10 ms·

So, wait, are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of you

So, wait, are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there? I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of the visual system at all - it's somewhere else in my head.

BizarroLand 3y ago
No. It's only rarely that vivid. It's more like the memory of an image, but one you may not have seen yet. Like if you imagine a 1950's spaceship, yellow with red stripes and long curving fins resting on a cratered moonscape with astronauts in shiny puffy silver suits holding their glass helmets in their hands as if they can breathe in the vacuum of space smiling brightly with a sign above that reads, "buy astrogum! It's astrolicious!" in the coca-cola font. You won't see that the same way you see the words on the page in front of you, but in that same way that you "see" the hazy memories of your childhood playing with friends, running around, parks and blue skies in the ever-lasting summer of your youth.
doug-moen 3y ago
I can imagine imagery in two different ways. 1. One way is the "behind the eyelids" technique, where the imagery seems to be coming from the retina, or at least I experience it that way. I cannot currently generate the high quality photographic imagery of the OP, and even the experience of colour is pretty sketchy. That's today, awake, although sometimes it gets better when I'm in bed and about to fall asleep. Either way, this only works if my eyes are closed, or it's pitch dark. With my eyes open, the signal from my retina washes out the image, which is very dim. One person I met who experiences this calls the experience "phosphenes". The experience doesn't look real, and I have no sense of depth or spatial location, like I do with vision. It is only partially under conscious control. I get images, then I "make suggestions" about what I want to see, and then it kind of drifts in the direction of what I want. 2. The other way works with my eyes open. I can do 3D objects, even set up a wire frame cube spinning around my head. The object can be "inside my mind" with no defined location, or I can locate it in space. I barely have any colour available in this subsystem, but that could be lack of practice. This is under full conscious control. I have no difficulty distinguishing these images from what I am seeing, I experience eyesight and these images as two different mental domains. I just ran a test, and I can do both things at the same time, but it requires a lot of concentration and I'm not good at it. I know from talking to people that there is a lot of variation in how people experience mental imagery. Based on what I've read, LSD and psilocybin hallucinations may be be a more powerful version of "system 1" imagery as described above. That's because: at low doses, you can only see the hallucinations with your eyes closed, and they are only partially under conscious control. (There are instructions on the web on how to influence the imagery.) UPDATE: I wondered whether my system 1 imagery is "in the retina" or "in the visual cortex". As an experiment, I stared at a bright light, then closed my eyes to see the retinal afterimage of the bright light. Everybody gets these afterimages. Then, I was able to modify the afterimage! After some work, I eventually changed the colour of the afterimage and made it into the centre of a flower. To my delight, the flower had an almost photographic quality. This doesn't really prove anything about retina vs visual cortex. But this is a better result than I've had in the past, before I read the ideas in this post. Finally, the OP and video describes "image streaming", which seems to be a more advanced version of what I do when I try to shape a system 1 "retinal" image. Afterimages are one way to produce a seed image. In the past I've just created images starting from a black visual field, but I guess it's easier if you start with a seed. Apparently if you get really good then you can have full conscious control over system 1 mental imagery! I had not previously considered talking out loud to influence the image. Now I'm wondering whether "microdosing", a Silicon valley practice that has been discussed on HN before, would improve your ability to perform "image streaming". Maybe other people with more knowledge of this can comment.
klipt 3y ago
I think it's normal to distinguish imagined pictures from real ones. If you can't, that's schizophrenia.
- mistermann 3y ago
  Or sometimes, critical thinking. ;
  - pixl97 3y ago
    If your mind is lying to you, there is no amount of critical thinking that can save you in the long run.
davidhunter 3y ago
Yes. I am like you in that I cannot actually see anything visual in my minds eye but I can still 'visualise' it. For example, I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain. It was a revelation when I found out that most people can actually see things visually in their minds eye. A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.
- k9unit 3y ago
  It feels like my brain is processing and feeling what it would look like if I truly saw it. I can see a dice, zoom in on it, and feel the indented bumps where the black dots go. But the actual image of a dice just barely escapes me. It's similar when visualizing math too.
- norrius 3y ago
  > I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain. I think I'm the same. It's as if I can imagine a geometry, but it doesn't have any texture or colour. It's not black, not grey, not brown... It's a shape in its pure form, maybe like a wireframe, without a physical manifestation. However, I can imagine music and actually hear it. I had this a couple of times where I "replay" a song in a foreign language I've heard a long time ago, and this time I can parse out more lyrics than before. All inside my head.
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    I definitely do abstract shapes more often, but I thought but and I could do some lighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_teapot_(solid).stl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_t... Play with the Utah teapot and then try to do the same thing mentally. Like imagine where the shadows are supposed to go and then see if you are right. For colors imagine something corny like like a laser scan passing over, and then try to imagine different colors or laser.
  - GolfPopper 3y ago
    That sounds a lot like me as well. I have a very hard time getting an actual realistic picture, with color and detail, in my head. At most its a faint and hazy thing. And while I don't have face-blindness - I recognize people from their faces easily - picturing the faces of even close friends and family members in my head is very hard, and mostly comes down to a few half-remembered features, tied to words. But a geometry, or set of relations between objects (whether that's connections or just relative positioning, like a map) is pretty easy, and I can move around, rotate and focus on the geometry with less effort than it takes to imagine, say, an apple. But familiar music can be played back in my head with only a little effort, or a slight reminder. Not just the lyrics, or the melody, but the full audio as I heard it, missing only background parts that my mind didn't "catch". Rarely (a couple times a year), I'll get a partial song "stuck" and won't be able to get it out of my head until I track it down and listen to it until the end. I can't "invent" a tune though, just replay ones I've heard several times.
krapp 3y ago
> are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there? No. >I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of the visual system at all - it's somewhere else in my head. Yes. That's all it is. Although it does seem to be indirectly related to the visual system, likely whatever part of it lets people "see" things when they dream, despite not actually processing visual stimuli through the eyes. It's just dreaming while awake.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  That's not what's being described in this article though. They are saying like how you see golden dots after gently rubbing your eyes. They are saying they see images like that. Definitely seems like more than just imagining seeing something. When I rub my eyes I definitely see some dots that are way more real than not rubbing my eyes and just imagining dots.
- _dain_ 3y ago
  >No. ahem. yes we do. we really, really do.
  - krapp 3y ago
    Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine? How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.
    - _dain_ 3y ago
