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I wonder if author is one of the lucky aphantasics who doesn’t have SDAM [1]. I tried the exercise they described… and nothing happened. I can’t even remember

I wonder if author is one of the lucky aphantasics who doesn’t have SDAM [1]. I tried the exercise they described… and nothing happened. I can’t even remember major life events that everybody is supposed to. Best I can do is recall there’s a photograph of the event, and using my recollection of the existence of the photograph, I can pull up a few facts I’ve intentionally made note of. And now cue the other commenters telling me my experience isn’t real, or I’m misunderstanding how other people can recall stuff like getting married and or the birth of their kids when I can’t. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945217303568 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00109...

pcl 9mo ago
I’m one of those lucky ones! It sounds like you’re implying that most aphantasics have SDAM. Is that the case? Do you have any sources?
j_bum 9mo ago
I’m curious if there is a diagnosis criteria for SDAM. It likely exists on a spectrum (just like mental imagery). I have aphantasia and struggle quite strongly with autobiographical memory, but if someone reminds me of an event or I look through old photos, I can remember things. This is why I love having Immich so much - it lets me feel connected to my past.
davidhs 9mo ago
There are people interested in overcoming aphantasia (or hypophantasia, an extremely weak form of imagination). Today I have medium-ish hypophantasia, but I remember when I was doing phantasia exercises, in particular "snapshotting" and "memory streaming", at least two times, there was a subtle shift in my perception and all of a sudden I could remember a ton of things, as if I opened a door. It would only last maybe 10-20 minutes (I would practice 30 - 60 minutes per day). It wouldn't surprise me a bunch of those memories are in the brain but you just don't have access to them in everyday waking consciousness. So, for me, it feels like a lot of my memories are visually indexed, and if I can't visualize then I can't remember, but once I configure my mind through meditation and these exercises, it is like I can "tune my mind" to mind's eye access (radio/TV analogy here) and with it the memories. Then once I stopped the exercise (for the day) it would go away in around 10-20 minutes (kind of like how a muscle pump goes away rather quickly after exercising).
t-3 9mo ago
Huh. If anything I have a better memory for things that I've experienced than others. My fully-phantasic siblings seem to struggle with recalling conversations and events from childhood that I can recount in detail, but they can do things like draw stuff from memory or put together outfits while shopping without having pictures of their closet or taking out stuff they've already purchased to match the colors. I don't have the visual imagination, episodic memory, or time travel of the paper you linked, but I have had full-sensory dreams and I can make myself salivate and taste sourness by thinking of lemons. Hypnosis has never worked on me. I've experienced visualization once, under the influence of heroin (only tried it the one time, no idea if that experience was anomalous or not). Other drugs, including other opiates and opiods and a variety of hallucinogens have had no effect of inducing visualization for me.
jyoung789 9mo ago
>cue the other commenters telling me my experience isn’t real, or I’m misunderstanding how other people can recall stuff like getting married and or the birth of their kids when I can’t I am much more on the hyperphantasia side of mental imagery but I am constantly astounded at how poorly visual imagery is conveyed as well as the difficulty in conveying the experience of mental imagery intuitively. Similarly it amazes me when people with mental imagery simply cant conceive that there are people without it. Looking at a test such as this one (https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq), the best descriptor for the most vivid mental imagery is: >Perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision I have always felt that comparing mental imagery to normal vision kind of misses the mark. For the common question people ask, where they say "imagine an apple sitting on the table of front of you" or something similar, where aphantasics simply can't conceptualize what that means, I have seen people say something similar to "Its like photo shopping an apple on top of what your eyes are seeing". This, to me, sounds more like hallucination rather than mental imagery and I think completely misses the mark for explaining what mental imagery is like to people who don't experience it. For me at least, mental imagery is much more like having some space inside my head disconnected from the physical reality in front of me. So when someone says to 'picture an apple on the desk in front of you', what I experience is that a perfect replica to my surroundings is created in this non-physical space and in that space, there is an apple on my desk. Bare in mind, this is completely detached from what I am literally seeing with my eyes. I could picture an apple on my desk rolling off and onto the ground, and follow that path with my eyes in the physical space in front of me. Really though, I am imagining how this scenario plays out in the non-physical space in my mind, and mapping the motion data of the apple back into reality and using my eyes to see where it 'would be'. I think what really becomes difficult in conveying mental imagery to people with aphantasia is that they completely lack the conceptualization that you can have all the qualia of a physical space represented to you without it being actually connected to your literal experiences of your surroundings and the space they take up. Like explaining color to the blind, or how some colors are warm and others are cold to a blind person, language fails to adequately transcend the difference in mental facilities. It seems much easier however to go imagine the experience of the blind as a sited person, much like a 3 dimensional creature could imagine the experience of a 2 dimensional one but not a 4 dimensional one.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
danhite 9mo ago
finally found a non-paywall version of your SDAM [1] cited: (A)phantasia and Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory: Scientific and Personal Perspectives. https://oro.open.ac.uk/53222/1/53222.pdf https://oro.open.ac.uk/53222/1/53222.pdf

pcl 9mo ago

I’m one of those lucky ones! It sounds like you’re implying that most aphantasics have SDAM. Is that the case? Do you have any sources?

