This has been nagging me for weeks since I 'discovered' that almost everyone around me can visualize things in their mind. Frankly, it helps explain a lot about my life. The inability to picture the face of friends, family, places I've visited, all contribute to a sense of isolation and distance that I feel daily. My strong preference for non-fiction, too, is likely an artifact of reading fiction word by word but 'seeing' nothing interesting. My failed attempts at all sort sorts of meditation and mindfulness exercises are also now suspect. The anecdotes about being unable to understand the concept of 'counting sheep' also resonate strongly with me. That face-blindness is also commonly co-morbid also helps me understand that aspect of myself better.
All in all, while I don't feel 'robbed' of this ability to visualize things, it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the human experience. I can't really visualize a future life for myself, let alone my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite mind-blowing, and I'm glad it's getting the wave of media attention that it is now (or else I would not have known).
But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.
Can anyone here give a good description of what it's like not to have Aphantasia? I'm having a very hard time believing this condition isn't the norm.
Edit. For a condition which supposedly affects only a few percent, the reaction to this article here and on Twitter contains a suspiciously high rate of people being surprised to find out they've got this and shocked that everyone else hasn't.
The more I read about this the more I feel that the variety in reported inner experience is more to do with the variety in reporting than of the experience itself.
I find myself able to relate to descriptions from both sufferers and non sufferers alike, but then again could often take extracts from each and be hard pressed to say who was claiming to be which.
I don't have aphantasia. With concentration, I can essentially override what I'm actually seeing with other imagery. For the most part, it's dimmer, duller, and less "present" than actual sensory input. It's much easier to do if there isn't a lot of actual visual input, because it's dark or my eyes are closed. I think many people can do this with great ease. For me, it depends on how hard I try, my mood, and maybe other factors I can't identify.
I can recall memories or visualize things that have never happened. I'm not sure if my recall is reproducing what I actual saw, or reimagining it from something more schematic. I suppose mostly the latter, maybe with a little of the former.
I can do the same thing with imaginary sound, far more easily. I'm not sure if people with aphantasia have difficulty here, too.
And with great difficulty the other senses.
Fairly often, these sensory reconstructions happen involuntarily. Which is basically what "daydreaming" is to me.
I can override my eye sight in the right conditions (with various degree of how much I override it) with another whole world created by mind in front of me. Ofc is FAR far far easier when it's dark or I am alone or I am hearing music, but you get the point.
For example when doing some shadowboxing I actually put fantasized people in front of myself which fight me and react to my moves, and I can see them as I see a real person until I remain focused. I often change also the location and the background to suite better my fantasy.
It's like shutting partially your eye system and making your mind go in full control.
edit: I said this to explain how much I can push it. But to make a simpler example, I _Very_ often fantasized at night, before bad and with eyes closed, of having an adventure in a post apocalyptic world and I can see everything in first person in my mind like I am really there and everything is real
It's totally foreign to me to think about "picturing" something in that detail. I can describe the physical attributes of an object if I think about it, and most of the time I just equate that to "visualizing" or "picturing" it. The thing that stands out to me in that Reddit thread (and other descriptions of how "normal" people visualize things) is that there is extra context. That's not something I understand at all, and so I'm convinced there is actually a fundamental difference.
This is a very objective thing, probably some can do it more or differently than others but I don't think we are just describing the same thing differently.
For me, I can picture whatever you might think of, enough to be able to copy what I imagine on paper or sculpture. However, this does not overlay with what I am seeing with my eyes as other people have described happens to them. What I see with my eyes, and what I imagine in my mind are in two different places. When I dream it can be very very realistic, as high detail as real life, and I can think it is real life (if you cannot visualize in your mind, what are your dreams like?). But when I wake up and open my eyes, there is no longer confusion. This is real life.
I also very very frequently can remember someone's face, how they act, what they do, and not remember their name. I can remember a whole conversation with them in video and not remember their name. But it feels like this type of visualization is different than picturing a sphere or some imaginary thing. It is a memory, a memory that I can manipulate, but based on reality.
Something I have always wondered about others, when you speak, is it just your thoughts in your language that you voice? Like, is your thought in language? I must translate my thoughts into language, and it is sometimes very difficult even though I am good at expressing myself. I do not usually think in language, unless it is some basic thing I am repeating to myself. It feels like some other people actually think with words.
For me imaginary input has less details and exists in a separate plane, and it never mixed up with real senses, in the sence that I always know which is which and to my knowledge I've never mixed them up when awake (only in sleep).
Visualizations are "ghostly", have few details, like 0.1 - 10% of what I usually see. Detail level depends on amount of attention allocated to internal imagery. Picture is always moving, changing, in flow. It takes considerable effort to pin a scene and stabilize it though it increases resolution. I've asked around and some people report having sequence of static, very high-resolution, almost real life quality pictures, either from real experience or synthesized. And images flip, replacing one another. Other people say that they have very fast low-res flowing "movies" like me, often consisting of several independent streams in different "parts" of awareness, typically with only one if focus. It's not that imaginary stream is overlayed on real sensory stream, it's more like they are different kinds of perception, like seeing and hearing is, though visual imagery is closer to seeing because objects it deals with have similar perceptive qualities, like having spatial component and colors.
In my case imagined sounds are more detailed. When I'm remembering or simulating a conversation, voices are rather close to that of real people. Music can be recalled quite well too, maybe up to 20% detail level of original. On several occasions a had some excerpts playing unvoluntary playing in my head with like 90% detail level of original. Quite often I got some music stuck in my head. When I'm underslept it's usually some bad quality pop music from 80s-90s that I haven't heard since my childhood.
Tactile, smell and taste sensations can be and are emulated too.
I wonder, do people with aphantasia have dreams? Dreams are fully emulated sensory input, though I feel like they come from a bit different place then imagined input does.
Edit: actually mind's eye is not restricted with field of vision of real sight, it can encompass say 1km sphere around me with very very low level of detail. I think that kind of capacity is used automatically in daily life when you walk somewhere and you have automatically constructed knowledge of what's behind your back.
So just to be clear, I didn't know people were not like me, but writing this I realized it explains a lot.
