours of that person's clothes look in your mind?", I hadn't even imagined his clothes being ANY color. Once I decided that he wore a green sweater, I could "experience" the green color vividly.
[+] [-] monkbroc|10 years ago|reply
I heard the story of the Exeter research on NPR while driving back from the airport at night last year at it floored me! I never realized that other people could actually picture images in their minds. I also thought this was entirely metaphorical. I wrote to the researchers back then to be included in further research.
I'm a computer engineer.
Anyone know if there a community group of people with aphantasia?
[+] [-] philbarr|10 years ago|reply
Even when the question was, "can you imagine their clothes" and the guy I was thinking of is well known for his, er, "drastic", clothes choices I couldn't do it. Much to my own surprise.
[+] [-] nicolas_t|10 years ago|reply
I'm also good at visualizing writing. When I was a student, during tests, I would see in my mind's eyes the place on my notes or in the book related to the question.
To go to sleep, I quickly imagine a lot of beautiful landscapes repeatedly, spending maybe a few seconds in each landscapes.
When I remember a book, I usually remember how I pictured the scenes of the book. Even 12 years after reading the dune books, I can remember the gom-jabbar pressing on Paul's neck, I can remember Alia's tapping her finger with the same rhythm as the baron Harkonnen. I can remember Siona running from the wolves.
[+] [-] dempseye|10 years ago|reply
I recall being frustrated by exhortations to "close [my] eyes and imagine" things as a child, as if I was being asked to do something evidently impossible.
And I always assumed that the counting sheep thing was mostly about the counting and that nobody could actually see sheep when they did it. Do people really see sheep?
Notwithstanding my apparently poorly functioning mind's eye, I've never had any problem with spatial reasoning, and have scored +2sd in tests with a spatial ability component. I find myself able to "feel" the forms in a way that seems to have nothing to do with vision.
Does anybody else recognize this experience?
[+] [-] SilasX|10 years ago|reply
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex...
Basically, there are a lot of cases where people assume something is part of everyone's internal experience but which can be refuted with detailed, literal comparisons of your first person accounts.
For me, it was alcohol. I have never actually liked it, in the sense of "enjoying the sensation of drinking it". The best drinks to me are merely "bearable". I always assumed everyone was pretending as some excuse to get drunk.
[+] [-] snarfy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aab0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaoD|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _0w8t|10 years ago|reply
I just realized that when I imagine things they are rather sketchy. For example, when I imaging a beach, it is very abstract. When I try to describe what present on it, I do not use an object from the picture, I first remember what could present on the beach like a left towel and then sort-of add it to the mental image.
In school I also had troubles with drawing. I could draw regular shapes like cubes, spheres or beams, but drawing an animal was a nightmare.
A probably related thing is that I do not get why people drink. I do it occasionally for a social aspect, but I do not remember that I ever experienced being more relaxed from it or having any special fun. I just feel more and more intoxicated :(
[+] [-] jacinda|10 years ago|reply
Unlike the author, I do dream visually (in fact, I tend to have very vivid dreams; the most vivid ones are difficult to separate from reality, even if the subject matter is something fantastic like being part of an interstellar military or something). If I'm in a state between waking and sleeping I actually do have much more of a mind's eye, but when I'm fully awake I don't have pictures in my head...but I remember what it's like to visualize things mentally because of my dreams.
I have at least something of a "mind's ear" in that I can hear music in my head (the detail is usually not as rich; it's often just the melody with lyrics). Additionally, I have a very good memory for song lyrics and when I listen to music the concept of tuning out or not being extremely aware of the lyrics is something that friends I have described but that I rarely experience. I can usually only tune out lyrics in music if it's a song that I'm already very familiar with.
One aspect that I find interesting is that although I can't really picture places I still have spatial awareness in my mental concept of them. For example, if I remember one of the houses we lived in as a child I can "place" various objects in and around the house in their correct spatial relationships without picturing the objects themselves. Do other people with aphantasia also have this experience?
