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I've got aphantasia too. When I first heard about it about a year ago I was surprised to learn that others can actually see things in their mind's eye. Had to c

• mattmanser 8y ago
  I have aphantasia too as I said in another comment, but I have an excellent sense of direction. I'm excellent at learning maps in computer games too. I also wouldn't describe myself as able to let go of things easily. When I remember traumatic experiences I don't visualize them, I remember the feeling, the shame or the guilt or the embarrassment. I completely agree with the photo thing though.
  • ux-app 8y ago
    > have an excellent sense of direction. I'm excellent at learning maps in computer games. That's interesting. I wonder how your mind has learned to compensate. Maps are such visual things, you must be tapping into some other brain areas to store/retrieve this information. > When I remember traumatic experiences I don't visualize them, I remember the feeling, the shame or the guilt or the embarrassment. hmm, interesting. Maybe this part of my personality isn't related to the aphantasia.
    • SaidinWoT 8y ago
      There's actually already a study on spatial reasoning and aphantasia: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6685&context=etd https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... Basically, aphantasiacs tend to do just as well at spatial reasoning tasks as people with imagery, but tend to be somewhat slower and do not exhibit the gender gap that has been identified in the broader population. I'm aphantasiac as well, and can identify with some of the experiences you've mentioned in this thread, and not at all with others. My spatial reasoning is great, and I'm a singer who has no problem at all with singing along to songs - if they're sufficiently regularly structured, even singing along with the chorus the second time it happens in a song I've never heard before. However, like you, I cannot replay sounds in my head. Memories are easily put behind me. We're clearly very early in understanding what impact aphantasia has on people. It's a fascinating topic, and always interesting to teach people about.
    • vidarh 8y ago
      A map is just a visual representation of spatial relationships, and often a poor one because it's from a fixed vantage point that is certainly not well suited to visual translation into what you see at a street level. When I look at a map, I rarely try to remember what it looks like (I couldn't visualise it anyway) - I remember directions and distances relative to other places.
  • scruple 8y ago
    I believe that I have aphantasia, this is all coming on very quickly right now, but after talking to my wife for about 30 minutes I'm certain of it. She highlighted the fact that I don't have any ability to recall my dreams outside of exceptionally rare instances. I, too, have a good sense of direction and am often relied upon to be the guide on hikes or backpacking trips in places that we've never been before. I know how to read maps and use a compass and orient myself but that is less visualize than it is analytical, IMO. But! I also have the black hole effect that the GP described. I have an almost uncanny ability to just get beyond trauma and bad experiences and I'm seeing now that that is probably due to this black hole memory effect. I don't carry memories with me the way that other people do, but I've known that about myself for a while. It's caused some strife in my life, and it continues to do so, but I've taken to keeping a physical journal and making frequent notes about things that happen throughout each day. The act of writing this stuff down seems to force these things into my memory. I learned recently that my father operated similarly in his career, using a single sheet of A12 folded into quarters where he'd divide each quarter into an hour of work, with 8 folds in total representing the average day. When he worked 12/16 hour shifts, he'd add additional folds. And, so... I guess that in light of this, I've always wondered if I'll have dementia or Alzheimer's late in my life. My paternal great grandmother lived well into her 90s, but my paternal grandmother succumbed to dementia in her mid 80s. My maternal family has some folks in their 90s, as well, and everyone there seems to have their memory in tact. But, my father has had his struggles and I've personally noticed that my mother is starting to struggle with conversational memory recall today.
    • JshWright 8y ago
      Everything you've described rings 100% true with me as well (great with directions, can only recall dreaming every few years, no issues moving part traumatic events, etc). I have not yet tried journalling as a coping mechanism; I may have to give that a go.
