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Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

• ClosedPistachio 2y ago
  A popular topic here: Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951990] 105 points|negativelambda|3 months ago|114 comments Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887661] 86 points|bookofjoe|3 months ago|89 comments More: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Aphantasia&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
• constantcrying 2y ago
  I still have a hard time believing this is actually real. I also don't see how you actually could do many jobs with this condition. At least I couldn't imagine doing any job I ever head without the ability to manipulate visual information in my head.
  • wingerlang 2y ago
    On the other hand I have a hard time believing people actually fully see visual information in their head.
    • Eric_WVGG 2y ago
      It cracks me up —- every time this topic comes up, a few people chime in to say that people who claim they can visualize things are just lying. No dudes, we can see the Mona Lisa just by thinking about it. Quite literally. I can see Luke and Obi Wan sitting in the hut discussing the Force, and that blue hologram of Carrie Fisher, in detail. And of course there’s audio, now the Cerveza Cristal theme is rattling around my head. The “screen” even has a location, it’s behind my eyes, maybe an inch above and ahead of my ears. Someone else in this thread said something about “closing your eyes, if you just see light…” no, that’s wrong, the picture is in a different place entirely. (I’m probably a two or one on that “red star” test.)
      • smeej 2y ago
        My "screen" isn't anywhere in space. It's in my internal world. If I want to see only it, I take a step out of reality, into my head, and there it is. Doesn't matter whether my eyes are open or closed, there's just another reality I can enter. I can superimpose things from it on normal reality too though, wherever I want them. They're in all three dimensions, like I can walk around them, or just copy the entire scene wholesale to my inside mind and move it about while I stay still. It wasn't until I learned about aphantasia that I discovered I'm on an extreme end even of the hyperphantasia end of the spectrum, but it made sense of the fact that as a child, I had a lot of trouble recognizing when I was awake vs. dreaming. I was pulling things into "reality" from my imaginary space as easily awake as most people do while dreaming. When I was 5 years old, a child psychologist gave me a standard-face watch and told me to practice looking at it whenever I wasn't sure whether I was awake. When I was awake, I would be able to read it. When I was dreaming, I wouldn't be able to. It worked! I still remember the night in my late 20s when I was absolutely sure I was dreaming (I'm usually a lucid dreamer). By this time I had long since stopped relying on the watch to tell when I was dreaming, because years of life experience had made it much easier to tell, but I still wore a standard-face watch due to years of habit. That night I dreamt I was standing in a pool, pouring water back and forth between my hands. I looked down at my watch and it was 11:37. When I woke up, I kid you not, the watch on my bedside table's battery had died and it was stopped at 11:37. I've been able to read books and clocks while sleeping ever since.
        • satvikpendem 2y ago
          Sounds like you actually have the opposite, hyperphantasia, perhaps even of an extreme kind. I also lucid dream, very vividly, but I cannot superimpose things from my mind onto my visual plane, it is more like the above parent for me, it's in a separate area from the visual plane altogether, and I suspect that's most people except for those with hyperphantasia.
          • smeej 2y ago
            Yes, from what I've heard from other people, I have pretty extreme hyperphantasia. The only other people I've talked to/heard of who experience something similar also have one or more kinds of synesthesia, which I don't have. I can pull anything from my inner world into the outer one and vice versa, but the things are only themselves. Numbers and letters don't have colors, smells, or personalities. Music notes aren't tactile. Nothing like that.
  • FeistySkink 2y ago
    Imagine thinking in concepts instead of images. I can't visualize a hammer or a face, but I don't have trouble with a multidimensional array or a graph.
    • constantcrying 2y ago
      >I don't have trouble with a multidimensional array or a graph. So you can visualize a graph, as if it were drawn out on a sheet of paper?
      • FeistySkink 2y ago
        I can't visualize anything. If I close my eyes, I just see some vague light coming through my eyelids. I can "imagine" for a lack of a better word, the graph and all the nodes and edges "existing", and can reason about its properties based on that.
        • madmask 2y ago
          Would you describe this as similar to proprioception? Like one knows the position of his own limbs without looking or visualizing.
  • floitsch 2y ago
    I have aphantasia, and I don't feel handicapped at all. The only thing where I really notice differences is when trying to describe people. Since I can't visualize them in my head, I can only describe "known facts", like "they have brown hair". I would make a lousy crime witness...
    • FeistySkink 2y ago
      This was my biggest puzzle as a child: how do all those people in crime shows describe suspects? And was it just made up?
      • floitsch 2y ago
        The other ones for me: - "go to your happy place", or "imagine you are on an island..." - counting sheep to fall asleep. I just couldn't visualize them.
        • e38383 2y ago
          I still counted them, it just didn’t make sense. It was more a spreadsheet - spreadsheep? - than visualizing real sheep. And it didn’t help me fall asleep at all.
          • codesuki 2y ago
            I had to laugh so much because of spreadsheep. Thank you.
        • gmokki 2y ago
          When I tried counting sheep it was very hard work: like stop motion animation. First picture a sheep, move it one frame, then re-draw everything including the fence that vanished every frame. It could easily take many minutes to move on sheep over a fence and exhaust me.
      • perrygeo 2y ago
        Same here. The scene where the witness describes the criminal's face in detail while the sketch artist can render a perfect drawing - I assumed that was pure Hollywood fantasy. Then I met people who could effortlessly recall/draw to that level and realized that wow it's real, but not for me.
  • iand 2y ago
    It's real and I have it. I was astonished when I discovered other people see pictures in their head. It doesn't restrict my creative thinking but I am a spatial thinker. When I solve an imaginary logic problem such as advancing the hands on a clock I can't see the before and after states but I can infer their positions by the directions they must point and then read the new time from that.
    • listenallyall 2y ago
      Asked to think of the Mona Lisa, there's just... nothing?
      • trescenzi 2y ago
        There’s nothing visual. There’s word association: painting, woman, brown hair, Louvre, Da Vinci and so on. Also potentially emotional response too, I’ve never seen it so I don’t have anything like that. The best example of this, and why I’m absolutely certain it’s real and there’s not just a miscommunication, is the joke “don’t think of a pink elephant”. Until I learned of aphantasia I always thought it was super dumb because you say the words pink elephant so of course you’re thinking of a pink elephant. But seemingly for a lot of people “thinking of a pink elephant” means “conjuring an image of a pink elephant”. Or something awful that people don’t want to imagine. I’ve never understood “I wish I could unsee that”.
