4 ms·

I can "hear" a song at will. I can "hear" it well enough to think about the instrumentation, etc. I can't "visualize" a pretzel. I go into an analytical mode a

by ozten 1mo ago

I can "hear" a song at will. I can "hear" it well enough to think about the instrumentation, etc. I can't "visualize" a pretzel. I go into an analytical mode and a gut-level physical mode, thinking about pretzels and their different aspects with momentary "pops" of "visualizing", but they aren't stable and continuous, the way I can imagine a song or any sound. Oddly, I started life as a visual artist before computers. I've met both total aphantasia-suffering artists and artists who can visually project onto a blank page and trace what they are seeing. People are somewhere on this spectrum.

mcmcmc 1mo ago
Have you ever seen a pretzel (or anything) in a dream?
- ozten 1mo ago
  I had vivid visual dreams as a child. Now my dreams are very abstract, but I think they sometimes include a visually striking element. I'm torn and not 100% sure. I don't remember my dreams as well as I did as a child.
- aculver 1mo ago
  Yes. Different people answer this differently: I'm 100% aphantasia while awake, but dream vividly as if it were real life. However, once I'm awake, I can recall the dream but can't visualize it, the same way I can't visualize a previous experience in real life.
soupfordummies 1mo ago
can you draw a pretzel though? Like, if I handed you a pad and pen and said just draw one from memory?
- ozten 1mo ago
  Yes, of course. I was a visual artist for a decade before falling down the software hole.
- ozten 1mo ago
  If you look at proper drawing instruction books from the 1940s, they show you all of the 3D rendering techniques later adopted by our modern CGI pipelines. To draw a head, you follow a pattern: draw a cube, carve it up into parts of the head and neck, carve that up into eyes, nose, ears, etc, establish a 3-point lighting system, and render materials. It is very time-intensive and analytical, and required if you didn't shoot a reference photo back then. This is needed for folks who can't visualize, like myself.
brookst 1mo ago
Greetings fellow music-hearer. My s/o will sometimes get irritated when I'm silent for a while on a car trip or at dinner. I'm not trying to be rude, I just get caught up in a song, just as if it were playing in the room. Vocals, drums, instrumentation and effects, the whole thing is just right there. I can visualize things, usually scenes and favorite places, but they are more abstract than the music is.
- red369 1mo ago
  Sigh! I am so far from having this ability. Reminds me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy talks about having an easy time in the hole because he could listen to music in his head. It's interesting to think each person is somewhere different on multiple spectrums: - Hyperphantasia - Aphantasia - Being able to imagine music/voices (are these linked?) - Inner monologue (is this the same as being able to imagine someone's voice?) - Memory vividness Most of these things seem rarely discussed. How much is known about the relationships between these?
  - slv77 1mo ago
    It is amazing that humans can communicate at all given the variance. Visualization is also tightly tied to the emotional centers of the brain and serve as an emotional amplifier. Visualize a scenario and you’ll get an emotional reaction on how you’d likely feel in that situation. Some people have normal visualization but don’t get emotional reactions. All these variances have profound impacts on everything from being able to imagine how novel flavor combinations will play out, to “feeling” how your body would move through a dance maneuver to knowing which future accomplishment would most excite you. If everyone lands somewhere in a bell curve for each of these traits it is likely that everyone has one area outside the bell curve. There is no normal.
  - brookst 1mo ago
    For me, inner monologue isn’t audio wildly different from imagining / reliving audio. Both exist, it’s the difference between listening to music and having a conversation.
- 1mo ago
case540 1mo ago
How do you solve geometry problems. For lots of them I visualize / rotate things im my head.
- zwayhowder 1mo ago
  Funny you should ask. In high school I was regarded as highly intelligent, I was near the top of all of my classes and widely read, with an excellent memory for facts and figures. (Though no visual memory whatsoever). Then one day we did a IQ test in science class. I scored near the bottom of the class. All of the geometry based "what comes next" puzzles left me flummoxed. Because I couldn't visualise, I couldn't rotate images in my head to identify patterns and so many of the questions were like that.
  - loa_in_ 1mo ago
    In my experience with IQ tests involving complete the sequence many of the solutions when I looked up the intent behind them made very little sense to me.
- metabagel 1mo ago
  I was good at mechanical drawing in college, meaning I could visualize the view of something from different sides. But, generally there was a perspective to work off of. I don’t have aphantasia, but I believe I have reduced ability to visualize things with accuracy and in detail. My visualizations are very imperfect and more like glimpses than strong visualizations. In particular, I struggle to visualize faces.
- Cerium 1mo ago
  Visualizing for me has always been like touching something with my eyes closed. I can't "see" the object, but I have a feeling for all the shapes and contours. You can feel which way a key is in your hand and where each ridge is without having to see it. I solve geometry problems the same way. I can't see the whole thing at once, but I can move my sense of feeling across arbitrary scenes.
  - 1mo ago

by ozten 1mo ago

mcmcmc 1mo ago

Have you ever seen a pretzel (or anything) in a dream?