I rarely forget a face, and routinely remember random people on the subway. I don't say anything but I'm almost always the person who remembers the other person first, and it almost offends me that someone doesn't recognize/remember seeing me when I remember them. I can usually tell who people are based only on gait and body proportions. I recognized a girl once just from her hair color, and it wasn't something noticeable, just a very muted blonde almost brown/gray hair, but I only knew one person with her height and hair type.
I have incredibly powerful imagery. I woke up once after realizing in my dream after breaking a window that the glass shattered with incredible physical accuracy, both material properties, and physics. It's in dreams that I notice certain things, like how did I know water/smoke/fire/cloth reacts like that? how did I know light bounces in that way? how did I know that subway tracks looked precisely like that? Like I never took the time to study any of it, but the real world accuracy and a high level of detail is there. I can visually take objects and rotate them in my head, I think someone mentioned this and I can confirm. And I always found it suspicious people couldn't rotate something they see in a 2D picture in their head (or at least they would say something that implies they have no idea what it looks like from another angle).
Having said that, I think there are parts of my brain that is so stunted I sometimes wonder how the hell I got to where I am. I feel like I have several streams of information coming into my head, and I have to process them asynchronously. I zone out all the time because I'm having a "Doug" moment (if anyone remembers the cartoon), where I'm vividly daydreaming. The images are so strong, it seems to black out what I'm really seeing (but not really, its more like getting extreme tunnel vision and being hyper focused on your imagination). Traumatic memories are terrible. I see and pretty much re-live bad experiences over and over again. I can sit still, not move physically and play movies in my head for hours. To be fair though, I'm probably closer to the other extreme, and to me the benefits outweigh the cons.
One of the students in my middle school put it into beautiful terms. One day, they say "You know, the TV in your forehead?" as they put 3/4 a square with their fingers onto their brow (like a "C" shape) I still get chills thinking of the phrase sometimes, it just was so understandable and approachable for us 6th graders.
I have very weak visualization but I have some (4-5) images I can render in my head (stills I've seen plus one from imagination), which I think aphantasics can't do, and if I'm reading specific descriptions and take enough time, I can call up a still or part of a still as well. (It's never several frames and it doesn't feel like seeing from the eyes, but I can do it.)
My other senses are not as affected, I have perfect tactile recall, I can recall and imagine plenty of smells and tastes as well. I have elaborate tactile fantasies when I want to distract myself. No visuals.
I don't think it's actually different from aphantasics but I've had vivid dream-visuals (including being able to literally read in a dream, seeing every character, hearing every word in the low subvocalized reading-voice, being caught up in the story) and visual hallucinations.
> The more I read about this the more I feel that the variety in reported inner experience is more to do with the variety in reporting than of the experience itself.
I think there is very strong truth to this. Words get in the way when trying to share internal experiences. Also, by reporting and discussing your experiences, you affect them. Memories of past experiences, and expectations for future experiences, are both affected.
For that reason, and without having digested the scientific literature, I would recommend against labeling oneself as having (or not having) aphantasia.
But then, I feel that way about pretty much all labels, especially ones related to cognition. They're fine for communication, but not for your internal perception of self.
I believe I've got the opposite of Aphantasia. I do a lot of improv comedy and I credit my success ar the form in large part because of my ability to believe that what we are creating in the moment is real. I can almost see it in the moment. Thinking back on specific scenes I don't see an empty stage with two+ people on it. I see some version of whatever we were supposedly doing in that scene.
I've got an incredible sense of direction too and I tell people it's because I've got a little google maps in my head.
I too find myself skeptical of this condition. I think we probably aren't so different, we just have trouble describing our subjective experiences in an objective way.
Imaging something is clearly not the same thing as actually seeing something. And yet I can imagine shape, 3D positioning, color, texture, movement, etc.. all the while NOT seeing it (and NOT hallucinating it). So do I have the condition or not?
Well, not having it would allow you to think visually, I guess.
I don't think visually most of the time, but I can picture things if I want to. I can even build whole "scenarios" in my mind and play them out, visually.
I don't have Aphantasia but I think the concept is wrongly described as the possibility of overlaying imaginary images on top of what you are seeing. If that was the case, then I have Aphantasia too.
In my case of not having Aphantasia is to be able to mentally reproduce an image with eyes open. If this image requires too much effort or has my interest for some reason, I still can see, but I am distracted by what I am visualizing at that moment.
That distraction is like when playing a videogame or watching a movie: you never see (or remember) what is around the monitor or TV because you are focused in playing/watching.
I do not have Aphantasia. The other day I was reading a problem book and after I would read the problem, I would look up (looking up makes it easier to think I guess?) and visualize the problem and work it while looking at it. You don’t have to close your eyes or anything, you can still see it fine.
I guess it feels like being able to project holograms internally.
My experience is similar to what others have mentioned so I will just add a bit not mentioned yet - the imagery I fantasize is sometimes erotic in nature. For example when I see an attractive woman on a bus, I can visualize her naked, taking shower or whatever - you get the point.
I can imagine a cube in my head and rotate it around and such. It's a sort of voluntary daydream. I'm not literally overriding vision, but rather I can hold a limited imaginary scene in my head.
OK I think by now we need to accept that everything in humans is a spectrum. I think most people don't have the level of internal visual detail that they can describe an artists rendering. Meanwhile very few have no detail. Plus it covers all senses.
So for me as example: I listen to metal and while I don't have super high quality sound in my mind, I can for the most part play a whole song in my head even the very intricate solos. If I knew the instruments and could play that we'll I could play it off the track in my head. However I can't imagine anything visual at all. No simple geometric Shape, no colors, not even a dot on a white backdrop.
I think most people are just shocked this is a thing and theyre too quick to say they have nothing when they probably have something. I'd give detailed tests like asking to imagine a tree and ask how many branches it has or what kind it is.
Any rate in sure in a couple years well have some nice professional tests to take for a more precise understanding.