      >How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's kinda like that. And it usually doesn't manifest when I'm intensely concentrating on one task (unless deliberately imagining something is part of how I solve the task). At any rate, driving is mostly a system 1 activity, carried out autonomically. In real life, people's thoughts drift all the time when they drive. It's unavoidable and mostly not a big deal. >How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? Because they're on different channels. Like stdout vs stderr. >I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional. Again, most people are like this. You are the one who is unusual. You probably have aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia It's common for aphantasics to be initially completely incredulous at the concept of mental imagery, so you're not alone here. See this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... >Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery1 to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images
iseanstevens 3y ago
I don’t even need to close my eyes and the images are fairly vivid. AR before AR. I thought for a long time that’s how it was for everyone. Anyone else have that?
- nurbl 3y ago
  Yes. I don't have very good conscious control of it, but if I start "daydreaming" the images can pretty much override what my eyes are seeing. I wouldn't say it's overlaying like AR, for me it's more like tuning in to a different channel. I guess somehow the things my eyes see are still registering, e.g. if something new comes into view I will pop back to reality.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I'm the same. I can pop things in and out of reality as needed to visualize things. Of course the counter to this scares me thinking about what happens if I did this without conscious awareness... My dreams can feel more real than reality too. Like full senses lucid dreams. Looking at things like clocks and books worked in my dreams. My dreams are just a reality inside the reality everyone else shares. Also, In my teens and early 20s I had dreams I could levitate. If you could imagine being able to follow magnetic fields just under your skin would be about the best way to describe it. It was disappointing to wake up and realize that I couldn't do this.
- naruhodo 3y ago
  Yep. Super helpful for visualising structures of source code and other things. Don't close your eyes, just patch your brain output back to brain input. Same as when you're dreaming.
RamRodification 3y ago
Yeah I have the same question. It's either that, which sounds kinda crazy, or that's just how they describe what you and I can already "see" when we imagine something that is visual, I guess? Whereas when you have aphantasia you cannot do that
stouset 3y ago
No, not with their eyes. Hence the “mind’s eye”. The darkness of your eyelids isn’t replaced, it’s just that your focus is on a mental image of what an object feels like and not just on the darkness of your vision.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  When I rub by eyes, the darkness of my eyelids is definitely replaced by yellowish dots that fade in and out and move around. I'm definitely seeing them even though my eyes are closed. I'm not just imagining them. This article is saying the effect is like that, so it seems to be different than just imagining something with your eyes closed. When I imagine something I don't "see" it at all the way I "see" the yellow dots after rubbing my eyes.
sebtron 3y ago
Yes, it apparently most people can. I cannot, and I also found out relatively recently. For example, you can ask "most people" to imagine a car, and then follow up by asking "what color did you imagine it?". For me and you this question would not make any sense, but you'll find out that "most people" find it completely normal and answer it without questioning you.
- sndwnm 3y ago
  If I had been posed this question I could imagine it having gone two different ways. First, I could approach it as remembering, maybe not a car I saw yesterday, but a generic idea of some type of car. For example if I thought about a Japanese pickup or a Lamborghini, I would probably answer the following color question with "white" and "orange", because for me those are stereotypic colors that "come with" the memory. Perhaps many people think in this way and thus assume the color obviously is there. The second way would be to abstractly build a car in my mind. Start with four tires, put a rough shape of a frame on it — lets make it a sedan. If I proceed this way, I probably would not choose a color, at least not early on. Like many in this thread, this is how I usually imagine things, as "wireframes". The color/texture is not there because I have not assigned it. I can't vividly see the things I imagine, but they can still have color just like they can have shape.
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
  I consider myself to have aphantasia (cannot visualize anything in my mind, except when dreaming) and I think I could still pass the test you mention. If I imagine a car, I can imagine its features, and of course color being a quite salient feature I would probably assign it a color (e.g. I could imagine a red Ferrari, or a black limo). It's just that I wouldn't see it, there wouldn't be anything in my mind similar to the actual experience of seeing a red object, I would just think about the "concept" of the car being red (hard to explain). So far I've never found a way in which aphantasia really manifests externally or can be measured externally in a more or less reliable way. Which is why I'm still not 100% sure that people who claim not to be aphantasiacs aren't just exaggerating or taking metaphors too literally...
  - 3y ago
Hnrobert42 3y ago
I am like you. I’m guessing that the author needed to use the stuff seen by his eyes while closed as a springboard to seeing something with his mind’s eye. My dad told me about monk’s who meditate on imagining that their thoughts exist behind their belly button. As you noted, your mind’s eye is not located in the same physical space as your actual eyes. Similarly, there is no reason the thoughts you hear couldn’t be happening in your belly button. But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard.
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard." It really is hard. I just know the conscious effort of meditating and centering my consciousness in the center of my body (above the belly button) as opposed to my head, really helps my focus and mental abilities and general wellbeing. And everytime I use my mobile .. it helps me if I do it afterwards, to not get lost again. I wonder if the jogis would have advanced much, if they would have had a mobile close to them ..
- toombowoombo 3y ago
  Try pinching yourself randomly so that you can attract your mind to different spots in your body. I used to do that when I had headpain to distract me from it (I was a minor back when I learned that. In my country everyone is very careful with any substance given to minors)
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  Do blind people have this same issue?
  - totetsu 3y ago
    I find that a lot of my awareness of space also comes from sounds around me, which are also centered at the head by ears. So maybe blind people could still be head centered.
pavlov 3y ago
For me, it makes a difference whether I imagine my body in the image or not. A disembodied mental image is located somewhere else in my head; a first-person one moves behind my eyes. It’s not like a projection in the sense that it would replace what I actually see, but like a secondary feed that overrides some processing in the same place just after the eyes.
ranprieur 3y ago
In my imagination I can see images basically the same as I see with my eyes, but less detailed and nowhere near as persistent. Back of the eyelid visuals are a whole different thing, and it's good to know there's so much room to work with them.
izoow 3y ago
I can't really "see" anything either, but I'm assuming it's something akin to "hearing" your inner voice. I also don't actually "hear" anything, but I can tell that it's going on in my head and it's effortless and "automatic". I don't have to consciously exert effort to "activate it", imagine it, and keep it there.
huytersd 3y ago
I think it’s a spectrum. I see really vague still images if I really try but yep just back of the eyelids most of the time. I’ve had a real feel for what vivid imagery looks like a few times right before I fall asleep. I envy people that can conjure up that sort of vividness when they want.
_dain_ 3y ago
