I got aphantasia from Covid, apparently it's an extremely rare side effect - so rare I've only found a handful of people on the entire internet who've experienced it. So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize, I used to be extremely good at visualizing. Most major impact (apart from the loss of ability to daydream) is that my memory is worse, as my memory was very much based on playing back memories as movies in my head. Especially childhood memories suffered. Also reading books is a very different experience, as when I previously would make up movies and picture the characters visually when reading, now it's all black. That said, reading books is still an enjoyable experience, it's just very different.
I also stopped dreaming in images for a long time, which was weird. It's still very dim (not so vivid), but at least that part came back.
That sounds incredibly sad and frustrating. I can't imagine what it's like to suddenly lose that ability, being so dependent on it.
Indeed many of my childhood memories are mostly sequences of pictures, the emotional content kind of "floats" on the imagery. It must be very frustrating, being forced to reinvent how you experience your inner life and memories.
Edit, after reading some more comments: are you musically inclined? Did your ability to hear melodies in your "inner ear" suffer similarly?
> So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize
True, but this is not the same as being born aphantasic.
I'm thinking that people like me who have never had the ability to draw pictures in their head have decades of dedicating brain power to alternative ways of thinking about the world that you wouldn't have in place.
You wouldn't be able to compare the experience in any real depth, but you might have more than typical insight.
I'm pretty sure you can regain the ability. Covid damages the brain, and the brain "forgets" how to do certain things (like smell or visualise or focus), but brains are incredibly powerful and flexible, and can re-learn these things. I myself have long covid and lost a lot of sensing ability, but have been able to improve my senses of smell and touch by training with promising results. Here are some techniques people have used to help learn/relearn how to visualise: https://www.reddit.com/r/CureAphantasia/
As someone outside the spectrum completely, I can sympathise with your lack. I find you experiencing both sides fascinating. But the reason I replied is that my wife is a Chinese medicine practitioner, and also treats using a not so common method of scalp/brain acupuncture. After contracting COVID myself and losing all sense of smell and taste, she cured me in one session of that technique. Minutes after the needles went in my scalp I got back about 5% of my senses and by the evening it was all back. I don't know where you are geographically but it might be something worth exploring.
I just realised that I had similar experience. I can still picture things in my mind but dreams only came back a few weeks ago after being absent for a long, long time. Thinking about it it's not been months but a year or two.
Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia.
SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes.
Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for breakfast today ಠ_ಠ
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I always feel like a complete tool when people talk about events in their adolescent years or even if we talk about the movie we watched at the theater yesterday. I remember what the movie was about and I'm probably able to recall one or two scenes that had the most impact on me, but then someone roles up and starts a discussion on "all the scenes where Rebecca and Lydia felt lost and how they were set in similar places" and I'm just lost myself. I'd be able to recall they were lost but not what scenes there were to transport that idea to me.
Memory is a funny thing, you can in fact remember things that didn't actually happen or just completely misremember things that did happen. See, for example, the 'Lost in the mall technique': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_technique
Interesting, combined with the article below I also start to wonder about more connections/correlations.
I have many vivid dreams a night, and often wake feeling exhausted. I have been thinking this might be my brain overcompensating for aphantasia. First time I have heard of SDAM, and that certainly applies to me, along with face/name memory, especially people out of context.
I speculated the other day that it could be 40 years programming has rewired my brain. Great at making logical connections, mapping/route memory is amazing, along with logical analysis.
Probably SDAM is related to depression too. If we are not able to recall the happy times/memories in the same way as other people do, not counting those technical solution wins!
Also as bad as my memory is, SDAM or old age ;) it actually feels worse since Covid and plenty of fuzzy/foggy brain days.
I started a small meditation where I attempt to walk back through the whole day as best I can, while trying to drift to sleep. It has made me appreciate my life more and I remember more mundane details because I have at least recalled it once, if that makes sense.
Unless it is a day to forget... If you have too many of those, you know something needs to change.
Ha. That describes me perfectly. I have heard the distinction between “episodic memory” and “semantic memory” made before, and so I just thought that my semantic memory was a lot stronger than my episodic memory. I hadn’t realised it had a specific name. Thanks for sharing.
FWIW, I’m also very much aphantasic (I’d be a 4.5/5.0 on the test in Guardian article).