Often when I hear people describing their experience with visualization, I wonder if I have a mild form of this. I am able to visualize things, think of visual scenes, manipulate objects in my mind, etc. But it's never at a level of fidelity I would consider 'looking at an image in my mind'. It's more of a nebulous, hazy thing, impermanent and lacking in detail. Faces in particular are very difficult to visualize; I don't have any real difficulty remembering what people look like or recognizing them, but summoning a complete mental picture of a particular face is usually elusive.
I find the terminology around this to be so vague as to be meaningless. Rather than using the words "image", "visualize", or "see" I'd rather use the more specific term "hallucinate", or to "see something that is not actually there". To those in this thread that do not consider themselves to be aphantasic I would propose this question: in your mind's eye, whatever that means to you, imagine a sphere or a barn or whatever physical object is easiest between you and your screen. What are its qualities? Is it opaque, translucent, transparent? Does it obscure the text on the screen? Or can you only hallucinate the object with your eyes closed? Or do you not hallucinate it at all?
Personally, I can imagine my apartment in detail down to the relative placements of most objects, proportions, the colors, the way the wind enters if the window is opened. I can do similar for past apartments going back 8 years as well as my parent's home. Hell, I can imagine the Reno's steakhouse from my hometown that I haven't been to in over 13 years in much the same way.
I do not consider myself to have aphantasia, however none of the "visualizations" I mentioned are hallucinations as some comments in this thread imply. I do not perceive them with any of my senses, including visual, as if I was there now. Rather it is more of a complex conceptualization in my mind.
I'm having trouble operationalizing the "blind mind's eye" concept. Catmull's brain knows what a sphere is, and my brain knows what a sphere is, and we can both describe the experience of seeing a sphere, so we both know what one "looks like."
Compare this to the phenomenon of "face blindness." My friends who suffer from this genuinely cannot describe what makes Angela Merkel's face (for instance) different from others because they lack the facility to remember it. But I can, because I don't have face blindness: Merkel's face is wrinkled, craggy even, with crows feet that resemble smile lines.
I hate to muddy the waters here but for years thought I had face-blindness before realising that I have Aphantasia.
You're exactly right: I know what a Sphere looks like but I am missing the bit that the rest of the world seems to have where they can conjure up an image of it. Even less abstract objects like a desk or Angela Merkel's face, I am quite unable to picture.
To answer your question, if I ask you to picture a barn in a field, you presumably have no difficulty in doing so. You've probably even made assumptions about things like the colour of the barn, the weather or surrounding terrain and have a sort of portrait with a barn at the centre, but I can't do that. I am having difficulty describing what I get but it's nothing close to anything like that. I know my barn is made of wood and I know it's in a field but that's about as far as I can get.
I'm happy that this is getting discussion because obviously it's quite strange to find out that a) you're not wired the same way as the majority of the world and b) that your self-diagnosis isn't a medically recognised condition. I'm excited to see what research comes out over the next few years.
I suppose that you can actually picture things in your head. I (being a software engineer) think of my aphantasia as being like having the hash of an image plus some metadata in my head. I can recognize that I've seen something before once I see it again, I can tell you that I've deliberately memorized some facts about it, but I cannot recall the image itself - there are no pixels.
So I can say that my two daughters have hair the same colour as mine (hopefully never to go bald like me!), and the colour of their eyes, but I simply cannot close my eyes and picture their faces no matter what I do. If you can picture people's faces, picture places you've been or even stare at some object in front of you right now then close your eyes and "see" a picture of it, you probably don't have aphantasia
I can dream a sphere. (Once had a semi lucid dream, but not really in control of that)
In an extremely relaxed state maybe I can visualise a sphere, like once a year, by accident, for a few seconds.
I feel like after a long time of practice I can sorta flicker a sphere, in order to describe it, but not really.
I cannot recall, visualise and describe a sphere, that's just not possible not a real thing to me. But I can logically tell you what a sphere is, without recalling it visually.
My wife can. She also has an idetic memory. She can picture anything she wants according to her.
Pretty sure I have this, but I've never really considered a struggle. Once read something about it being a potential outcome from a stressful childhood, which I had.
Similarly I have a shocking memory. Literally need to focus to remember more than one item from a store. Can't remember more than one name at a time, also requiring effort to remember just one.
Oh well. As an aside, I'm fairly successful considering background etc. :)
I suspect I have it. When I 'visualise' things, there's no visual component to it. Instead, I'm remembering an abstract list of features that the visualisation has. For example, with a sphere, I know that it's round, probably smooth, with a surface equidistant from its centre at all points. I don't 'see' a sphere in any way though.
With a beach, I know that there's probably sunshine, there's some water, some sand, it's probably hot, maybe some wind, some waves, some seagulls. But I don't see any part of this, so if you ask me for specific details they just don't exist and I couldn't tell you whether, for example, the beach in my mind is short or long.
When it comes to faces, I can't picture them and find myself often forgetting/not recognising people with whom I'm only tangentially familiar. I couldn't describe a person's face to you at all, but if you asked 'do they have a big or small nose', I might be able to recall that (usually not though). I'm more likely to be able to recall distinct features - skin colour, hair colour, etc., than I am features where there's a sliding scale (nose size, etc.) This even applies to people close to me such as my own immediate family, partner, etc.
Funny, most people have the opposite question: they can't understand what it would be like to have aphantasia.
The way you're describing "knowing what a sphere is" and being able to describe it, is how I explain to people what aphantasia is like.
Consider the possibility, even if unlikely, that you yourself have aphantasia. It is common for people with aphantasia to not realize they have it until a conversation like this -- they simply assume they are experiencing what everyone else is experiencing, and that the concept of "visualizing" something is more metaphorical than it really is.
Can you really see a sphere when you're not looking directly at one, in any sense of the word? Or do you just know what a sphere looks like?
I can't describe the face of my family members to a sketch artist. I mean, I know I can recognize their face if I see it, but I can't take 2 of them and tell you who has a bigger ear, or nose or lips, or if one has a more round or oval face. This is with my own family members I see often. I use to think that people who claimed they could visualize where lying and making it that claim up until a few years ago.
I have very weak visualization. One way of describing it would be that I can close my eyes and tell you where everything is in my house, or map my way downtown. But I don't see anything, I just know the spatial placement of everything and how to move through it.