j_bum 9mo ago

I’m curious if there is a diagnosis criteria for SDAM. It likely exists on a spectrum (just like mental imagery). I have aphantasia and struggle quite strongly with autobiographical memory, but if someone reminds me of an event or I look through old photos, I can remember things. This is why I love having Immich so much - it lets me feel connected to my past.

davidhs 9mo ago

There are people interested in overcoming aphantasia (or hypophantasia, an extremely weak form of imagination). Today I have medium-ish hypophantasia, but I remember when I was doing phantasia exercises, in particular "snapshotting" and "memory streaming", at least two times, there was a subtle shift in my perception and all of a sudden I could remember a ton of things, as if I opened a door. It would only last maybe 10-20 minutes (I would practice 30 - 60 minutes per day). It wouldn't surprise me a bunch of those memories are in the brain but you just don't have access to them in everyday waking consciousness. So, for me, it feels like a lot of my memories are visually indexed, and if I can't visualize then I can't remember, but once I configure my mind through meditation and these exercises, it is like I can "tune my mind" to mind's eye access (radio/TV analogy here) and with it the memories. Then once I stopped the exercise (for the day) it would go away in around 10-20 minutes (kind of like how a muscle pump goes away rather quickly after exercising).

t-3 9mo ago

Huh. If anything I have a better memory for things that I've experienced than others. My fully-phantasic siblings seem to struggle with recalling conversations and events from childhood that I can recount in detail, but they can do things like draw stuff from memory or put together outfits while shopping without having pictures of their closet or taking out stuff they've already purchased to match the colors. I don't have the visual imagination, episodic memory, or time travel of the paper you linked, but I have had full-sensory dreams and I can make myself salivate and taste sourness by thinking of lemons. Hypnosis has never worked on me. I've experienced visualization once, under the influence of heroin (only tried it the one time, no idea if that experience was anomalous or not). Other drugs, including other opiates and opiods and a variety of hallucinogens have had no effect of inducing visualization for me.

jyoung789 9mo ago

>cue the other commenters telling me my experience isn’t real, or I’m misunderstanding how other people can recall stuff like getting married and or the birth of their kids when I can’t I am much more on the hyperphantasia side of mental imagery but I am constantly astounded at how poorly visual imagery is conveyed as well as the difficulty in conveying the experience of mental imagery intuitively. Similarly it amazes me when people with mental imagery simply cant conceive that there are people without it. Looking at a test such as this one (https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq), the best descriptor for the most vivid mental imagery is: >Perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision I have always felt that comparing mental imagery to normal vision kind of misses the mark. For the common question people ask, where they say "imagine an apple sitting on the table of front of you" or something similar, where aphantasics simply can't conceptualize what that means, I have seen people say something similar to "Its like photo shopping an apple on top of what your eyes are seeing". This, to me, sounds more like hallucination rather than mental imagery and I think completely misses the mark for explaining what mental imagery is like to people who don't experience it. For me at least, mental imagery is much more like having some space inside my head disconnected from the physical reality in front of me. So when someone says to 'picture an apple on the desk in front of you', what I experience is that a perfect replica to my surroundings is created in this non-physical space and in that space, there is an apple on my desk. Bare in mind, this is completely detached from what I am literally seeing with my eyes. I could picture an apple on my desk rolling off and onto the ground, and follow that path with my eyes in the physical space in front of me. Really though, I am imagining how this scenario plays out in the non-physical space in my mind, and mapping the motion data of the apple back into reality and using my eyes to see where it 'would be'. I think what really becomes difficult in conveying mental imagery to people with aphantasia is that they completely lack the conceptualization that you can have all the qualia of a physical space represented to you without it being actually connected to your literal experiences of your surroundings and the space they take up. Like explaining color to the blind, or how some colors are warm and others are cold to a blind person, language fails to adequately transcend the difference in mental facilities. It seems much easier however to go imagine the experience of the blind as a sited person, much like a 3 dimensional creature could imagine the experience of a 2 dimensional one but not a 4 dimensional one.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

danhite 9mo ago

finally found a non-paywall version of your SDAM [1] cited: (A)phantasia and Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory: Scientific and Personal Perspectives. https://oro.open.ac.uk/53222/1/53222.pdf https://oro.open.ac.uk/53222/1/53222.pdf