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There is a sort of confusion when people read about aphantasia, they tend to imagine (pun intended) that most people have vivid pictures when they close their e

by xpl 3y ago

There is a sort of confusion when people read about aphantasia, they tend to imagine (pun intended) that most people have vivid pictures when they close their eyes, coming to conclusion that they must have aphantasia, because it isn't what happens with them. But normally, you won't actually see anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a "closed-eye visual" (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)! Nonetheless, most people can "visualize" when they imagine objects, people's faces, places from memory — but it is totally not like AR (i.e. actually overlaying images on top of light perception). Nope, it feels more like you see it with some mysterious "mind's eye", disconnected from real eyes. It is very faint and tacit, like you're perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual "pixels". And it doesn't require having eyes closed, people often can do it as easily with their eyes open, as it doesn't interfere with the normal vision at all.

temp0826 3y ago
IME with ayahuasca (but probably other psychedelics too), there are different types of visions you might have. I've clearly experienced the typical CEVs but also have stark images coming through my mind's eye (much more akin to normal life visualizing). My tolerance is pretty high, it takes me an absurd amount to have the full-on technicolor visions, but I do seem to get a lot of color through my mind's eye still (usually related to the master plant diets and their spirits). There is another type of vision I've experienced that is somewhere in between that I have a lot of trouble describing, it pops out in a different way on top of normal vision.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ergonaught 3y ago
Most of my family actually see things. One or two of them would qualify as hyperphantasiac, presumably. I see absolutely nothing. When you say “it” is “faint and tacit”, you are describing an “it” that simply does not exist for me. I see a whole lot of people who don’t have aphantasia get hung up on this. They keep describing an “it” without accepting that for some of us there is no “it”. The way I’ve usually “tested” it among friends/family/clients is to just ask them to imagine that there is a ball, on a table, and someone pushes the ball so that it rolls off the table onto the floor. I then ask them to answer, from memory, simple things like what color was the ball, what kind of table was it, what material was the floor, was there a sound when the ball fell to the floor, what else happened, etc. No one I’ve known with aphantasia (including myself) has answers for any such questions when asked to recall what they just imagined, but almost all can answer such questions “while imagining”.
- xpl 3y ago
  It is an interesting test (I tried it once I read your sentence). Turns out I can imagine a ball rolling off a table without detailing the imaginary scene to have a specific material, texture or sound (and if I wasn't specifically asked, I won't likely picture it). My imaginary scene clearly had some "spatial sense" though — I saw (but more like "felt") the flat surface of the table, the edges of it, how it is positioned relative to myself, the roundness of the ball rolling, and how it falls off.
  - kordlessagain 3y ago
    The people I've talked to who can visualize say they can consciously see the objects in mind, confirming it looks as if they are looking at it on a phone (as a rough analogy). There is apparently a wide range of ability regarding this, and the abilities seem to be about as common as the limitations, such as not visualizing faces, and seeing historic data in black and white or blocks like Minecraft. Some people can't do motion, some can't do high detail. My mom can do detailed trees with leaves and see landscapes from anywhere she has been, but no creative ones. She also doesn't do faces, nor does she have echoic recall. A recent conversation with a visualizer confirmed they were doing creative rendering of scenes (mesh + texture + lighting) but had low detail on things like tree leaves. They said they were for sure "seeing" the imagery, as if it were a type of "screen" in mind. I've questioned maybe 200 people about this over the years and when someone starts talking about spatial understanding and not seeing pixels, they aren't really talking about seeing anything in mind, but more understanding it. I can do the "feeling" thing, which I reference as "I have the mesh, not the map". People with Aphantasia appear to hold facts about objects, but not actually generate the imagery where they are conscious of seeing it. It would be a little like having Dalle3 generate an image from a Claude Opus 3 prompt, then uploading it to Claude to look at. It can't do generative images, but can look at them and inference. Maybe someone that visualizes strongly here can confirm that what you are indeed seeing has aspects of light, shadows, color and the things we consider attributes of "pixels"?
    - deleted 3y ago
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saberience 3y ago