But if I try to see the stuff, it's as though there is a brief flash, and I see an outline for a second or so, and then it isn't there. But I know what's there.
I don't think I was ever strong on this front, but I think my ability has been declining gradually. I'm 33 now. I remember arriving in a new country at age 23, and I could recall everything that happened when I arrived: my drive in, arrival at my new house, standing in the rain.
I can still recall much of this, but I have a memory of seeing it and having great visual recall of this. But, how accurate is a memory of a memory? I didn't take any notes, so it's hard to say for sure what I could in fact recall.
One odd point: I used to get the most vivid images while lying in bed with my eyes closed, falling off to sleep. The most fantastic scenes would flow from one image to the next. I think it actually helped me sleep. These were also notable in that I couldn't visualize that way during the day.
One day I had to take antibiotics for an MRSA infection. I recall the images that night were dark and foreboding. I haven't had colourful images since then.
Sometimes at night I get glimpses of them. It's as though the images are happening in the background, and I can catch them but without colour. And I can't always see them, so I can't follow, and the images stop.
Haven't found anything in the literature about antibiotics causing this though, so I'm not too sure, it may have been coincidence and instead just gradual decline that crossed a threshold around then.
Has anyone had gradual decline of mental images, loss of pre-sleep visions, or had either of these precipitated by antibiotics?
Next up: people discovering that not everyone hears an internal voice either. And probably many other variations of the same kind. The funny thing is that nobody really talks about their internal experience in such detail, so there's little opportunity for observations like this to surface. A rigorous multidimensional classification of "thinking styles" would definitely be interesting.
I don't have any problems visualising objects, faces, rain, snow, wind,...etc. But when it comes to drawing, I get stuck, especially if I try to draw a face that I remember/visualise almost perfectly. Why is that? What it takes to be good at drawing (not that "painter-level" drawing)? It's (relatively) easy for me to draw objects which have sharp edges and straight lines (like a table, door, sofa), but I have hard times with drawing more detailed things like human faces, animals and cars even though I can visualise them as if they are present right before my eyes.
I imagine that if I were to describe someone to obtain, say, a police sketch, I'd not be able to do it because I don't know how to describe a face, even though I have a clear image of it in my mind. Obviously, I'd not be able to draw it myself either.
And some tangential thing, when I visualise things, I visualise them through my left eye (faces, especially. since you almost always see them, well, face-to-face), as if a projector projects them through it and I remember left parts of things better as if they're recorded using my left eye. I occasionally think about it, but haven't come up with an answer for myself yet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think there has to be a spectrum for this? I can visualize but the impressions are I think weak and fleeting. It's more like a visual thought and I only do it when I concentrate. I'm not a visual thinker at all and I don't draw or paint well. I don't take much interest in photographs either and much prefer audio impressions.
Also if I read a menu I am attracted more by the sensation of the words themselves than a visualization of the food they actually represent. Mushrooms in a white cream sauce simply sounds delicious (as verbiage), though I'm not terribly fond of them.
Interesting that some great animators also have aphantasia. I always assumed that my aphantasia and complete inability to draw anything at better than a 5 year old level were related, but it seems some have developed an iterative process that works around it. That's pretty encouraging.
I think I'm partially aphantasic. I say 'partially' because I can picture the broad strokes about things in about the same detail as a watercolor painting run through a blur filter a few times.
This hasn't been any hindrance to my career in software, as once I grok something sufficiently it turns into an abstract knowledge tree that I work through on a subconscious more than conscious level.
I do lose track of things around the house constantly, but I'm not sure if this is a side effect of poor "where'd you leave it last" visualization or just everyday absent-mindedness.
My imagination is not the best, but when I am really high on marijuana and I close my eyes, I can imagine alls sorts of absolutely gorgeously bright and photorealistic visuals. I can imagine anything with remarkable photorealism during that state of mind. It's semi autopilot and spontaneous, though. My imagination also becomes very strong right before I'm about to fall asleep. When I'm sober, my imagination takes effort and is hazier, and not creative.
I also want to ask people with Aphantasia, what do their dreams look like?
There is also "mind's ear". Most people have it but some don't.
Most people imagine voices in their head. When reading, writing, or imagining a conversation, especially an argument, or preparing for a meeting.
When I'm reading, or writing, including coding, I hear the words in my head.
The speech doesn't sound like real sound, just like visualising doesn't look like real images. (Dreams are different - they can sound real, and I've heard some amazing music in my dreams.)
I have friend who doesn't hear anything in her "mind's ear", and had no idea until recently that other people do.
After someone admitted to hearing imaginary voices (me), after asking other people she was astonished to find this is normal and she's unusual. Nearly everyone has an internal voice.
This freaked her out as she wondered if other people experienced auditory "voices in your head telling you what to do" style hallucinations, and wondered if they sound like real voices (they don't, but there is some resemblance).
She simply had no conscious experience of a mind's ear with speech.
I can't imagine what it's like without one. Most of my thinking has imaginary speech going on, including when I'm coding or reading.
I also have a friend who _stopped_ having the mind's ear speech after a stroke. She said she'd been trying for years to quieten the internal dialogue through meditation, and then after the stroke she finally experienced it.
I read a lot, fiction mostly, but I don't hear an inner voice when reading speech (and I don't hear a voice from the narrator if the books is written like a narrative). I could do that, if I wished to apply a voice to it, e.g. imagine that some friend said those words.
I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to actually 'listen' to a voice when reading I imagine the reading would get terribly slow. Since I was a child I've always been able to read much much faster than any kind of speech or audio narrative. In elementary school I used to drop by the library every day, borrow up to four books, read them, get new books the next day. An inner voice would be like slow motion, it would take forever to read a book.
(And I was surprised when book commentors complained about e.g. names in a story that are difficult to pronounce. Until I understood that their inner voice is actually trying to pronounce it - which breaks up their reading.)
I have aphantasia. But I do have a good "visual" mind.