        • listenallyall 2y ago
          I think you believe that "normal" people have some magic hi-res virtual movie projector that superimposes crystal clear visions inside their heads. No, it's all just memories and concepts. Their response to thinking about the Mona Lisa is the same as yours. You know which way she faces, don't you?
          • SaidinWoT 2y ago
            Both my wife and one of my co-workers experience hi-res images superimposed over their actual vision when prompted (and occasionally involuntarily). This opposite end of the spectrum is hyperphantasia[0]. There are accounts in this thread of people having trouble reading books because they're too caught up in the visuals the story creates in their head (something that same co-worker has also mentioned happening). I just responded to you elsewhere assuming that you're operating from a baseline experience of depending on visualization, but this comment has made me think you might actually also lack it, and that your assertion that aphantasia must be debilitating is from an assumption that the lack we're describing is something beyond your experience. Since it's all a matter of your internal experience, though, it's impossible for me to know. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia
  • sanarothe 2y ago
    I draw pictures. Had some difficulty dreaming up a part to create in engineering school but 3D cad programs made my own shortcomings irrelevant. We had a 'intro engineering' class that taught orthographic drawing (by hand, about a decade ago, so thankful for it) which included puzzles on what the various 2D views should be given a 3d object, and the opposite direction. Holy crap those were so hard for me, but picked it up with practice. I have visio open constantly at work. Lots of mind maps, flow diagrams. Take lots of pictures on vacation because the visual memories are basically gone as soon as my body is. The 'language is a tool for communication' thread from today has some discussion on different types of thinking. For example it was inconceivable to me that someone would visualize words in their head, but I guess that's a thing for some people. I do have to ask people to draw me a picture occasionally when they're trying to describe something. Don't need a lot of detail, just a rough sketch and I can figure out the idea.
  • wubbalerfa 2y ago
    It's definitely real - I just need to draw/map out things on tos like drawio all the time when things get too complex to hold in my head as just memorised words and relationships
  • shafyy 2y ago
    It is real. My partner has it. Interestingly, she is really good it visualizing 3D concepts in her mind, but not images. For example, when she walks through an apartment she can instantly draw a blueprint. Or when we move in multi-story building, she knows exactly where we are conceptually (I always get lost). So, these two things don't seem to be connected.
    • constantcrying 2y ago
      >Interestingly, she is really good it visualizing 3D concepts in her mind, but not images. I don't understand what that is supposed to mean. How can you understand the blueprint of a building without seeing a representation of that building in your head?
      • cgio 2y ago
        As per OP, you "visualise" concepts rather than images. A representation can be conceptual rather than visual. I don't know if I have the condition, but I can draw a shape without seeing that shape in my mind, I can see it when it's drawn though.
      • FeistySkink 2y ago
        You can have a conceptual model of how things relate in space. Something like a class diagram or a DB schema. It doesn't need to be visual.
        • constantcrying 2y ago
          This seems totally contradictory to me.
          • FeistySkink 2y ago
            How so? A DB schema is not visual: it's something that lives inside a DBMS. Boxes with arrows is a way to represent it. Text is another one.
  • e38383 2y ago
    I can confirm that this is real. It also isn’t much of a problem job-wise. I can’t do creative work like drawing a picture, but I can (and do) think up algorithms and write code. I would describe it as: I can’t do creative visual work, everything else is fine.
• quantum2022 2y ago
  I wonder if this could be induced in people who suffer from hallucinations to reduce or eliminate their symptoms? Maybe their system is rigged into overdrive the other way. It says on wikipedia that there are 'cases reported of acquired aphantasia'.
  • speedylight 2y ago
    I don’t think hallucinations and having a “minds eye” are the same thing. A minds eye is different in the sense that it’s entirely separate from the “visual feed” you get from your eyes, they’re not combined so you can’t really mistake them as a hallucination; hallucinations trick you into seeing things that are not really there such as when people with schizophrenia can see people who are not actually with them — I remember seeing this guy on Instagram with a proper schizophrenia diagnosis that showcased this very phenomenon in action and the way he dealt with it is by using his phones camera to check whether the person they are perceiving is real or not. You never have to do that if you have hyperphantasia (the opposite of aphantasia) because it’s very easy to tell whats real and what’s not, and more importantly, it takes mental effort to create and maintain these imaginations in your mind and you can have total control over them.
    • smeej 2y ago
      I think adults with hyperphantasia can easily tell what's real and what's not, but I had a lot of trouble with it as a child. My parents were afraid I was hallucinating, so took me to see a child psychologist, but it turned out I was just pulling things from my extremely acute mind's eye into reality while awake like many people do while dreaming, and I hadn't figured out that didn't make them "real" in a way other people could see like it did in my dreams. (I shudder to think how differently things could have gone if I had been misdiagnosed with a severe mental illness when all I actually have is an unusually powerful imaginative ability.)
    • quantum2022 2y ago
      I found a reddit post about it and I think you may be correct, though it seems like their hallucinations aren't 'full fledged' (they report seeing shadows, not people or what have you): https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/baf5fv/can_people_with_aphantasia_have_schizophrenia/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/baf5fv/can_peop... I also found this study asking a similar question about many different types of mental illnesses, though some of it is about making people that have aphantasia better able to visualize to treat things like PTSD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9614338/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9614338/
• MoSattler 2y ago
  I am curious: do people with aphantasia dream?
  • tambre 2y ago
    For me: yes. Dreaming is the only experience that kinda matches the descriptions of others' mind's eye. Day to day? Just blackness, only the light that comes through the skin of the eyelids.
    • BoardsOfCanada 2y ago
      I think that sounds normal. The mind's eye is more like evoking the sense of seeing something without actually seeing it.
      • SamPatt 2y ago
        This seems like a major point of confusion on the subject. I agree with your interpretation, but there are those charts which show varying degrees of clarity of mental images (using an apple), I don't understand how to square that with just invoking the sense instead of actually seeing it.
