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Aphantasia and Psychedelics

63 points by yenniejun111 1y ago

aatd86 1y ago
I wonder if schizophrenia is not partially disregulated phantasia. Or at least one of the symptoms.
tt22 1y ago
[flagged]
CjHuber 1y ago
I have aphantasia and psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. DMT however is one of the only things that gave me strong visuals, LSD in combination with DXM too so I wonder if it has something to do with the sigma receptor
- diggan 1y ago
  Ever tried 2CB or mushrooms/psilocybin and if so, how prominent were the visuals? Always found those to be more visual (for better or worse), particularly compared to LSD, but I don't have aphantasia.
  - anp 1y ago
    Not GP but 2CB and psilocybin were never very visual for me compared with LSD in my tripping days. I have aphantasia and the only chemical to give me full eyes open visuals was DMT. Mescaline was a very distant second.
  - spoiler 1y ago
    I tried them and probably have apanthasia. Similar experience to the other comments: it's usually just overlaid on what I see. A few time when I closed my eyes and got taken away by music, it would give me a more "story-like" trip, but I don't specifically recall visuals. I scored as hypophantastic, but I'm not sure if I'm skewing the results because I draw/paint too. So I'm not sure if I'm triggering some detail processing/recall function. I see nothing, but I know what I should be seeing. For a lot of the examples I could... I don't want to call it "visualise" details, but I could describe in detail what should be there, but its in fact blank. Not sure how relevant this is, but I'm also neuro divergent; some diagnosed: ADHD, severe dyslexia, occasionally migraine + auditory hallucinations, undiagnosed but obviously there is also tinnitus. Dunno if I'm also a bit on the spectrum becau I also need to take at least 2x the dose my friends do, and stuff like amphetamines have _zero_ effect on my headspace
- someothherguyy 1y ago
  > has something to do with the sigma receptor Why? Because two of those drugs are agonists?
- anp 1y ago
  This matches my experience and I was quite surprised to find out other aphantasiacs have their “minds eye open” when tripping. For me psychedelics only ever produced a fractal overlay on top of what I was already seeing. I wondered for a long time why everyone else experienced such strong visuals and eventually decided on my own it must be related to aphantasia. It’s nice to find out I might not have been a total crank with that hypothesis :).
  - asdff 1y ago
    It depends on the psychadelic. Acid will be fractal overlay and color shifts, breathing textures. Mushrooms, you will see a face in the treebark and the clouds, plus the color shifts and breathing textures.
- gavinray 1y ago
  I have aphantasia but I have visuals when dreaming, and have OEV's on any psychedelic in high enough doses. So I think it's useful to talk about dosages here. For example, I won't have OEV's until around 200-250ug of LSD, or 20-22mg 2C-B, or 3.5g mushrooms. Marijuana gives me the ability to have closed-eye visuals ("mind movies") even in low doses, though I don't use it because it gives me panic attacks.
- loves_mangoes 1y ago
  The visuals you get from psychedelics and the visuals from imagination are different. Psychedelics seem to affect your real visual field. You're not imagining textures melting with colors and walls turning into liquid, it becomes what you see. I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or texture. But rarely, while lying in bed I get these full vivid pictures. It feels like a whole another visual field. I can't really control it, but these are fully detailed like a painting. It's dizzying how fast I can imagine these when my mind decides to switch into this mode, and how it can switch from one painting to the next fully detailed picture in a fraction of a second. I normally have to strain hard to hold just a few outlines of simple shapes in my mind, evaporating the moment my focus wavers.
  - drcongo 1y ago
    I'm quite strongly aphantasic, I can, for a split second, hold the essence of a thing in my brain, but it's not even vaguely visual. I have though, several times, experienced almost exactly what you decribe - also while laying in bed trying to get to sleep. Every now and then I can kind of see a room, sometimes the room I'm in, sometimes not, even though my eyes are closed. I love it. I can't switch what I'm seeing though, but possibly because as soon as it happens I'm just laying there marvelling at being able to see something with my eyes shut, and staring intently at the details.