I'm a super recognizer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser). I can see someone and KNOW that I've seen them before. I can recognize people I haven't seen in 25 years. Even if they've become adults in the interim. I immediately notice if someone changes their hair. But, I cannot visualize at all. Particularly not faces. I cannot see family members without looking at them. When I look at them I can notice deltas of things I haven't seen before. A change in hairstyle, new glasses etc. But I cannot 'see' what it was before, I cannot 'see' the old hairstyle or glasses. I can notice the anomalies. I can recognize faces really well. But only actually using my eyes. I think a lot in terms of how things relate to each other. My brain seems to work by attributes and relations, and then make analogies and predictions based on those. There's more an understanding of the relationships of the facial features to each other, and as a whole, than the exact qualia of the feature.
I noticed this when I was a kid- I was playing with lego space ships one day and suddenly realized I could no longer visualize an actual space ship- it just looked a lego thing. I thought it was odd and sort of forgot about it until recently when somebody else said they were troubled by it.
Discovering 3D rendering was a huge thing for me- suddenly, rather than having to work incredibly hard to visualize things in my head (or do mental rotations on them), I could build a model world and move things around until I saw what I needed (this was super helpful for molecular structures, but also for neural network architectures and complex workflows).
I visualize things pretty weakly, pretty low on the ability-to-visualize scale.
I don't really think it has caused me many problems, except that I tend to get lost very easily. Luckily, we have near ubiquitous GPS now and Google Maps.
On the other hand, I have good mental auditory capabilities. I can, say, play "air on the g string" in my head right now with near perfect fidelity, or just imagine new music in real time as if I were simply hearing it. Some people apparently can't do that, but can do the visual equivalent.
This is incredibly interesting. About a year ago I began to acknowledge that I can't really force an image into my head, and if I try I can sort of get a vague impression of it, but it doesn't have color or anything. When I am free thinking I think my mind is able to conjure all sorts of images, but when I try to focus in on it, the image vanishes into that vague impression. And sometimes it is weird, I can think about all of the details and have sort of a distant detailed image of whatever I'm thinking about, but I can't bring it to focus. It feels like the uncertainty principle with my mind.
But it was a strange topic, so I never really discussed this topic with anyone. Based on what I am reading, I don't think I have aphantasia, or maybe it is a spectrum and I have it to some degree. But it is refreshing and also kind of sad at the same time to hear that others experience visualization drastically differently.
I'm still very much a dreamer and a thinker and haven't had any issues with my ability to visualize things. But hearing about how some of you are able to bring up vivid images sounds pretty magical. I do wonder if some of this is about how we as individuals explain things. Maybe what I am experiencing is actually normal but others describe it in a different frame of mind than my own.
I discovered I had this a year ago. Honestly, I always thought I had some kind of learning disability. Some kinds of tests are very hard, I cannot picture anything while awake, I literally cannot remember anything about my life visually, learning faces takes a long time, I failed geometry, and struggled with any kind of visualization math past that (despite doing quite well in calculus)...
Then there were the careers I was drawn to: creative things like graphic design, drafting, etc that I utterly failed at. I had ideas of what I wanted to do, but the step between transforming the thoughts onto paper was always a fight. I studied photography in school, and could never convert it into a profession because I found being creative enough to get clients wasn't coming to me - I would be burnt out on small projects for no reason I could fathom.
I ALWAYS assumed people who visualize chakras or meditate with a object focus were just faking it.
I remember reading about this a year or so ago, and telling some friends. One of them immediately recognized it as why I utterly failed at some MMO raid mechanics.
So there is probably an unending list of ways this has impacted my choices, and I can only hope young kinds get a chance to learn they have this and get some guidance on what effects this will have on certain tasks based on the level of visualization they have.
I have aphantasia (hate the name, no phantasia my ass) and I wonder what kind of: 'color blind are people with better contrast' type of stuff there is.
I remember reading that there is a significant amount of extra resilience for traumatic experiences due to not being able to get the memory visualized again, again and again which makes it easier to cope.
If anyone has more info about other positive aspects I'd appreciate it.
[+] [-] unquietcode|7 years ago|reply
All in all, while I don't feel 'robbed' of this ability to visualize things, it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the human experience. I can't really visualize a future life for myself, let alone my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite mind-blowing, and I'm glad it's getting the wave of media attention that it is now (or else I would not have known).
But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.
[+] [-] hanoz|7 years ago|reply
Edit. For a condition which supposedly affects only a few percent, the reaction to this article here and on Twitter contains a suspiciously high rate of people being surprised to find out they've got this and shocked that everyone else hasn't.
The more I read about this the more I feel that the variety in reported inner experience is more to do with the variety in reporting than of the experience itself.
I find myself able to relate to descriptions from both sufferers and non sufferers alike, but then again could often take extracts from each and be hard pressed to say who was claiming to be which.
[+] [-] acjohnson55|7 years ago|reply
I can recall memories or visualize things that have never happened. I'm not sure if my recall is reproducing what I actual saw, or reimagining it from something more schematic. I suppose mostly the latter, maybe with a little of the former.
I can do the same thing with imaginary sound, far more easily. I'm not sure if people with aphantasia have difficulty here, too.
And with great difficulty the other senses.
Fairly often, these sensory reconstructions happen involuntarily. Which is basically what "daydreaming" is to me.
[+] [-] yulaow|7 years ago|reply
For example when doing some shadowboxing I actually put fantasized people in front of myself which fight me and react to my moves, and I can see them as I see a real person until I remain focused. I often change also the location and the background to suite better my fantasy.
It's like shutting partially your eye system and making your mind go in full control.
edit: I said this to explain how much I can push it. But to make a simpler example, I _Very_ often fantasized at night, before bad and with eyes closed, of having an adventure in a post apocalyptic world and I can see everything in first person in my mind like I am really there and everything is real
[+] [-] JshWright|7 years ago|reply
Then I read a Reddit thread like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b8eojm/when_some...
It's totally foreign to me to think about "picturing" something in that detail. I can describe the physical attributes of an object if I think about it, and most of the time I just equate that to "visualizing" or "picturing" it. The thing that stands out to me in that Reddit thread (and other descriptions of how "normal" people visualize things) is that there is extra context. That's not something I understand at all, and so I'm convinced there is actually a fundamental difference.