Yeah it's not a figure of speech, there's LITERALLY another framebuffer (or whatever you want to call it) in my mind in addition to the ones from left eye and right eye. I don't need to close my eyes to do see it (but it helps). I can draw to it, with some effort . Daydreams get painted on it when my mind drifts. It's the stage on which I experience memories. Most people are like this, with variation in the degree of vividness and control. Some people can make realistic detailed scenes, for other people it's harder and their images are often blotchy or lacking in detail and colour. I'm in the latter group. If you don't have any of this at all and you're surprised by the whole idea, you are probably aphantasic.
- zestyping 3y ago
  Yes, I have another framebuffer too. It's interesting to me that it seems to be located a little bit above and behind my head. Does it feel to you like your framebuffer is physically located at any particular place? One interesting effect of psychedelics that I've noticed is that they can cause the framebuffer behind my head and the framebuffer in front of my head (i.e. on the insides of my eyelids) merge into one framebuffer. It's quite an odd and fascinating state to be in!
  - justsid 3y ago
    Reading this is crazy talk to me. I can recall what things look like, like I know what an elephant looked like or my first apartment. But I just know what it was like, I can’t project it anywhere in my brain. It’s also just a very high level knowledge, there is 0 detail whatsoever because there is “nothing”. It’s incredibly fascinating to learn about nuances between humans.
    - Rapzid 3y ago
      This is so wild to me I feel like there must be a misunderstanding lol. I apparently have excellent spatial awareness and reasoning. I can imagine shapes and scenes. Rotate a shape and have a good crack at sketching it from my mind. But I would never describe this as similar to actually seeing in any way. If I had to describe what I experience after reading through a lot of these descriptions it would be "knowing". When I visualize something it's like I'm "knowing" it's shape, size, position, and etc. But it's nowhere and I'm certainly not seeing it in any way that's meaningfully similar to actual sight.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Yes, a side effect of this skill is that schizophrenia runs in the family. Super helpful for lots of other things though.
SanderNL 3y ago
No, that’s hallucinating. Mind’s eye is like what you see when you remember a visual scene.
Eupraxias 3y ago
Aphantasia?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Jiocus 3y ago
If I remember correctly, aphantasia is inability to visualise images, objects or memories in the mind, and this seems to be what the author actually refers to. The alternative, to actually perceive imagery with the eye that isn't there is usually called hallucination. The article doesn't get at this difference and seems to be based on Youtube videos about aphantasia. If you've ever had a dream with vivid first person eyesight (like most people during dreams) then it's easy to see that we should be very capable of producing high quality visuals without external stimuli. I've been practicing on this kind of thing as it's a technique for dropping into a lucid dream. In my case, I manage to find some kind of repeat pattern in the visual random noise of my closed eyes. Slowly and consciously I manage to see clouds or waves on an open sea, maybe add color. Then I can try something more advanced. If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations[0], but then it's not quite the same level of conscious involvement steering what to see. In any case, it's nowhere near what I'd imagine as useful for an on-site photo session, more like a high effort meditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  > If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations Try your meditation routine while sitting in a warm shower with a visual focus. That for me gives me the same intensity as the true hypnagogic level visualizations while still having close to full mental faculties. Some people report being able to use audio patterns as an alternative to visual patterns. I've had mixed success personally but ymmv.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  I've suffered Hypnagogia several times in my life where I have woken up and can see giant spiders running around my bedroom. I hurt myself once leaping from standing on my bed, over the spiders, to my door so I could switch the light on and attack them. Of course, when the light came on and I turned around the spiders were not there. My brain, not understanding where the "spiders" had gone convinced me that they had merely scurried under the furniture to hide, so I spent another couple of minutes trying to find them before I realized I had been punked by my own brain.
Ericson2314 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia seems like the "fully visual" one is different, and possibly not good.
donpark 3y ago
It 'feels like' like seeing. There is sense of dimension and position in the space and objects. I can imagine people I know and places I've been to with amazing details but visual details like texture are limited to where I'm focusing. Rest of the view is filled with 'feels like they are there'. It's not retrieval because when I try to focus on non-memorable parts of a face, I can tell that details are made up on-demand using common variety. And what I 'see' is affected by light over closed eyelid as well as inner blood vessel, minor debris and micro organism floating over the cornea, meaning input from the eyes does play a role even with eyes closed. While I have very vivid imaginations, I don't think I have photographic memory because what I can recall is rather too creative.
Stratoscope 3y ago
I have seen lines of code projected vividly like this. Several years ago a Facebook recruiter invited me to interview with them. It mostly went well, except I bombed the leetcode algorithm quiz. The next day, as I expected, they sent me a polite note thanking me for interviewing but they would be moving on with other candidates. The morning after that, I woke up and before I opened my eyes I saw the complete solution on the back of my eyelids, about 20 lines of code. I stepped through the code mentally and thought, "Yes! This will work!" So I ran to my computer and typed the code in to test it. Other than one bug - this was old-school JavaScript and I'd forgotten one var statement, so there was an inadvertent global - it worked perfectly.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  If you’re not already aware, there is also a phenomenon where a person wakes up with a solution to something they had a problem with. Sleep is required for memory formation and organization, during which new and sometimes novel associations can be made. I personally consider naps an essential part of studying because of this.
- 725686 3y ago
  I have, in more than one occasion, gone to sleep with a problem in mind and woke up with a solution, but it is more of a conceptual thing. To actually see the lines of code, if true, is wild.
  - Stratoscope 3y ago
    The story is indeed true, in every detail. And yes, it was a wild experience. I'd never had this happen before, nor since. I wish it were a skill I could develop and cultivate!
- winrid 3y ago
  This is just common solving problems while you sleep. Everyone does this. If you're having trouble with something - try a nap.
  - 3y ago
reliablereason 3y ago
No people can’t see stuff in their vision, it is just a way of describing the "minds eye". I was also confused when I first heard of aphantasia, so talked about it with a few people. Enough people to come to the conclusion that a loot of it comes down to some people using crude language for the "minds eye". But that some people use the minds eye more than others.
gumballindie 3y ago
I can, but in my case it’s not always a coherent image sequence like in movies. I see “episodes”. Actually that’s my only way of falling asleep. If i don’t “see” images i dont fall asleep. And when i sleep well it’s always after having a clear dream. Although somehow when i am about to get a cold or a health issue they get more vivid. Strange.
fallingfrog 3y ago