    • raducu 8y ago
      Were you always this way? I can still picture things in my head, but with huge gaps and difficulty; when I was a kid, I used to replay a 17km road to my grandparents with exquisite details in my head: the bus, the driver, walking down the isle, seating myself, the initial jolt, watching the road turn, every unique house, porch,bench, tree, telephone wires and so on and all without a conscious efort "what happens next" . If I try real hard and ask myself questions like "ok, so now picture grandpa's mustache, now his hair, now his neck" then maybe I get a glimpse of his whole face. My sister and I used to play a game as teenagers: one of us would closd his eyes, the other would narate a scene, it was pretty great. In the 7th grade I was a 6/10 student at math, then trigonometry came and I was a 10/10 at trigonometry and 6/10 at algebra, because trigonometry made absolute sense because I could draw everything in my head; I needed tutoring with algebra, but never with trigonometry. I also almost never remember any dreams; my rem and deep sleep are toast anyway, according to fitbit. As opposed to my childhood when I woke up exactly once per night to drink water from the cup my grandma left beside the bed -- the rest of the night I had great adventures, I'd be chased my demons, fly across the clouds, escape some trap my grandfather told stories about. Nowadays I get about 1 hour of tossing and turning througout the night, and depending on my anxiety I sometimes get completely wake for 1-2 hours at about 4AM; only about 1h of rem and 1h of deep sleep, the rest is just light sleep according to fitbit.
  • vidarh 8y ago
    Similar here. I can reconstruct spatial relationships from memory in great detail, to the extent that before I realised people are literal about being able to see things, I considered myself to be a very visual thinker. E.g an example I often used is that I remember pieces of code by how they look on screen to the extent that the syntax and formatting is something I'm unusually obsessed with because it affects my recall, and that I remember pages from papers I read 25+ years ago by visual appearance and layout. But I can't see them, even though I can recall them to the point that I know what they would have looked like had I been able to see them.
• l_t 8y ago
  Have you ever noticed a similar effect with sounds? Or does it feel like a purely visual/spatial thing? For example, once I've heard a song enough, I can just replay it in my head, and it feels the same as actually listening to it. Is that just as weird for you as being able to see a ball?
  • ux-app 8y ago
    > For example, once I've heard a song enough, I can just replay it in my head sigh you've got to be kidding me. You can actually replay a sound in your head?? well, i'll add that to the list of things my brain can't do :( I've also never been able to sing along with songs. It always blows me away when my wife can just start singing along with a song she's heard a few times. I'm starting to think I might be brain damaged.
    • l_t 8y ago
      Maybe your Brain-VCR is missing the Rewind button. :) It's super interesting how memory works. Like, I can remember the content of songs because they have rhyme and rhythm and pleasantness, but I can't remember anything else word-for-word. I'm the king of paraphrasing jokes and quotes, because I can never remember how they originally went. edit to add: I'm just kidding about the brain damage thing, but seriously, I very much don't like the idea of presenting this as "aphantasia" as though it is a lack of something. I think it's (probably) just a different system that's optimized for different kinds of behaviors. I do also suspect that the mental visualization could be learned. I feel like when I played Legos as a kid I was incidentally practicing my visualization, perhaps the only reason I'm good at it now is an aggregate of those kind of coincidences.
      • ux-app 8y ago
        >Maybe your Brain-VCR is missing the Rewind button hehe sure sounds like it :)
    • johnsimer 8y ago
      You've never had an earworm?? E.g. where a song is stuck in your head and you can't get it out?
• anoncake 8y ago
  > 2. An almost superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. People with aphantasia don't have the tendency to ruminate. I've had some traumatic experiences in my life and within a few months it's as if the experience never happened. I can recall details of it but the recollection is as if the experience happened to someone else. Are you sure? I am not a psych(atr|olog)ist, but that sounds consistent with some sort of dissociation. People can even be impacted by traumas that they do not remember at all.
  • ux-app 8y ago
    > Are you sure? * shrug * no idea tbh. others with aphantasia don't seem to share the same effect, so maybe it's some kind of other dysfunction.