    • navjack27 2y ago
      You're seeing blackness because you closed your eyes. Seeing stuff in the mind's eye usually has to do with seeing stuff in open eye everyday life but not hallucinatory it's like on another plane of your normal vision and it's not a constant image it has to be invoked and concentrated upon almost like a flickering image that you could feel and see in your skull that's like behind your eyes and up a little bit. It's really hard to explain but closing your eyes isn't the way to see in your mind's eye.
      • smeej 2y ago
        My mind's eye doesn't care whether my eyes are open or closed. I can copy things back and forth between "reality" and "internal reality" quite seamlessly, so I can either keep my eyes open and bring things from my mind out into reality, or I can close my eyes and bring things from reality into internal reality. I don't strictly speaking have to close my eyes for the second one, but for example if I need to picture the room I'm in from another angle, but it's an inappropriate time to move from my seat, I can just copy the whole room into my mind, either close my eyes or unfocus and ignore my eyesight for awhile, and move things around inside my head. If there's a lot going in in the room, it's sometimes easier if I actually close them so I can spin the room around to the perspective I need.
• e38383 2y ago
  Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.
  • antihipocrat 2y ago
    When you read a word relating to something you've seen or regularly experienced, how is that processed by your mind? For example if you were asked to draw and color a basketball, how would you approach the task without 'seeing' something in your mind?
    • lesuorac 2y ago
      Same way I remember somebody's name. Do you picture name tags on people? It just comes out of nothing in my head.
      • Kiro 2y ago
        I always see a face together with the name, yes. The name is mostly audible but I also visualize the text in a white font.
        • averageRoyalty 2y ago
          That's entirely alien to me. I cannot picture faces nor text in my head.
          • krapp 2y ago
            One of the ways I make myself relax and fall asleep is visualizing a countdown from 1000 to 0. Actually visualizing the shapes of the numbers, to occupy that part of my brain, and then mentally saying the numbers as well. I'm absolutely terrible with faces and names, though, but I think that's mostly due to poor social conditioning.
    • 2y ago
• tjpnz 2y ago
  How do you know if you have it?
  • FeistySkink 2y ago
    Close your eyes. Do you see anything?
  • e38383 2y ago
    If you close your eyes and only see the dim light coming through your eyelids, that’s it. If you can visualize anything, then no.
  • menotyou 2y ago
    Quick test: Try to imagine the following and then answer the questions beneath. Imagine a table with a ball on it. A person is approaching the table, pushes the ball gently, and the balls starts to roll. Questions: (1) What color has the ball? (2) Is the person male or female? (3) What material is the table made of? (4) When you answered questions (1)-(3), did you know the answer beforehand, or did you think about when you were reading the questions? Depending on your answer to question (4) you can assume if you have it or not.
    • memkit 2y ago
      I've found this to be the most reliable test.
    • khazhoux 2y ago
      Erm... here's a simpler test: (1) picture a circle (2) do you see a circle? (3) do you still see a circle? Even replace "circle" with "straight line." I think tests like above (balls, people, details) miss the point that in actual aphantasia you literally visualize nothing
      • TeaBrain 2y ago
        I think this hits closer to the mark. For any given description, if a person is able to visualize anything at all, then they don't have the condition. If they do have the condition, then they apparently can't visualize anything.
• majiy 2y ago
  If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain". The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path". Maybe, maybe the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and the path is a winding line ~~~ but that is already pushing it. These kind of "mind-travels" are sometimes done at end of yoga classes. For me, they are complete pointless, and I usually fall asleep. I have also great problems identifying faces, don't know if there is a connection. On the other hand, I can vividly imagine sounds, including voices and music.
  • fatata123 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • alienicecream 2y ago
    [dead]
  • slwvx 2y ago
    >>If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain". >>The image I see in my mind... I see no image. No empty paper with an arrow, nothing. Same with sounds. I don't have a problem identifying faces. I'm not great at putting names with faces, but that may be separate.
    • edgyquant 2y ago
      I think entirely in words, no images. No sounds. Just concepts that are mapped to words. It blows my mind some people actually see images when they think
      • listenallyall 2y ago
        You can't think of what a STOP sign looks like? Or your country's flag?
• hackeraccount 2y ago
  I find it easier to believe that this is a failure of communication.
  • basscomm 2y ago
    Believe whatever you want, but visualization ability is like every other aspect of human experience: it exists on a spectrum I can only visualize involuntarily as I'm drifting off to sleep, so I know what it is and what it's like. But I can't consciously do it, never have been able to, even with decades of deliberate practice.
• fatata123 2y ago
  [flagged]
• perrygeo 2y ago
  There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported. Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogramming our visual hardware to form abstract concepts in the minds eye rather than visualizing concrete objects.
  • xnickb 2y ago
    For me it's the other way around. I was always good at abstract sciences, like math and theoretical physics. Partially because I could operate in my mind with my very own abstractions. But I'm for example very bad at chess and tetris, because I can't visualize. This has been true for me at least since I was 5.
    • anon22981 2y ago
      Since we are going with anecdotes and gut feelings, I’d say these things aren’t related at all. I can imagine pictures, sounds and also have always been good at abstract thinking. Also chess and tetris are a matter of practice mostly, imo.
    • devbent 2y ago
      I can own at Tetris but I am miserable at chess. The types of visualization are completely different IMHO.
      • xnickb 2y ago
        Well I'm bad compared to top 10% who play at crazy speed. I can't plan top far ahead though which makes me slower. And I'm too old I guess
    • Georgelemental 2y ago
      I know an aphantasiac who is very good at chess.
• dorena 2y ago
  I‘m also a self diagnosed aphant. I was so relived when I found out, school was very frustrating since there are so many learning methods that are built for people with a mind that’s able to picture stuff also hard to remember faces, I usually only know some facts about people, like they have red hair, brown eyes… even family members but I can at least hear sounds in my mind :) I read that this is a similar spectrum thing where some people hear nothing and others can replay everything
• neongreen 2y ago
  Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes. Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for breakfast today ಠ_ಠ
  • lurking_swe 2y ago
    correct - it’s like playing an extremely low resolution “replay” of that moment in time.sometimes the frames skip but it’s still visible to me.
    • acjohnson55 2y ago
      Yeah, for me, it's like watching a movie through fog. Although, I feel like when I was younger, I had far more vivid recall.
