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If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining. My

If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining. My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. I am jealous. My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes. On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it's just black and blank and boring when I close my eyes at bed time. :)

fbanon 5y ago
>My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. Nah, it's not like that. When we imagine something it's not like we actually see those things like real visual stimuli. The experience is more abstract than that. There is a vague visual aspect to it, but it's not hi-def like real vision, just fragments appearing then disappearing in your mind. So it's not at all like dreaming. * at least for me.
- checkyoursudo 5y ago
  I have no first-hand experience with what it's like, so I cannot comment on the veracity of what people have told me or I have read about it since learning about aphantasia. However, my wife assures me that it is in fact like a real, hi-def movie playing in her mind, and I have since read a number of accounts of artists who literally just draw or paint exactly what they see with their minds' eye(s), and talked with plenty of people who have varying degrees of inner vision. I take you at your word for your experience. I likewise have no reason to think my wife, for example, is exaggerating to me. My wife has a photographic memory, and she can literally recreate stuff down to almost absurd details. I think it is possible you may be underestimating what other people see in their minds. :)
  - fbanon 5y ago
    I've asked a few people and everyone said that their imagination is not as hi-def as their vision. I.e. when they imagine something it's not like an image was cut & pasted onto their visual field. So I'm pretty sure your friends were exaggerating, or meant hi-def in a different sense.
    - checkyoursudo 5y ago
      I'm not so sure. "Our discovery, or rediscovery, that around 2-3% of the population, with aphantasia, lack a mind’s eye, and that a somewhat larger percentage, with hyperphantasia, have imagery that is ‘as vivid as real seeing’ has captured huge public interest, and led to a sustained surge of citizen science. We have been astonished – and delighted – to receive over 14,000 contacts from members of the public with extreme imagery since coining the terms in 2015."[1] > ‘as vivid as real seeing’ I can only take others' word for it, but why would I disbelieve this? Especially when I myself have the other extreme of nothingness? Why would so many people lie or exaggerate about seeing mental imagery "as vivid as real seeing"? [1] https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/2020/05/04/an-update-on-extreme-imagination-aphantasiahyperphantasia/ https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/2020/05/04/an-update-on-...
ManuelKiessling 5y ago
This is so incredible for me to, well, imagine (no pun intended). I’m super curious now and hope you don’t mind. If you are currently not outside your house, and I ask you to tell me how many windows your house has – and I also ask you to not step outside your house and not go from room to room, literally counting the windows – how would you do this? When I do this, I can‘t help to go from room to room in my mind, visualizing each room in my mind, and, well, basically count the windows from the images in my mind. I can’t imagine how else one could do this! And I assume you are nevertheless able to tell me from memory the number of windows in your house, even without physically visiting each room and also assuming that you don’t just happen to know the number by heart (I don’t for my house, and it‘s a small house – yet I have to „visit“ each room mentally and visually). Or are you? As said, really curious! I mean, if you don’t happen to know the number by heart, and you also aren’t allow to count them in person, but you ALSO only see a blank space when closing your eyes – in a way, you shouldn’t be able to answer that question…? Or am I missing something?
- checkyoursudo 5y ago
  What an interesting mental exercise. I have an inventory of concepts, data, and other random thoughts in my head. If you ask me how many windows are in each room, I can recall this information (probably even relatively accurately!). I cannot picture the room or the windows, however. So, I can tally up the windows and be reasonably certain, only because I know how many there are (in this house, I know how many are in each room, so I can add them up; in past houses I have counted them before and can simply recall that information). If I had not at some point paid attention to the number of windows in a room, and then left that room, I am not sure I could accurately tell you how many windows were there, because I cannot recreate it in my mind in a visual way. I think I would have to make a mental note first. However, I think I do actually do this unconsciously throughout the waking day. I can certainly remember things from during the day. I think that I can know the number of windows in each room even though I cannot picture them in the same way that I can recognize anything that I have encoded in memory before. The information is there for both of us, encoded in synapses like usual. When you are "visiting" each room in your house, I think you are walking through a recalled simulation that is created in your working memory, e.g. a visuo-spatial sketchpad, using the same type of information that is stored in my brain. The difference is that I cannot recall into a visual simulation that encoded information in the way that you can. So, I think the information is there for both of us. You can just do something with it that I cannot. Maybe. Anyway, memory encoding is not where my research is, so don't quote me. :)

fbanon 5y ago

>My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. Nah, it's not like that. When we imagine something it's not like we actually see those things like real visual stimuli. The experience is more abstract than that. There is a vague visual aspect to it, but it's not hi-def like real vision, just fragments appearing then disappearing in your mind. So it's not at all like dreaming. * at least for me.