    • NateEag 8y ago
      I'm not purely aphantasiac (occasionally have momentary flashes of fuzzy, vague imagery), but I'm still in the category, and I identify strongly with the "superhuman ability" to get over traumatic experiences. I've had very few traumatic events in my life, but when I hear people talk about flashbacks or reliving trauma, it confuses me utterly. I understand theoretically how it could happen, now that I finally know about visual memory, but the practical effect is still completely outside my experience. My wife had long been envious of my "superhuman ability" to stay in the present, neither lingering in the past nor staring off towards the future. Once we realized I was aphantasiac it made more sense, as memory and fantasy simply don't exist for me in remotely compelling or seductive ways. It's all just abstract word-forms (and occasionally sounds). As a programmer, writer, musician, and occasional photographer/painter, I've long insisted that when making art "There is only implementation." I still think there's a lot of truth in that, but I do now realize that most people can meaningfully "see" their work before incarnating it.
  • taneq 8y ago
    > I am not a psych(atr|olog)ist I think psychiatrologist is my new favourite word. Edit: Or maybe psycologiatrist.
• graeme 8y ago
  I don't think either of those are necessarily aphantasia. I'm an excellent navigator, and in general I know the spatial arrangement of things well. Likewise, though I'm pretty stoic about stuff, I can feel shame or other emotions about past events long past.
• NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  I'm not sure I connect either of those side effects. I discovered I have aphantasia a couple of years ago from a chance encounter with a previous news discussion of it. My sense of direction is fine to good, and as far as I can establish, it's common to visualise "metaphorically". So I'd visualise a route or 3d model as another might visualise honesty - I know what it is, I can precisely express it, but I can't picture it in technicolour. It seems to work well enough that hobbies over the years have included model engineering - including design, fell walking and geocaching. I never needed a 3d model to "see" a plan, even while drawing it, even though I cannot "see" it. Saying "I just know" seems completely inadequate, but that feels like how it works. I can pick up on potential problems where a) might interfere with b). Language gets difficult for this! I can juggle a model but again metaphorically. I can do it quite easily and it never occurred to me in 50 years that images were an optional component for others. :) The only other I've encountered with a similar lack of images among my friends reports just the same ability to do direction, map reading and spatial interrelation just fine, without seeing it. Just knowing seems to be enough to do the rest. Rumination and regret is perfectly possible too - the feelings, the consequences is plenty enough to get that going. The pictures are better on radio also applies - not a literal picture but the feelings and the metaphorical. :)
  • Arelius 8y ago
    As someone who also has aphantasia, I have a very good sense of direction. For me I think I feel a sense of direction in my body the same way you might feel a blanket on a side of my body. And am also good at recognizing objects and feeling their location in relation to my transit around it... If that makes any sense.
  • coldtea 8y ago
    >I'm not sure I connect either of those side effects. I discovered I have aphantasia a couple of years ago from a chance encounter with a previous news discussion of it. Don't people misdiagnose things all the time? Unless not diagnosed, you could just not have it, and e.g. expect something super special/realistic when people talk about "seeing images" in their minds eye, which is not the case, and comparing with that. E.g. even for us, without aphantasia it's not like what we envision with our "mind's eye" has the same richness, texture, reality etc to it as things we actually see (else, I guess, we'd had trouble knowing if we really did something or just imagined it).
• rimliu 8y ago
  Have you tried Rubik's cube or similar puzzles? Does this condition have any effect on solving those?
  • godshatter 8y ago
    Not the OP, but I learned how to solve them not long after they came out. I solved one on my own, but it was more about learning a series of logical moves and applying them, along with some trial and error and some luck. I then learned a method of solving the cube from a book which I can still do to this day. But there's no visualization involved. I just look at the cube, notice that these particular faces are in this configuration, then apply the appropriate sequence of moves to get to the next step. Rinse and repeat.
• macawfish 8y ago
  Idk, I have aphantasia and I also ruminate quite a lot.