    • Auracle 2y ago
      All I have are one second long snippets, but they are visual (+ audio, smell, etc.).
    • saghm 2y ago
      Huh, when reading the parent comment I didn't think it applied to me because I felt like I remember stuff that happened in enough detail to walk through the sequences of events that happened, but reading this makes me think that maybe I don't actually have it because it's nothing I'd describe as being able to "watch" it as much as just recall the details. I could potentially imagine a visualization of the vents I remember, but I certainly don't remember what enough of the details actually look like to replay the real thing.
      • noduerme 2y ago
        idk. I can watch my memories but I often see myself slightly in the third person in them, as if from over my own shoulder, which imples they're not really what I experienced but more like a reconstruction from place and dialog.
• SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
  One of the times aphantasia has been brought up here somebody posted a guide to training your brain to see more vivid imagery from someone who alleges they started out aphantasic and trained themselves to not be. Does anybody have the link, I've been searching for it for like a year since I forgot to backup my bookmarks before a resinstall.
  • whiteandnerdy 2y ago
    I don't have a specific link, but the general method is called "image streaming". It's pretty googleable so you should be able to find something similar at least.
    • SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
      Thanks! That gives me a lead to follow.
• auggierose 2y ago
  What frustrates me about things like that, there seem to be no proper tests for that. Shouldn't there be an easy test for Aphantasia, for example, that doesn't ask me things like "do you have a mind's eye" (what does that even mean?). Such a test should not ask the test subjects to self-diagnose themselves, but it should objectively test abilities and put them on a scale. Anything else really is not that helpful.
  • SirRoderic 2y ago
    Speaking from experience as an aphantasic person, I think it is definitely possible to test objectively. For instance certain IQ tests will test the subject's ability to identify what a pictured object would look like if it were rotated in a certain way. I have taken just such a test where spatial rotations, IIRC including multi-step ones, were a component, and I scored close to 99th percentile on every section except that one... where I scored 1st percentile. If that's not a strong sign of aphantasia I don't know what is!
    • SaidinWoT 2y ago
      This is actually one of the things about aphantasia that has already had a (small) study[0], and the results are actually the opposite! The participants with aphantasia were more likely to both (a) take longer to answer and (b) be _correct_. I personally have aphantasia and have quite good spatial reasoning, including with mentally rotating objects. I think it's fair to assume that visualization and spatial reasoning are mostly (but not entirely) orthogonal spectra, and it's completely possible for people to fall anywhere on either, just based on how their brain developed its internal strategies throughout normal life. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26792259_Loss_of_imagery_phenomenology_with_intact_visuo-spatial_task_performance_A_case_of_'blind_imagination' https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26792259_Loss_of_im...
      • auggierose 2y ago
        Yes, objective tests must somehow take into account the multitude of coping mechanisms that people with the condition have developed. "Spatial reasoning" for example is very close to logical reasoning, and I don't see why people with Aphantasia shouldn't be very good at that, albeit slower in "spatial" mode.
• electrodank 2y ago
  For those of you who do not suffer from dead-on aphantasia but simply have bad visualization/memory recall: you may find great industry in learning to draw, paint, sculpt and immersing yourself in perceptory recall to essentially, in an analogous manner of speaking, strengthen weak muscles. You may go so far as to find the book “ The training of the memory in art and the education of the artist” by B., L. Horace to be of interest. Do not skip on music and try to find ways to engage physically as best as possible. Perception works best in totality, and people who have strong visual recall often have other strong recall functions as well, disabilities notwithstanding.
• graemebenzie 2y ago
  Like the blind who can avoid bumping into things perhaps https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/out-of-mind-out-of-sight-the-blind-man-who-can-see-obstacles-2090303.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/out-of-mind-out-o...
• mostly_lurks 2y ago
  I'm (apparently) aphantasic, having learned about the concept on a couple of months ago. However unscientific the [VVIQ](https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/) is, I couldn't answer a single question with anything other than "No image at all." What I find interesting is that for the past few years I've also been getting regular IV ketamine infusions to treat major depression. The imagery I visualize during these infusions is hyperreal and unlike anything I've ever experienced. I see these full-motion, hyper-detailed, 3D environments that absolutely blow my mind. I also seem to have fairly vivid dreams but when I'm conscious, I can't visualize anything to save my life.
• bleakenthusiasm 2y ago
  This makes so many moments of my life make so much more sense. I don't have full blown aphantasia I think but mental images are always very hazy and dark to me and calling them up takes immense effort. Seems like I'm a 4 on the VVIQ scale. On the other hand, imaginations in psychotherapy, be it for exposure it for revisiting childhood places and moments, still work for me. They are just not very visual. They contain emotions and haptic aspects, sometimes sounds and smells, but the visual is kind of like really old polaroid pictures. They frizzle out at the edges really quickly, they never move, the colors are muted and sometimes off. At least now I know that people who claim that books evoke vibrant mental images in them are not bullshitting me. And I can stop sitting there with Lord of the Rings in hand, staring at a wall for 10 minutes and wondering why I still don't manage to "see" what Moria looks like.
• albert_e 2y ago
  Can people with Aphantasia still have visual dreams -- where imagery is more real and vivid and more involuntary than willed .... than what they can 'see' when awake and conscious and are trying to muster up an image on purpose with closed eyes ? I tried visualizing some images now -- and it seems harder than I expected, seems harder with eyes closed (makes eveyrthing feel too dark and low contrast). But I think my dreams are more vivid than that. Also I relized that when actively trying to imagine things, the "resolution" or sharpness/focus of the mental picture is very narrow -- I can only imagine the "details" of texture/surface of things when focussing attention on a very small and narrow field of "vision".
  • jumploops 2y ago
    Yes, I have aphantasia and also have visual dreams. I always figured daydreaming was just a metaphor, and had no idea most people could use visual faculties outside of an actual dream state!
    • georgewinters 2y ago
      Agreed. I'm exactly the same. I also thought daydreaming was a metaphor.
  • jackjeff 2y ago
    I don’t dream. When I was a child I remember dreams occurred but they did not contain any vivid representations of anything. Just abstract images. Nothing you could classify as vivid, let alone a representation of reality in any sense. The whole concept that you can actually “see” something that is not real and happening in the moment is non sensical to me. Vivid dreams are just mysterious to me as the minds eye.
