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As a person with aphantasia, the only time I'm able to "see" pictures is while dreaming (including day dreaming), but daydreaming has a weird effect of complete

• robofanatic 3y ago
  thats interesting. So if someone asks you to draw a picture of a lighthouse, are you able to draw it without looking at an actual lighthouse or a picture of it? if yes, then how?
  • Karawebnetwork 3y ago
    There's actually a few interesting articles out there about this: https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-aphantasia-how-mind-blind-artists-create-without-being-able-to-visualise-162566 https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-aphantasia-how-mind-b... "Edinburgh: “I can remember visual details,” he commented, “but I can’t see them”." In this one, they show step by step how the artist does it: https://aphantasia.com/article/stories/visual-artist-with-aphantasia/ https://aphantasia.com/article/stories/visual-artist-with-ap...
  • rhinoceraptor 3y ago
    I also have it, I can draw a lighthouse because I know what it should look like. But if I close my eyes and try to visualize it, I don't have any sense that I'm seeing something, in the same way that I have a sense that I'm listening to a song when I play it back from memory. When I dream there's only a faint visual component, there's no color or detail.
    • magicalhippo 3y ago
      Same. Also, when reading fiction, I never have any use for the long-winded descriptions of a place and a character. I don't picture the scene or character, but I create my own "space" where I can place the characters and the action, and I can feel beeing there. This "space" can have details, but usually not a lot. Recalling memories are similar. I can vividly feel the moment, and I can remember a lot of non-visual details, and often some distinct visual details. But I can't really picture it.
      • dumbo-octopus 3y ago
        > I never have any use for the long-winded descriptions of a place and a character. Same, and oh my goodness did my teachers in High School chastise me for not wanting to produce those same strings of adjectives in my own works. I fundamentally could not understand why someone would want to read that much description about the appearance of something.
    • namtab00 3y ago
      now that I think of it, in my dreams colors are not something I recall, but I definitely can say that I don't dream in greyscale..
    • the_af 3y ago
      Would you be able to go beyond the abstract notion of a lighthouse (basic geometric shape, white with red stripes, etc) and without a reference know where to paint shadows, how to dither them, how to achieve some "weathering effects", marks left by the water, etc? My guess is that kind of "untrained intuitions" about drawing require two preconditions: 1. Having seen lighthouses or buildings and paid attention to how rust/marks/decay and the interplay of light and shadow looks like. 2. Being able to visualize this when drawing. Otherwise, how can the drawing (without a photo reference) be anything but idealized and abstract?
  • tiborsaas 3y ago
    It's stored conceptually and I don't need to recall it visually to copy it to paper.
  • jermaustin1 3y ago
    Yeah, I can draw one. I actually took a lot of art classes, so it is kind of hardwired into me how to draw. That said, my lighthouse will not have details in it that someone who can recall a photograph of one might. Here is kind of how my brain describes a lighthouse for me to draw it: cone-shaped, white brick, wooden door at base, a platform on top without walls, a small shingled roof, large rotating light. As I am drawing the lighthouse the part that I'm working on will have more descriptors popup in my inner voice. Like say I'm drawing the door, I will hear: "vertical slats, arched top, dark weathered wood" and as I drill into each of those, I will hear more words in my head. Maybe I trained myself to do that over many many years of art classes, but I can't remember that not being the case.
    • namtab00 3y ago
      hmm that's weird, you forgot that they're usually painted in stripes (red/white?)
      • in3d 3y ago
        It probably depends on which ones they have encountered in real life. From a Google image search, it seems that less than half are.
      • dumbo-octopus 3y ago
        That's funny - I also have aphantasia and described it in much the same as the parent. But your comment threw me, I think of them as plain. Looked it up, and turns out the ones in Oregon are. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=oregon+lighthouses&form=HDRSC3&first=1 https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=oregon+lighthouses&form...
      • jermaustin1 3y ago
        That is not something I have encountered (I don't think), or if I did, I didn't absorb that detail. The words don't exist in my brain.
    • polishdude20 3y ago
      That seems to be the way I see objects in my mind. It starts as a basic formless "idea" of a lighthouse. Vague images come to mind: Tall, pointy, seaside, seagulls, looming. Then I sort of focus on one part of the lighthouse instantly to figure out the details. Like the walls: Brick, painted over with white paint, moss and lichen growing on them. Then the door: Wooden, one handle, thick, dark wood, little peep hole. Etc. I never fully visualize it instantly. It's like my mind is creating the details over time. A minute later if you ask me to visualize it again, I still don't see it instantly, I need to remind myself "Oh yeah the door was wooden, the walls were white" etc. I feel like a lot of differences in people's experience of this is less to do with their actual abilities of visualization and more to do with not being able to describe what is happening and observing yourself as a third party while you're thinking.
• godshatter 3y ago
  I also have aphantasia. I'm hoping that if they start running these tests on humans that they make sure they bring in people with aphantasia. Something like 1 in 20 of us have it. For example, when I daydream, I lose myself and come back to myself a short time later. It's kind of like highway hypnosis, but I do know what I was thinking about, it just happened "off-screen" so to speak and I become aware of it all at once. It would be interesting to know if the same regions of the brain are lighting up. Maybe we can figure out what aphantasia is, from an anatomical perspective.