ozten 1mo ago
I had vivid visual dreams as a child. Now my dreams are very abstract, but I think they sometimes include a visually striking element. I'm torn and not 100% sure. I don't remember my dreams as well as I did as a child.
aculver 1mo ago
Yes. Different people answer this differently: I'm 100% aphantasia while awake, but dream vividly as if it were real life. However, once I'm awake, I can recall the dream but can't visualize it, the same way I can't visualize a previous experience in real life.

soupfordummies 1mo ago

can you draw a pretzel though? Like, if I handed you a pad and pen and said just draw one from memory?

ozten 1mo ago
Yes, of course. I was a visual artist for a decade before falling down the software hole.
ozten 1mo ago
If you look at proper drawing instruction books from the 1940s, they show you all of the 3D rendering techniques later adopted by our modern CGI pipelines. To draw a head, you follow a pattern: draw a cube, carve it up into parts of the head and neck, carve that up into eyes, nose, ears, etc, establish a 3-point lighting system, and render materials. It is very time-intensive and analytical, and required if you didn't shoot a reference photo back then. This is needed for folks who can't visualize, like myself.

brookst 1mo ago

Greetings fellow music-hearer. My s/o will sometimes get irritated when I'm silent for a while on a car trip or at dinner. I'm not trying to be rude, I just get caught up in a song, just as if it were playing in the room. Vocals, drums, instrumentation and effects, the whole thing is just right there. I can visualize things, usually scenes and favorite places, but they are more abstract than the music is.

red369 1mo ago
Sigh! I am so far from having this ability. Reminds me of the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy talks about having an easy time in the hole because he could listen to music in his head. It's interesting to think each person is somewhere different on multiple spectrums: - Hyperphantasia - Aphantasia - Being able to imagine music/voices (are these linked?) - Inner monologue (is this the same as being able to imagine someone's voice?) - Memory vividness Most of these things seem rarely discussed. How much is known about the relationships between these?
- slv77 1mo ago
  It is amazing that humans can communicate at all given the variance. Visualization is also tightly tied to the emotional centers of the brain and serve as an emotional amplifier. Visualize a scenario and you’ll get an emotional reaction on how you’d likely feel in that situation. Some people have normal visualization but don’t get emotional reactions. All these variances have profound impacts on everything from being able to imagine how novel flavor combinations will play out, to “feeling” how your body would move through a dance maneuver to knowing which future accomplishment would most excite you. If everyone lands somewhere in a bell curve for each of these traits it is likely that everyone has one area outside the bell curve. There is no normal.
- brookst 1mo ago
  For me, inner monologue isn’t audio wildly different from imagining / reliving audio. Both exist, it’s the difference between listening to music and having a conversation.
1mo ago

case540 1mo ago

How do you solve geometry problems. For lots of them I visualize / rotate things im my head.

zwayhowder 1mo ago
Funny you should ask. In high school I was regarded as highly intelligent, I was near the top of all of my classes and widely read, with an excellent memory for facts and figures. (Though no visual memory whatsoever). Then one day we did a IQ test in science class. I scored near the bottom of the class. All of the geometry based "what comes next" puzzles left me flummoxed. Because I couldn't visualise, I couldn't rotate images in my head to identify patterns and so many of the questions were like that.
- loa_in_ 1mo ago
  In my experience with IQ tests involving complete the sequence many of the solutions when I looked up the intent behind them made very little sense to me.
metabagel 1mo ago
I was good at mechanical drawing in college, meaning I could visualize the view of something from different sides. But, generally there was a perspective to work off of. I don’t have aphantasia, but I believe I have reduced ability to visualize things with accuracy and in detail. My visualizations are very imperfect and more like glimpses than strong visualizations. In particular, I struggle to visualize faces.
Cerium 1mo ago
Visualizing for me has always been like touching something with my eyes closed. I can't "see" the object, but I have a feeling for all the shapes and contours. You can feel which way a key is in your hand and where each ridge is without having to see it. I solve geometry problems the same way. I can't see the whole thing at once, but I can move my sense of feeling across arbitrary scenes.
- 1mo ago