
Aphantasia: 'My mind's eye is blind' - headalgorithm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256
======
unquietcode
This has been nagging me for weeks since I 'discovered' that almost everyone
around me can visualize things in their mind. Frankly, it helps explain a lot
about my life. The inability to picture the face of friends, family, places
I've visited, all contribute to a sense of isolation and distance that I feel
daily. My strong preference for non-fiction, too, is likely an artifact of
reading fiction word by word but 'seeing' nothing interesting. My failed
attempts at all sort sorts of meditation and mindfulness exercises are also
now suspect. The anecdotes about being unable to understand the concept of
'counting sheep' also resonate strongly with me. That face-blindness is also
commonly co-morbid also helps me understand that aspect of myself better.

All in all, while I don't feel 'robbed' of this ability to visualize things,
it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the
human experience. I can't really visualize a future life for myself, let alone
my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite
mind-blowing, and I'm glad it's getting the wave of media attention that it is
now (or else I would not have known).

But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.

~~~
ux-app
I've got aphantasia too. When I first heard about it about a year ago I was
surprised to learn that others _can_ actually see things in their mind's eye.
Had to confirm with friends and family, with questions like 'so you can
actually _see_ a ball if you think about it?'. Their answers blew me away.

So far I've boiled the side effects down to:

1\. A complete and utter lack of direction. I literally get lost in suburbs
surrounding my home (i'll very often take an extremely sub optimal route home
from a store that is just 10 minutes from my home - a bit embarrassing tbh,
gives my wife a laugh though). These are streets I've travelled for over 30
years. Apparently quite common with aphantasia.

2\. An almost superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. People with
aphantasia don't have the tendency to ruminate. I've had some traumatic
experiences in my life and within a few months it's as if the experience never
happened. I can recall details of it but the recollection is as if the
experience happened to someone else.

Regarding no.2, photos are super important. There was a period of 10 years or
so where I didn't take many photos, and that period feels like a black hole.

~~~
l_t
Have you ever noticed a similar effect with sounds? Or does it feel like a
purely visual/spatial thing?

For example, once I've heard a song enough, I can just replay it in my head,
and it feels the same as actually listening to it. Is that just as weird for
you as being able to see a ball?

~~~
ux-app
> For example, once I've heard a song enough, I can just replay it in my head

 _sigh_ you've got to be kidding me. You can actually replay a sound in your
head??

well, i'll add that to the list of things my brain can't do :(

I've also never been able to sing along with songs. It always blows me away
when my wife can just start singing along with a song she's heard a few times.

I'm starting to think I might be brain damaged.

~~~
aristophenes
Yes, I think that is common to be able to replay music you've heard in your
head. I feel confident this is another thing that is a spectrum, not binary.
So some people just need to hear something once and have it perfectly, others
need to hear it a lot and still don't remember it well.

My favorite thing about sound memory is echoic memory[1], a very specific type
of memory that is basically like a buffer or a cache. Basically perfect audio
memory of the last few seconds. You can replay the sound in your mind and
analyze it for that brief moment in time.

I speculate that this is almost entirely to help you properly react to things
that woke you up. You were sleeping, now you are awake. But why? You still
hear the sound in your head, was it something falling, or a glass window
breaking, or your dog barking, or a gunshot, or just thunder? It could be very
important to know.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoic_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echoic_memory)

~~~
FreeFull
Echoic memory is also very useful when someone says something, but you haven't
understood them right away. There is also iconic memory, which stores the
things you see and lasts less than a second.

~~~
Tor3
I have echoic memory for audio, and that's indeed very useful.

But I don't have 'playback' memory for anything else, definitely not for
visuals or touch. So if something is said around me and I didn't listen, I can
replay the last couple of seconds or so, and that's usually enough. Helps with
languages you're not fluent in too. But if I suddenly notice that I'm now
touching something that I shouldn't, say, for example with my arm, in a
crowded pub, there's just no way I can 'replay' history, not even the last
moments, to figure out how that happened. Unless I actually paid attention
_when_ it happened. Same with visuals. If I didn't recognize what passed
before my eyes there's no way to replay that to take a better look. Unlike
with audio, where I can do precisely that.

------
hanoz
Can anyone here give a good description of what it's like _not_ to have
Aphantasia? I'm having a very hard time believing this condition isn't the
norm.

 _Edit_. For a condition which supposedly affects only a few percent, the
reaction to this article here and on Twitter contains a suspiciously high rate
of people being surprised to find out they've got this and shocked that
everyone else hasn't.

The more I read about this the more I feel that the variety in reported inner
experience is more to do with the variety in reporting than of the experience
itself.