    - bethekidyouwant 1y ago
      I can also only experience true visualizations when falling asleep or dreaming. I concluded that being awake (correctly?) suppresses vivid visuals and some people when awake simply do not have this (mal?)adaptation.
      - kakokiyrvoooo 1y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  > psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. At least with LSD and psilocybin, that’s what visuals are. You don’t hallucinate things out of thin air on either one of those drugs, things morph and shift and wobble and waver and shimmer and so on. At least in the dosage ranges I have explored, 7g dried mushrooms and 10 ‘hits’ of LSD which was probably at least 500mcg?
  - asdff 1y ago
    With mushrooms it is certainly possible to see faces/eyes and such in certain textures like bark or cloud formations.
    - quickthrowman 1y ago
      I was going to edit my post and add that mushroom visuals can be more tangible than the swirling/shimmering/morphing of LSD. During one particularly strong mushroom trip I was seeing geometric patterns on surfaces that were very similar to ‘Navajo Print’ fabrics woven by Native Americans. It was uncanny, and I’m convinced to this day that those patterns were revealed to the indigenous Americans during psilocybin experiences.
thrance 1y ago
I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?". I can't for the life of me imagine an apple. At best, I get a very faint and dark picture of something resembling the fruit. Plus, there's one on the desk right next to me, so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the assignment, but here we are. On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall vivid (at least to me) images of the past. For example, I can still picture a scene of me and my dad picking apples in my grandparents' garden years ago, just after my grandmother passed away. I recall the cold November weather, the grey sky, the felled apples laying on the ground, some rotten. I can still remember what I was wearing that day. Similarly, I do dream a lot, most often accompanied with clear images of places and people, fictional or not. Even though I am utterly incapable of drawing these memories and dreams (I tried), I would still qualify these things as "image", and I can't fathom them being any clearer. Am I just misunderstanding the exercise or is there something here?
- ITB 1y ago
  I can give you a quick and infallible test, but it has to be done live. How do I reach out?
- e-khadem 1y ago
  There is a simple (unofficial?) test for aphantasia, and I have tried it on many of my peers, it seems to be accurate. _Close your eyes and ask someone else to read the instructions for you. If you really want to take it stop reading here._ . . . Imagine a room with a table in it. Someone comes in, puts a ball on the table and the ball falls down from the table. - What age was the person that came in? - What hairstyle did they have? - What was that person wearing? - How big was the table? Describe how it looked like. - What color was the ball? ... and similar questions. In my experience, people with aphantasia will say "I don't know" or "I didn't pay attention" to almost all of these questions. For me personally, everything is "blank." There was no ball to see there, and the person did not have a face. I just experience "feelings" or "sensations" of the scenario, like in the matrix movie. At most some wire frames. Most other people would say, for example, there was a big brown table with metallic legs in the middle of the room, and the person that came in had a blue T-shirt.
bcraven 1y ago
I listened to a recent podcast that discussed why giving people with aphantasia the chance to see images is ethically complicated: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-blind https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-bl... (Presented by Alex Goldman from Reply All)
- wetpaws 1y ago
  [dead]
- crooked-v 1y ago
  I'm not taking the time to listen through that. Is there a transcript?
  - j_bum 1y ago
    I haven’t listened to this podcast, but I listened to an excellent RadioLab podcast a while ago on the topic. They ended the podcast by discussing some of the ethics of “fixing” aphantasia, many of which I had never considered. I recall them mentioning: 1. the ethical challenge of arguing that aphantasia is something that needs “fixed” in the first place 2. The unknowns of what might happen to someone emotionally if they go from nothing to something. This might sound odd, but we know that hyperphantasia can be associated with schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric issues. 3. The implications of downstream cognitive “enhancements” that might result from this. I have aphantasia, and I do not think I’d want it “fixed”. My partner has hyperphantasia, and similarly she wouldn’t want it “fixed”.
