
The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia - monort
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29175093
======
buss
I'm mostly aphantasic: I get brief flashes of images, completely out of my
control, and I can't hold onto them; images appear and disappear in a split
second. After learning about aphantasia and the very surprising reality that
some people can just see whatever they want in their head I started
practicing. I've only gotten slightly better in about two years of practice.
Best results are as I'm falling asleep, but I still cannot force an image to
appear, I just try to hang on to whatever shows up, though it still doesn't
last longer than a couple seconds. So this doesn't seem like something one can
meaningfully improve through practice :/

~~~
kace91
Wow.

Your comment made something click for me: I just realised that I'm losing this
ability somehow.

I'm in my late twenties, and as a teenager I was very into reading novels,
very dreamy and would daydream constantly about things ( real-world
situations, memories, or fantastic ideas).Nowadays I barely get into fiction,
pretty much all I read is either technical or essays, and it's been a while
since I have a memorable dream. My memory is horrible for personal events too.

I don't know whether this development of my personality is due of barely being
able to see something in my mind, or the other way around - but I just tried,
and realized that I can't do it anymore. I try to visualize a car, or a
landscape, and I just can't, only abstract concepts come to my mind. I'm only
getting flashes of an image when trying to "see" familiar faces, like those of
my family.

~~~
tw1010
Are you on a low-carb diet by any chance? I only ask because I've been on one
for a while and one reason I suspect I'm having similar effects as you're
describing is maybe because of long-term consequences of carb restriction.

~~~
kace91
Nope, doesn't fit for me. I work out and I guess I have a pretty high
metabolism because I've always been quite thin, so I put that advantage to
good use by not exactly eating clean - I eat plenty of fast food.

It could be some sort of deficiency though.

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Lerc
Like quite a few people I discovered aphantasia and the fact I had it
simultaneously. This was 0nly in the last few years as articles on the topic
appeared. Since then I have been analysing my experiences relative to what I
have been told is normal. Art tutorials I find especially odd, because they
analytically break things into components the way I would. If people can
visualise, why don't they just draw what they see.

Thinking about that put me in mind of a curious possibility. What if no-one
had a mind's eye and Aphantasia is simply the lack of a delusion of a mind's
eye. Such tricks performed by the brain are well documented with regard to
time, decision-making, optical illusions. Derren Brown exploits a lot of these
for entertainment.

That leads to a philosophical notion of whether the delusion of having a
sensation qualifies as a sensation itself. Would that make it the opposite of
blindsight where people have the experience of being blind while being able to
experimentally demonstrate they can see?

~~~
looki
A few counter-questions to poke at your hypothesis:

Are you able to imagine sound? To me, imagining and hearing sound, and
imagining and seeing images are equivalent relations. It seems obvious to me,
but of course since we're talking about the literal differences of the way
human minds can function here, I can see how it might not be to some.

Do you dream at all? I can still picture a lot of scenes from my most vivid
dreams.

Do you read fiction? It's hard to imagine what's that like if I can't, well,
paint a picture of the scenes you're trying to imagine, like in a movie.

(edited to clarify the last sentence)

~~~
graeme
I'm mildly aphantadic. I can see flashes of image, but can't hold them, and
with little colour. I feel this has worsened with time.

However, I can know where objects are in a room and am excellent at navigating
a city in my mind. It's like the data is there, but I can't visualize it, if
that makes sense.

Music and sound recall is excellent. I have good memory of spoken words, and I
can play songs in my head in what seems like full detail.

I dream. I kept a dream journal for a while and had a lot of detail. Though, I
think I had more visualization then. I can definitely still recall dreams with
a lot of detail though. But it's like my waking thoughts: the images aren't
vivid.

Fiction is easy. I don't have visuals in the rest of my life, so I'm hardly
missing them there. I think the same thing happens where I imagine a room with
objects, but I just can't quite _see_ it. But it's there.

What is hard is poetry, most of it I simply can't get into. There are a few
exceptions. I've liked some ancient greek stuff, and I liked Felix Dennis. But
most is just dull for me.

I'm not really into hiphop and it occurs to me this could be part of it....

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justinator
I was amazed to find out people have aphantasia. I'm def. a visual thinker. I
went to art school, and had a hell of a time, until I could competently draw
out what I imagined in my head (my hand/eye coordination had to catch up!).
But even before that, I could visualize a lot of detail on just what I wanted
something to look like. I could see a detailed part, or manipulate the visual
in my head.

I remember waking up and playing Tetris in my head before I got out of bed. I
could keep track of the piece falling, the next piece and the board as it
stood.

Even when I started programming, I would just remember like, the pattern the
code made, and where it was within the file structure. I never used an IDE - I
kinda felt like I could fit the entire thing in my head and just compile it
dynamically to imagine what it would do. Some languages are easier to do that
with then others. Even before that, learning HTML coincided with dreams of
simply writing HTML and seeing the results.

I had a nightlight until I was at least 12 (off and on), as I would imagine
the craziest things happening while I slept. I also suffered from sleep
paralysis - I can still picture some of the demons that were on top of me from
25 years ago.

To this day, I live in a daytime world of constantly daydreaming, making up
scenarios, and playing them out. I probably shoulda went into film.

Anyways, y'all aren't like that? Weird.