I actually experience CEVs easily without any drugs at all, something that’s happened all my life. I can even influence it to some extent. IE if I close my eyes and focus I can create more and more intense closed eye visuals without falling asleep. When I was a child I used to do this for fun when I was bored. So yeah, it’s definitely not a hard and fast rule about CEVs.
- gryn 3y ago
  I used to when I was younger, these day I seems to have lost that ability even my dreams are not vivid and I rarely have a dream (that I remember)
- ben_w 3y ago
  I've had the audio equivalent of that at least once, and I think (can't prove it) a few other times. But it was scary so I never tried again. I suspect I had the visual once, thanks to one time as a teenager I tried a magic spell and the explanation of "I'm capable of self-hypnosis" is much more plausible than the spell having had even the slightest effect. I can easily create intense overrides for sensory experience whenever I like for my sense of which way down is, and mild overrides for the various kinds of touch.
  - JoeyJoJoJr 3y ago
    This might seem like a weird question, but have you ever had distortions in your sense of the size of features of your face? I remember a very strange feeling as a child about my sense of scale when I was dreaming or asleep. Feeling like I was minuscule while in the presence of something very big. Later in adult life I found I distort my sensory perception of my facial features, ie make my lips or cheeks feel gigantic, by pressing a very particular part of my face into the pillow at the correct angle. This sensation seemed to feel similar to one I experienced as a child. I also have or have had the ability to do other sensory overrides like distorting my sense of physical space, ie warp the bounds of my room while I stare at ceiling in bed. It’s not really a visual thing, but it makes me think of the spoon bending scene in the matrix.
grugagag 3y ago
People who have aphantasia know right away something must be off for them when others enjoy things they don’t, such overly descriptive prose and so on. It is indeed very difficult to compare one’s internal experience with others’ and that’s one reason aphantasia flies under the radar.
user8501 3y ago
I personally believe that people just answer the question “do you visualize?” differently. I used to think I had “aphantasia” but like you said, you see it without seeing it. If your eyes and brain are functioning at all, your brain is perfectly capable of creating colorful images. Just look around. Those colors you see? That’s your brain.
- ITB 3y ago
  No. There’s more to this. My wife has hyperphantasia. She can imagine an apple in front of my face, with her eyes open, and she will see occlusion.
sudosysgen 3y ago
I've personally always had closed eye visuals, that are very vivid. Quite a few people have those without hallucinogens.
- fallingfrog 3y ago
  That is pretty surprising to me. I’ve only experienced that when waking up in the middle of a very vivid dream, and sometimes will see geometric shapes with my eyes closed for 10 or 20 seconds. Then it goes away. I chalked it up to the brain being flooded with weird chemicals during sleep. I’ve also seen this while on oxycodone after a surgery. Personally, I kinda envy you, you must live in a very exciting world if your brain is loaded with those chemicals all the time! Serotonin, maybe?
jijijijij 3y ago
>But normally, you won't actually see anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a "closed-eye visual" (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)! I can attest you, this is wrong. When I close my eyes I do see stuff... At the very least some geometric fractals, usually some sort of boiling visual association soup, where random images emerge from fractal Eigengrau liquid. I, willfully, got little influence on the stuff coming up. It feels like watching my brain do brain things. It's rather annoying/exhausting by the way. I think this experience is a spectrum. It's not like you have it or you don't.
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  > I think this experience is a spectrum. Yes, a thousand times yes.
  - jijijijij 3y ago
    I always imagine there is some sort of threshold for conscious impressions, which varies between people, but also during the day in a single individual. Like islands sticking out of the sea. The more engaged/synchronized the brain processes something, the more "mass" gets build up forming these landscapes. If you lower the water level the islands become wider, if the sea is turbulent the edges become less defined.
- xpl 3y ago
  Worth to mention that there is a condition called HPPD (hallucinogen-induced perception disorder), causing people to see CEVs/OEVs while not on drugs. The condition persists for a while (for some people, months or even years) after a drug use, as the name would imply, causing annoyance and anxiety. Surely its a spectrum, but seeing closed eye visuals isn't considered "being in a normal part of the spectrum" though.
  - jijijijij 3y ago
    >Surely its a spectrum, but seeing closed eye visuals isn't considered "being in a normal part of the spectrum" though. Source?
thomasahle 3y ago
> It is very faint and tacit, like you're perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual "pixels". Some people see details, some see colors, some see black and white, some see a misty fog, some see nothing. It sounds to me like you're somewhere towards the aphantasic end of the spectrum, but I couldn't give you the exact percentile.