I've sometimes wondered if I could have aphantasia or perhaps be low enough on the visual imagery spectrum to have some of the practical effects of aphantasia.
When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar mustache. I can bring up a general image of "circular glasses" or "handlebar mustache" in my mind. However, I cannot imaging his face with glasses and a mustache. It almost feels like the way that you "see" things when you are only half watching a TV show or are partially zoned out while driving. In some sense you are seeing them but it's difficult to pull up details.
When I visualize a scene, I'm not sure I "see" it so much as I form a spatial map of the scene.
I also find that the "images" that do get stored in my memory are more like impressions. Maybe in some sense I can "visualize" them, but they are really more like impressions of how they make me feel or the "vibe" that I get from them.
It's a spectrum and I think your experience is probably typical. A minority of people see nothing and another minority of people see vivid images. Most people get varying degrees of fuzziness.
I consider myself aphantasic and would describe my process similarly. I can kind of "draw" shapes in my head with sort of strokes of light like a kid writing their name in the air with a sparkler. While doing it, I can in fact feel my eyes physically moving around under their lids. Anything that isn't a rudimentary shape is out. This comes in handy while thinking about software because I can pretty easily create and trace connections between things in a sort of imaginary network.
I experience basically the same thing with sounds, which I've never heard anyone talk about. If you ask me to imagine the guitar solo from "sweet child of mine", I'm not going to hear the actual song in my head, I'm going to hear essentially the same thing as if you asked me to describe it (with lots of beedly dee type sounds). I can recognize a person's voice, but I can't will it into existence without hearing it, instead I would hear my own imitation of them, however bad that is. I'm not sure if that's a common experience but media tells me it's not.
This sounds very similar to my experience as well. Memory and mental visualization are very fuzzy. Like a camera with a dirty lens and very narrow focus. I can't even imagine my wife or children's faces clearly. I can picture an environment, but it's like a low res image or impressionistic painting.
I can think very clearly in text however, so I can imagine vivid descriptions of a physical environment and with descriptions of fine detail. But it's stored as text, and only blurrily rendered to images.
Recently, I've gradually realized that I struggle to recognize faces and some significant chunk of my social anxiety comes from this. If I see a face often enough or in large enough doses I can recognize it, but if I see it only occasionally and for brief encounters, I really struggle. I think it may be related to my inability visualize.
A key thing here is that you can train the ability to visualise. You probably don't spend very long per day trying to picture your friend's face with the glasses and mustache, but if you did, you'd find that over time, your ability would increase.
This is just normal. I wouldn't overthink it. If you were truly "aphantasic", you'd know; if you truly had preternatural visualization abilities, you'd know.
that's basically what I experience. When I learned that many artists picture their entire drawing in detail, and then put it down on page roughly as they imagine it, I couldn't even imagine that.
If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain".
The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path". Maybe, maybe the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and the path is a winding line ~~~ but that is already pushing it.
These kind of "mind-travels" are sometimes done at end of yoga classes. For me, they are complete pointless, and I usually fall asleep.
I have also great problems identifying faces, don't know if there is a connection.
On the other hand, I can vividly imagine sounds, including voices and music.
I really hate these aphantasia questions. It feels too subjective.
I can visualize in a sense, but I would never talk of an image. In fact closing my eyes makes it harder for me to imagine anything.
I can recall my dream from last night for example, I can describe it quite well. If you now would ask me to in my mind modify for example the color of the floor, I couldn’t. Because in “dream reality” I very much remember it wasn’t.
I can daydream, I can imagine vividly. But the moment anyone tells me, “modify what you’re imagining like this”, it all falls apart.
Also what is interesting is the quality of detail between me describing the imaginary situation and reconstructing it in real life. A lot of aspects are lost under a haze when describing it, but when reconstructing it I can tell you if an aspect is right or wrong, not what it should be.
That’s of course my personal experience. Just I feel like Aphantasia is this buzzfeed like diagnosis illness, where you really have a lot of interpretation.
There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported.
Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogramming our visual hardware to form abstract concepts in the minds eye rather than visualizing concrete objects.
What frustrates me about things like that, there seem to be no proper tests for that. Shouldn't there be an easy test for Aphantasia, for example, that doesn't ask me things like "do you have a mind's eye" (what does that even mean?). Such a test should not ask the test subjects to self-diagnose themselves, but it should objectively test abilities and put them on a scale. Anything else really is not that helpful.
Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head.
I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA.
I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.
This makes so many moments of my life make so much more sense.
I don't have full blown aphantasia I think but mental images are always very hazy and dark to me and calling them up takes immense effort. Seems like I'm a 4 on the VVIQ scale.
On the other hand, imaginations in psychotherapy, be it for exposure it for revisiting childhood places and moments, still work for me. They are just not very visual. They contain emotions and haptic aspects, sometimes sounds and smells, but the visual is kind of like really old polaroid pictures. They frizzle out at the edges really quickly, they never move, the colors are muted and sometimes off.
At least now I know that people who claim that books evoke vibrant mental images in them are not bullshitting me. And I can stop sitting there with Lord of the Rings in hand, staring at a wall for 10 minutes and wondering why I still don't manage to "see" what Moria looks like.
I'm (apparently) aphantasic, having learned about the concept on a couple of months ago. However unscientific the [VVIQ](https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/) is, I couldn't answer a single question with anything other than "No image at all."
What I find interesting is that for the past few years I've also been getting regular IV ketamine infusions to treat major depression. The imagery I visualize during these infusions is hyperreal and unlike anything I've ever experienced. I see these full-motion, hyper-detailed, 3D environments that absolutely blow my mind. I also seem to have fairly vivid dreams but when I'm conscious, I can't visualize anything to save my life.
I don't see anything. I feel like we're talking past each other. I am skeptical that "visualize an apple" to some people gets them the mental equivalent of a Blender model where they get a 360 degree view of the image and from there they are able to apply arbitrary transformations. I can "replay" songs in my head with pretty good fidelity to the original if I remember enough of it, but I think that's fairly common.
For those of you who do not suffer from dead-on aphantasia but simply have bad visualization/memory recall: you may find great industry in learning to draw, paint, sculpt and immersing yourself in perceptory recall to essentially, in an analogous manner of speaking, strengthen weak muscles. You may go so far as to find the book “ The training of the memory in art and the education of the artist” by B., L. Horace to be of interest. Do not skip on music and try to find ways to engage physically as best as possible. Perception works best in totality, and people who have strong visual recall often have other strong recall functions as well, disabilities notwithstanding.
For me, visualisation is related to memory recall. If someone asks me to imagine a scene, I'll run through memories of actual experiences and combine them where necessary to produce an approximation. For aural imagination, such as music composition, I imagine snippets of music I've heard, then combine them. There is a visual component to that, but it's symbolic, not vivid. If I need to imagine something I haven't experienced, it's like a combination of line drawings, animation and written and spoken language. It would look like a mess if I could project it. Colours are there, but they're not vivid. They're more like bad watercolours. If I take my time, I can clear up the image, and over time it becomes more vivid. This is actually how I write. It's a slow process, but it's the only way I can think clearly. I find social conversation difficult because it tends to move faster than my ability to visualise so I find it dull and uninspiring. I prefer to spend my time slow-reading literature.
Contextual conversations are ok, such as business or academic conversations, because the language is generally a closed set and visualisations are well practiced. But social situations can be without context, and difficult to navigate.
> If someone asks me to imagine a scene, I'll run through memories of actual experiences and combine them where necessary to produce an approximation.
When someone asks me to imagine a scene, I don't really do that. That scene with mountains, trees and a lake? It's like three labels just kinda being there... waiting to be updated based on what comes next.
But if I make a focused effort, I can sorta do it. I can recall seeing something which might look like that, and recall some visual aspects. Not super vividly, but something I could at least use as a basis to draw a sketch for example.
But just by default, those images from my memory seldom come up just reading something. I have to focus and spend time recollecting. But they never ever become vivid as in real life, not remotely close.
I‘m also a self diagnosed aphant. I was so relived when I found out, school was very frustrating since there are so many learning methods that are built for people with a mind that’s able to picture stuff also hard to remember faces, I usually only know some facts about people, like they have red hair, brown eyes… even family members
but I can at least hear sounds in my mind :) I read that this is a similar spectrum thing where some people hear nothing and others can replay everything
What about sexual fantasies? Can people with aphantasia imagine the other person in any manner? In the article, the writer claims she can’t even imagine her ex-boyfriend.
I can imagine anyone, anywhere, without even closing my eyes. In many situations, I know I shouldn’t do it, but I’ve had this ability since early childhood. It has not made me a sex-craving maniac, though; I’m quite stable.