  • in3d 3y ago
    Yes, they certainly should for the sake of their own research. Considering aphantasia could increase the effect size in their studies.
• User23 3y ago
  I can fairly easily picture “something,” but it’s always extremely protean. During meditation for example I sometimes picture Calvary, but the forms are just constantly shifting around that theme. I certainly can’t just picture an apple and just hold it still in my mind’s eye. Although I do suspect if I spent around 10,000 hours at it I could get considerably better. The point of all that is I rather suspect aphantasia is very much a spectrum. I’m really not a visual learner for the most part, and maybe that’s why? On the other hand I’m quite good at shape rotation and other such problems. That and there are times where I find the visual interpretation to clarify my understanding of the abstract concept. The standout example of that is the marvelous Visual Complex Analysis.
• robluxus 3y ago
  Are there tests for aphantasia? It's fascinating to me that (as far as I'm concerned) we mostly learn about it by self-reporting but then those reports vary pretty wildly. I myself don't have aphantasia I think but I feel like I really have to work on "drawing things up" when I try to picture something with my eyes closed. Or maybe that's just the normal amount of effort for the complexity and detail I'm trying to capture? Actually it's easier to "imagine" things with my eyes open which I always thought was weird before I read this comment about daydreaming blocking out vision. Which still sounds extreme to me, but maybe not more extreme than all those other reports that claim they can procure fully detailed houses / places / system architectures / electrical diagrams / etc on a whim.
  • to1y 3y ago
    When I was younger I used to draw constantly and I'd say that was the only period in my life when I would often picture images. Looking back it was more flashes of angles and line shapes and how it would feel to draw them. This makes me wonder two things: 1. Apart from understanding how a mechanical object functions or recalling how to get somewhere what other query benefits from visualisation? 2. Do people with aphantasia dream in images?
    • Sharlin 3y ago
      1. It really depends on how you think. I assume that people with strong visualization abilities generally tend to use those abilities to reason and think about many different things, like math or code or filesystems or even, say, cooking. But other people use different "internal modalities" to reason about the same things. As a photographer, one of the skills you develop is to have a concept of a photo in your mind before actually taking the picture. Likely this is the same for any visual form of art. Literally previsualizing what you want to express seems to be the most obvious way to think about it, but I assume there are also other ways that make more sense to less visually-oriented people.
    • in3d 3y ago
      > 2. Do people with aphantasia dream in images? Yes, many reports suggest that most do. But I haven’t seen any rate comparisons with people who don’t have it.
• intrasight 3y ago
  I just assumed that everyone has "aphantasia". What does it mean to "picture things in your mind"? How would one explain to another what that meant? How would one be tested to determine if one could do that?
  • delecti 3y ago
    A person without aphantasia can experience thoughts as though they were literally seeing the things being thought about. There are varying degrees to it, and this, or something like it, makes the rounds on social media from time to time: https://i.imgur.com/gpN7EcP.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/gpN7EcP.jpeg I'm about a 2-3 when I'm just idly thinking about things, and can get to about a 1-2 if I really concentrate on an image. Subjectively, the images I'm experiencing in my mind aren't exactly the same as actually seeing things, but they're pretty similar.
    • krunck 3y ago
      I'm 3.5. It's crazy to me that people can see vivid imagery or rotate 3d objects in their minds eye.
      • intrasight 3y ago
        I'm a 4. But I still score off the charts on 3D object manipulation. But I don't see those objects. It's more a symbolic representation.
  • jermaustin1 3y ago
    My wife doesn't have it, so when we discovered I had it, she was gobsmacked by the fact that I don't see a green apple when told to picture it. I always though when someone would say "picture it" it was just describe it in as much detail as possible, like reading about it in a book.
  • speedylight 3y ago
    Some people like it to call it the “Mind’s eye” - Basically you can create images in your mind by just thinking about them. Like if I wanted to “see” a golden retriever, I can just imagine one because I’ve seen them before, so my mind knows what to do. You can also manipulate those images; so for example instead of the golden retriever being gold, I can imagine it in a purple or green color, etc. A good analogy is that the human mind can have it’s own internal stable diffusion or Midjourney, complete with the ability to give it a “prompt” i.e. thinking about what you want to imagine. I was surprised to learn a while ago that not everyone can visualize things in their mind. As far testing for it, I don’t really know how that would work. I don’t think you really need to test for it, I assume most people who can visualize things in their mind know that they can.
• tiborsaas 3y ago
  Damn, I can't even daydream with aphantasia :/
  • jermaustin1 3y ago
    What about night dream?
    • tiborsaas 3y ago
      That's the only case when I can see visual images eyes closed.
      • _ink_ 3y ago
        When I close my eyes, I see my eye lids.
    • jve 3y ago
      I can night dream. But up until now I didn't even know a daydream existed and this is the first time I hear such a term (well, I'm not native English anyway)
    • _ink_ 3y ago
      I rarely remember them. But they are visual and often of places I have been together with persons I know. So the information is in my head. I just cannot access it while being awake. Which sucks.