[+] [-] aristophenes|7 years ago|reply
For me, I can picture whatever you might think of, enough to be able to copy what I imagine on paper or sculpture. However, this does not overlay with what I am seeing with my eyes as other people have described happens to them. What I see with my eyes, and what I imagine in my mind are in two different places. When I dream it can be very very realistic, as high detail as real life, and I can think it is real life (if you cannot visualize in your mind, what are your dreams like?). But when I wake up and open my eyes, there is no longer confusion. This is real life.
I also very very frequently can remember someone's face, how they act, what they do, and not remember their name. I can remember a whole conversation with them in video and not remember their name. But it feels like this type of visualization is different than picturing a sphere or some imaginary thing. It is a memory, a memory that I can manipulate, but based on reality.
Something I have always wondered about others, when you speak, is it just your thoughts in your language that you voice? Like, is your thought in language? I must translate my thoughts into language, and it is sometimes very difficult even though I am good at expressing myself. I do not usually think in language, unless it is some basic thing I am repeating to myself. It feels like some other people actually think with words.
[+] [-] spatular|7 years ago|reply
Visualizations are "ghostly", have few details, like 0.1 - 10% of what I usually see. Detail level depends on amount of attention allocated to internal imagery. Picture is always moving, changing, in flow. It takes considerable effort to pin a scene and stabilize it though it increases resolution. I've asked around and some people report having sequence of static, very high-resolution, almost real life quality pictures, either from real experience or synthesized. And images flip, replacing one another. Other people say that they have very fast low-res flowing "movies" like me, often consisting of several independent streams in different "parts" of awareness, typically with only one if focus. It's not that imaginary stream is overlayed on real sensory stream, it's more like they are different kinds of perception, like seeing and hearing is, though visual imagery is closer to seeing because objects it deals with have similar perceptive qualities, like having spatial component and colors.
In my case imagined sounds are more detailed. When I'm remembering or simulating a conversation, voices are rather close to that of real people. Music can be recalled quite well too, maybe up to 20% detail level of original. On several occasions a had some excerpts playing unvoluntary playing in my head with like 90% detail level of original. Quite often I got some music stuck in my head. When I'm underslept it's usually some bad quality pop music from 80s-90s that I haven't heard since my childhood.
Tactile, smell and taste sensations can be and are emulated too.
I wonder, do people with aphantasia have dreams? Dreams are fully emulated sensory input, though I feel like they come from a bit different place then imagined input does.
Edit: actually mind's eye is not restricted with field of vision of real sight, it can encompass say 1km sphere around me with very very low level of detail. I think that kind of capacity is used automatically in daily life when you walk somewhere and you have automatically constructed knowledge of what's behind your back.
[+] [-] chansiky|7 years ago|reply
I rarely forget a face, and routinely remember random people on the subway. I don't say anything but I'm almost always the person who remembers the other person first, and it almost offends me that someone doesn't recognize/remember seeing me when I remember them. I can usually tell who people are based only on gait and body proportions. I recognized a girl once just from her hair color, and it wasn't something noticeable, just a very muted blonde almost brown/gray hair, but I only knew one person with her height and hair type.
I have incredibly powerful imagery. I woke up once after realizing in my dream after breaking a window that the glass shattered with incredible physical accuracy, both material properties, and physics. It's in dreams that I notice certain things, like how did I know water/smoke/fire/cloth reacts like that? how did I know light bounces in that way? how did I know that subway tracks looked precisely like that? Like I never took the time to study any of it, but the real world accuracy and a high level of detail is there. I can visually take objects and rotate them in my head, I think someone mentioned this and I can confirm. And I always found it suspicious people couldn't rotate something they see in a 2D picture in their head (or at least they would say something that implies they have no idea what it looks like from another angle).
Having said that, I think there are parts of my brain that is so stunted I sometimes wonder how the hell I got to where I am. I feel like I have several streams of information coming into my head, and I have to process them asynchronously. I zone out all the time because I'm having a "Doug" moment (if anyone remembers the cartoon), where I'm vividly daydreaming. The images are so strong, it seems to black out what I'm really seeing (but not really, its more like getting extreme tunnel vision and being hyper focused on your imagination). Traumatic memories are terrible. I see and pretty much re-live bad experiences over and over again. I can sit still, not move physically and play movies in my head for hours. To be fair though, I'm probably closer to the other extreme, and to me the benefits outweigh the cons.
[+] [-] jamesmiller5|7 years ago|reply
(Edit: word choice)
[+] [-] arandr0x|7 years ago|reply
My other senses are not as affected, I have perfect tactile recall, I can recall and imagine plenty of smells and tastes as well. I have elaborate tactile fantasies when I want to distract myself. No visuals.
I don't think it's actually different from aphantasics but I've had vivid dream-visuals (including being able to literally read in a dream, seeing every character, hearing every word in the low subvocalized reading-voice, being caught up in the story) and visual hallucinations.
[+] [-] l_t|7 years ago|reply
I think there is very strong truth to this. Words get in the way when trying to share internal experiences. Also, by reporting and discussing your experiences, you affect them. Memories of past experiences, and expectations for future experiences, are both affected.
For that reason, and without having digested the scientific literature, I would recommend against labeling oneself as having (or not having) aphantasia.
But then, I feel that way about pretty much all labels, especially ones related to cognition. They're fine for communication, but not for your internal perception of self.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|7 years ago|reply
I've got an incredible sense of direction too and I tell people it's because I've got a little google maps in my head.
[+] [-] mikedilger|7 years ago|reply
Imaging something is clearly not the same thing as actually seeing something. And yet I can imagine shape, 3D positioning, color, texture, movement, etc.. all the while NOT seeing it (and NOT hallucinating it). So do I have the condition or not?
[+] [-] k__|7 years ago|reply
I don't think visually most of the time, but I can picture things if I want to. I can even build whole "scenarios" in my mind and play them out, visually.
It's a bit like lucid dreaming, I think.
[+] [-] scoutt|7 years ago|reply
In my case of not having Aphantasia is to be able to mentally reproduce an image with eyes open. If this image requires too much effort or has my interest for some reason, I still can see, but I am distracted by what I am visualizing at that moment.