Of course they can picture things in their mind, that's how they see.
To explain the not-joke: the things you see are not "out there" they are in your mind. Now of course the things you see through your eyes are there, but the images are imaginary, the eye and brain do all kinds of things between the retina and the mind to make the imagery you see. Your visual perception is constructive.
Metaphorically speaking, the camera works, these folks just don't know how to hit "play" on the tape. They have the neural "circuitry" to visualize in their minds (or they would be blind!) they just aren't using it.
> Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
Learn to use your brain folks. It's the most sophisticated computer in the known Universe and you can learn to operate it.
I'm very interested in this topic, so I'll go ahead and describe my experience.
I can imagine anything with my eyes open. Any object on my desk, or a place, a drawing, abstract geometry or pretty much anything I have a reference to. If I were to visualize an apple in real life, with my eyes open, this is how the process would go: Imagine you're taking photos of the world 5 times a second. You then take those pictures into your mind and superimpose an apple onto them, like adding a layer in Photoshop, perhaps with 90% opacity or a bit of inconsistent flickering. That's probably the best way I could describe the experience. Those edits I create are on another visual layer, inside my mind, which requires an active effort to have a consistent visual experience, but of course sometimes it can passively activate and you're just daydreaming without any effort. Personally, I have a hard time imagining faces. They change, they melt, sometimes they become inhuman. I only have consistent faces in my dreams.
The places I know well, I can fully navigate inside my mind, just flying around a town, going down streets and such. I, of course, don't believe neither the scaling or the distance is accurate, but it's convincing and consistent enough for me at the level of abstract thought.
I fully get immersed in the books I'm reading or listening to. It's the best part of reading a book.
I can imagine smell, taste, sound, touch, sight and even other senses like balance and whatever else. Sound would be the most vivid part of my imagination. High consistency and fidelity. I also have an inner monologue which I use in second person communication, addressing myself from the perspective of another entity.
I have anxiety, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and problems with rumination. I experience memories with a lot of emotion. Whenever I look at art or listen to music, I also tend to have a deep and powerful emotional reaction.
In second year university I took a difficult 3d calculus class. I struggled for weeks until I suddenly developed the capability to visualize and manipulate 3D objects with axes, rulers and protractors in my mind. It like instantly leveled me up. Before that I had only done 2D math.
I still have a hard time believing this is actually real. I also don't see how you actually could do many jobs with this condition.
At least I couldn't imagine doing any job I ever head without the ability to manipulate visual information in my head.
[+] [-] markers|1 year ago|reply
I also stopped dreaming in images for a long time, which was weird. It's still very dim (not so vivid), but at least that part came back.
[+] [-] isoprophlex|1 year ago|reply
Indeed many of my childhood memories are mostly sequences of pictures, the emotional content kind of "floats" on the imagery. It must be very frustrating, being forced to reinvent how you experience your inner life and memories.
Edit, after reading some more comments: are you musically inclined? Did your ability to hear melodies in your "inner ear" suffer similarly?
[+] [-] ryanjshaw|1 year ago|reply
True, but this is not the same as being born aphantasic.
I'm thinking that people like me who have never had the ability to draw pictures in their head have decades of dedicating brain power to alternative ways of thinking about the world that you wouldn't have in place.
You wouldn't be able to compare the experience in any real depth, but you might have more than typical insight.
[+] [-] notRobot|1 year ago|reply
Can't hurt to try, right?
[+] [-] harel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] helij|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neongreen|1 year ago|reply
SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes.
Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for breakfast today ಠ_ಠ
[+] [-] mmh0000|1 year ago|reply
This explains why I lose every argument with my wife about things that happened in the past.
[+] [-] bleakenthusiasm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tmtvl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] whitehexagon|1 year ago|reply
I have many vivid dreams a night, and often wake feeling exhausted. I have been thinking this might be my brain overcompensating for aphantasia. First time I have heard of SDAM, and that certainly applies to me, along with face/name memory, especially people out of context.
I speculated the other day that it could be 40 years programming has rewired my brain. Great at making logical connections, mapping/route memory is amazing, along with logical analysis.
Probably SDAM is related to depression too. If we are not able to recall the happy times/memories in the same way as other people do, not counting those technical solution wins!
Also as bad as my memory is, SDAM or old age ;) it actually feels worse since Covid and plenty of fuzzy/foggy brain days.