~~~
no_identd
Here, something you might find even stranger than aphantasia, a stark contrast
in visual thinking between people WITHOUT aphantasia, i.e. between people with
a functioning mind's eye:

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f1c0/e09b9909a751de4f1c15cd...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f1c0/e09b9909a751de4f1c15cd4ad8d36b8c9e52.pdf)
Spatial versus object visualizers: a new characterization of visual cognitive
style. [2005]

Here's an imgur album of the two most important figures from the paper, which
might very well already summarize the majority of it for you:

[https://imgur.com/a/6C7WcWk](https://imgur.com/a/6C7WcWk)

~~~
Terretta
Thanks for this PDF

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Geee
Can people really see something that they imagine? I can only create a
conceptual image in my head but I don't really see anything. It's like a
symbolic version of the image. If I imagine a beach, I can tell where sand,
ocean and sky are located but I don't see anything visually.

~~~
Steve44
A little while ago I watched a series called The Brain with David Eagleman and
one thing that really stuck with me was how the eyes and brain interact.

The eyes are not connected straight to the main brain, they feed into a 'frame
buffer' which creates an image. The brain then looks at what is in the 'frame
buffer' and can also add/feedback into it.

This is partially why psychosis can seem so real. One part of our brain feeds
into the 'frame buffer', the other part of the brain interpreting what you see
can't tell the difference between input from the eyes and feedback from the
brain. Those spiders you are seeing are as real to you as if you really do see
them with your eyes.

This also goes some way to explaining how the 'gorilla walking through the
basketball game' illusion works and other visual tricks such as not seeing the
blackout when your eyes move - you really didn't see that cyclist etc.

(I've explained that in my simple language from recollection as it's how I
easily understand it.)

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interfixus
Quite the other way round, excuse the possible off-topicness:

As a boy, way back in the sixties, age four or five, one day I overheard my
parents talking of 'color tv' and the possibility of getting such a thing.
"What is that?" was my obvious question. "A tv that can show colors, of
course". "But our tv _does_ do color", I informed them, and was promptly told
it didn't. But of course it did. I was adamant. I _knew_ that television was
full of colors, and always had been. I could describe the colors of all sorts
of things I'd seen on our tv. I remember knowing for a fact that a Volkswagen
in some series I had been following was bright red. Stupid parents for not
realising.

Next time the thing was turned on in all its vacuum tube glory, everything -
to my immense disappointment - was greyscale, and remained so for several
years until an actual color tv was actually purchased.

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pirogen
I went from hyperphantasia as a child to complete aphantasia in my early
teens. When I was <= 7 y.o. my favourite past time was playing and directing
vividly realistic movies behind my closed eyelids. Sometimes I could even
visualize things with my eyes open, creating a kind of "extended reality" with
imagined things or creatures interacting with real ones. This ability started
to gradually disappear around the time I went to school, and now I'm
completely unable to visualize anything (other than occasional involuntary
hypnagogues before falling asleep).

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malthaus
I have aphantasia (or am on the spectrum) and my mind can only see in
"concepts" and flashes of light. I can't think of a banana and "see" it. The
closest i get to visualization is recalling photographic snapshots of things
but only if i saw a photo of it once.

One interesting aspect are psychedelics. I only get open-eye visuals but
almost no closed-eye effects except for light flashes (black & white, no
imagery), even on high doses of LSD/Mushrooms. But i do get dream-like, very
abstract 'recreations' which are hard to describe. I get to relive memories
etc, just not see them.

But, using DMT - i visualize like crazy with abstract / geometric colorful
patterns. And even when totally sober, i sometimes dream/recall those patterns
during sleep, which wakes me up immediately because it's so overwhelming
compared to my dull normal dreams.

This makes me think that i actually can visualize, i just block it out (i'm a
very headstrong/rational person) and i'm working with meditation techniques to
open the gate (or chakra, if you're esoterically inclined) permanently, so far
unsuccesfully.

I do think that more research here would be great as i'm convinced it also
impacts creativity and thinking patterns. For example, my strong creativity
outlet is music; visual art is foreign to me.

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mirimir
OK, so I'm either aphantasic, or there's some semantic confusion. Perhaps with
me, I admit.