- cousinbryce 1y ago
  I have aphantasia, after psychedelic experiences for the next few nights I see small poorly defined things when falling asleep. I don’t enjoy it and the idea of seeing things all the time sounds exhausting. I also have a slight astigmatism and prefer not to wear my glasses because the details of perfect vision are tiring.
- kybernetikos 1y ago
  My aphantasia mainly feels like a super power, that I process at the conceptual level rather than the visual level. I feel like it helps me focus on the important things and ignore the extraneous. It's strange to read it described as a 'deficit' and as something needing to be corrected.
mdswanson 1y ago
An aphantasia "beginner's guide" for those who aren't familiar or just want to learn more: https://aphantasia.com/guide/ https://aphantasia.com/guide/
- card_zero 1y ago
  I feel in my gut that this is fad-driven internet bullshit, and I would like to learn less, if it were possible. > Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. > Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers. Hmm
  - cnity 1y ago
    My gut feel has always been that it is just a language thing where some people think that when others imagine things that they literally see it right in front of them _the same way_ they see real things. Like, when I imagine a scene or object in my head, I am not literally seeing it. It's like some vague in-between thing. And that people who claim to have aphantasia just have a higher bar for what it means to "see" something. Though I'm open to being corrected if there's some concrete experiment that can be performed that shows definitively that some people can not imagine things _at all_.
    - card_zero 1y ago
      Patient MX there is quite persuasive. Lots of neuroscience discoveries start with somebody having some brain damage and losing a facility of some kind. However, most of the people claiming aphantasia, or the extreme opposite, are not brain damaged. At least not literally. It would also be more valuable information if some area was damaged that was known to cause the effect.
    - roxolotl 1y ago
      The parent article has brain scans showing different activations in control brains vs aphantasia vs hyperphantasia. Also when people self report that their experience has qualitatively changed that seems like a pretty strong indicator that’s at least a range.
incomingpain 1y ago
On the graph for aphantasia where it's words. I certainly dont imagine words. If I were to stretch the truth about seeing an apple, I maybe see an outline. Certainly no detail inside, like the relfection of light off the apple. Psychedelics, like mushrooms, do nothing for me. Mushrooms, I've never had a high better than say a light buzz from alcohol, generally nothing. I never get the wavvy or beer goggles from alcohol. I could be absolutely smashed, drink a micky in a couple hours and still pass a field sobriety test; and im a cheap drunk. THC doesnt do much of anything. Opiates take alot; any amount of morphine and nothing. Still feel the pain. One time I had Dilaudid. That helped with the surgical pain maybe 50%; from intolerable to tolerable. Nothing though, no hallucinations or anything. Maybe at some peak I was feeling a wierd flush or wave feeling in my body but nothing significant.
- ajford 1y ago
  I interpreted it as more of "concepts" and not the word floating in space. That's closer to how I would describe my experience. With effort I can kinda force a static visualization but for lack of a better explanation it feels almost like a wireframe pre-render. Sounds similar to how you describe it. Dreaming feel reminiscent to what an Audiobook feels like when thinking about the dream after waking up.
calebh 1y ago
I have aphantasia and have been practicing meditation with the goal of improving the condition for a couple years. I have seen some minor improvements - when I'm in a pretty relaxed state I can see some visuals, but am not able to control the stream of images. I haven't been working on this quite as much recently since there seems to be a connection with the meditation causing an ocular migraine with aura.
deepvibrations 1y ago
Curious - do people see a picture perfect apple when they close their eyes? If you ask me to imagine a red apple, i can, but i have the image somewhere other than my actual vision... If i close my eyes I can't manipulate that space to show the apple.