That distraction is like when playing a videogame or watching a movie: you never see (or remember) what is around the monitor or TV because you are focused in playing/watching.
[+] [-] marsrover|7 years ago|reply
I guess it feels like being able to project holograms internally.
[+] [-] honzzz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|7 years ago|reply
But I can also "move the camera" off the dash and to 3rd person over-the-shoulder like in a racing game, and continue the drive.
[+] [-] Emma_Goldman|7 years ago|reply
That's what accounts for so many people wondering if they have aphantasia.
[+] [-] jdashg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfiorav|7 years ago|reply
For example, can't you picture yourself on your commute home? Like if a camera was filming you going home today?
How do you forsee things?
[+] [-] barrucadu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatoneuser|7 years ago|reply
So for me as example: I listen to metal and while I don't have super high quality sound in my mind, I can for the most part play a whole song in my head even the very intricate solos. If I knew the instruments and could play that we'll I could play it off the track in my head. However I can't imagine anything visual at all. No simple geometric Shape, no colors, not even a dot on a white backdrop.
I think most people are just shocked this is a thing and theyre too quick to say they have nothing when they probably have something. I'd give detailed tests like asking to imagine a tree and ask how many branches it has or what kind it is.
Any rate in sure in a couple years well have some nice professional tests to take for a more precise understanding.
[+] [-] tempestn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aston|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanze|7 years ago|reply
Personally, I can imagine my apartment in detail down to the relative placements of most objects, proportions, the colors, the way the wind enters if the window is opened. I can do similar for past apartments going back 8 years as well as my parent's home. Hell, I can imagine the Reno's steakhouse from my hometown that I haven't been to in over 13 years in much the same way.
I do not consider myself to have aphantasia, however none of the "visualizations" I mentioned are hallucinations as some comments in this thread imply. I do not perceive them with any of my senses, including visual, as if I was there now. Rather it is more of a complex conceptualization in my mind.
[+] [-] john-radio|7 years ago|reply
Compare this to the phenomenon of "face blindness." My friends who suffer from this genuinely cannot describe what makes Angela Merkel's face (for instance) different from others because they lack the facility to remember it. But I can, because I don't have face blindness: Merkel's face is wrinkled, craggy even, with crows feet that resemble smile lines.
What can I do that an aphantasia sufferer cannot?
[+] [-] 0xADEADBEE|7 years ago|reply
You're exactly right: I know what a Sphere looks like but I am missing the bit that the rest of the world seems to have where they can conjure up an image of it. Even less abstract objects like a desk or Angela Merkel's face, I am quite unable to picture.
To answer your question, if I ask you to picture a barn in a field, you presumably have no difficulty in doing so. You've probably even made assumptions about things like the colour of the barn, the weather or surrounding terrain and have a sort of portrait with a barn at the centre, but I can't do that. I am having difficulty describing what I get but it's nothing close to anything like that. I know my barn is made of wood and I know it's in a field but that's about as far as I can get.
I'm happy that this is getting discussion because obviously it's quite strange to find out that a) you're not wired the same way as the majority of the world and b) that your self-diagnosis isn't a medically recognised condition. I'm excited to see what research comes out over the next few years.
[+] [-] shaneos|7 years ago|reply
So I can say that my two daughters have hair the same colour as mine (hopefully never to go bald like me!), and the colour of their eyes, but I simply cannot close my eyes and picture their faces no matter what I do. If you can picture people's faces, picture places you've been or even stare at some object in front of you right now then close your eyes and "see" a picture of it, you probably don't have aphantasia
[+] [-] ownagefool|7 years ago|reply
I can dream a sphere. (Once had a semi lucid dream, but not really in control of that)
In an extremely relaxed state maybe I can visualise a sphere, like once a year, by accident, for a few seconds.
I feel like after a long time of practice I can sorta flicker a sphere, in order to describe it, but not really.
I cannot recall, visualise and describe a sphere, that's just not possible not a real thing to me. But I can logically tell you what a sphere is, without recalling it visually.
My wife can. She also has an idetic memory. She can picture anything she wants according to her.
Pretty sure I have this, but I've never really considered a struggle. Once read something about it being a potential outcome from a stressful childhood, which I had.
Similarly I have a shocking memory. Literally need to focus to remember more than one item from a store. Can't remember more than one name at a time, also requiring effort to remember just one.
Oh well. As an aside, I'm fairly successful considering background etc. :)
[+] [-] NamTaf|7 years ago|reply
With a beach, I know that there's probably sunshine, there's some water, some sand, it's probably hot, maybe some wind, some waves, some seagulls. But I don't see any part of this, so if you ask me for specific details they just don't exist and I couldn't tell you whether, for example, the beach in my mind is short or long.
When it comes to faces, I can't picture them and find myself often forgetting/not recognising people with whom I'm only tangentially familiar. I couldn't describe a person's face to you at all, but if you asked 'do they have a big or small nose', I might be able to recall that (usually not though). I'm more likely to be able to recall distinct features - skin colour, hair colour, etc., than I am features where there's a sliding scale (nose size, etc.) This even applies to people close to me such as my own immediate family, partner, etc.
[+] [-] GraffitiTim|7 years ago|reply
The way you're describing "knowing what a sphere is" and being able to describe it, is how I explain to people what aphantasia is like.
Consider the possibility, even if unlikely, that you yourself have aphantasia. It is common for people with aphantasia to not realize they have it until a conversation like this -- they simply assume they are experiencing what everyone else is experiencing, and that the concept of "visualizing" something is more metaphorical than it really is.
Can you really see a sphere when you're not looking directly at one, in any sense of the word? Or do you just know what a sphere looks like?
[+] [-] slartibardfast0|7 years ago|reply
I treat the world as a narrative, so a sphere is part of a very clear story. Indeed, A one of type object.
If it helps, there's an objective way to classify this under development in Australia, involving colour bias in people with stereoscopic vision: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2124346-people-with-no-...
[+] [-] segmondy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonthrowaway2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|7 years ago|reply
But if I try to see the stuff, it's as though there is a brief flash, and I see an outline for a second or so, and then it isn't there. But I know what's there.