I find myself able to relate to descriptions from both sufferers and non
sufferers alike, but then again could often take extracts from each and be
hard pressed to say who was claiming to be which.

~~~
yulaow
I can override my eye sight in the right conditions (with various degree of
how much I override it) with another whole world created by mind in front of
me. Ofc is FAR far far easier when it's dark or I am alone or I am hearing
music, but you get the point.

For example when doing some shadowboxing I actually put fantasized people in
front of myself which fight me and react to my moves, and I can see them as I
see a real person until I remain focused. I often change also the location and
the background to suite better my fantasy.

It's like shutting partially your eye system and making your mind go in full
control.

edit: I said this to explain how much I can push it. But to make a simpler
example, I _Very_ often fantasized at night, before bad and with eyes closed,
of having an adventure in a post apocalyptic world and I can see everything in
first person in my mind like I am really there and everything is real

~~~
vcavallo
holy fucking shit seriously? this is so amazing and unfamiliar to me that i
find it hard to believe you’re not lying. amazing

~~~
thatoneuser
I know you almost feel like 90% of the world got in on a huge psych joke a few
years ago on a day we skipped class. Kinda of like that "dihydrogen monoxide
found at 99% of crime scenes".

Idk if you know but Aphantasia technically covers all senses. For example I
can hear music in my head. It's kinda faint and fuzzy but it's there and well
defined. Meanwhile I can't imagine a simple green triangle. Maybe you have it
in some ways and not others? You should think about it - kinda blew my mind.

~~~
vcavallo
Music definitely works differently in my imagination, but I notice that it
also corresponds to very subtle breathing pattern changes. Like I'll be
inhaling and exhaling with the beat and maybe very, very imperceptibly nano-
humming. or perhaps I'm just _rationalizing_ the what-feels-like-nearly-
physical music in my head by telling my lungs that they're helping to create
it...

Maybe there's a similar vector I could explore for improved visualization.
eye-movements or subtle pen-strokes with the hand or something.

------
tempestn
Often when I hear people describing their experience with visualization, I
wonder if I have a mild form of this. I am able to visualize things, think of
visual scenes, manipulate objects in my mind, etc. But it's never at a level
of fidelity I would consider 'looking at an image in my mind'. It's more of a
nebulous, hazy thing, impermanent and lacking in detail. Faces in particular
are very difficult to visualize; I don't have any real difficulty remembering
what people look like or recognizing them, but summoning a complete mental
picture of a particular face is usually elusive.

~~~
eduren
Yeah, threads like this make me wonder similar things. Lots of people here are
using terms like overlay and superimpose that seem foreign to me.

For those in the thread that can work on imagery in a visual manner, does it
feel like the images are taking the same path as ones that actually hit the
retina? To be more precise, could your visualizations be roughly matched by an
idealized Augmented Reality headset? If that sounds close to most people's
experiences thats weird to me because my vague visualizations seem to never
interfere with my actual visual plane, but rather a more abstract in-brain
space.

Love discussions like these, subjective experience is crazy.

~~~
l_t
Chiming in as someone with fairly strong visual imagery (I think...)

I think there are generally a variety of ways things can "appear". However
it's never the same as true AR. For example, with true AR, you could be fooled
into seeing something that's not there. But I can't fool myself (deliberately)
with my own mental images.

Having said that, it subjectively feels like the stimulus originates in a
different part of the brain at a low level, but eventually both "mental
visual" and "true visual" stimulus are unified to some degree.

Like yes, I can visualize a ball in my hand, but it'll always be in a
different layer from my actual visual input of my hand. Like two different
layers in Photoshop.

Also, beyond the AR concept, one of my favored types of visualizations is what
I call "playing myself a movie". It's pretty much what you would imagine,
basically watching a movie with my mind's eye. I can watch the movie and look
at "real things" at the same time. Works great for falling asleep as well.

I agree, it's a super fascinating discussion.

~~~
azlen
I've never had strong visual imagery, but recently I've been practicing
visualizing mental images as well as attempting (and failing) to overlay those
images over my vision.

Whenever I do visualize images, they feel as if they are positioned behind
just my forehead or at the top of my head. Sometimes I imagine this as a sort
of "canvas" on which I can imagine or draw images. With your example of
visualizing a ball, the ball and my hand can be on the same "layer" on this
canvas, but do not affect my vision at all.

What I find interesting is that I can actually move this canvas around
spatially or create new ones. On each canvas for example, I can imagine a
different rotating object. As well, each canvas retains its image as a form of
short-term memory. So I can switch focus between different imagined images or
compositions.

I'm curious - with more practice - how mental imagery can aid in memory.
Recently I learned a song in a language I do not understand, and the words of
the song would appear on my mind's "canvas" almost like karaoke or like
reading off imaginary flashcards...

It's always interesting to read about how other people's experiences are
similar or different to my own. The minds eye is endlessly interesting.

~~~
tylerjwilk00
I have a very similar experience as you.

I like your description using multiple canvases.

Similarly, I described them as PIPs (Picture In Picture) but off screen
canvases may be a better analogy.

------
aston
Blake Ross (co-founder of Mozilla) has a great post about his journey with
Aphantasia here: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-
it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-
be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

~~~
ignoramous
Outline: [https://outline.com/VU4Mcg](https://outline.com/VU4Mcg)

------
thatoneuser
My ex made me realize I had this a few years ago. It was like everyone here
says, the literallity of seeing things in my mind escaped me. I'd always
assumed sayings like counting sheep were just metaphorical.

It kind of goes to show you how moritifyingly behind we are in understanding
and articulating our cognition. Autism was right up there until a few years
ago. I believe there's a lot we still have to open up to ourselves. I'm not
religious, but maybe exploration of the self and mind is more warranted than
our society currently expresses. Of course, it's easy to slip into quackery,
but I almost wonder if it'd be worth a few more nut jobs if we collectively
self analyzed more deeply. Maybe there's a lot out there to our happiness and
evolution were missing out on if it's taken this long to realize there's a
sizeable number of people who can't sense internally.

Funny side note - despite having Aphantasia I have two degrees in physics. I
could never follow in class (literally couldn't imagine what the prof was
trying to hand model) and animated gifs made everything instantly
understandable. The agony I felt in those programs seemed a little more
justified after I was told about Aphantasia. A little.