If I really try I can put myself in a place, I can imagine for instance going to the grocery store with my kids: I’m in the parking lot holding their hands. I feel the sun shining too bright in my eyes when I look to the left, I feel a slight breeze on my arms and face, then the automatic doors open, and my boy is fussing so I pick him up, and I can feel his arms around me, then I put him in the cart, and he’s heavy. I hear the beeping of cash registers and the murmur of people talking. One wheel is bad on the shopping cart and it squeaks and pulls to the left. The handle of the cart is smooth plastic, it’s translucent but with a red stripe painted on it. I reach for the cucumbers and I can see that they’re waxy but also the end of the first one I see is wrinkly, meaning that it’s starting to shrivel. You get the idea. I see it all in detail and I can feel certain sensations and hear sound too. Yeah visualizing with that much detail takes effort but I can do more than just visualize an apple. It’s not exactly the same as watching a movie. But I think if I was doing this and you moved something in front of me, I wouldn’t see it. It would be an interesting scientific experiment. Certainly people have told me that when I was staring into space that they waved to me and I didn’t respond. One way this is really useful is if I’m packing for, say, a camping trip. I can put myself in the campsite, and I first want to gather firewood, but it’s too thick to break, so I pick up a saw. -ok write that down, a saw. At night we climb into the tent and when we get inside it’s very dark -write down flashlight- and then after unrolling my sleeping back I notice that it’s uncomfortable without a pillow -write down pillow. That kind of thing. I can do this with music too. Sometimes that’s how I write songs. I’ll work the parts, hearing them all together while I’m taking a shower, then later ill go to the music room and play the whole song one instrument at a time.
glitchc 3y ago
Everything that physically excites the rods and cones in our eyes is perceived in the occipital cortex which is at the back of our brains, right above the medullaoblongata. It isn't surprising that it's somewhere else inside our heads.
richarme 3y ago
Apparently, people are on a spectrum when it comes to this [1]. Super interesting! [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/science/minds-eye-mental-pictures-psychology.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/science/minds-eye-mental-...
- aiiie 3y ago
  It varies for me depending on my mood state. I find it most vivid in bouts of psychosis. I remember once being in such a state and being overwhelmed by my mind's eye seeming even more vivid than the images coming into my actual eyes. Seeing two distinct views at once was quite disorienting.
anentropic 3y ago
Exactly the same for me, I always assumed people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about "seeing" with their mind's eye until a few years ago I first heard about Aphantasia and was like WTF
jonplackett 3y ago
Yeah they really can. My wife is an artist and she can literally just close her eyes and imagine layouts and colour schemes. The whole thing! The downside is it’s hard for her to shut it off. I have the opposite problem and see nothing. Only learned about aphantasia a few years ago - made so much sense when I realised. I am super excited to try image streaming!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
I'm like you. It's called aphantasia. But to this day, I still wonder if we are really different from most people or it's just that most people are more lenient in using words like "seeing", "mind's eye", etc. in a highly metaphorical sense. There seems to be no external measurable manifestation or consequence (contrary to what some people might think, I can answer questions about hypothetical spatial rotations, etc. just fine. I don't visualize and rotate the object, but I sort of imagine the "concept" of the object and can rotate such "concept". It's just that the process for me doesn't involve "seeing" anything). So it's hard to know to what extent the difference is real.
- Winsaucerer 3y ago
  It's not leniency in words. I see images in my mind, with colour and shape. I'd go so far as to say these are literal images. Dreams at night are like participating in a movie, with animations and sounds. I think about other senses like smell, sound, touch, and taste. I can imagine sounds very clearly in my mind. I can also imagine very well how something would feel to touch, to the point where the imagination is almost as clear as the real thing. However, what I can do for images, touch, and sounds, I cannot do for taste and smell. And this helps me to appreciate something of what 'aphantasia' might be like, though with different sensations. I have a question I like to ask people, that I think helps show some external measurable consequence of this. I ask people to tell me how many doors there are going off the hall in their house (it may help you to take a moment to try answering before reading the next part). For myself, and many others, we imagine a picture in our mind of us standing in the hall, and in the picture we just 'look' around and count off the doors. However, I made an error and missed a door when I did the counting, I forgot to count the door that was behind where I imagined myself standing in the hall, because I couldn't "see" it. I asked someone with aphantasia this same question, because I couldn't understand how they could answer it (I'm a very visual thinker). He told me (if I understand right) that he does something like tell a story via words, and uses that to somehow enumerate the doors and answer the question. Perhaps his strategy is prone to analogous mistakes like mine, but presumably not the same mistake.
- chr1 3y ago
  In several occasions, after very intense and new visual stimulus, (e.g. being the first time in a forest, watching "where dreams may come", playing a beautiful video game for the first time, strangely, playing checkers for almost the whole day) i could close my eyes and literally see scenes similar to the scenes that had made impression on me. After several days the images would fade and i would return to not seeing anything. So i also wonder if those realistic images i could see in those few occasions are the norm for other people, or if they have not seen such images and describe something else as seeing. Also somewhat related i have similar experience with sound, while normally i can imagine music as my inner voice singing, but on some occasions i could hear the whole orchestra. And here as well, people describe different experience from hearing to not having an inner voice at all.
southernplaces7 3y ago
Speaking from personal experience and only that, I've always had a fairly vivid imagination and yes, the images created in the mind's eye during an imaginative episode (in not referring to dreams here, but waking-state fantasies desired or not) "look" remarkably clear. It's not the same as literally viewing something because you're fundamentally aware that you're lacking the external physical stimuli of a real thing, but the mental fidelity of details is more than good enough to perceive colors, textures, specific appearances and with a bit of focus even tiny details of an internal visual story. I always assumed this was completely normal for most people, but apparently it really is difficult for some.
signaru 3y ago
Based on how the article describes the imagery, I think I am somewhere in the middle and just always assumed everyone else also is. I can see images that I recall from memory or trigger with my thoughts, but the images are unstable, and the quality is similar to that of after images of bright objects, except the colors are correct, albeit being faint since my recalled images don't last long enough for "persistence of vision". It's almost like an inserted split second subliminal image, that I notice, but not sure if it is there (well it's not because I'm fully aware it's from my mind). I think the biggest difference to how others describe their experience is the "persistence" factor, holding the image long enough to look at the details. Furthermore, the stuff I "see" do not occupy the full field of view. They're just big enough as the object I am trying to remember/imagine while the background is still darkness or reality (like AR) if I'm not closing my eyes. I'd be interested to see more quantitative descriptions of "duration" and "field of view" of what they see.
- hudell 3y ago
  That's a lot more than I can do. I can't see anything at all. No color, no shape. The most I can do is remember if something is taller or wider.
TheHappyOddish 3y ago
Welcome to the club. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia I only know that terms like 'mental imagery' or 'daydreaming' aren't metaphorical because of another HN thread about it years ago. Turns out (to varying degrees) the vast majority of people have a TV in their minds they can switch on.
ebw 3y ago
I have exactly zero images in my "mind's eye" I have a blank movie screen. I can remember dreams, although they're pretty abstract. I take a picture of my kids before I take them out so if they get lost I can tell people what they are wearing. (learned that the hard way)