• leames99 2y ago
  For me, visualisation is related to memory recall. If someone asks me to imagine a scene, I'll run through memories of actual experiences and combine them where necessary to produce an approximation. For aural imagination, such as music composition, I imagine snippets of music I've heard, then combine them. There is a visual component to that, but it's symbolic, not vivid. If I need to imagine something I haven't experienced, it's like a combination of line drawings, animation and written and spoken language. It would look like a mess if I could project it. Colours are there, but they're not vivid. They're more like bad watercolours. If I take my time, I can clear up the image, and over time it becomes more vivid. This is actually how I write. It's a slow process, but it's the only way I can think clearly. I find social conversation difficult because it tends to move faster than my ability to visualise so I find it dull and uninspiring. I prefer to spend my time slow-reading literature. Contextual conversations are ok, such as business or academic conversations, because the language is generally a closed set and visualisations are well practiced. But social situations can be without context, and difficult to navigate.
  • magicalhippo 2y ago
    > If someone asks me to imagine a scene, I'll run through memories of actual experiences and combine them where necessary to produce an approximation. When someone asks me to imagine a scene, I don't really do that. That scene with mountains, trees and a lake? It's like three labels just kinda being there... waiting to be updated based on what comes next. But if I make a focused effort, I can sorta do it. I can recall seeing something which might look like that, and recall some visual aspects. Not super vividly, but something I could at least use as a basis to draw a sketch for example. But just by default, those images from my memory seldom come up just reading something. I have to focus and spend time recollecting. But they never ever become vivid as in real life, not remotely close.
• markers 2y ago
  I got aphantasia from Covid, apparently it's an extremely rare side effect - so rare I've only found a handful of people on the entire internet who've experienced it. So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize, I used to be extremely good at visualizing. Most major impact (apart from the loss of ability to daydream) is that my memory is worse, as my memory was very much based on playing back memories as movies in my head. Especially childhood memories suffered. Also reading books is a very different experience, as when I previously would make up movies and picture the characters visually when reading, now it's all black. That said, reading books is still an enjoyable experience, it's just very different. I also stopped dreaming in images for a long time, which was weird. It's still very dim (not so vivid), but at least that part came back.
  • isoprophlex 2y ago
    That sounds incredibly sad and frustrating. I can't imagine what it's like to suddenly lose that ability, being so dependent on it. Indeed many of my childhood memories are mostly sequences of pictures, the emotional content kind of "floats" on the imagery. It must be very frustrating, being forced to reinvent how you experience your inner life and memories. Edit, after reading some more comments: are you musically inclined? Did your ability to hear melodies in your "inner ear" suffer similarly?
    • markers 2y ago
      It sucks, but that's life - there are worse things and life is still plenty enjoyable. In addition, I lost my sense of smell/taste completely and that was much worse to be honest (but still, you learn to live without and focus on what's good). If I had to choose between the two, I'd choose being able to smell/taste any day. Funnily enough not because of food, but actually because of the added experience you get when walking in nature or other places - smell has so much to do with experiencing things, but you never consider it until it's gone. Luckily it came back, even though it's been 2.5 years now and it's still only 80% normal (but 80% is quite good!). As you mention, the most sad part about it is actually the childhood memories, but I still have the memories of course, they're just a bit more "facts based" than re-living experiences. Luckily, I didn't lose my inner ear or even inner monologue like in another reported case [0]. I do play instruments, so I guess I was/is musically inclined to some degree. I still have ability to imagine music exactly like I would hear it, unlike a friend with aphantasia who can't. Another interesting detail is that I regained the ability before losing it again (Covid re-infection), and during this time of recovery I could gradually see grey, blurry images that got better and better. It's like the image generator in my head didn't have capacity to create full blown images, but only low res ones. Which makes me believe that in my case the "image generator" was damaged as I couldn't even dream in pictures, while for most people with aphantasia that's not the case, as they can dream normally. On the bright side, I don't get horrible, lifelike images popping up in my head anytime I hear about something disturbing. Not that that was a big problem, but it's something you notice. It makes me believe that people with aphantasia might be better at coping with disturbing events, as they don't have to re-live the experience visually. But that's just a theory. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-stopped-having-dreams-seeing-images-aphantasia-2022-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-stopped-having-dreams-...
• true_djf 2y ago
  Hm. But if people really see things in their mind like that, how come so many apparently struggle to draw a bicycle, even though they've both seen and used one? If I ask one of those people to picture a bicycle in their mind, what exactly do they see? Do they see their own distorted version of a bike? When I "picture" something in my mind, I can't really see anything, it's more feelings and words and abstract ideas. But I have no problems drawing an imaginary bike. https://road.cc/content/blog/90885-science-cycology-can-you-draw-bicycle https://road.cc/content/blog/90885-science-cycology-can-you-...
  • gilleain 2y ago
    Well I can say what happens with me, although as should be clear from this whole thread, other's experiences might be very different! Visualising an image (of a memory, or an ideal) is a bit like tricking yourself into seeing something. There is no actual bike in your brain, just memories of what parts of a bike look like. The trick is your brain putting those parts together and presenting that composite as 'a bike'. So i can understand how - some people - can 'see' what they think a bike looks like but then draw a mechanical mess. Of course there are people with perfect recall, and others who design bikes for a living and so on. I'm really just describing how it could happen for some group of people.
    • true_djf 2y ago
      That makes sense. So perhaps you could simplistically think of it like this then: the brain remembers things somehow, and when recalling, it runs that internal representation of that memory through some kind of a machinery that visually presents it to you? Only in some people that machinery actually doesn't produce visuals, but something else? (And I would seem to be one of those people).
  • _dain_ 2y ago
    > Do they see their own distorted version of a bike? Yes. For most people it's more like a "schema" or a lossy compression. It can be placed in space, left or right or above or below other image-fragments, there can be colouring, shading, motion, sound. But it's not a faithful bike-image, although it's hard to notice that unless you try to draw it. There are also other reasons why mental visualization doesn't necessarily mean one can draw it faithfully. For me, mental imagery has a kind of unstable three-dimensional quality, where I see the image from multiple overlapping, shifting perspectives, kinda like a Cubist painting. Different parts of the image have more or less detail over time; I can't hold fine detail about the whole thing simultaneously. If I wanted to draw it, I'd have to pin it to one perspective for long enough, and I can't make my mind do that. This shouldn't be so surprising -- perspective and realistic representational art took a long time to develop in human history. It's a skill that has to be learned, and I haven't learned it. Some people really can imagine a photorealistic picture of the bike though. They're usually either savants or trained artists.