~~~
0xDEFC0DE
If you’re willing to share, what are your dreams like?

~~~
ncallaway
That's a super interesting question to me.

I would describe myself as having essentially no mind's eye. I don't
"visualize" anything, ever. If I imagine a tree (or someone asks me to
visualize one) I mostly have descriptive words, but no "images".

But I can dream, and that definitely is a distinctively visual experience.
Does that mean, when someone asks you to "visualize" something, you have an
visual experience akin to dreaming?

------
evanze
I find the terminology around this to be so vague as to be meaningless. Rather
than using the words "image", "visualize", or "see" I'd rather use the more
specific term "hallucinate", or to "see something that is not actually there".
To those in this thread that do not consider themselves to be aphantasic I
would propose this question: in your mind's eye, whatever that means to you,
imagine a sphere or a barn or whatever physical object is easiest between you
and your screen. What are its qualities? Is it opaque, translucent,
transparent? Does it obscure the text on the screen? Or can you only
hallucinate the object with your eyes closed? Or do you not hallucinate it at
all?

Personally, I can imagine my apartment in detail down to the relative
placements of most objects, proportions, the colors, the way the wind enters
if the window is opened. I can do similar for past apartments going back 8
years as well as my parent's home. Hell, I can imagine the Reno's steakhouse
from my hometown that I haven't been to in over 13 years in much the same way.

I do not consider myself to have aphantasia, however none of the
"visualizations" I mentioned are hallucinations as some comments in this
thread imply. I do not perceive them with any of my senses, including visual,
as if I was there now. Rather it is more of a complex conceptualization in my
mind.

~~~
russelldc
While I understand the desire to use less vague terminology, to hallucinate
usually implies that it is done involuntarily.

Based on your description of your abilities, have you considered that what
you're describing is spatial thinking, rather than visual imagery? It is
common for people with aphantasia to retain strong spatial cognition.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29175093](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29175093)

[https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6685&context=etd)

~~~
evanze
Point taken. Merriam-Webster says "usually arising from disorder of the
nervous system or in response to drugs (such as LSD)" so I take "usually" to
mean not always.

Regardless I hope the distinction I was drawing comes across clearly.

Regarding spacial thinking, yes it seems fairly accurate however where I would
expect it to break down would be recollection of colors, touch, sounds,
tastes, or smells. But I don't feel I experience such a breakdown in ability
to recall those either albeit in the same conceptualized not-connected-to-my-
realtime-senses way.

Out of the examples given in this thread I would say faces are the most
challenging object to recall. Though, depending on the distinction of the
features I can also do that without much difficulty.

~~~
russelldc
> where I would expect it to break down would be recollection of colors...

Could that not be explained by simply storing that information as "textual"
data? As in: using spatial imagery to recall the layout of a room, and basic
knowledge to recall the color of the walls.

> ...touch, sounds, tastes, or smells.

These other senses are considered separate from the topic of Aphantasia. It
seems there are many people with good visual imagery, but none of the other
senses... as well as people with zero visual imagery, but some or all of the
other senses.

I have zero across the board, unfortunately.

Could you explain your taste or smell imagery? My recollection only goes as
far as "I remember liking this dish more than most things".

~~~
evanze
Perhaps I have overblown the ability to recall taste or smell, or at least it
was incorrect to say there isn't some level of breakdown in comparison to the
spatial/visual recollection we were discussing.

In general, I think of it in the terms you might hear someone on the food
network describe a dish. "High notes", "low notes", "mellow", "pungent". On
Sunday I made biscuits and sawmill gravy (good southern boy that I am).
Sawmill gravy has a distinct profile, it's a base of nutty/earthy from the
roux and peppery. I start describing the constituent parts, however if you
asked me to describe "peppery" now it's getting more difficult. The only way I
would have to describe it would be how your tongue and throat burns when you
taste it.

You can see I'm getting more vague and conceptual.

It's entirely possible that as you say this is just "textual" data, however
that feels like a drab description of what feels to me like a more vivid
experience. It feels as if there "more to it" than just recalling information.

Unrelated, but I also think it's interesting how as we start talking about
other senses how entangled memory is. We aren't talking about a nondescript
sphere hallucination in my visual field anymore, but rather a memory of my
Sunday brunch. When I imagine the smell of beer I inevitably will recall the
last time I was at the bar with some mates and the spatial/visual memory of
that space as well as my emotional state, etc.

------
john-radio
I'm having trouble operationalizing the "blind mind's eye" concept. Catmull's
brain knows what a sphere is, and my brain knows what a sphere is, and we can
both describe the experience of seeing a sphere, so we both know what one
"looks like."

Compare this to the phenomenon of "face blindness." My friends who suffer from
this genuinely cannot describe what makes Angela Merkel's face (for instance)
different from others because they lack the facility to remember it. But I
can, because I don't have face blindness: Merkel's face is wrinkled, craggy
even, with crows feet that resemble smile lines.

What can I do that an aphantasia sufferer cannot?