BizarroLand 3y ago

No. It's only rarely that vivid. It's more like the memory of an image, but one you may not have seen yet. Like if you imagine a 1950's spaceship, yellow with red stripes and long curving fins resting on a cratered moonscape with astronauts in shiny puffy silver suits holding their glass helmets in their hands as if they can breathe in the vacuum of space smiling brightly with a sign above that reads, "buy astrogum! It's astrolicious!" in the coca-cola font. You won't see that the same way you see the words on the page in front of you, but in that same way that you "see" the hazy memories of your childhood playing with friends, running around, parks and blue skies in the ever-lasting summer of your youth.

doug-moen 3y ago

I can imagine imagery in two different ways. 1. One way is the "behind the eyelids" technique, where the imagery seems to be coming from the retina, or at least I experience it that way. I cannot currently generate the high quality photographic imagery of the OP, and even the experience of colour is pretty sketchy. That's today, awake, although sometimes it gets better when I'm in bed and about to fall asleep. Either way, this only works if my eyes are closed, or it's pitch dark. With my eyes open, the signal from my retina washes out the image, which is very dim. One person I met who experiences this calls the experience "phosphenes". The experience doesn't look real, and I have no sense of depth or spatial location, like I do with vision. It is only partially under conscious control. I get images, then I "make suggestions" about what I want to see, and then it kind of drifts in the direction of what I want. 2. The other way works with my eyes open. I can do 3D objects, even set up a wire frame cube spinning around my head. The object can be "inside my mind" with no defined location, or I can locate it in space. I barely have any colour available in this subsystem, but that could be lack of practice. This is under full conscious control. I have no difficulty distinguishing these images from what I am seeing, I experience eyesight and these images as two different mental domains. I just ran a test, and I can do both things at the same time, but it requires a lot of concentration and I'm not good at it. I know from talking to people that there is a lot of variation in how people experience mental imagery. Based on what I've read, LSD and psilocybin hallucinations may be be a more powerful version of "system 1" imagery as described above. That's because: at low doses, you can only see the hallucinations with your eyes closed, and they are only partially under conscious control. (There are instructions on the web on how to influence the imagery.) UPDATE: I wondered whether my system 1 imagery is "in the retina" or "in the visual cortex". As an experiment, I stared at a bright light, then closed my eyes to see the retinal afterimage of the bright light. Everybody gets these afterimages. Then, I was able to modify the afterimage! After some work, I eventually changed the colour of the afterimage and made it into the centre of a flower. To my delight, the flower had an almost photographic quality. This doesn't really prove anything about retina vs visual cortex. But this is a better result than I've had in the past, before I read the ideas in this post. Finally, the OP and video describes "image streaming", which seems to be a more advanced version of what I do when I try to shape a system 1 "retinal" image. Afterimages are one way to produce a seed image. In the past I've just created images starting from a black visual field, but I guess it's easier if you start with a seed. Apparently if you get really good then you can have full conscious control over system 1 mental imagery! I had not previously considered talking out loud to influence the image. Now I'm wondering whether "microdosing", a Silicon valley practice that has been discussed on HN before, would improve your ability to perform "image streaming". Maybe other people with more knowledge of this can comment.

klipt 3y ago

I think it's normal to distinguish imagined pictures from real ones. If you can't, that's schizophrenia.

mistermann 3y ago
Or sometimes, critical thinking. ;
- pixl97 3y ago
  If your mind is lying to you, there is no amount of critical thinking that can save you in the long run.

davidhunter 3y ago

Yes. I am like you in that I cannot actually see anything visual in my minds eye but I can still 'visualise' it. For example, I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain. It was a revelation when I found out that most people can actually see things visually in their minds eye. A friend of mine can actually place imagined objects into their field of view, like AR.

k9unit 3y ago
It feels like my brain is processing and feeling what it would look like if I truly saw it. I can see a dice, zoom in on it, and feel the indented bumps where the black dots go. But the actual image of a dice just barely escapes me. It's similar when visualizing math too.
norrius 3y ago
> I can rotate a die in my minds eye without actually seeing it. It's hard to explain. I think I'm the same. It's as if I can imagine a geometry, but it doesn't have any texture or colour. It's not black, not grey, not brown... It's a shape in its pure form, maybe like a wireframe, without a physical manifestation. However, I can imagine music and actually hear it. I had this a couple of times where I "replay" a song in a foreign language I've heard a long time ago, and this time I can parse out more lyrics than before. All inside my head.
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  I definitely do abstract shapes more often, but I thought but and I could do some lighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_teapot_(solid).stl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot#/media/File:Utah_t... Play with the Utah teapot and then try to do the same thing mentally. Like imagine where the shadows are supposed to go and then see if you are right. For colors imagine something corny like like a laser scan passing over, and then try to imagine different colors or laser.
- GolfPopper 3y ago
  That sounds a lot like me as well. I have a very hard time getting an actual realistic picture, with color and detail, in my head. At most its a faint and hazy thing. And while I don't have face-blindness - I recognize people from their faces easily - picturing the faces of even close friends and family members in my head is very hard, and mostly comes down to a few half-remembered features, tied to words. But a geometry, or set of relations between objects (whether that's connections or just relative positioning, like a map) is pretty easy, and I can move around, rotate and focus on the geometry with less effort than it takes to imagine, say, an apple. But familiar music can be played back in my head with only a little effort, or a slight reminder. Not just the lyrics, or the melody, but the full audio as I heard it, missing only background parts that my mind didn't "catch". Rarely (a couple times a year), I'll get a partial song "stuck" and won't be able to get it out of my head until I track it down and listen to it until the end. I can't "invent" a tune though, just replay ones I've heard several times.

krapp 3y ago

> are people normally actually seeing images, with their eyes, when they imagine what something looks like? Like, the brown-blackness of the back of your eyelids gets replaced with something you actually see, like it's projected there? No. >I can imagine what something looks like, and I guess I sort of 'see' it, but closing my eyes doesn't make it any more real. It doesn't seem to involve the eyes or any part of the visual system at all - it's somewhere else in my head. Yes. That's all it is. Although it does seem to be indirectly related to the visual system, likely whatever part of it lets people "see" things when they dream, despite not actually processing visual stimuli through the eyes. It's just dreaming while awake.