• zingerlio 2y ago
  How do people with aphantasia draw/paint/design? I always thought you had to kind of visualize those artistic things in your mind before manifesting them on paper/screen?
  • SapporoChris 2y ago
    For myself, drawing never required having it visualized in my mind. I knew what I wanted to draw and could put it on paper. However not without difficulty. Using a model, or image to reference certainly helped. As a simple example. Do you picture the letters you are going to write before writing a note? I don't know the mechanic, but I can write notes without effort. In the same vein, simple objects like geometric shapes are very easy for me to draw, no visualization needed. I suspect it's the same for most. However, I did give up on drawing because I recognized I couldn't visualize a scene and place it on paper easily. It felt like I was drawing with poor planning which resulted in lots of mistakes, corrections and ultimately frustration. However, I'm not sure if I qualify as someone with true aphantasia or not. I can visualize things, but I can't hold them in my mind. I see it briefly, like a flash, but can't hold onto it. I've tried to practice holding an image in my mind without success.
• ossacip 2y ago
  What about sexual fantasies? Can people with aphantasia imagine the other person in any manner? In the article, the writer claims she can’t even imagine her ex-boyfriend. I can imagine anyone, anywhere, without even closing my eyes. In many situations, I know I shouldn’t do it, but I’ve had this ability since early childhood. It has not made me a sex-craving maniac, though; I’m quite stable.
  • tgdude 2y ago
    I cannot. It's easier to imagine the sensations of being with the person than it is to visualize the person themselves. I can't visualize the faces of any of my exes but I can vividly "feel" the memory how we felt being next to each other, sometimes if I focus this starts to include smells and sounds as well but no visuals.
• coldblues 2y ago
  I'm very interested in this topic, so I'll go ahead and describe my experience. I can imagine anything with my eyes open. Any object on my desk, or a place, a drawing, abstract geometry or pretty much anything I have a reference to. If I were to visualize an apple in real life, with my eyes open, this is how the process would go: Imagine you're taking photos of the world 5 times a second. You then take those pictures into your mind and superimpose an apple onto them, like adding a layer in Photoshop, perhaps with 90% opacity or a bit of inconsistent flickering. That's probably the best way I could describe the experience. Those edits I create are on another visual layer, inside my mind, which requires an active effort to have a consistent visual experience, but of course sometimes it can passively activate and you're just daydreaming without any effort. Personally, I have a hard time imagining faces. They change, they melt, sometimes they become inhuman. I only have consistent faces in my dreams. The places I know well, I can fully navigate inside my mind, just flying around a town, going down streets and such. I, of course, don't believe neither the scaling or the distance is accurate, but it's convincing and consistent enough for me at the level of abstract thought. I fully get immersed in the books I'm reading or listening to. It's the best part of reading a book. I can imagine smell, taste, sound, touch, sight and even other senses like balance and whatever else. Sound would be the most vivid part of my imagination. High consistency and fidelity. I also have an inner monologue which I use in second person communication, addressing myself from the perspective of another entity. I have anxiety, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and problems with rumination. I experience memories with a lot of emotion. Whenever I look at art or listen to music, I also tend to have a deep and powerful emotional reaction.
  • andoando 2y ago
    That sounds heavenly to me.
    • coldblues 2y ago
      It is such an essential part of my life that suddenly losing these abilities would be devastating. Aphantasia should be considered a disability. I feel as if you're losing an essential part of human experience.
  • 2y ago
• rldjbpin 2y ago
  is there a version of not being able to visualize faces of people you know? asking for a friend. from all i read about things like this, the more it become apparent that we all experience things in a unique way.
  • burbage 2y ago
    Sure. At least, I've never been able to do this. That doesn't mean I can't recognise people when I see them, though that can sometimes be a struggle. It's just that I can't (or don't) "picture" them later. I've never considered it a problem. For a start, because I've no clear idea of what I look like, either, I've never had to worry much about that. Slightly more strangely, and it took me a long while to realise this, I've never taken or collected family photographs; I've managed to remember who my relatives are perfectly well without having to get them to pose, yet it's my relatives who think that's odd. If there is a downside, it's that I'd make a terrible witness. But I have a feeling that most witnesses are fairly terrible, it's just that most of them don't know it. As you said, we all experience things in unique ways, and that's only a problem if we forget it. Which is largely why I don't care for "aphantasia" as a label. It's like having a word for people who don't dream in music or visualise mathematical functions; it'd include so many, that it'd serve no purpose.
  • smokel 2y ago
    Perhaps you are looking for prosopagnosia or "face blindness"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
• snaeker58 2y ago
  I really hate these aphantasia questions. It feels too subjective. I can visualize in a sense, but I would never talk of an image. In fact closing my eyes makes it harder for me to imagine anything. I can recall my dream from last night for example, I can describe it quite well. If you now would ask me to in my mind modify for example the color of the floor, I couldn’t. Because in “dream reality” I very much remember it wasn’t. I can daydream, I can imagine vividly. But the moment anyone tells me, “modify what you’re imagining like this”, it all falls apart. Also what is interesting is the quality of detail between me describing the imaginary situation and reconstructing it in real life. A lot of aspects are lost under a haze when describing it, but when reconstructing it I can tell you if an aspect is right or wrong, not what it should be. That’s of course my personal experience. Just I feel like Aphantasia is this buzzfeed like diagnosis illness, where you really have a lot of interpretation.
  • duncancarroll 2y ago
    I agree, the interpretation factor is huge. I can picture things in my mind's eye, can remember what people look like, walk through the recent past, etc., but I don't see them painted as images on my closed eyelids as though I was seeing them with my actual eyes. When I remember I "see" them but not in a literal visual sense. Like if you asked me, "When you came to my house yesterday, did you see a green apple on the table?" I would scan back through my memory "visually" and if I encountered a memory of a green apple I would say yes, but I would only see that apple in my "mind's eye". Does that qualify as an image? Because I wouldn't really call it that, it's just a flash of mental objects and sure some imagery. So am I aphantasic? I still have no idea.