~~~
0xADEADBEE
I hate to muddy the waters here but for years thought I had face-blindness
before realising that I have Aphantasia.

You're exactly right: I know what a Sphere looks like but I am missing the bit
that the rest of the world seems to have where they can conjure up an image of
it. Even less abstract objects like a desk or Angela Merkel's face, I am quite
unable to picture.

To answer your question, if I ask you to picture a barn in a field, you
presumably have no difficulty in doing so. You've probably even made
assumptions about things like the colour of the barn, the weather or
surrounding terrain and have a sort of portrait with a barn at the centre, but
I can't do that. I am having difficulty describing what I get but it's nothing
close to anything like that. I know my barn is made of wood and I know it's in
a field but that's about as far as I can get.

I'm happy that this is getting discussion because obviously it's quite strange
to find out that a) you're not wired the same way as the majority of the world
and b) that your self-diagnosis isn't a medically recognised condition. I'm
excited to see what research comes out over the next few years.

~~~
dorkwood
Many people, in my experience, exaggerate the ability of the mind’s eye. Ask
them to picture Bugs Bunny and they’ll say they can see him perfectly, give
them a pencil and ask them to draw the shape of his mouth and they’ll
flounder, because they were never really seeing that sort of detail. What they
were “seeing” was more like the memory of a symbol.

~~~
hisnameisjimmy
I think people's ability to imagine scenes, and then render them, are two
very, very, very different skill sets. In fact, have somebody render the scene
right before your very eyes, or even try to render bugs bunny from the image
they see right in front of them.

I can imagine enormous paintings from the Prado in my head, but could I render
them? No, and I have decent artistic ability (not great, but I could probably
do a decent bugs bunny).

~~~
dorkwood
I’m not asking them to copy it exactly. I just want them to put everything
where it should be.

A better example is probably a bicycle. Everyone knows what a bicycle looks
like. Ask someone with a great “mind’s eye” to draw one with all the parts in
the right place. I haven’t tested it, but my guess is that they’d struggle.

~~~
hathawsh
You're in for a treat! Here's a curated collection of bicycle drawings,
complete with full renderings of some of the most interesting designs.

[http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html](http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What I find interesting about those (I've seen something very similar before,
maybe even that set) is that people don't bother to be informed by the obvious
inability of the device they drew to function.

------
graeme
I have very weak visualization. One way of describing it would be that I can
close my eyes and tell you where everything is in my house, or map my way
downtown. But I don't see anything, I just know the spatial placement of
everything and how to move through it.

But if I try to see the stuff, it's as though there is a brief flash, and I
see an outline for a second or so, and then it isn't there. But I know what's
there.

I don't think I was ever strong on this front, but I think my ability has been
declining gradually. I'm 33 now. I remember arriving in a new country at age
23, and I could recall everything that happened when I arrived: my drive in,
arrival at my new house, standing in the rain.

I can still recall much of this, but I have a memory of _seeing_ it and having
great visual recall of this. But, how accurate is a memory of a memory? I
didn't take any notes, so it's hard to say for sure what I could in fact
recall.

One odd point: I used to get the most vivid images while lying in bed with my
eyes closed, falling off to sleep. The most fantastic scenes would flow from
one image to the next. I think it actually helped me sleep. These were also
notable in that I couldn't visualize that way during the day.

One day I had to take antibiotics for an MRSA infection. I recall the images
that night were dark and foreboding. I haven't had colourful images since
then.

Sometimes at night I get glimpses of them. It's as though the images are
happening in the background, and I can catch them but without colour. And I
can't always see them, so I can't follow, and the images stop.

Haven't found anything in the literature about antibiotics causing this
though, so I'm not too sure, it may have been coincidence and instead just
gradual decline that crossed a threshold around then.

Has anyone had gradual decline of mental images, loss of pre-sleep visions, or
had either of these precipitated by antibiotics?

I think these images were called Hypnagogia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia)

~~~
russelldc
Sorry I'm not sure of the relation to antibiotics, but Hypnagogia is something
even aphantasics experience. It's typically more involuntary than not, so it's
grouped with dreams rather than visual imagery/thinking.

~~~
graeme
Oh, that's interesting. Do you mean they experience _visual_ hypnagogia?
Because I'd say at the time I lost it, those visual experiences were the only
ones I had, so it did seem distinct from any non-hypnagogic visualizations.

Also, I remember as a kid if I played video games I would see images of them
when I closed my eyes. I don't think that happens now. Maybe those brain
pathways got pruned....