I don't think I was ever strong on this front, but I think my ability has been declining gradually. I'm 33 now. I remember arriving in a new country at age 23, and I could recall everything that happened when I arrived: my drive in, arrival at my new house, standing in the rain.
I can still recall much of this, but I have a memory of seeing it and having great visual recall of this. But, how accurate is a memory of a memory? I didn't take any notes, so it's hard to say for sure what I could in fact recall.
One odd point: I used to get the most vivid images while lying in bed with my eyes closed, falling off to sleep. The most fantastic scenes would flow from one image to the next. I think it actually helped me sleep. These were also notable in that I couldn't visualize that way during the day.
One day I had to take antibiotics for an MRSA infection. I recall the images that night were dark and foreboding. I haven't had colourful images since then.
Sometimes at night I get glimpses of them. It's as though the images are happening in the background, and I can catch them but without colour. And I can't always see them, so I can't follow, and the images stop.
Haven't found anything in the literature about antibiotics causing this though, so I'm not too sure, it may have been coincidence and instead just gradual decline that crossed a threshold around then.
Has anyone had gradual decline of mental images, loss of pre-sleep visions, or had either of these precipitated by antibiotics?
I think these images were called Hypnagogia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
[+] [-] kaffeemitsahne|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dyukqu|7 years ago|reply
And some tangential thing, when I visualise things, I visualise them through my left eye (faces, especially. since you almost always see them, well, face-to-face), as if a projector projects them through it and I remember left parts of things better as if they're recorded using my left eye. I occasionally think about it, but haven't come up with an answer for myself yet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[+] [-] scandox|7 years ago|reply
Also if I read a menu I am attracted more by the sensation of the words themselves than a visualization of the food they actually represent. Mushrooms in a white cream sauce simply sounds delicious (as verbiage), though I'm not terribly fond of them.
Anyone similar?
[+] [-] shaneos|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crooked-v|7 years ago|reply
This hasn't been any hindrance to my career in software, as once I grok something sufficiently it turns into an abstract knowledge tree that I work through on a subconscious more than conscious level.
I do lose track of things around the house constantly, but I'm not sure if this is a side effect of poor "where'd you leave it last" visualization or just everyday absent-mindedness.
[+] [-] type-2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlokier|7 years ago|reply
Most people imagine voices in their head. When reading, writing, or imagining a conversation, especially an argument, or preparing for a meeting.
When I'm reading, or writing, including coding, I hear the words in my head.
The speech doesn't sound like real sound, just like visualising doesn't look like real images. (Dreams are different - they can sound real, and I've heard some amazing music in my dreams.)
I have friend who doesn't hear anything in her "mind's ear", and had no idea until recently that other people do.
After someone admitted to hearing imaginary voices (me), after asking other people she was astonished to find this is normal and she's unusual. Nearly everyone has an internal voice.
This freaked her out as she wondered if other people experienced auditory "voices in your head telling you what to do" style hallucinations, and wondered if they sound like real voices (they don't, but there is some resemblance).
She simply had no conscious experience of a mind's ear with speech.
I can't imagine what it's like without one. Most of my thinking has imaginary speech going on, including when I'm coding or reading.
I also have a friend who _stopped_ having the mind's ear speech after a stroke. She said she'd been trying for years to quieten the internal dialogue through meditation, and then after the stroke she finally experienced it.
[+] [-] Tor3|7 years ago|reply
I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to actually 'listen' to a voice when reading I imagine the reading would get terribly slow. Since I was a child I've always been able to read much much faster than any kind of speech or audio narrative. In elementary school I used to drop by the library every day, borrow up to four books, read them, get new books the next day. An inner voice would be like slow motion, it would take forever to read a book.
(And I was surprised when book commentors complained about e.g. names in a story that are difficult to pronounce. Until I understood that their inner voice is actually trying to pronounce it - which breaks up their reading.)
[+] [-] francpaul|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dekhn|7 years ago|reply
Discovering 3D rendering was a huge thing for me- suddenly, rather than having to work incredibly hard to visualize things in my head (or do mental rotations on them), I could build a model world and move things around until I saw what I needed (this was super helpful for molecular structures, but also for neural network architectures and complex workflows).
[+] [-] theonemind|7 years ago|reply
I don't really think it has caused me many problems, except that I tend to get lost very easily. Luckily, we have near ubiquitous GPS now and Google Maps.
On the other hand, I have good mental auditory capabilities. I can, say, play "air on the g string" in my head right now with near perfect fidelity, or just imagine new music in real time as if I were simply hearing it. Some people apparently can't do that, but can do the visual equivalent.
So, eh, you've got what you've got.
[+] [-] dinkleberg|7 years ago|reply
But it was a strange topic, so I never really discussed this topic with anyone. Based on what I am reading, I don't think I have aphantasia, or maybe it is a spectrum and I have it to some degree. But it is refreshing and also kind of sad at the same time to hear that others experience visualization drastically differently.
I'm still very much a dreamer and a thinker and haven't had any issues with my ability to visualize things. But hearing about how some of you are able to bring up vivid images sounds pretty magical. I do wonder if some of this is about how we as individuals explain things. Maybe what I am experiencing is actually normal but others describe it in a different frame of mind than my own.
Regardless, it is an interesting subject.
[+] [-] the_solenoid|7 years ago|reply
Then there were the careers I was drawn to: creative things like graphic design, drafting, etc that I utterly failed at. I had ideas of what I wanted to do, but the step between transforming the thoughts onto paper was always a fight. I studied photography in school, and could never convert it into a profession because I found being creative enough to get clients wasn't coming to me - I would be burnt out on small projects for no reason I could fathom.
I ALWAYS assumed people who visualize chakras or meditate with a object focus were just faking it.
I remember reading about this a year or so ago, and telling some friends. One of them immediately recognized it as why I utterly failed at some MMO raid mechanics.
So there is probably an unending list of ways this has impacted my choices, and I can only hope young kinds get a chance to learn they have this and get some guidance on what effects this will have on certain tasks based on the level of visualization they have.
[+] [-] caenn|7 years ago|reply