    • czbond 2y ago
      What I've learned is that there are people heavily focused on their senses and then there are others who take in information in other ways (possibly intuition, etc) because they are always in their head. I have an incredibly poor short term memory, my wife an amazing sensor. She notices everything.... object placement, where things were weeks ago. I didn't notice an elephant walking by me years ago in Thailand; nor last week in a western state town I didn't the open carry long gun that a guy had whom I spoke to for 5 seconds. [he was protesting through engagement] These are running jokes. I also can't relate to a majority of the world (sensors) - however, I can solve complex multi-chain problems in my head that they drop out at step 1.
• snaeker58 2y ago
  The biggest problem with these questions is that they in my opinion don’t actually measure anything. “Imagine a ball falling of the table.” Asking questions of what was under the table or the color of the ball is useless (imo). Let me explain: Recall a dream of yours. What is out there in the dream world? Can you tell me what the retail tax is in that dream world? What house number the door of your dream world neighbor has? No? For me the answer is no. Because I only create answers to these questions if they are relevant to the dream or asked. I forgot the study, but it claimed that people often retrospectively imagine detail based on the question asked. (Citation needed) I like to believe that dreams and imagination share aspects. And one aspect I see in both of them is that, similarly to video games, any detail is kept to the necessary minimum. It doesn’t matter what is under the table, it is about a ball falling off the table. Its color doesn’t matter, the color has no effect on the story. If you retrospectively ask me those questions, you’re just testing if I’m going to make one up in the spot, make one up on the spot and tell myself I didn’t or not make one up on the spot. I think of my imagination as an abstract realm I can control, that is limited by my ability to comprehend. It’s less vivid than a dream, but a dream gives me no control. Anything I imagine is a feeling, there is no incoming physical aspect. And the reason why it’s so hard to measure or quantify is because it is best described as a feeling.
• xbmcuser 2y ago
  I realized that the ability to visualize is probably on a spectrum many years ago while discussing science fiction fantasy books with others. And I am probably someone whose ability to visualize is a lot worse than others.
• harimau777 2y ago
  I've sometimes wondered if I could have aphantasia or perhaps be low enough on the visual imagery spectrum to have some of the practical effects of aphantasia. When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar mustache. I can bring up a general image of "circular glasses" or "handlebar mustache" in my mind. However, I cannot imaging his face with glasses and a mustache. It almost feels like the way that you "see" things when you are only half watching a TV show or are partially zoned out while driving. In some sense you are seeing them but it's difficult to pull up details. When I visualize a scene, I'm not sure I "see" it so much as I form a spatial map of the scene. I also find that the "images" that do get stored in my memory are more like impressions. Maybe in some sense I can "visualize" them, but they are really more like impressions of how they make me feel or the "vibe" that I get from them.
  • kemiller 2y ago
    Yeah I’m exactly the same. It’s like I can “visualize” my proprioceptive sense for where things are in space but it’s more like a lidar map.
  • tootie 2y ago
    It's a spectrum and I think your experience is probably typical. A minority of people see nothing and another minority of people see vivid images. Most people get varying degrees of fuzziness.
    • nicolas_t 2y ago
      I see vivid images of pretty much everything except faces. Faces are blurry (but then I can't recognize people's faces in the street and instead rely heavily on contextual clues, what they were, etc...)
  • skinkestek 2y ago
    I think I used to be able to visualize earlier but by the time I learned about aphantasia I had already gone years without it. Why I cannot say. Sometimes when I get a lot of sleep and relaxation I think I can visualize in ny head. Oh, and I can visualize at least one relative, but only a certain passport image of that person. And I can draw to some degree, so I clearly know roughly what things look like even if I cannot visualize it internally.
• MichaelRo 2y ago
  Until we can probe into people's minds (some advanced MRI or something in the future) and display them on a computer screen, there's no way to call bullshit on people who claim they can "see" the apple, you only have your subjective experience for that. And I don't believe for a second they "see" in the real sense, again, because I don't see anything. Only time I really see is in my dreams. So rather, ask people "do you see the apple just like you see it in your dreams?" I bet they don't. Or funk knows, again I repeat, I only have my sensory experience to relate to and there's no visual element in it when I close my eyes.
  • postalrat 2y ago
    I used to do tech support before remote desktop became easy. When talking people though screens I had to do a lot of visualization of what I thought they were seeing so I could explain what to do next. Was it like a dream? Sometimes pretty close but just a computer screen.
  • trescenzi 2y ago
    There are some studies which do show differences in neural activation across people who describe subjective differences in visualization. 2023: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.14.544909v4 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.14.544909v4 2021: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/ 2017: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945217303209 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094521...
  • Kiro 2y ago
    You clearly have aphantasia. > do you see the apple just like you see it in your dreams? Yes, pretty much.
• carapace 2y ago
  Of course they can picture things in their mind, that's how they see. To explain the not-joke: the things you see are not "out there" they are in your mind. Now of course the things you see through your eyes are there, but the images are imaginary, the eye and brain do all kinds of things between the retina and the mind to make the imagery you see. Your visual perception is constructive. Metaphorically speaking, the camera works, these folks just don't know how to hit "play" on the tape. They have the neural "circuitry" to visualize in their minds (or they would be blind!) they just aren't using it. > Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? Learn to use your brain folks. It's the most sophisticated computer in the known Universe and you can learn to operate it.
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• qustrolabe 2y ago
  While laying in bed with fever I realised it's much more easier to imagine moving things than static ones. Imagine red apple? To hell that, my apple gonna spin and rotate, and be chopped by sawblade flying by, while slowly oxidizing cut parts
• booleandilemma 2y ago
  Does anyone else think this is complete bullshit?
  • costco 2y ago
    I, a random HN user, can personally attest to having never pictured anything and being a 5 in the sense of this image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Aphantasia_apple_test.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Aphantas... And apparently they can prove differences with MRIs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/
• hyperliner 2y ago
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• beedeebeedee 2y ago
  I feel like I have two visual fields. One that feels like it is through my eyes and of the outside world, and then another that has images or ideas that I can conjure up (almost like eigenfaces or other low resolution concepts). The second visual field isn't within the first, but feels like it is also roughly centered where my brain is.