  • _ink_ 3y ago
    Yeah, I can't do it, as well.
• iamthepieman 3y ago
  I don't have aphantasia, quite the opposite, I see things constantly in my head and have to work hard on my environment and myself to be able to focus on the present moment or what's in front of me. I also learned about it from some random internet content (possibly here) and have a hard time imagining what it would be like to NOT picture things in my head. Much like you probably have a hard time imagining the reverse. I can pull up an image of any place real or "imaginary" at a moments notice, see myself walking around in first or third person view and imagine any number of people or entities in the space. If I'm working on a physical object like a home project or building a piece of furniture or wiring a circuit, I usually start by visualizing it much like 3D modelling software, spinning it around in my mind, looking at it from all angles and modifying as needed before putting my ideas down on paper. Interestingly, this makes using actual 3D modeling software incredibly frustrating because I'm very much a novice and the speed and fidelity of the software in my hands is so much slower than my imagination.
  • hskalin 3y ago
    I think I am pretty similar to you. When I was younger I used to build all sorts of things with paper and cardboard and used to imagine the whole thing in 3D and design its cutout template all in my head. I learned about aphantasia a few years back and it sounds very inconvenient to me. I also have a habit of playing around with imaginary worlds and stories in my head and I pretty much visualize whole scenes and sequences in as much detail as possible. I wouldn't be able to do that with aphantasia.
    • Filligree 3y ago
      You’re right; it’s very inconvenient. Especially frustrating because I’m in the same boat as OP: I can absolutely hallucinate, but only if I’m on the edge of dreaming, or actually asleep. I really wish I could change that. The machinery is clearly there.
    • mromanuk 3y ago
      Nikola Tesla was that way
    • 3y ago
• LoganDark 3y ago
  I wish I could block out my vision. Whenever I try to imagine something, even if my eyes are closed and I'm in pitch darkness, I still see the darkness. It's distracting. How is darkness distracting? How is it that the color black, no light at all, is still so obnoxious? It's always in the way of what I'm trying to imagine, and it's so hard to "see past" the darkness. The only way for me to really imagine something is to actually have my eyes open and stare at words describing what it is that I'm imagining. I can vividly imagine stories that I'm reading, or writing. Or roleplay. But if I want to daydream, it's just not happening.
• akomtu 3y ago
  It looks like your GPU memory is barely enough to fit video stream from your eyes.
  • intelVISA 3y ago
    my buffer runneth over :(
• anoncow 3y ago
  That sounds like a superpower.
• thomastjeffery 3y ago
  I feel like we are only scratching the surface of what "aphantasia" means. I am nearly always a lucid dreamer. The only difference between daydreaming and night-dreaming for me is focus. I play along with my dreams, and laugh at how absurd and illogical they are. There was one time that I was dreaming so deeply that I could actually see. It was incredible. I decided to fly, and nearly woke myself up from the imagined (but realistically experienced) change of balance. Outside of that one experience, my inner eye is nearly blind. Consider the experience of walking down the street: you can see what is in front of you, and you can remember what is behind you. My dreams are much more like an invented memory than something seen. But what about audio? If I could pull the data of my inner (metaphorical) ear, and plug it into a speaker, I could play you a reasonably high-fidelity copy of Metallica's black album (good luck suing this nap-ster) from front to back. Honestly, it's a bit frustrating that I can't. Playing a musical instrument requires a lot of patience: I can hear any sound I want to at a moment's notice, but making you hear it takes hard work and years of practice. I have been nearsighted since I was a child. I wonder if living that way - without corrective lenses - played a part in my development.
  • actionfromafar 3y ago
    Hey, that's interesting, it would be very cool with a study to look for correlation between nearsightedness and aphantasia.
    • kinos 3y ago
      Anecdotal, obviously, but I have 20/10 vision and aphantasia.
• huytersd 3y ago
  I see flashes of images. I’m so jealous of people that can perfectly replicate 3D images in their head. What a superpower that would be.
• bongodongobob 3y ago
  When were you diagnosed by a professional? Edit: I'll bet my next paycheck they are self-diagnosed.
• grammers 3y ago
  It's fascinating how different minds can process information. I myself have a photographic memory - only one of my kids has it as well. The two of us are constantly being asked where this and that is lying around, and we can always tell while the others in the family wouldn't be able to guess even if they just saw whatever they were looking for. It's simply amazing.
• kmonsen 3y ago
  I (think, not formally diagnosed) have aphantasia, and I also don't remember my dreams. So I have not "seen" pictures ever. Or I think so, it is so hard to know what others are "seeing".
  • kaashif 3y ago
    You've never remembered any dreams, never one bit? I find that interesting. I occasionally remember dreams. Once, for a few months, I kept a dream diary and started to remember more and more of my dreams. From a few flashes to pages and pages of stuff. It was mostly really boring and nonsense.
    • kmonsen 3y ago
      Not really, I had some I was remembering but it was from the paralyzed state in between sleep and awake. Other than that, no don't remember anything at all.
• deleted 3y ago
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