------
kaffeemitsahne
Next up: people discovering that not everyone hears an internal voice either.
And probably many other variations of the same kind. The funny thing is that
nobody really talks about their internal experience in such detail, so there's
little opportunity for observations like this to surface. A rigorous
multidimensional classification of "thinking styles" would definitely be
interesting.

~~~
gwern
I've actually been compiling notes to do this! I've been fascinated by how
every time aphantasia comes up on HN or Reddit, there's always several people
who either discover they have aphantasia because of the article or had
recently discovered it, because they had always assumed that expressions like
"mind's eye" were just another figure of speech or idiom. It's made me wonder
if one could create a survey of mental/physical experiences which would double
as a way of informing everyone about the various possibilities & what is the
norm.

Aphantasia is just the tip of the iceberg - there's a whole laundry list of
'abnormal is normal' mental stuff out there.

A partial list: they vary from the various kinds of color blindness to anosmia
(unable to smell!) to blind people regularly having vivid visual
hallucinations (Charles Bonnet syndrome) to hearing voices (something like
10-20% of people occasionally hear voices) to lack of inner monologue to
musical anhedonia (being unable to enjoy or be moved by music) to ASMR to
misophonia to the nasal dilation cycle to 'intrusive thoughts' like 'the call
of the void' to hypnagogia (hallucinations while falling asleep) to being
aware of one's facial expression when talking to synesthesia to faceblindness
to crying (I was shocked to learn that many women report shedding physical
tears from sorrow on a weekly or monthly basis) to repetitive PTSD-like school
dreams to long-running elaborate daydreams ('maladaptive daydreaming')...

(There's also the funny little lifestyle ones. Like, do you take shoes off or
not? Do you take 'navy showers' or let the water run the entire time? Cereal
then milk or vice-versa? Do you eat the same thing for lunch every day?)

~~~
russelldc
I don't mean to take away something so small from your great posts, but...

> repetitive PTSD-like school dreams

I'd really like to know how common this is. I'm now almost ten years removed
from my school years, but the vast majority (90%+) of my dreams are based
there.

~~~
gwern
Disturbingly common, judging from the people I've asked about it. It took at
least a decade for my own to go away. I too am curious exactly how common they
are...

------
dyukqu
I don't have any problems visualising objects, faces, rain, snow, _wind_
,...etc. But when it comes to drawing, I get stuck, especially if I try to
draw a face that I remember/visualise almost perfectly. Why is that? What it
takes to be good at drawing (not that "painter-level" drawing)? It's
(relatively) easy for me to draw objects which have sharp edges and straight
lines (like a table, door, sofa), but I have hard times with drawing more
detailed things like human faces, animals and cars even though I can visualise
them as if they are present right before my eyes. I imagine that if I were to
describe someone to obtain, say, a police sketch, I'd not be able to do it
because I don't know how to _describe_ a face, even though I have a clear
image of it in my mind. Obviously, I'd not be able to draw it myself either.

And some tangential thing, when I visualise things, I visualise them _through_
my left eye (faces, especially. since you almost always see them, well, face-
to-face), as if a projector projects them through it and I remember _left_
parts of things better as if they're _recorded_ using my left eye. I
occasionally think about it, but haven't come up with an answer for myself yet
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
beering
> I have hard times with drawing more detailed things like human faces,
> animals and cars even though I can visualise them as if they are present
> right before my eyes.

That's pretty normal in my experience as someone who went to art school. My
best guess is that your "visualization" is a high-level representation that
actually isn't detailed enough for the purposes of putting down on paper.

Most artists rely on rules of thumb (head proportions, etc.), practice, and
looking at references to be able to draw people, animals, and other
"difficult" things.

~~~
dyukqu
> _Most artists rely on rules of thumb (head proportions, etc.), practice, and
> looking at references to be able to draw people, animals, and other
> "difficult" things._

Thank you for letting know. It explains a lot.

But what is the distinction between "visualisation" and "high-level
representation"? It's still a relative thing, I presume, since there is no
_standards_ for it and it's certainly not in the same "level" across all
artists.

~~~
huffmsa
Not saying there is a distinction, rather "visualization" is a scale of
different levels of fidelity, "high level representation" being on the lower
resolution end.

And drawing / painting for the majority of people is 95% education and
practice. Some people have a knack for it, but almost anyone can learn to draw
high fidelity people / cars / faces / animals with proper tutelage.

------
scandox
I think there has to be a spectrum for this? I can visualize but the
impressions are I think weak and fleeting. It's more like a visual thought and
I only do it when I concentrate. I'm not a visual thinker at all and I don't
draw or paint well. I don't take much interest in photographs either and much
prefer audio impressions.

Also if I read a menu I am attracted more by the sensation of the words
themselves than a visualization of the food they actually represent. Mushrooms
in a white cream sauce simply sounds delicious (as verbiage), though I'm not
terribly fond of them.

Anyone similar?

------
shaneos
Interesting that some great animators also have aphantasia. I always assumed
that my aphantasia and complete inability to draw anything at better than a 5
year old level were related, but it seems some have developed an iterative
process that works around it. That's pretty encouraging.

~~~
theoh
I'd say it's a feedback process, not an iterative one.

"Psychologists now recognize three basic types of visual thinkers. To
determine what kind of visual thinker you are try imagining a triangle. Do
whatever it takes to image that shape in your mind, How did you do it?

Some people cannot "see" a triangle in their minds until they draw it on a
piece of paper or trace its outline on a table with the and of their finger.

Some people need to close their eyes, apparently because seeing interferes
with their visual imagination. When their eyes are closed, however, they can
"project" the triangle on the inside of their eyelids. Did your eyeballs move
as you drew the triangle?

Some rare individuals can bring up the image of the triangle with their eyes
open, superimposing the triangle on whatever they are looking at. A subset of
this latter group can make the triangle change size, color, and perspective;
they can make it twirl, jump, and pass through other figures. Steinmetz and
Tesla clearly fell into this last category."

Elmer Sperry was notoriously good at mental visualization, to the point that
he could supposedly just draw the projected outline of his mental images onto
paper.