- kakokiyrvoooo 1y ago
  That’s similar to my experience.
- icepush 1y ago
  There is a very huge spectrum of answers for this, ranging from complete inability to picture literally anything to being able to visualize it with greater clarity than their actual eye-balls.
elric 1y ago
The more I read about aphantasia, the more I'm convinced half the people who claim to have it are simply of the anxious persuasion. The language used to describe imagination, or the perceived lack thereof, is pretty conducive to fostering doubt and confusion.
malthaus 1y ago
i have aphantasia and extensive experience with psychedelics for me, as long as my consciousness is still in control, i have no closed-eye visuals akin to what others see. the more i lose control/consciousness, the more visuals i get but only over a certain (high) threshold. dmt is the only substance that consistently gives me visuals but only at close to breakthrough dosages where i effectively lose consiousness. and they are never "things", they are always the known patterns, ie just raw signals and nothing meaningful - but my mind interprets them in whatever it thinks sensible. otherwise i hallucinate like i dream or think - in an abstract, non visual way, the only thing i "see" are white flashes in nothingness
i4i 1y ago
My understanding is that most aphantasics (like myself) can still see images while dreaming—suggesting that dreaming uses a different network for visualization. I have vivid dreams most nights. Shane Williams (an aphant) hosts a podcast where he interviews people using a set of questions designed to probe their inner sensory world. From it I’ve learned, for example, that some people can taste food when reading a menu, or have a conversation with a deceased loved one and actually hear their voice. One of his prompts is whether guests can place themselves inside a photo of a carnival (which he provides); many say they can smell the cotton candy or hear the chatter of the crowd. It’s striking how little we really know about the variety of inner sensory experiences: Discovering Your Mind – Aphantasia and Beyond https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-your-mind-aphantasia-and-beyond/id1726498892 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-your-mind-... A favorite research paper compares brain activity in identical twin sisters, only one of whom is aphantasic: The Neural Underpinnings of Aphantasia: A Case Study of Identical Twins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.23.614521v2 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.23.614521v2
- vidarh 1y ago
  Yes, I also see images while dreaming. I've also once seen super-vivid (far higher fidelity than dreaming) images, while lucid during meditation, and able to "look around", so I don't think we can't (or at least not universally so) - but I've not managed to find a way back to that experience even years later.
- ajford 1y ago
  Interesting. I'm somewhere on the aphantasia spectrum, but I very rarely have vivid dreams. Most dreams I would describe it almost like remembering an audiobook instead of a movie. But I do occasionally have a vivid dream, and though I can't be certain I could swear that I remember more vivid dreams as a child/early adolescent. But by the time I was entering college I rarely remember my dreams and the ones I do remember are like those I described above with little visualization. It's really interesting to hear about how others perceive these sensory experiences.
WrongOnInternet 1y ago
Apparently it is possible, at least for some people, to "cure" aphantasia with a training technique is called "image streaming." I'm on the aphantasia side of the spectrum, and it has certainly help me see more vidid images in my mind's eye. Here is a link to the article where I learned about it, which also includes a video explaining the technique. https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/ https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photogra...
- Llamamoe 1y ago
  Rubbing your eyes thins their keratocyte layer and is a risk factor for eye deformation and damage: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6848869/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6848869/ I have no idea if the technique you linked works, but anyone stumbling across this should be aware that it has very real and potentially serious risks - if rubbing them at all increases your odds of keratoconus, just think what 10min/day for months will do.
  - WrongOnInternet 1y ago
    You rub your eyes for a few seconds, not 10 minutes. Read the first Q in the FAQ.