by xpl 3y ago

temp0826 3y ago

IME with ayahuasca (but probably other psychedelics too), there are different types of visions you might have. I've clearly experienced the typical CEVs but also have stark images coming through my mind's eye (much more akin to normal life visualizing). My tolerance is pretty high, it takes me an absurd amount to have the full-on technicolor visions, but I do seem to get a lot of color through my mind's eye still (usually related to the master plant diets and their spirits). There is another type of vision I've experienced that is somewhere in between that I have a lot of trouble describing, it pops out in a different way on top of normal vision.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ergonaught 3y ago

Most of my family actually see things. One or two of them would qualify as hyperphantasiac, presumably. I see absolutely nothing. When you say “it” is “faint and tacit”, you are describing an “it” that simply does not exist for me. I see a whole lot of people who don’t have aphantasia get hung up on this. They keep describing an “it” without accepting that for some of us there is no “it”. The way I’ve usually “tested” it among friends/family/clients is to just ask them to imagine that there is a ball, on a table, and someone pushes the ball so that it rolls off the table onto the floor. I then ask them to answer, from memory, simple things like what color was the ball, what kind of table was it, what material was the floor, was there a sound when the ball fell to the floor, what else happened, etc. No one I’ve known with aphantasia (including myself) has answers for any such questions when asked to recall what they just imagined, but almost all can answer such questions “while imagining”.

xpl 3y ago
It is an interesting test (I tried it once I read your sentence). Turns out I can imagine a ball rolling off a table without detailing the imaginary scene to have a specific material, texture or sound (and if I wasn't specifically asked, I won't likely picture it). My imaginary scene clearly had some "spatial sense" though — I saw (but more like "felt") the flat surface of the table, the edges of it, how it is positioned relative to myself, the roundness of the ball rolling, and how it falls off.
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  The people I've talked to who can visualize say they can consciously see the objects in mind, confirming it looks as if they are looking at it on a phone (as a rough analogy). There is apparently a wide range of ability regarding this, and the abilities seem to be about as common as the limitations, such as not visualizing faces, and seeing historic data in black and white or blocks like Minecraft. Some people can't do motion, some can't do high detail. My mom can do detailed trees with leaves and see landscapes from anywhere she has been, but no creative ones. She also doesn't do faces, nor does she have echoic recall. A recent conversation with a visualizer confirmed they were doing creative rendering of scenes (mesh + texture + lighting) but had low detail on things like tree leaves. They said they were for sure "seeing" the imagery, as if it were a type of "screen" in mind. I've questioned maybe 200 people about this over the years and when someone starts talking about spatial understanding and not seeing pixels, they aren't really talking about seeing anything in mind, but more understanding it. I can do the "feeling" thing, which I reference as "I have the mesh, not the map". People with Aphantasia appear to hold facts about objects, but not actually generate the imagery where they are conscious of seeing it. It would be a little like having Dalle3 generate an image from a Claude Opus 3 prompt, then uploading it to Claude to look at. It can't do generative images, but can look at them and inference. Maybe someone that visualizes strongly here can confirm that what you are indeed seeing has aspects of light, shadows, color and the things we consider attributes of "pixels"?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

saberience 3y ago

I actually experience CEVs easily without any drugs at all, something that’s happened all my life. I can even influence it to some extent. IE if I close my eyes and focus I can create more and more intense closed eye visuals without falling asleep. When I was a child I used to do this for fun when I was bored. So yeah, it’s definitely not a hard and fast rule about CEVs.