A lot of figurative art in previous centuries was also based on drawing bodies
from memory. I think you can infer that some painters could really conjure an
image (the configuration of a body) in their mind before drawing it, just like
Sperry. But the feedback loop approach is equally valid!

~~~
barrucadu
None of those three seem to fit my experience of visualising things. I can
conjure the image of a triangle in my mind with my eyes open without any
difficulty, I can move it around, I can change its colour, I can make it
shrink and grow; but it's not superimposed on what I'm looking at. It's as if
I had a second pair of eyes looking at a scene entirely controlled my my
imagination.

Isn't that what the "mind's eye" is?

~~~
haxiomic
I love hearing how other people's imagination functions.

Your experience sounds similar to mine, but I feel like there's two distinct
levels to the mind's eye.

There's the level you describe, where it doesn't feel like you're seeing
through your real eyes but I find it's also possible to have images that feel
very much like they're coming in through your eyes – almost as if there's a
tap on the optic nerve.

For me these images are for the most part only visible with my eyes closed and
most visible when falling asleep. I also cannot precisely control them in the
same way I can instantly imagine a shape, instead I have to influence them
indirectly bit by bit with lots of effort (but I usually get there – I'm
practising to see if it can become easier). These images can be much more
vivid, they're usually in full color and animated, but with a small field of
view. It looks a bit like having a small CRT-style color TV at the center of
my vision and it feels like watching a dream while you're awake.

To go into more detail on the process: when I close my eyes I don't see black
but a sort of vague mix of colored blobs, a little bit like this but darker
[0]. As I start to think, I pick out patterns in the blobs that look like the
thing I'm trying to imaging, until eventually they sort of become full images
that evolve on their own. They become vivid enough that I feel like the
muscles in my eyes are straining to try to focus on them. It's not that
dissimilar to those deep-dream images (but much less creepy!).

Is this something that happens for you too?

[0] [https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/colored-
no...](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/colored-noise-grunge-
rusty-precious-450w-552311992.jpg)

~~~
cartoonfoxes
I can also attest to this two-level phenomenon.

> These images can be much more vivid, they're usually in full color and
> animated, but with a small field of view. It looks a bit like having a small
> CRT-style color TV at the center of my vision and it feels like watching a
> dream while you're awake.

This almost exactly. I have experienced this a handful of times on waking. A
stream of photoreal content, in a small round field of view in the center of
my vision. The images often have fewer colors than real life, and some kind of
artifact not unlike "scanlines" from a CRT. So far, they're also distinctly
2D. It's like watching broadcast from the part of my brain that's still
dreaming, through my eyes. It's what I expect retinal projection looks like.

As opposed to the "back buffer" of normal visualization or daydreaming, there
are separate "front buffer" phenomenon that are as close to hallucinations as
I've ever experienced. If they happened at any time other than waking or
falling asleep, I would drive myself straight to the ER.

------
crooked-v
I think I'm partially aphantasic. I say 'partially' because I can picture the
broad strokes about things in about the same detail as a watercolor painting
run through a blur filter a few times.

This hasn't been any hindrance to my career in software, as once I grok
something sufficiently it turns into an abstract knowledge tree that I work
through on a subconscious more than conscious level.

I do lose track of things around the house constantly, but I'm not sure if
this is a side effect of poor "where'd you leave it last" visualization or
just everyday absent-mindedness.

~~~
cybersol
My strongest past memories of landscapes are this way, which I have also
described as something like an expressionist painting. My conjured mental
images (picture a red star) are just black though.

------
type-2
My imagination is not the best, but when I am really high on marijuana and I
close my eyes, I can imagine alls sorts of absolutely gorgeously bright and
photorealistic visuals. I can imagine anything with remarkable photorealism
during that state of mind. It's semi autopilot and spontaneous, though. My
imagination also becomes very strong right before I'm about to fall asleep.
When I'm sober, my imagination takes effort and is hazier, and not creative. I
also want to ask people with Aphantasia, what do their dreams look like?

~~~
SargeZT
Our dreams are the same. Dreaming actually activates the visual cortex, so it
doesn't depend on imagination. We also get hypnagogia.

~~~
type-2
>Dreaming actually activates the visual cortex, so it doesn't depend on
imagination. I thought imagination also depended on the visual cortex.
Dreaming and imagining is not too different to me. One is a bit more
conscious, that's it.

~~~
SargeZT
As I understand it, aphantasia relates to a lack of coordination between
different parts of the brain that allows that activation to happen while
awake. There hasn't been a ton of research into aphantasia yet, so take that
with a grain of salt, but during discussions with other people with aphantasia
I have never heard of one of us not being able to dream. Psychedelics work
too.

------
jlokier
There is also "mind's ear". Most people have it but some don't.

Most people imagine voices in their head. When reading, writing, or imagining
a conversation, especially an argument, or preparing for a meeting.

When I'm reading, or writing, including coding, I hear the words in my head.

The speech doesn't sound like real sound, just like visualising doesn't look
like real images. (Dreams are different - they can sound real, and I've heard
some amazing music in my dreams.)

I have friend who doesn't hear anything in her "mind's ear", and had no idea
until recently that other people do.

After someone admitted to hearing imaginary voices (me), after asking other
people she was astonished to find this is normal and she's unusual. Nearly
everyone has an internal voice.

This freaked her out as she wondered if other people experienced auditory
"voices in your head telling you what to do" style hallucinations, and
wondered if they sound like real voices (they don't, but there is some
resemblance).

She simply had no conscious experience of a mind's ear with speech.

I can't imagine what it's like without one. Most of my thinking has imaginary
speech going on, including when I'm coding or reading.

I also have a friend who _stopped_ having the mind's ear speech after a
stroke. She said she'd been trying for years to quieten the internal dialogue
through meditation, and then after the stroke she finally experienced it.