63 points by yenniejun111 1y ago

aatd86 1y ago

I wonder if schizophrenia is not partially disregulated phantasia. Or at least one of the symptoms.

tt22 1y ago

[flagged]

CjHuber 1y ago

I have aphantasia and psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. DMT however is one of the only things that gave me strong visuals, LSD in combination with DXM too so I wonder if it has something to do with the sigma receptor

diggan 1y ago
Ever tried 2CB or mushrooms/psilocybin and if so, how prominent were the visuals? Always found those to be more visual (for better or worse), particularly compared to LSD, but I don't have aphantasia.
- anp 1y ago
  Not GP but 2CB and psilocybin were never very visual for me compared with LSD in my tripping days. I have aphantasia and the only chemical to give me full eyes open visuals was DMT. Mescaline was a very distant second.
- spoiler 1y ago
  I tried them and probably have apanthasia. Similar experience to the other comments: it's usually just overlaid on what I see. A few time when I closed my eyes and got taken away by music, it would give me a more "story-like" trip, but I don't specifically recall visuals. I scored as hypophantastic, but I'm not sure if I'm skewing the results because I draw/paint too. So I'm not sure if I'm triggering some detail processing/recall function. I see nothing, but I know what I should be seeing. For a lot of the examples I could... I don't want to call it "visualise" details, but I could describe in detail what should be there, but its in fact blank. Not sure how relevant this is, but I'm also neuro divergent; some diagnosed: ADHD, severe dyslexia, occasionally migraine + auditory hallucinations, undiagnosed but obviously there is also tinnitus. Dunno if I'm also a bit on the spectrum becau I also need to take at least 2x the dose my friends do, and stuff like amphetamines have _zero_ effect on my headspace
someothherguyy 1y ago
> has something to do with the sigma receptor Why? Because two of those drugs are agonists?
anp 1y ago
This matches my experience and I was quite surprised to find out other aphantasiacs have their “minds eye open” when tripping. For me psychedelics only ever produced a fractal overlay on top of what I was already seeing. I wondered for a long time why everyone else experienced such strong visuals and eventually decided on my own it must be related to aphantasia. It’s nice to find out I might not have been a total crank with that hypothesis :).
- asdff 1y ago
  It depends on the psychadelic. Acid will be fractal overlay and color shifts, breathing textures. Mushrooms, you will see a face in the treebark and the clouds, plus the color shifts and breathing textures.
gavinray 1y ago
I have aphantasia but I have visuals when dreaming, and have OEV's on any psychedelic in high enough doses. So I think it's useful to talk about dosages here. For example, I won't have OEV's until around 200-250ug of LSD, or 20-22mg 2C-B, or 3.5g mushrooms. Marijuana gives me the ability to have closed-eye visuals ("mind movies") even in low doses, though I don't use it because it gives me panic attacks.
loves_mangoes 1y ago
The visuals you get from psychedelics and the visuals from imagination are different. Psychedelics seem to affect your real visual field. You're not imagining textures melting with colors and walls turning into liquid, it becomes what you see. I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or texture. But rarely, while lying in bed I get these full vivid pictures. It feels like a whole another visual field. I can't really control it, but these are fully detailed like a painting. It's dizzying how fast I can imagine these when my mind decides to switch into this mode, and how it can switch from one painting to the next fully detailed picture in a fraction of a second. I normally have to strain hard to hold just a few outlines of simple shapes in my mind, evaporating the moment my focus wavers.
- drcongo 1y ago
  I'm quite strongly aphantasic, I can, for a split second, hold the essence of a thing in my brain, but it's not even vaguely visual. I have though, several times, experienced almost exactly what you decribe - also while laying in bed trying to get to sleep. Every now and then I can kind of see a room, sometimes the room I'm in, sometimes not, even though my eyes are closed. I love it. I can't switch what I'm seeing though, but possibly because as soon as it happens I'm just laying there marvelling at being able to see something with my eyes shut, and staring intently at the details.
  - bethekidyouwant 1y ago
    I can also only experience true visualizations when falling asleep or dreaming. I concluded that being awake (correctly?) suppresses vivid visuals and some people when awake simply do not have this (mal?)adaptation.
    - kakokiyrvoooo 1y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
quickthrowman 1y ago
> psychedelics definitely give me visuals. However it‘s more like shifting and warping stuff I and not very pronounced. At least with LSD and psilocybin, that’s what visuals are. You don’t hallucinate things out of thin air on either one of those drugs, things morph and shift and wobble and waver and shimmer and so on. At least in the dosage ranges I have explored, 7g dried mushrooms and 10 ‘hits’ of LSD which was probably at least 500mcg?
- asdff 1y ago
  With mushrooms it is certainly possible to see faces/eyes and such in certain textures like bark or cloud formations.
  - quickthrowman 1y ago
    I was going to edit my post and add that mushroom visuals can be more tangible than the swirling/shimmering/morphing of LSD. During one particularly strong mushroom trip I was seeing geometric patterns on surfaces that were very similar to ‘Navajo Print’ fabrics woven by Native Americans. It was uncanny, and I’m convinced to this day that those patterns were revealed to the indigenous Americans during psilocybin experiences.

thrance 1y ago

I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?". I can't for the life of me imagine an apple. At best, I get a very faint and dark picture of something resembling the fruit. Plus, there's one on the desk right next to me, so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the assignment, but here we are. On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall vivid (at least to me) images of the past. For example, I can still picture a scene of me and my dad picking apples in my grandparents' garden years ago, just after my grandmother passed away. I recall the cold November weather, the grey sky, the felled apples laying on the ground, some rotten. I can still remember what I was wearing that day. Similarly, I do dream a lot, most often accompanied with clear images of places and people, fictional or not. Even though I am utterly incapable of drawing these memories and dreams (I tried), I would still qualify these things as "image", and I can't fathom them being any clearer. Am I just misunderstanding the exercise or is there something here?