'Sleep deprivation disrupts memory' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40681345
[edit] tried to explain it better.
[+] [-] Pwhy1|1 year ago|reply
Unless it is a day to forget... If you have too many of those, you know something needs to change.
[+] [-] lurking_swe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lannisterstark|1 year ago|reply
what the fuck
[+] [-] matthewsinclair|1 year ago|reply
FWIW, I’m also very much aphantasic (I’d be a 4.5/5.0 on the test in Guardian article).
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] adastra22|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jumploops|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] klysm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] replwoacause|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] harimau777|1 year ago|reply
When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar mustache. I can bring up a general image of "circular glasses" or "handlebar mustache" in my mind. However, I cannot imaging his face with glasses and a mustache. It almost feels like the way that you "see" things when you are only half watching a TV show or are partially zoned out while driving. In some sense you are seeing them but it's difficult to pull up details.
When I visualize a scene, I'm not sure I "see" it so much as I form a spatial map of the scene.
I also find that the "images" that do get stored in my memory are more like impressions. Maybe in some sense I can "visualize" them, but they are really more like impressions of how they make me feel or the "vibe" that I get from them.
[+] [-] tootie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarchu|1 year ago|reply
I experience basically the same thing with sounds, which I've never heard anyone talk about. If you ask me to imagine the guitar solo from "sweet child of mine", I'm not going to hear the actual song in my head, I'm going to hear essentially the same thing as if you asked me to describe it (with lots of beedly dee type sounds). I can recognize a person's voice, but I can't will it into existence without hearing it, instead I would hear my own imitation of them, however bad that is. I'm not sure if that's a common experience but media tells me it's not.
[+] [-] dbingham|1 year ago|reply
I can think very clearly in text however, so I can imagine vivid descriptions of a physical environment and with descriptions of fine detail. But it's stored as text, and only blurrily rendered to images.
Recently, I've gradually realized that I struggle to recognize faces and some significant chunk of my social anxiety comes from this. If I see a face often enough or in large enough doses I can recognize it, but if I see it only occasionally and for brief encounters, I really struggle. I think it may be related to my inability visualize.
[+] [-] skinkestek|1 year ago|reply
Why I cannot say.
Sometimes when I get a lot of sleep and relaxation I think I can visualize in ny head.
Oh, and I can visualize at least one relative, but only a certain passport image of that person.
And I can draw to some degree, so I clearly know roughly what things look like even if I cannot visualize it internally.
[+] [-] lewispollard|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sfpotter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] phito|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kemiller|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dekhn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] majiy|1 year ago|reply
The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path". Maybe, maybe the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and the path is a winding line ~~~ but that is already pushing it.
These kind of "mind-travels" are sometimes done at end of yoga classes. For me, they are complete pointless, and I usually fall asleep.
I have also great problems identifying faces, don't know if there is a connection.
On the other hand, I can vividly imagine sounds, including voices and music.
[+] [-] snaeker58|1 year ago|reply
I can visualize in a sense, but I would never talk of an image. In fact closing my eyes makes it harder for me to imagine anything.
I can recall my dream from last night for example, I can describe it quite well. If you now would ask me to in my mind modify for example the color of the floor, I couldn’t. Because in “dream reality” I very much remember it wasn’t.
I can daydream, I can imagine vividly. But the moment anyone tells me, “modify what you’re imagining like this”, it all falls apart.
Also what is interesting is the quality of detail between me describing the imaginary situation and reconstructing it in real life. A lot of aspects are lost under a haze when describing it, but when reconstructing it I can tell you if an aspect is right or wrong, not what it should be.
That’s of course my personal experience. Just I feel like Aphantasia is this buzzfeed like diagnosis illness, where you really have a lot of interpretation.
[+] [-] perrygeo|1 year ago|reply
Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogramming our visual hardware to form abstract concepts in the minds eye rather than visualizing concrete objects.
[+] [-] auggierose|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] e38383|1 year ago|reply
I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.
[+] [-] bleakenthusiasm|1 year ago|reply
I don't have full blown aphantasia I think but mental images are always very hazy and dark to me and calling them up takes immense effort. Seems like I'm a 4 on the VVIQ scale.
