I can somewhat do this, but I think that the idea is overstated in many people's perceptions -- that is, it's not that I can always clearly see anything in my m

I can somewhat do this, but I think that the idea is overstated in many people's perceptions -- that is, it's not that I can always clearly see anything in my mind or hear or smell things in my mind, it's only in specific situations and specific moods. I enjoy cooking for example, and if I really like a meal somewhere, I can slowly start to break down the components that provide the taste, the smell, even the texture (i.e., cooking techniques) for the meal. Music is a bit easier for me even without a ton of familiarity, but I can hear the notes quite easily in my mind, scale them and find their "friends" (not sure what the real musical term is), I just lack the physical ability to hit some of the notes in my mind. The point of this is that it's not an omnipresent feature for everyone, and I'm willing to bet it's much more isolated as I'm describing, but I don't insist that I'm accurate in this bet. I don't think that I really trained for this directly, at least not in all subjects -- I did play an instrument as a child, and while I couldn't recite the different scales or tell you which notes to play by name, I could just show you with my instrument because it "sounded" right in my head, and if my teacher corrected me and showed me, it was easy enough after awhile to "hear" the right note in advance. With visualizing items, again it's nothing that I would train on and it's not something I do all the time, but it does happen; remembering directions to some place in my city I might just give the basic directions without thinking of what it looks like, but if someone is unfamiliar with my city, I can "see" the various places they'll spot on the way, almost to the point it's like going on a walk in my mind through this place. The visualizations typically start out very amorphous for me unless I'm _very_ familiar with the subject; usually only a few vague aspects of the image appear, and as I remember other details, the picture becomes more clear. It's maybe a bad example, but imagine watching a painting come together one layer at a time, or a Timelapse of an artist doing a painting. Or maybe some game where only part of the image is shown at first with some blurring or distortion, and over time (as I think of more details), it becomes more clear.