SirMaster 3y ago
That's not what's being described in this article though. They are saying like how you see golden dots after gently rubbing your eyes. They are saying they see images like that. Definitely seems like more than just imagining seeing something. When I rub my eyes I definitely see some dots that are way more real than not rubbing my eyes and just imagining dots.
_dain_ 3y ago
>No. ahem. yes we do. we really, really do.
- krapp 3y ago
  Really? Like you literally see the things you imagine? How do you function? How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional.
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    >How do you manage to drive, without your thoughts blocking your view? They don't block the view, in the same way that the image from your left eye doesn't block the image from your right eye, even though they're overlaid on the same "mental space". Hold up your finger in front of your eyes, and focus on a distant object. You can see two images of the finger, but also see straight through them simultaneously. It's kinda like that. And it usually doesn't manifest when I'm intensely concentrating on one task (unless deliberately imagining something is part of how I solve the task). At any rate, driving is mostly a system 1 activity, carried out autonomically. In real life, people's thoughts drift all the time when they drive. It's unavoidable and mostly not a big deal. >How can you even tell if anything you see is real or a product of your imagination? Because they're on different channels. Like stdout vs stderr. >I feel like if that's what is actually happening you should see a professional. Again, most people are like this. You are the one who is unusual. You probably have aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia It's common for aphantasics to be initially completely incredulous at the concept of mental imagery, so you're not alone here. See this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... >Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery1 to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images

iseanstevens 3y ago

I don’t even need to close my eyes and the images are fairly vivid. AR before AR. I thought for a long time that’s how it was for everyone. Anyone else have that?

nurbl 3y ago
Yes. I don't have very good conscious control of it, but if I start "daydreaming" the images can pretty much override what my eyes are seeing. I wouldn't say it's overlaying like AR, for me it's more like tuning in to a different channel. I guess somehow the things my eyes see are still registering, e.g. if something new comes into view I will pop back to reality.
pixl97 3y ago
I'm the same. I can pop things in and out of reality as needed to visualize things. Of course the counter to this scares me thinking about what happens if I did this without conscious awareness... My dreams can feel more real than reality too. Like full senses lucid dreams. Looking at things like clocks and books worked in my dreams. My dreams are just a reality inside the reality everyone else shares. Also, In my teens and early 20s I had dreams I could levitate. If you could imagine being able to follow magnetic fields just under your skin would be about the best way to describe it. It was disappointing to wake up and realize that I couldn't do this.
naruhodo 3y ago
Yep. Super helpful for visualising structures of source code and other things. Don't close your eyes, just patch your brain output back to brain input. Same as when you're dreaming.

RamRodification 3y ago

Yeah I have the same question. It's either that, which sounds kinda crazy, or that's just how they describe what you and I can already "see" when we imagine something that is visual, I guess? Whereas when you have aphantasia you cannot do that

stouset 3y ago

No, not with their eyes. Hence the “mind’s eye”. The darkness of your eyelids isn’t replaced, it’s just that your focus is on a mental image of what an object feels like and not just on the darkness of your vision.

SirMaster 3y ago
When I rub by eyes, the darkness of my eyelids is definitely replaced by yellowish dots that fade in and out and move around. I'm definitely seeing them even though my eyes are closed. I'm not just imagining them. This article is saying the effect is like that, so it seems to be different than just imagining something with your eyes closed. When I imagine something I don't "see" it at all the way I "see" the yellow dots after rubbing my eyes.

sebtron 3y ago

Yes, it apparently most people can. I cannot, and I also found out relatively recently. For example, you can ask "most people" to imagine a car, and then follow up by asking "what color did you imagine it?". For me and you this question would not make any sense, but you'll find out that "most people" find it completely normal and answer it without questioning you.

sndwnm 3y ago
If I had been posed this question I could imagine it having gone two different ways. First, I could approach it as remembering, maybe not a car I saw yesterday, but a generic idea of some type of car. For example if I thought about a Japanese pickup or a Lamborghini, I would probably answer the following color question with "white" and "orange", because for me those are stereotypic colors that "come with" the memory. Perhaps many people think in this way and thus assume the color obviously is there. The second way would be to abstractly build a car in my mind. Start with four tires, put a rough shape of a frame on it — lets make it a sedan. If I proceed this way, I probably would not choose a color, at least not early on. Like many in this thread, this is how I usually imagine things, as "wireframes". The color/texture is not there because I have not assigned it. I can't vividly see the things I imagine, but they can still have color just like they can have shape.
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
I consider myself to have aphantasia (cannot visualize anything in my mind, except when dreaming) and I think I could still pass the test you mention. If I imagine a car, I can imagine its features, and of course color being a quite salient feature I would probably assign it a color (e.g. I could imagine a red Ferrari, or a black limo). It's just that I wouldn't see it, there wouldn't be anything in my mind similar to the actual experience of seeing a red object, I would just think about the "concept" of the car being red (hard to explain). So far I've never found a way in which aphantasia really manifests externally or can be measured externally in a more or less reliable way. Which is why I'm still not 100% sure that people who claim not to be aphantasiacs aren't just exaggerating or taking metaphors too literally...
- 3y ago

Hnrobert42 3y ago

I am like you. I’m guessing that the author needed to use the stuff seen by his eyes while closed as a springboard to seeing something with his mind’s eye. My dad told me about monk’s who meditate on imagining that their thoughts exist behind their belly button. As you noted, your mind’s eye is not located in the same physical space as your actual eyes. Similarly, there is no reason the thoughts you hear couldn’t be happening in your belly button. But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"But I’ve found it remarkably difficult to convince my mind that it exist anywhere other than my head. I don’t think this difficulty is based on biology. I think it’s just conditioning. But damn, it’s hard." It really is hard. I just know the conscious effort of meditating and centering my consciousness in the center of my body (above the belly button) as opposed to my head, really helps my focus and mental abilities and general wellbeing. And everytime I use my mobile .. it helps me if I do it afterwards, to not get lost again. I wonder if the jogis would have advanced much, if they would have had a mobile close to them ..
toombowoombo 3y ago
Try pinching yourself randomly so that you can attract your mind to different spots in your body. I used to do that when I had headpain to distract me from it (I was a minor back when I learned that. In my country everyone is very careful with any substance given to minors)
oh_sigh 3y ago
Do blind people have this same issue?
- totetsu 3y ago
  I find that a lot of my awareness of space also comes from sounds around me, which are also centered at the head by ears. So maybe blind people could still be head centered.

pavlov 3y ago

For me, it makes a difference whether I imagine my body in the image or not. A disembodied mental image is located somewhere else in my head; a first-person one moves behind my eyes. It’s not like a projection in the sense that it would replace what I actually see, but like a secondary feed that overrides some processing in the same place just after the eyes.

ranprieur 3y ago

In my imagination I can see images basically the same as I see with my eyes, but less detailed and nowhere near as persistent. Back of the eyelid visuals are a whole different thing, and it's good to know there's so much room to work with them.

izoow 3y ago

I can't really "see" anything either, but I'm assuming it's something akin to "hearing" your inner voice. I also don't actually "hear" anything, but I can tell that it's going on in my head and it's effortless and "automatic". I don't have to consciously exert effort to "activate it", imagine it, and keep it there.

huytersd 3y ago

I think it’s a spectrum. I see really vague still images if I really try but yep just back of the eyelids most of the time. I’ve had a real feel for what vivid imagery looks like a few times right before I fall asleep. I envy people that can conjure up that sort of vividness when they want.