~~~
Tor3
I read a lot, fiction mostly, but I don't hear an inner voice when reading
speech (and I don't hear a voice from the narrator if the books is written
like a narrative). I _could_ do that, if I wished to apply a voice to it, e.g.
imagine that some friend said those words.

I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to actually 'listen' to a voice
when reading I imagine the reading would get terribly slow. Since I was a
child I've always been able to read much much faster than any kind of speech
or audio narrative. In elementary school I used to drop by the library every
day, borrow up to four books, read them, get new books the next day. An inner
voice would be like slow motion, it would take forever to read a book.

(And I was surprised when book commentors complained about e.g. names in a
story that are difficult to pronounce. Until I understood that their inner
voice is actually trying to pronounce it - which breaks up their reading.)

~~~
jlokier
I read quickly, sometimes extremely quickly (I can spot things in a terminal
window scrolling at high speed - I know some people who can't do that), and
find the inner voice doesn't slow down my reading at all.

Like what someone wrote about visualising barns, it's not like a real voice.

Even though it's faster than real speech, it doesn't sound rapid in the same
way as Youtube at 2x. And if I skip my eyes around a large block of text, it
seamlessly picks up the words in each location instantly.

So I don't think the reading happens by internal listening. I think the
reading is visual, and the internal speech is more like an output of the
reading process, giving an auditory feel (and a bit of an accent) to the
words.

~~~
Tor3
Thanks. That's interesting. I suspect that this works differently for
different people though, just like the comments have shown how differently the
visual imaginery works for people. Because I have heard people explain that
they really hear that inner voice, a distinct one that could as well be (and
sometimes is) of a person they know.

------
francpaul
I have aphantasia. But I do have a good "visual" mind. I'm a super recognizer
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser)).
I can see someone and KNOW that I've seen them before. I can recognize people
I haven't seen in 25 years. Even if they've become adults in the interim. I
immediately notice if someone changes their hair. But, I cannot visualize at
all. Particularly not faces. I cannot see family members without looking at
them. When I look at them I can notice deltas of things I haven't seen before.
A change in hairstyle, new glasses etc. But I cannot 'see' what it was before,
I cannot 'see' the old hairstyle or glasses. I can notice the anomalies. I can
recognize faces really well. But only actually using my eyes. I think a lot in
terms of how things relate to each other. My brain seems to work by attributes
and relations, and then make analogies and predictions based on those. There's
more an understanding of the relationships of the facial features to each
other, and as a whole, than the exact qualia of the feature.

------
dekhn
I noticed this when I was a kid- I was playing with lego space ships one day
and suddenly realized I could no longer visualize an actual space ship- it
just looked a lego thing. I thought it was odd and sort of forgot about it
until recently when somebody else said they were troubled by it.

Discovering 3D rendering was a huge thing for me- suddenly, rather than having
to work incredibly hard to visualize things in my head (or do mental rotations
on them), I could build a model world and move things around until I saw what
I needed (this was super helpful for molecular structures, but also for neural
network architectures and complex workflows).

------
theonemind
I visualize things pretty weakly, pretty low on the ability-to-visualize
scale.

I don't really think it has caused me many problems, except that I tend to get
lost very easily. Luckily, we have near ubiquitous GPS now and Google Maps.

On the other hand, I have good mental auditory capabilities. I can, say, play
"air on the g string" in my head right now with near perfect fidelity, or just
imagine new music in real time as if I were simply hearing it. Some people
apparently can't do that, but can do the visual equivalent.

So, eh, you've got what you've got.

~~~
cr0sh
> I can, say, play "air on the g string" in my head right now with near
> perfect fidelity, or just imagine new music in real time as if I were simply
> hearing it.

For me, I wish there were a way to easily get the music I imagine outside of
my head. The best I've been able to do is whistle it, sing it, perhaps each
"track" and record it; I've played around with 4-track recording too. Tried
trackers, but always get lost in the nuances, or trying to create a particular
sound or whatnot...

But it's the same way with my visual side; I can think of things, but anything
beyond technical drawing I am pretty weak at doing (and the only reason I have
some success with technical drawing is that I took a few years in grade school
doing it as an elective).

------
dinkleberg
This is incredibly interesting. About a year ago I began to acknowledge that I
can't really force an image into my head, and if I try I can sort of get a
vague impression of it, but it doesn't have color or anything. When I am free
thinking I think my mind is able to conjure all sorts of images, but when I
try to focus in on it, the image vanishes into that vague impression. And
sometimes it is weird, I can think about all of the details and have sort of a
distant detailed image of whatever I'm thinking about, but I can't bring it to
focus. It feels like the uncertainty principle with my mind.

But it was a strange topic, so I never really discussed this topic with
anyone. Based on what I am reading, I don't think I have aphantasia, or maybe
it is a spectrum and I have it to some degree. But it is refreshing and also
kind of sad at the same time to hear that others experience visualization
drastically differently.

I'm still very much a dreamer and a thinker and haven't had any issues with my
ability to visualize things. But hearing about how some of you are able to
bring up vivid images sounds pretty magical. I do wonder if some of this is
about how we as individuals explain things. Maybe what I am experiencing is
actually normal but others describe it in a different frame of mind than my
own.

Regardless, it is an interesting subject.