  • quenix 2y ago
    Yes, same! Sometimes it almost feels like HDMI1 and HDMI2 or something, and I switch between the two during dreaming and sort of superimpose them somehow when picturing something
• costco 2y ago
  I don't see anything. I feel like we're talking past each other. I am skeptical that "visualize an apple" to some people gets them the mental equivalent of a Blender model where they get a 360 degree view of the image and from there they are able to apply arbitrary transformations. I can "replay" songs in my head with pretty good fidelity to the original if I remember enough of it, but I think that's fairly common.
  • czbond 2y ago
    I have come to believe there are different type of intelligences, we all have a few, just different. I do believe a subset of humans can rotate a mental image in their head. I know an accomplished UI / UX artist who would do just this. He'd create an image in his head, observe and critique it from angles and then create in "reality" I can listen to a song 100 times, and not tell you more than 5 words in a song, nor the beat. My early teen son (a sensor) can sing the entire song after a few listens. I used to think the only intelligence sign was being highly logical or able to solve complex problems. Because that is what I know. However, I've come to learn there are large swath of intelligences I don't have, and have not personally valued in the past, but others have them and can do great things with them. This awareness has even allowed me to believe in a wider growth of intelligences at the spectrums, even to a type of supernatural gifts.
    • anthonypasq 2y ago
      i think calling those things different types of intelligence is dumb. those are just skills.
  • cucustiuc 2y ago
    I am exactly the opposite, I can very easy imagine an object in my mind and apply a texture, color skew it, rotate it. I can easily visualize a chessboard with pieces that I can change colors and even move. I can visualize moments from past, faces, places, I can even draw them to some degree however without much talent. But for the life of me I can't remember my favorite music unless I start hearing it and then it comes to me, just to fade away seconds after I finish listening to it I can remember lyrics but without the music. I think that I kind of remember (chorus) national anthem and some children songs 1-2 of them, but I can sing along once the music starts. I have a very good memory otherwise, never had to use a todo list for my daily routine.
• swat535 2y ago
  It's so wild to me that people can't see pictures or hear music in their mind. I've always assumed everyone could do it but it just goes to show how little we know about the human brain. I was reading the other day on HN that some people don't have an internal monologue and think very differently than I do (like thoughts just "appear" somehow?) Now I'm wondering if there are any mind capabilities people possess that I don't? Humans are truly fascinating.
• nightowl_games 2y ago
  In second year university I took a difficult 3d calculus class. I struggled for weeks until I suddenly developed the capability to visualize and manipulate 3D objects with axes, rulers and protractors in my mind. It like instantly leveled me up. Before that I had only done 2D math.
• aeturnum 2y ago
  A really interesting question here, to me, is if aphantasia is more common now than it was before. There's a whole collection of non-"neurotypical" conditions that seem more common now (though its always possible they are just diagnosed more and more likely to be expressed in lifestyles that require more complex thought). It also seems likely that our focus on literal "visualization" (picturing a picture) is amplified by the media that surrounds us - thousands of high fidelity photos of the world. Perhaps previous generations simply had less cause to try to visualize things in a "photo-realistic" way?
• itsoktocry 2y ago
  Much like autism, every time one of these articles comes up, half the population of HackerNews says they have it. Where do we get this idea that there's a "normal", and everything outside of that requires some special diagnosis?
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• LennyHenrysNuts 2y ago
  My daughter has aphantasia. I can't imagine what it must be like for her - my visual imagination is ridiculously rich. I can traumatize myself with what I can see in my mind's eye it's so strong, but for her, she has absolutely no ability to visualize whatsoever.
• ralfd 2y ago
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• vonunov 2y ago
  I emailed Adam Zeman (the neurologist who coined the term being discussed here) a while back seeking clarification about exactly what the experience of visualizing something should be like -- pasting the thread below. His replies were short, but he managed to pack into them not only a comprehensible answer to my question, but also hinted at something I really hadn't expected in his two-word final reply: "Pseudo- mostly..." To clarify, a pseudohallucination is a "hallucination" that you know isn't real. A hallucination, strictly speaking, is imaginary sensory input that you don't realize is imaginary. So, his reply seems to suggest that he's encountered people whose hyperphantasic pseudohallucinations (being able to overlay vivid visualizations onto the field of stuff they're actually seeing with their actual eyes) sometimes cross the line into bona fide hallucinations; i.e., they lose track, even if only temporarily, of what's real and what's imagined. Which is just endlessly fascinating. Readers/commenters on this topic may find it interesting -- sorry, most of it is me going on about what my visualization is like, but I guess it forms the necessary backdrop for some of his answer to be useful anyway. This topic, or the comments diverging from it, also seems to overlap with the topic of "unsymbolized thinking"; I've dumped some more stuff of possible interest on that: https://www.pastery.net/vvapdr/ https://www.pastery.net/vvapdr/ with a bit of context in another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40774163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40774163 ======== Me: ======== Hi, I'm looking for some clarification on the exact nature of visualization as I'm not sure what it's meant to be like. The Wikipedia article on aphantasia mentions activation of the visual cortex. So am I supposed to be generating an actual visual input that I feel like I can see with my eyes? When I visualize something, it's not really there on that literal visual level. I physically see the inside of my eyelids and the visualized image is not projected such that I feel like my eyes are actually seeing it. Instead it's somewhere else; sometimes it feels as if it's somewhere behind my eyes. Nonetheless, the image can be vivid in its own way, precise and consistent. I can rotate and manipulate it. I can move a light source around the object and "see" the shadow change, or place my point of quasi-view within a scene. This comes along with mental impressions of other sensory inputs that, similarly, are "vivid" but clearly not actually being sensed from the outside world. Is this what it's supposed to be? What point on the scale would reflect this in the visualization quiz? Thanks ======== Adam: ======== …it sounds to me as if you are in the 3-4/5 territory…seeing imagery as if you were ‘really’ seeing is the exception, but for most of us visual imagery has a visual ‘feel’, which sounds to be the case for you… ======== Me: ======== Thanks for the reply. To clarify, the "really seeing" exception is akin to a visual hallucination, or rather pseudohallucination? ======== Adam: ======== Pseudo- mostly…