[+] [-] berekuk|10 years ago|reply
1) I have a phonological loop and can easily imagine music.
2) My visuospatial sketchpad (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddeley%27s_model_of_working_...) is almost entirely spatial. I don't know the color of the floor in my kitchen, unless I paid attention to it specifically and verbally in the past. But I can use memory palace successfully.
3) I wonder if for me it's just an undeveloped habit which could be improved: I have dreams with pictures and colors once a few months, and sometimes I see pictures when I'm half asleep, but it's really hard to put myself into that state intentionally.
[+] [-] gojomo|10 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9280134
Notably, ~gwillen there pointed out Francis Galton's 1880 study of the matter – where he started with the idea that mental imagery was a hoax, as he himself did not experience it. His surveys convinced him that it was instead common, and that only ~3% of people lack it entirely – very close to the 2% estimate Ross passes along from a 2009 study.
So: still surprising people, but known for quite a while.
[+] [-] nkurz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaffeemitsahne|10 years ago|reply
Key quote from the article IMO: "I thought “counting sheep” was a metaphor." I've always thought the same way about daydreaming, only a few years ago did I realize it's actually something more precise than just 'not paying attention'.
[+] [-] cabirum|10 years ago|reply
This topic is fascinating, what else some people have that others don't.
[+] [-] bjz_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philipov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blaze33|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaoD|10 years ago|reply
Sorry to tell you this, but my inner monologue does have texture and sound :P It sounds pretty close to my voice (or how I imagine my voice, I guess) and my inflections when speaking (even across languages). Even when I read other people's writings, I kinda hear myself in my mind.
> However, most of my friends and family describe what they “hear” as music—not as vivid as the real thing, to be sure, and not as many instruments—but “music” nonetheless.
That reminds me of an anecdote with my older brother: I was very young and I remember telling him I could hear music in my mind when I wanted to, just like if I pressed PLAY on a cassette player. He looked at me like I was crazy (note to self: test if he's aphantasic).
I still can, and (I think) I can reproduce it in high polyphonic detail (even details I don't consciously remember!) I perceive my aural imagination (aurination? audination?) as vivid as the real thing (though real sound kind of "overpowers" my imagination, like my imagination was playing through earphones close to my ears, not quite plugged in, but inside my head!) It's much clearer than my visual imagination, which is more blurry and fleeting.
Maybe that's why I became an amateur musician :)
[+] [-] JoeyJoJoJr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnBooty|10 years ago|reply
One tenet? concept? component? of mindfulness is observing without judging, being fully in the moment and fully experiencing it.
The goal of (the various flavors of) mindfulness isn't to eschew emotion and become a Vulcan or anything. Emotions are great! The goal is to more fully experience our lives, including our emotions, by also being mindful observers of them...
[+] [-] mcweaksauce|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grahamburger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cottonseed|10 years ago|reply
I'm also aphantasic and the fun part of reading this was the differences between our internal experiences. I have a great sense of direction and I love navigating and exploring new places.
I don't really have a mind's ear, either, just the "milk voice" as he calls it, although when I started studying Chinese and learning the tones, I had this crazy experience where I heard a melody in my head for the first time. Now I'd say I have something like a speaker that sometimes plays music, but I can't really control it. (Great, now I can get music stuck in my head.)
I have a similar experience with episodic memory, which is strange, because generally I have a great memory. In high school, I could read a chapter of a book and remember it word for word the next day (but my memory was not photographic!) I've always been deeply unsentimental and, instead of being sad about it, my attitude has always been "destroy the past to create the future."
[+] [-] Falco70|10 years ago|reply
I had a similar experience to the author. Except that it was when I learned that not everyone experiences these intense fantasies. I experience a psychological concept known as Maladaptive Daydreaming. I find it difficult, and at times impossible, to stop visualizing through my minds eye.