• comprev 8y ago
  Ask me to dive deep into software architecture and I'm all good. Ask me to "visualise" re-arranging the office furniture or think up a children's fantasy story with magic animals - and I'm totally, utterly lost. I have found my "creative outlet" is actually music - DJing. The repetitive logical arrangement of electronic music still gives opportunity to also be creative. I can relate to the lack of interest in fiction books others have written on this thread. I struggle to visualise what's going on with the characters/scenes so get bored (and frustrated) very quickly. Oddly I can relate strongly to your point 2. My father is the same - emotions get switched off and practical mode kicks in. He's working on a solution to one of the problems as a result of whatever's happening around us, be it financial, logistical, or anything which could "help" in his eyes. It's not so much put bad experiences behind me, but rather put them in a mental box (ironically, I can't imagine) and not worrying about it.
• francpaul 8y ago
  I also have aphantasia, and my wife has hyperphantasia. makes for interesting conversations. 1.While I do not experience visual images in my mind, I do 'form' what I can only explain as proprioceptive relationships between things. I can mentally rotate objects or my environment, but have no visual experience of it. This is a long-winded way of saying I have very good spacial understanding, direction and concept of how things relate to each other - I'm a hang glider pilot, motorcyclist, loves driving and hiking around, and never get lost. 2. I do relate with having a superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. I don't dwell on the bad for long, and tend to forget the bad experiences pretty quickly. My memory of accidents are also more proprioception and relation to things in my environment than visual.
• seandhi 8y ago
  I used to think I had aphantasia and an uncanny ability to let go of bad experiences. Then, I hit a wall after a particularly rough time in my life which forced me to “look back” at my life, and I realized that I was pushing down extremely traumatic memories. Recognizing that, it was almost as if those events caused me to get really good at blocking out images in my head, and the reason I felt that I could get past bad experiences was because nothing really added up to the things I faced in my younger years. Also, the traumatic events caused me to kind of disassociate, never really being present enough to experience things on a deep emotional level - good or bad. Dealing with the trauma has opened up a richness inside my head that I didn’t realize I had. I can visualize almost anything I imagine, and I’ve began drawing. I’ve always had very good spatial reasoning, sense of direction and audible memory. I’m still working on being fully present, though.
• uxp100 8y ago
  I also "have" aphantasia. (Am aphantasic?) No 1 I never connected it to this, but yes, I have terrible sense of direction. I do okay if there are physical landmarks (Like lake to the west or hills to the east) and numbered streets help too, but I still regularly make wrong turns and don't realize it in cities I've lived for a long time. No 2 I don't feel. I ruminate a lot. My memory is weak, but I still manage to ruminate on things.
• bemmu 8y ago
  I'm still a bit skeptical as I can't really confirm by visiting someone else's mind. What if they just define their thoughts differently? When I say "I can't see a ball", I mean that while I can reproduce how it would vaguely feel like to see a ball (like the difference between tasting something and recalling a taste), and kind of trace its outline, I can't have a picture in my mind with a similar accuracy as actually looking at a ball. Someone else might say "I can see a ball" even if internally they experience the same as me, because they might set their bar lower. Could it be that people with aphantasia are just more demanding for what they count as "seeing"?
  • russelldc 8y ago
    After speaking with enough people about this topic, I can assure you it's not just a difference of language. It's incredible what friends, family and coworkers have told me they're able to do with visual imagery. A large portion of them could overlay imaginary objects over the real world. My wife, who may be hyperphantasic, can spend hours watching TV shows/cartoons she's created in her head. She has no idea what it's like to think without visualization. I'm extremely jealous of their abilities to replay memories, old or contemporary, as films in their head. I can tell you basic facts about what happened in my life, I can't re-see those experiences.
  • ux-app 8y ago
    >because they might set their bar lower. Could it be that people with aphantasia are just more demanding for what they count as "seeing"? Yeah maybe. How could we ever really know though? I guess we have to take them at their word. I would like to be able to visualise my son's face while I'm at work, but I get nothing just black, thank goodness for photos :)
    • sergioj97 8y ago
      Even though you can't visualize his face, can you just describe it?