3 ms·

I can't even imagine (no pun intended) what would be like having aphantasia. It would be weird to me not being able to draw from memory a map of my own home.

I can't even imagine (no pun intended) what would be like having aphantasia. It would be weird to me not being able to draw from memory a map of my own home. Or not being able to answer a question like "if you enter your home, walk straight ahead until you reach a wall, and then turn 90° counterclockwise, what would you be looking at?". Unless I'm wildly misunderstanding what "having a mental image" means.

drcongo 4y ago
Sorry for the delayed reply, but if you happen to come back... In my case, I can definitely do the two things you mention there (funnily enough most people with aphantasia actually have better than average spatial awareness), but there is no mental image of any of it - I can't see anything in my head, but have an entirely different "sense" of it all. The best description I've managed to come up with for my own attempts to mentally see something is that I can hold the essence of the object in my head. Ask me to imagine an apple and it's kinda like my brain has stored the underlying code that when run would render an apple, but the renderer is broken. I know what an apple is, I know what it looks like, I could describe one with great detail, but I can't picture one in my head.
- quectophoton 4y ago
  Thanks for the response, that's more or less where I was leading with my message. I don't think I have aphantasia myself, but what you say makes sense to me and describes my experience. We might never know the answer, but for all we know, what you describe here might be what others call a "mental image", and maybe aphantasia is just a huge misunderstanding because the language we use to describe it makes it sound like it should be something more vivid that it really is. Or maybe I also have aphantasia myself and I'm just finding out now. These mind topics are always fascinating.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    There's a test you can do here [0] which is quite interesting in showing the variation in people's internal experience. I did it with my wife and daughter who are both very visual thinkers - I was astonished at their answers and how different their mind's eyes appear to be to my own, they were similarly astonished at mine. [0] https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/vviq/

drcongo 4y ago

Sorry for the delayed reply, but if you happen to come back... In my case, I can definitely do the two things you mention there (funnily enough most people with aphantasia actually have better than average spatial awareness), but there is no mental image of any of it - I can't see anything in my head, but have an entirely different "sense" of it all. The best description I've managed to come up with for my own attempts to mentally see something is that I can hold the essence of the object in my head. Ask me to imagine an apple and it's kinda like my brain has stored the underlying code that when run would render an apple, but the renderer is broken. I know what an apple is, I know what it looks like, I could describe one with great detail, but I can't picture one in my head.

quectophoton 4y ago
Thanks for the response, that's more or less where I was leading with my message. I don't think I have aphantasia myself, but what you say makes sense to me and describes my experience. We might never know the answer, but for all we know, what you describe here might be what others call a "mental image", and maybe aphantasia is just a huge misunderstanding because the language we use to describe it makes it sound like it should be something more vivid that it really is. Or maybe I also have aphantasia myself and I'm just finding out now. These mind topics are always fascinating.
- drcongo 4y ago
  There's a test you can do here [0] which is quite interesting in showing the variation in people's internal experience. I did it with my wife and daughter who are both very visual thinkers - I was astonished at their answers and how different their mind's eyes appear to be to my own, they were similarly astonished at mine. [0] https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/vviq/