ITB 1y ago
I can give you a quick and infallible test, but it has to be done live. How do I reach out?
e-khadem 1y ago
There is a simple (unofficial?) test for aphantasia, and I have tried it on many of my peers, it seems to be accurate. _Close your eyes and ask someone else to read the instructions for you. If you really want to take it stop reading here._ . . . Imagine a room with a table in it. Someone comes in, puts a ball on the table and the ball falls down from the table. - What age was the person that came in? - What hairstyle did they have? - What was that person wearing? - How big was the table? Describe how it looked like. - What color was the ball? ... and similar questions. In my experience, people with aphantasia will say "I don't know" or "I didn't pay attention" to almost all of these questions. For me personally, everything is "blank." There was no ball to see there, and the person did not have a face. I just experience "feelings" or "sensations" of the scenario, like in the matrix movie. At most some wire frames. Most other people would say, for example, there was a big brown table with metallic legs in the middle of the room, and the person that came in had a blue T-shirt.

bcraven 1y ago

I listened to a recent podcast that discussed why giving people with aphantasia the chance to see images is ethically complicated: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-blind https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-bl... (Presented by Alex Goldman from Reply All)

wetpaws 1y ago
[dead]
crooked-v 1y ago
I'm not taking the time to listen through that. Is there a transcript?
- j_bum 1y ago
  I haven’t listened to this podcast, but I listened to an excellent RadioLab podcast a while ago on the topic. They ended the podcast by discussing some of the ethics of “fixing” aphantasia, many of which I had never considered. I recall them mentioning: 1. the ethical challenge of arguing that aphantasia is something that needs “fixed” in the first place 2. The unknowns of what might happen to someone emotionally if they go from nothing to something. This might sound odd, but we know that hyperphantasia can be associated with schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric issues. 3. The implications of downstream cognitive “enhancements” that might result from this. I have aphantasia, and I do not think I’d want it “fixed”. My partner has hyperphantasia, and similarly she wouldn’t want it “fixed”.
cousinbryce 1y ago
I have aphantasia, after psychedelic experiences for the next few nights I see small poorly defined things when falling asleep. I don’t enjoy it and the idea of seeing things all the time sounds exhausting. I also have a slight astigmatism and prefer not to wear my glasses because the details of perfect vision are tiring.
kybernetikos 1y ago
My aphantasia mainly feels like a super power, that I process at the conceptual level rather than the visual level. I feel like it helps me focus on the important things and ignore the extraneous. It's strange to read it described as a 'deficit' and as something needing to be corrected.

mdswanson 1y ago

An aphantasia "beginner's guide" for those who aren't familiar or just want to learn more: https://aphantasia.com/guide/ https://aphantasia.com/guide/

card_zero 1y ago
I feel in my gut that this is fad-driven internet bullshit, and I would like to learn less, if it were possible. > Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. > Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers. Hmm
- cnity 1y ago
  My gut feel has always been that it is just a language thing where some people think that when others imagine things that they literally see it right in front of them _the same way_ they see real things. Like, when I imagine a scene or object in my head, I am not literally seeing it. It's like some vague in-between thing. And that people who claim to have aphantasia just have a higher bar for what it means to "see" something. Though I'm open to being corrected if there's some concrete experiment that can be performed that shows definitively that some people can not imagine things _at all_.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    Patient MX there is quite persuasive. Lots of neuroscience discoveries start with somebody having some brain damage and losing a facility of some kind. However, most of the people claiming aphantasia, or the extreme opposite, are not brain damaged. At least not literally. It would also be more valuable information if some area was damaged that was known to cause the effect.
  - roxolotl 1y ago
    The parent article has brain scans showing different activations in control brains vs aphantasia vs hyperphantasia. Also when people self report that their experience has qualitatively changed that seems like a pretty strong indicator that’s at least a range.

incomingpain 1y ago

On the graph for aphantasia where it's words. I certainly dont imagine words. If I were to stretch the truth about seeing an apple, I maybe see an outline. Certainly no detail inside, like the relfection of light off the apple. Psychedelics, like mushrooms, do nothing for me. Mushrooms, I've never had a high better than say a light buzz from alcohol, generally nothing. I never get the wavvy or beer goggles from alcohol. I could be absolutely smashed, drink a micky in a couple hours and still pass a field sobriety test; and im a cheap drunk. THC doesnt do much of anything. Opiates take alot; any amount of morphine and nothing. Still feel the pain. One time I had Dilaudid. That helped with the surgical pain maybe 50%; from intolerable to tolerable. Nothing though, no hallucinations or anything. Maybe at some peak I was feeling a wierd flush or wave feeling in my body but nothing significant.