_dain_ 3y ago

Yeah it's not a figure of speech, there's LITERALLY another framebuffer (or whatever you want to call it) in my mind in addition to the ones from left eye and right eye. I don't need to close my eyes to do see it (but it helps). I can draw to it, with some effort . Daydreams get painted on it when my mind drifts. It's the stage on which I experience memories. Most people are like this, with variation in the degree of vividness and control. Some people can make realistic detailed scenes, for other people it's harder and their images are often blotchy or lacking in detail and colour. I'm in the latter group. If you don't have any of this at all and you're surprised by the whole idea, you are probably aphantasic.

zestyping 3y ago
Yes, I have another framebuffer too. It's interesting to me that it seems to be located a little bit above and behind my head. Does it feel to you like your framebuffer is physically located at any particular place? One interesting effect of psychedelics that I've noticed is that they can cause the framebuffer behind my head and the framebuffer in front of my head (i.e. on the insides of my eyelids) merge into one framebuffer. It's quite an odd and fascinating state to be in!
- justsid 3y ago
  Reading this is crazy talk to me. I can recall what things look like, like I know what an elephant looked like or my first apartment. But I just know what it was like, I can’t project it anywhere in my brain. It’s also just a very high level knowledge, there is 0 detail whatsoever because there is “nothing”. It’s incredibly fascinating to learn about nuances between humans.
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    This is so wild to me I feel like there must be a misunderstanding lol. I apparently have excellent spatial awareness and reasoning. I can imagine shapes and scenes. Rotate a shape and have a good crack at sketching it from my mind. But I would never describe this as similar to actually seeing in any way. If I had to describe what I experience after reading through a lot of these descriptions it would be "knowing". When I visualize something it's like I'm "knowing" it's shape, size, position, and etc. But it's nowhere and I'm certainly not seeing it in any way that's meaningfully similar to actual sight.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Yes, a side effect of this skill is that schizophrenia runs in the family. Super helpful for lots of other things though.

SanderNL 3y ago

No, that’s hallucinating. Mind’s eye is like what you see when you remember a visual scene.

Eupraxias 3y ago

Aphantasia?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Jiocus 3y ago

If I remember correctly, aphantasia is inability to visualise images, objects or memories in the mind, and this seems to be what the author actually refers to. The alternative, to actually perceive imagery with the eye that isn't there is usually called hallucination. The article doesn't get at this difference and seems to be based on Youtube videos about aphantasia. If you've ever had a dream with vivid first person eyesight (like most people during dreams) then it's easy to see that we should be very capable of producing high quality visuals without external stimuli. I've been practicing on this kind of thing as it's a technique for dropping into a lucid dream. In my case, I manage to find some kind of repeat pattern in the visual random noise of my closed eyes. Slowly and consciously I manage to see clouds or waves on an open sea, maybe add color. Then I can try something more advanced. If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations[0], but then it's not quite the same level of conscious involvement steering what to see. In any case, it's nowhere near what I'd imagine as useful for an on-site photo session, more like a high effort meditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

vorpalhex 3y ago
> If going to sleep, these images get more vivid and might classify for something called hypnagogic hallucinations Try your meditation routine while sitting in a warm shower with a visual focus. That for me gives me the same intensity as the true hypnagogic level visualizations while still having close to full mental faculties. Some people report being able to use audio patterns as an alternative to visual patterns. I've had mixed success personally but ymmv.
qingcharles 3y ago
I've suffered Hypnagogia several times in my life where I have woken up and can see giant spiders running around my bedroom. I hurt myself once leaping from standing on my bed, over the spiders, to my door so I could switch the light on and attack them. Of course, when the light came on and I turned around the spiders were not there. My brain, not understanding where the "spiders" had gone convinced me that they had merely scurried under the furniture to hide, so I spent another couple of minutes trying to find them before I realized I had been punked by my own brain.

Ericson2314 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia seems like the "fully visual" one is different, and possibly not good.

donpark 3y ago

It 'feels like' like seeing. There is sense of dimension and position in the space and objects. I can imagine people I know and places I've been to with amazing details but visual details like texture are limited to where I'm focusing. Rest of the view is filled with 'feels like they are there'. It's not retrieval because when I try to focus on non-memorable parts of a face, I can tell that details are made up on-demand using common variety. And what I 'see' is affected by light over closed eyelid as well as inner blood vessel, minor debris and micro organism floating over the cornea, meaning input from the eyes does play a role even with eyes closed. While I have very vivid imaginations, I don't think I have photographic memory because what I can recall is rather too creative.

Stratoscope 3y ago

I have seen lines of code projected vividly like this. Several years ago a Facebook recruiter invited me to interview with them. It mostly went well, except I bombed the leetcode algorithm quiz. The next day, as I expected, they sent me a polite note thanking me for interviewing but they would be moving on with other candidates. The morning after that, I woke up and before I opened my eyes I saw the complete solution on the back of my eyelids, about 20 lines of code. I stepped through the code mentally and thought, "Yes! This will work!" So I ran to my computer and typed the code in to test it. Other than one bug - this was old-school JavaScript and I'd forgotten one var statement, so there was an inadvertent global - it worked perfectly.

Modified3019 3y ago
If you’re not already aware, there is also a phenomenon where a person wakes up with a solution to something they had a problem with. Sleep is required for memory formation and organization, during which new and sometimes novel associations can be made. I personally consider naps an essential part of studying because of this.
725686 3y ago
I have, in more than one occasion, gone to sleep with a problem in mind and woke up with a solution, but it is more of a conceptual thing. To actually see the lines of code, if true, is wild.
- Stratoscope 3y ago
  The story is indeed true, in every detail. And yes, it was a wild experience. I'd never had this happen before, nor since. I wish it were a skill I could develop and cultivate!
winrid 3y ago
This is just common solving problems while you sleep. Everyone does this. If you're having trouble with something - try a nap.
- 3y ago

reliablereason 3y ago

No people can’t see stuff in their vision, it is just a way of describing the "minds eye". I was also confused when I first heard of aphantasia, so talked about it with a few people. Enough people to come to the conclusion that a loot of it comes down to some people using crude language for the "minds eye". But that some people use the minds eye more than others.

gumballindie 3y ago

I can, but in my case it’s not always a coherent image sequence like in movies. I see “episodes”. Actually that’s my only way of falling asleep. If i don’t “see” images i dont fall asleep. And when i sleep well it’s always after having a clear dream. Although somehow when i am about to get a cold or a health issue they get more vivid. Strange.