But anyway. Normally, I do not see stuff that isn't (arguably) there. With my
eyes open, or closed. But I can imagine stuff, and reason based on those
imagined images or whatever. That is, I can do all those object rotation
tests. I can imagine some thing, and create it in wood or metal, without
anything but crude drawings.

Or when I read a good description of a fight, for example, I can imagine how
it would work. Or not, if it wouldn't.

But is this basically a form of blindsight?

Also, it was my impression that people who experience stuff that isn't there
are typically diagnosed with some sort of psychosis. And from my experience
with psychedelics, I know what that's like. Even with good marijuana, I
sometimes see and hear people talking to me, just before I pass out.

I can't imagine how it would work if I were constantly seeing stuff that isn't
there. How could I, for example, drive a car? Or walk across the room, even?

So am I confused, or aphantasic?

~~~
nnnnnnnnnnnnn
I think I'm not aphantasic.

When I "imagine" images, they're not usually superimposed or mixed into the
input from my eyes like you described. They're on like a "second computer
monitor" in my head. Maybe this helps you understand what it's like?

I "see" what I imagine, but I also can see what it is that's in front of my
eyes, and the two things don't conflict with each other.

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ben_w
Language is unfortunately constrained when discussing internal mental states;
we use “ _imag_ ination” to describe internal mental models of even non-image
things.

Myself:

• I can “visualise” images moderately well; ditto the tingling feeling of UV
light and pins and needles (the paresthesia, not the objects of the same
names); and both real electric shocks and the experience of the same
description that happens when withdrawing from SSRIs.

• I can “visualise” sounds, balance, sustained pressure, heat, and kinesthetic
senses to the level they have sometimes become indistinguishable from my
actual senses;

• I can _sometimes_ switch off pain

• I _cannot_ “visualise” smells or tastes at all. Pattern match to other
similar tastes and smells is only possible while I am experiencing the thing I
am trying to compare.

~~~
kranner
> • I can sometimes switch off pain

This is interesting. Can you elaborate? Is this something you have worked on
or is it just intuitive for you?

I have been able to do this exactly once in my life, during a meditation
session in which I was meditating on external sounds. I also had acute pain in
my elbow, arthritis-related. At one point the access concentration became very
focused, my sense of self disappeared and I could not distinguish myself
spatially from the sounds I was hearing. At the same time the pain in my elbow
also detached from me. It was still all present but it was just no longer my
problem. The sense of relief, the surprise that this was possible, and the
realisation I could do this with just my mind, the blissful feeling from the
intense concentration; it all added up and I simply broke out into surprised,
joyful, laughter. It dissipated in a minute or two after that. Therefore I'm
curious by what you mean about being able to do this.

~~~
ben_w
I’m not sure how to phrase it, but it’s not only as you describe. While I can
make my pain “not my problem” — present but irrelevant, which is what I think
you describe — I consider switching it off entirely to be very different.

For lack of better words: the situations have involved knowing the cause of
the pain, knowing it represents nothing important, and making it totally cease
from the point of view of my (I dislike this phrase but don’t have a better
one) conscious self awareness.

~~~
kranner
Thanks for clarifying.

------
graeme
Has anyone had aphantasia onset after antibiotics? Or, a worsening.

I have had poor visualization for years. I do remember being able to see
images in my head when younger though. In a fair of detail in some cases.

A few years ago (when I had already lost much visualization) I took a course
of antibiotics for MRSA. After that I lost the ability to see colourful
visions pre-sleep.

I used to get the most fantastic images in full colour with incredible detail.
Then when on the antibiotics they seemed dark. Now I can still have
visualizations, but I can't see them. (Meaning, they're happening, and I get
glimpses, but I can't continuously view them)

Sort of annoying as they were a good way to fall asleep. Focussing on them
hasn't seemed to rebuild the ability.

~~~
no_identd
Might be a gut microbiome thing?

Do you know which exact antibiotics? Some antibiotics have psychoactive
effects.

~~~
graeme
I'd have to check with my doctor's office.

How would I search once I found them?

------
Cheleborn
In the 'New Yorker', 2003, the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks explain that he
had a very poor mental imagery. But once, it took a strong medication and his
mental visual skill increased a lot but after stopping his medication
everything got back to poor.
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8da6/ee8fa95f52476fc5d81f60...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8da6/ee8fa95f52476fc5d81f60ad4f89fca2ebb2.pdf)
(page 9)