checkyoursudo 5y ago
I have no first-hand experience with what it's like, so I cannot comment on the veracity of what people have told me or I have read about it since learning about aphantasia. However, my wife assures me that it is in fact like a real, hi-def movie playing in her mind, and I have since read a number of accounts of artists who literally just draw or paint exactly what they see with their minds' eye(s), and talked with plenty of people who have varying degrees of inner vision. I take you at your word for your experience. I likewise have no reason to think my wife, for example, is exaggerating to me. My wife has a photographic memory, and she can literally recreate stuff down to almost absurd details. I think it is possible you may be underestimating what other people see in their minds. :)
- fbanon 5y ago
  I've asked a few people and everyone said that their imagination is not as hi-def as their vision. I.e. when they imagine something it's not like an image was cut & pasted onto their visual field. So I'm pretty sure your friends were exaggerating, or meant hi-def in a different sense.
  - checkyoursudo 5y ago
    I'm not so sure. "Our discovery, or rediscovery, that around 2-3% of the population, with aphantasia, lack a mind’s eye, and that a somewhat larger percentage, with hyperphantasia, have imagery that is ‘as vivid as real seeing’ has captured huge public interest, and led to a sustained surge of citizen science. We have been astonished – and delighted – to receive over 14,000 contacts from members of the public with extreme imagery since coining the terms in 2015."[1] > ‘as vivid as real seeing’ I can only take others' word for it, but why would I disbelieve this? Especially when I myself have the other extreme of nothingness? Why would so many people lie or exaggerate about seeing mental imagery "as vivid as real seeing"? [1] https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/2020/05/04/an-update-on-extreme-imagination-aphantasiahyperphantasia/ https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/2020/05/04/an-update-on-...

ManuelKiessling 5y ago

This is so incredible for me to, well, imagine (no pun intended). I’m super curious now and hope you don’t mind. If you are currently not outside your house, and I ask you to tell me how many windows your house has – and I also ask you to not step outside your house and not go from room to room, literally counting the windows – how would you do this? When I do this, I can‘t help to go from room to room in my mind, visualizing each room in my mind, and, well, basically count the windows from the images in my mind. I can’t imagine how else one could do this! And I assume you are nevertheless able to tell me from memory the number of windows in your house, even without physically visiting each room and also assuming that you don’t just happen to know the number by heart (I don’t for my house, and it‘s a small house – yet I have to „visit“ each room mentally and visually). Or are you? As said, really curious! I mean, if you don’t happen to know the number by heart, and you also aren’t allow to count them in person, but you ALSO only see a blank space when closing your eyes – in a way, you shouldn’t be able to answer that question…? Or am I missing something?

checkyoursudo 5y ago
What an interesting mental exercise. I have an inventory of concepts, data, and other random thoughts in my head. If you ask me how many windows are in each room, I can recall this information (probably even relatively accurately!). I cannot picture the room or the windows, however. So, I can tally up the windows and be reasonably certain, only because I know how many there are (in this house, I know how many are in each room, so I can add them up; in past houses I have counted them before and can simply recall that information). If I had not at some point paid attention to the number of windows in a room, and then left that room, I am not sure I could accurately tell you how many windows were there, because I cannot recreate it in my mind in a visual way. I think I would have to make a mental note first. However, I think I do actually do this unconsciously throughout the waking day. I can certainly remember things from during the day. I think that I can know the number of windows in each room even though I cannot picture them in the same way that I can recognize anything that I have encoded in memory before. The information is there for both of us, encoded in synapses like usual. When you are "visiting" each room in your house, I think you are walking through a recalled simulation that is created in your working memory, e.g. a visuo-spatial sketchpad, using the same type of information that is stored in my brain. The difference is that I cannot recall into a visual simulation that encoded information in the way that you can. So, I think the information is there for both of us. You can just do something with it that I cannot. Maybe. Anyway, memory encoding is not where my research is, so don't quote me. :)