fallingfrog 3y ago

If I really try I can put myself in a place, I can imagine for instance going to the grocery store with my kids: I’m in the parking lot holding their hands. I feel the sun shining too bright in my eyes when I look to the left, I feel a slight breeze on my arms and face, then the automatic doors open, and my boy is fussing so I pick him up, and I can feel his arms around me, then I put him in the cart, and he’s heavy. I hear the beeping of cash registers and the murmur of people talking. One wheel is bad on the shopping cart and it squeaks and pulls to the left. The handle of the cart is smooth plastic, it’s translucent but with a red stripe painted on it. I reach for the cucumbers and I can see that they’re waxy but also the end of the first one I see is wrinkly, meaning that it’s starting to shrivel. You get the idea. I see it all in detail and I can feel certain sensations and hear sound too. Yeah visualizing with that much detail takes effort but I can do more than just visualize an apple. It’s not exactly the same as watching a movie. But I think if I was doing this and you moved something in front of me, I wouldn’t see it. It would be an interesting scientific experiment. Certainly people have told me that when I was staring into space that they waved to me and I didn’t respond. One way this is really useful is if I’m packing for, say, a camping trip. I can put myself in the campsite, and I first want to gather firewood, but it’s too thick to break, so I pick up a saw. -ok write that down, a saw. At night we climb into the tent and when we get inside it’s very dark -write down flashlight- and then after unrolling my sleeping back I notice that it’s uncomfortable without a pillow -write down pillow. That kind of thing. I can do this with music too. Sometimes that’s how I write songs. I’ll work the parts, hearing them all together while I’m taking a shower, then later ill go to the music room and play the whole song one instrument at a time.

glitchc 3y ago

Everything that physically excites the rods and cones in our eyes is perceived in the occipital cortex which is at the back of our brains, right above the medullaoblongata. It isn't surprising that it's somewhere else inside our heads.

richarme 3y ago

Apparently, people are on a spectrum when it comes to this [1]. Super interesting! [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/science/minds-eye-mental-pictures-psychology.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/science/minds-eye-mental-...

aiiie 3y ago
It varies for me depending on my mood state. I find it most vivid in bouts of psychosis. I remember once being in such a state and being overwhelmed by my mind's eye seeming even more vivid than the images coming into my actual eyes. Seeing two distinct views at once was quite disorienting.

anentropic 3y ago

Exactly the same for me, I always assumed people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about "seeing" with their mind's eye until a few years ago I first heard about Aphantasia and was like WTF

jonplackett 3y ago

Yeah they really can. My wife is an artist and she can literally just close her eyes and imagine layouts and colour schemes. The whole thing! The downside is it’s hard for her to shut it off. I have the opposite problem and see nothing. Only learned about aphantasia a few years ago - made so much sense when I realised. I am super excited to try image streaming!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago

I'm like you. It's called aphantasia. But to this day, I still wonder if we are really different from most people or it's just that most people are more lenient in using words like "seeing", "mind's eye", etc. in a highly metaphorical sense. There seems to be no external measurable manifestation or consequence (contrary to what some people might think, I can answer questions about hypothetical spatial rotations, etc. just fine. I don't visualize and rotate the object, but I sort of imagine the "concept" of the object and can rotate such "concept". It's just that the process for me doesn't involve "seeing" anything). So it's hard to know to what extent the difference is real.

Winsaucerer 3y ago
It's not leniency in words. I see images in my mind, with colour and shape. I'd go so far as to say these are literal images. Dreams at night are like participating in a movie, with animations and sounds. I think about other senses like smell, sound, touch, and taste. I can imagine sounds very clearly in my mind. I can also imagine very well how something would feel to touch, to the point where the imagination is almost as clear as the real thing. However, what I can do for images, touch, and sounds, I cannot do for taste and smell. And this helps me to appreciate something of what 'aphantasia' might be like, though with different sensations. I have a question I like to ask people, that I think helps show some external measurable consequence of this. I ask people to tell me how many doors there are going off the hall in their house (it may help you to take a moment to try answering before reading the next part). For myself, and many others, we imagine a picture in our mind of us standing in the hall, and in the picture we just 'look' around and count off the doors. However, I made an error and missed a door when I did the counting, I forgot to count the door that was behind where I imagined myself standing in the hall, because I couldn't "see" it. I asked someone with aphantasia this same question, because I couldn't understand how they could answer it (I'm a very visual thinker). He told me (if I understand right) that he does something like tell a story via words, and uses that to somehow enumerate the doors and answer the question. Perhaps his strategy is prone to analogous mistakes like mine, but presumably not the same mistake.
chr1 3y ago
In several occasions, after very intense and new visual stimulus, (e.g. being the first time in a forest, watching "where dreams may come", playing a beautiful video game for the first time, strangely, playing checkers for almost the whole day) i could close my eyes and literally see scenes similar to the scenes that had made impression on me. After several days the images would fade and i would return to not seeing anything. So i also wonder if those realistic images i could see in those few occasions are the norm for other people, or if they have not seen such images and describe something else as seeing. Also somewhat related i have similar experience with sound, while normally i can imagine music as my inner voice singing, but on some occasions i could hear the whole orchestra. And here as well, people describe different experience from hearing to not having an inner voice at all.

southernplaces7 3y ago

Speaking from personal experience and only that, I've always had a fairly vivid imagination and yes, the images created in the mind's eye during an imaginative episode (in not referring to dreams here, but waking-state fantasies desired or not) "look" remarkably clear. It's not the same as literally viewing something because you're fundamentally aware that you're lacking the external physical stimuli of a real thing, but the mental fidelity of details is more than good enough to perceive colors, textures, specific appearances and with a bit of focus even tiny details of an internal visual story. I always assumed this was completely normal for most people, but apparently it really is difficult for some.

signaru 3y ago

Based on how the article describes the imagery, I think I am somewhere in the middle and just always assumed everyone else also is. I can see images that I recall from memory or trigger with my thoughts, but the images are unstable, and the quality is similar to that of after images of bright objects, except the colors are correct, albeit being faint since my recalled images don't last long enough for "persistence of vision". It's almost like an inserted split second subliminal image, that I notice, but not sure if it is there (well it's not because I'm fully aware it's from my mind). I think the biggest difference to how others describe their experience is the "persistence" factor, holding the image long enough to look at the details. Furthermore, the stuff I "see" do not occupy the full field of view. They're just big enough as the object I am trying to remember/imagine while the background is still darkness or reality (like AR) if I'm not closing my eyes. I'd be interested to see more quantitative descriptions of "duration" and "field of view" of what they see.

hudell 3y ago
That's a lot more than I can do. I can't see anything at all. No color, no shape. The most I can do is remember if something is taller or wider.

TheHappyOddish 3y ago

Welcome to the club. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia I only know that terms like 'mental imagery' or 'daydreaming' aren't metaphorical because of another HN thread about it years ago. Turns out (to varying degrees) the vast majority of people have a TV in their minds they can switch on.

ebw 3y ago

I have exactly zero images in my "mind's eye" I have a blank movie screen. I can remember dreams, although they're pretty abstract. I take a picture of my kids before I take them out so if they get lost I can tell people what they are wearing. (learned that the hard way)