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softwarefounder
Would love to read this - is there no way aside from paying for the content?
(Can only read the abstract)

~~~
the8472
[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.012](https://sci-
hub.tw/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.012)

------
throwaway848483
I'm not quite sure if I have it or not. I visualize mostly in 3d but without a
specific viewpoint, or more exactly I get a feel from how it would look from
various viewpoints simultaneously. I find it easier to mentally see as a 2d
picture, something I saw in photo, or on a screen.

If I specifically force myself to imagine how it would look if I was at a
specific position looking in a specific direction (i.e. do the 2d projection),
I can in-paint in my mind starting from a black canvas, focusing sequentially
my attention on a part of the canvas making details appear at the center of
attention. I scan the canvas a few times in-painting details, and then I try
to mentally take a step back visualize all those various details in a unique
coherent picture, by un-focusing attention. It kinda work, but it needs to get
into it. It's easier to imagine looking at a photo from the scene I'm trying
to visualize. I noticed my eyes do some REM when I do this. Color and
illumination comes last. Closing eyes helps. I can mentally do a "street-view"
experience of my home, moving inside and answer question about details, but I
need to focus my attention first on the relevant area.

Those mental exercises are quite funny, not sure how useful they are though.
Once you add some moving objects (like pendulums) in the scene in your mind,
it gets even harder to make something coherent. Then you can add animals and
people, wind. Noises, music. I guess when you add complexity, you must relax
your attention to make a coherent global picture, then you get into a flow-
like state, and it becomes more similar to a lucid dream.

On the other hand of the spectrum, I'm not quite sure about auras too. It's
kind like of synesthesia but for people instead of numbers. I guess the brain
hallucinate colors around object/people to make it faster to process. I find
it quite unnecessary to hallucinate rather than having a specific feel about
the person. And I feel it's quite reductive/intolerant to put/interact with
people into a category based on subconscious perception. But I guess that if I
was a bouncer, I'll probably be seeing colors around people too.

To conclude this already too long post, I think aphantasia is probably very
correlated with hyper-attention.

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0xfaded
I'm aphantasic, and like others here was blown away to learn that people can
see things with their eyes closed. That statement seems like an oxymoron to
me.

Once I started thinking about it more, I realised I can actually imagine a
very precise scenario, except that it is always _behind_ me. It could be
similar to how a blind person perceives the world, not seeing anything but
knowing that everything is there.

The way I see it, I can process two different worlds at once. I've always been
very good at modeling abstract things in my head, e.g. binary trees or a
graph.

~~~
michrassena
One thing the Internet has been good for has been finding people with similar
conditions. Knowing that many people can see images on demand alleviates some
of my confusion; "Imagine yourself on a beach" to relax never made much sense
to me.

I do feel I'm missing out somewhat on richness of experience. When I try to
visualize it's as if there's just a texture to the blackness in my mind, like
a handprint in mud.

I recently learned about Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM).
It's hard to tell based on textual descriptions, but it does seem to relate to
aphantasia and the fact I can't recall most of the past, whether it be ten
days or ten years ago.

------
thatoneuser
As others I learned that this was not a universal thing a couple years ago.
Ironically I studied physics. It makes a lot of sense why learning certain
things were so damn difficult for me now.

It’s crazy how little we understand our mind still.

------
Geee
Got an related idea from the IQ thread: is there a correlation between
aphantasism and IQ? Most IQ tests require you to visually imagine the
sequences that lead to the correct answer.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
> "Most IQ tests require you to visually imagine the sequences that lead to
> the correct answer."

I think you assume it is required to do it visually only because you do it
that way. Personally I've had no trouble with that kind of IQ test without
using visualization.

~~~
the_solenoid
In grade school, they did some testing on me for a study or something, and it
had to do with visual stuff - my parents remember that I just came up with
correct answers but I had a novel way of coming to them, and I think this gets
to what you're saying.

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threatofrain
Do such people experience differences in the study of topology?

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
I remember an article about an architect who lost his mental visualization, he
had no problem performing mental rotation puzzles. Can't seem to find the
article, unfortunately. In general, from reading a lot about this a few years
back (when I found out "seeing a picture in your mind" is not just a
metaphor...) it seems aphantasiacs don't have any difficulty with any kind of
mental task.

Edit: here's the article, rotation stuff is in the 2nd paragraph on page 2.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20120615154334/http://discovermag...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120615154334/http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/23-the-
brain-look-deep-into-mind.s-eye/)

~~~
the_solenoid
I wanted to be an architect or similar in high school - but I was always
painfully slow at drafting.

I also found throughout life I cannot easily transfer my ideas (like, if I
have a concept for something, its not an image, its just a collection of ideas
or concepts) into something physical

(found out about aphantasia early 2018)

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navjack27
I'm curious.

How many coders here also can't picture things in their mind visually for
longer then a quick flash?

~~~
Steve44
I used to be a games programmer, not an artist, but have always created mental
models to help problem solving.

~~~
Lerc
I'm also a games programmer. I make mental models too, I almost feel like it
would be excessively restrictive if they had to have a visual representation.
On the other hand, if I had mental visual representations, maybe I wouldn't be
surrounded by a million bits of paper with weird things scribbled on them.