On the other hand, imaginations in psychotherapy, be it for exposure it for revisiting childhood places and moments, still work for me. They are just not very visual. They contain emotions and haptic aspects, sometimes sounds and smells, but the visual is kind of like really old polaroid pictures. They frizzle out at the edges really quickly, they never move, the colors are muted and sometimes off.
At least now I know that people who claim that books evoke vibrant mental images in them are not bullshitting me. And I can stop sitting there with Lord of the Rings in hand, staring at a wall for 10 minutes and wondering why I still don't manage to "see" what Moria looks like.
[+] [-] mostly_lurks|1 year ago|reply
What I find interesting is that for the past few years I've also been getting regular IV ketamine infusions to treat major depression. The imagery I visualize during these infusions is hyperreal and unlike anything I've ever experienced. I see these full-motion, hyper-detailed, 3D environments that absolutely blow my mind. I also seem to have fairly vivid dreams but when I'm conscious, I can't visualize anything to save my life.
[+] [-] costco|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ClosedPistachio|1 year ago|reply
Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951990] 105 points|negativelambda|3 months ago|114 comments
Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887661] 86 points|bookofjoe|3 months ago|89 comments
More: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[+] [-] electrodank|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] leames99|1 year ago|reply
Contextual conversations are ok, such as business or academic conversations, because the language is generally a closed set and visualisations are well practiced. But social situations can be without context, and difficult to navigate.
[+] [-] magicalhippo|1 year ago|reply
When someone asks me to imagine a scene, I don't really do that. That scene with mountains, trees and a lake? It's like three labels just kinda being there... waiting to be updated based on what comes next.
But if I make a focused effort, I can sorta do it. I can recall seeing something which might look like that, and recall some visual aspects. Not super vividly, but something I could at least use as a basis to draw a sketch for example.
But just by default, those images from my memory seldom come up just reading something. I have to focus and spend time recollecting. But they never ever become vivid as in real life, not remotely close.
[+] [-] dorena|1 year ago|reply
but I can at least hear sounds in my mind :) I read that this is a similar spectrum thing where some people hear nothing and others can replay everything
[+] [-] ossacip|1 year ago|reply
I can imagine anyone, anywhere, without even closing my eyes. In many situations, I know I shouldn’t do it, but I’ve had this ability since early childhood. It has not made me a sex-craving maniac, though; I’m quite stable.
[+] [-] carapace|1 year ago|reply
To explain the not-joke: the things you see are not "out there" they are in your mind. Now of course the things you see through your eyes are there, but the images are imaginary, the eye and brain do all kinds of things between the retina and the mind to make the imagery you see. Your visual perception is constructive.
Metaphorically speaking, the camera works, these folks just don't know how to hit "play" on the tape. They have the neural "circuitry" to visualize in their minds (or they would be blind!) they just aren't using it.
> Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?
Learn to use your brain folks. It's the most sophisticated computer in the known Universe and you can learn to operate it.
[+] [-] coldblues|1 year ago|reply
I can imagine anything with my eyes open. Any object on my desk, or a place, a drawing, abstract geometry or pretty much anything I have a reference to. If I were to visualize an apple in real life, with my eyes open, this is how the process would go: Imagine you're taking photos of the world 5 times a second. You then take those pictures into your mind and superimpose an apple onto them, like adding a layer in Photoshop, perhaps with 90% opacity or a bit of inconsistent flickering. That's probably the best way I could describe the experience. Those edits I create are on another visual layer, inside my mind, which requires an active effort to have a consistent visual experience, but of course sometimes it can passively activate and you're just daydreaming without any effort. Personally, I have a hard time imagining faces. They change, they melt, sometimes they become inhuman. I only have consistent faces in my dreams.
The places I know well, I can fully navigate inside my mind, just flying around a town, going down streets and such. I, of course, don't believe neither the scaling or the distance is accurate, but it's convincing and consistent enough for me at the level of abstract thought.
I fully get immersed in the books I'm reading or listening to. It's the best part of reading a book.
I can imagine smell, taste, sound, touch, sight and even other senses like balance and whatever else. Sound would be the most vivid part of my imagination. High consistency and fidelity. I also have an inner monologue which I use in second person communication, addressing myself from the perspective of another entity.
I have anxiety, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and problems with rumination. I experience memories with a lot of emotion. Whenever I look at art or listen to music, I also tend to have a deep and powerful emotional reaction.
[+] [-] nightowl_games|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] constantcrying|1 year ago|reply