gryn 3y ago
I used to when I was younger, these day I seems to have lost that ability even my dreams are not vivid and I rarely have a dream (that I remember)
ben_w 3y ago
I've had the audio equivalent of that at least once, and I think (can't prove it) a few other times. But it was scary so I never tried again. I suspect I had the visual once, thanks to one time as a teenager I tried a magic spell and the explanation of "I'm capable of self-hypnosis" is much more plausible than the spell having had even the slightest effect. I can easily create intense overrides for sensory experience whenever I like for my sense of which way down is, and mild overrides for the various kinds of touch.
- JoeyJoJoJr 3y ago
  This might seem like a weird question, but have you ever had distortions in your sense of the size of features of your face? I remember a very strange feeling as a child about my sense of scale when I was dreaming or asleep. Feeling like I was minuscule while in the presence of something very big. Later in adult life I found I distort my sensory perception of my facial features, ie make my lips or cheeks feel gigantic, by pressing a very particular part of my face into the pillow at the correct angle. This sensation seemed to feel similar to one I experienced as a child. I also have or have had the ability to do other sensory overrides like distorting my sense of physical space, ie warp the bounds of my room while I stare at ceiling in bed. It’s not really a visual thing, but it makes me think of the spoon bending scene in the matrix.

grugagag 3y ago

People who have aphantasia know right away something must be off for them when others enjoy things they don’t, such overly descriptive prose and so on. It is indeed very difficult to compare one’s internal experience with others’ and that’s one reason aphantasia flies under the radar.

user8501 3y ago

I personally believe that people just answer the question “do you visualize?” differently. I used to think I had “aphantasia” but like you said, you see it without seeing it. If your eyes and brain are functioning at all, your brain is perfectly capable of creating colorful images. Just look around. Those colors you see? That’s your brain.

ITB 3y ago
No. There’s more to this. My wife has hyperphantasia. She can imagine an apple in front of my face, with her eyes open, and she will see occlusion.

sudosysgen 3y ago

I've personally always had closed eye visuals, that are very vivid. Quite a few people have those without hallucinogens.

fallingfrog 3y ago
That is pretty surprising to me. I’ve only experienced that when waking up in the middle of a very vivid dream, and sometimes will see geometric shapes with my eyes closed for 10 or 20 seconds. Then it goes away. I chalked it up to the brain being flooded with weird chemicals during sleep. I’ve also seen this while on oxycodone after a surgery. Personally, I kinda envy you, you must live in a very exciting world if your brain is loaded with those chemicals all the time! Serotonin, maybe?

jijijijij 3y ago

>But normally, you won't actually see anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a "closed-eye visual" (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)! I can attest you, this is wrong. When I close my eyes I do see stuff... At the very least some geometric fractals, usually some sort of boiling visual association soup, where random images emerge from fractal Eigengrau liquid. I, willfully, got little influence on the stuff coming up. It feels like watching my brain do brain things. It's rather annoying/exhausting by the way. I think this experience is a spectrum. It's not like you have it or you don't.

kordlessagain 3y ago
> I think this experience is a spectrum. Yes, a thousand times yes.
- jijijijij 3y ago
  I always imagine there is some sort of threshold for conscious impressions, which varies between people, but also during the day in a single individual. Like islands sticking out of the sea. The more engaged/synchronized the brain processes something, the more "mass" gets build up forming these landscapes. If you lower the water level the islands become wider, if the sea is turbulent the edges become less defined.
xpl 3y ago
Worth to mention that there is a condition called HPPD (hallucinogen-induced perception disorder), causing people to see CEVs/OEVs while not on drugs. The condition persists for a while (for some people, months or even years) after a drug use, as the name would imply, causing annoyance and anxiety. Surely its a spectrum, but seeing closed eye visuals isn't considered "being in a normal part of the spectrum" though.
- jijijijij 3y ago
  >Surely its a spectrum, but seeing closed eye visuals isn't considered "being in a normal part of the spectrum" though. Source?

thomasahle 3y ago

> It is very faint and tacit, like you're perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual "pixels". Some people see details, some see colors, some see black and white, some see a misty fog, some see nothing. It sounds to me like you're somewhere towards the aphantasic end of the spectrum, but I couldn't give you the exact percentile.