ajford 1y ago
I interpreted it as more of "concepts" and not the word floating in space. That's closer to how I would describe my experience. With effort I can kinda force a static visualization but for lack of a better explanation it feels almost like a wireframe pre-render. Sounds similar to how you describe it. Dreaming feel reminiscent to what an Audiobook feels like when thinking about the dream after waking up.

calebh 1y ago

I have aphantasia and have been practicing meditation with the goal of improving the condition for a couple years. I have seen some minor improvements - when I'm in a pretty relaxed state I can see some visuals, but am not able to control the stream of images. I haven't been working on this quite as much recently since there seems to be a connection with the meditation causing an ocular migraine with aura.

deepvibrations 1y ago

Curious - do people see a picture perfect apple when they close their eyes? If you ask me to imagine a red apple, i can, but i have the image somewhere other than my actual vision... If i close my eyes I can't manipulate that space to show the apple.

kakokiyrvoooo 1y ago
That’s similar to my experience.
icepush 1y ago
There is a very huge spectrum of answers for this, ranging from complete inability to picture literally anything to being able to visualize it with greater clarity than their actual eye-balls.

elric 1y ago

The more I read about aphantasia, the more I'm convinced half the people who claim to have it are simply of the anxious persuasion. The language used to describe imagination, or the perceived lack thereof, is pretty conducive to fostering doubt and confusion.

malthaus 1y ago

i have aphantasia and extensive experience with psychedelics for me, as long as my consciousness is still in control, i have no closed-eye visuals akin to what others see. the more i lose control/consciousness, the more visuals i get but only over a certain (high) threshold. dmt is the only substance that consistently gives me visuals but only at close to breakthrough dosages where i effectively lose consiousness. and they are never "things", they are always the known patterns, ie just raw signals and nothing meaningful - but my mind interprets them in whatever it thinks sensible. otherwise i hallucinate like i dream or think - in an abstract, non visual way, the only thing i "see" are white flashes in nothingness

i4i 1y ago

My understanding is that most aphantasics (like myself) can still see images while dreaming—suggesting that dreaming uses a different network for visualization. I have vivid dreams most nights. Shane Williams (an aphant) hosts a podcast where he interviews people using a set of questions designed to probe their inner sensory world. From it I’ve learned, for example, that some people can taste food when reading a menu, or have a conversation with a deceased loved one and actually hear their voice. One of his prompts is whether guests can place themselves inside a photo of a carnival (which he provides); many say they can smell the cotton candy or hear the chatter of the crowd. It’s striking how little we really know about the variety of inner sensory experiences: Discovering Your Mind – Aphantasia and Beyond https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-your-mind-aphantasia-and-beyond/id1726498892 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-your-mind-... A favorite research paper compares brain activity in identical twin sisters, only one of whom is aphantasic: The Neural Underpinnings of Aphantasia: A Case Study of Identical Twins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.23.614521v2 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.23.614521v2

vidarh 1y ago
Yes, I also see images while dreaming. I've also once seen super-vivid (far higher fidelity than dreaming) images, while lucid during meditation, and able to "look around", so I don't think we can't (or at least not universally so) - but I've not managed to find a way back to that experience even years later.
ajford 1y ago
Interesting. I'm somewhere on the aphantasia spectrum, but I very rarely have vivid dreams. Most dreams I would describe it almost like remembering an audiobook instead of a movie. But I do occasionally have a vivid dream, and though I can't be certain I could swear that I remember more vivid dreams as a child/early adolescent. But by the time I was entering college I rarely remember my dreams and the ones I do remember are like those I described above with little visualization. It's really interesting to hear about how others perceive these sensory experiences.

WrongOnInternet 1y ago

Apparently it is possible, at least for some people, to "cure" aphantasia with a training technique is called "image streaming." I'm on the aphantasia side of the spectrum, and it has certainly help me see more vidid images in my mind's eye. Here is a link to the article where I learned about it, which also includes a video explaining the technique. https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/ https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photogra...

Llamamoe 1y ago
Rubbing your eyes thins their keratocyte layer and is a risk factor for eye deformation and damage: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6848869/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6848869/ I have no idea if the technique you linked works, but anyone stumbling across this should be aware that it has very real and potentially serious risks - if rubbing them at all increases your odds of keratoconus, just think what 10min/day for months will do.
- WrongOnInternet 1y ago
  You rub your eyes for a few seconds, not 10 minutes. Read the first Q in the FAQ.