~~~
graeme
It's a spectrum. Or at least vividness of visual imagery is. I'm extremely low
on the vividness scale. Don't know if this makes me aphantasic, or something
else:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Questionnaire)

------
the_solenoid
I discovered I had this a year ago. Honestly, I always thought I had some kind
of learning disability. Some kinds of tests are very hard, I cannot picture
anything while awake, I literally cannot remember anything about my life
visually, learning faces takes a long time, I failed geometry, and struggled
with any kind of visualization math past that (despite doing quite well in
calculus)...

Then there were the careers I was drawn to: creative things like graphic
design, drafting, etc that I utterly failed at. I had ideas of what I wanted
to do, but the step between transforming the thoughts onto paper was always a
fight. I studied photography in school, and could never convert it into a
profession because I found being creative enough to get clients wasn't coming
to me - I would be burnt out on small projects for no reason I could fathom.

I ALWAYS assumed people who visualize chakras or meditate with a object focus
were just faking it.

I remember reading about this a year or so ago, and telling some friends. One
of them immediately recognized it as why I utterly failed at some MMO raid
mechanics.

So there is probably an unending list of ways this has impacted my choices,
and I can only hope young kinds get a chance to learn they have this and get
some guidance on what effects this will have on certain tasks based on the
level of visualization they have.

------
caenn
I have aphantasia (hate the name, no phantasia my ass) and I wonder what kind
of: 'color blind are people with better contrast' type of stuff there is. I
remember reading that there is a significant amount of extra resilience for
traumatic experiences due to not being able to get the memory visualized
again, again and again which makes it easier to cope. If anyone has more info
about other positive aspects I'd appreciate it.

~~~
russelldc
Memory tends to be poor among folks with aphantasia, but supposedly whatever
details we do actually remember may have less of a chance to have been morphed
over time through re-visualization. So we'd make for better eye witnesses.

------
honzzz
I have to say that it is mind boggling to me that someone can be surprised to
realize that visualizing things is normal for other people - it feels like
someone surprisingly finding out in their thirties that the other people are
not blind - that's how ever-present it feels for me. Living without it is as
hard to imagine for me as hard it must be for people with aphantasia to
imagine seeing things with the inner eye.

If I can ask people with aphantasia...

How do you remember things? When I remember the past I see the ephemeral image
of what I was seeing then. And there is a thin line between memory and fantasy
- I can play with my memories and let them play out some other way than they
happened.

How do you read the books without imagining what is happening? How else do you
convert letters into meaning?

What happens in your head when someone says "a car"? I see a vague image of a
car - right now it's a red sports car but I have no idea why and I am not sure
about the brand and it's kind of general car without specific features but if
you ask me, I can immediately imagine the details of wheels or whatever - and
some other day it might be a black BMW.

How do you imagine your future? I can see myself sitting in a place (inspired
by a photo I saw and liked) with big wooden bookcase in a bright room lit by
setting sun - and that image makes me feel something and motivates me to work
towards it.

And fear is also visual - like when I see myself getting hit by a car when I
am on a bike, with the blood and dirt in wounds... I could continue like this
for long time - it feels like seeing things inside my head is so "normal" that
I cannot imagine functioning without it. It is fascinating though.

~~~
ux-app
>How do you remember things?

I don't. As I mentioned in a previous post, without photos to look at, my past
is a complete, impenetrable, black hole. I've been aware of this for a very
long time, but never thought it strange (I don't know any different). The tape
in my head is non-visual and seems to only stretch a few weeks back. Photos
are the only way for me to relive these moments.

>How do you read the books without imagining what is happening? How else do
you convert letters into meaning?

I was a voracious reader as a child, reading dozens of novels per year. I
can't see the story, but I still like hearing it. By the sounds of things I am
missing a very large part of what makes reading enjoyable (this makes me sad).

>What happens in your head when someone says "a car"?

I unlock the "car" concept in my mind. This does not include an image. I guess
it's the same for you if you think of something with no embodiment such as a
taste.

> How do you imagine your future?

I consider things that I think will make me happy and work toward them. No
images are part of this.

>And fear is also visual

For me it is visceral. I don't see anything, but am filled with an unpleasant
sensation or dread if the fear is strong enough.

~~~
distantaidenn
That's the crux. Every thought I have has a visual element. If I think of a
perfume, then I'm back in the hotel seeing the person that was wearing it. If
I imagine a taste, then I can see the dish.

~~~
ux-app
man that is wild. I have never experienced something like this. seems pretty
awesome.

------
no_identd
In case any Aphantasia researchers read this (or someone with more time and
energy to badger Aphantasia researchers about-this until they actually pay
attention to this-than me):

Can you please, for crying out loud, investigate this anecdotal report of
Aphantasia attenuation following vision therapy for Amblyopia, Strabismus &
Stereo-Blindness in a 70 year old:

[http://www.strabismusworld.com/practical/interview-how-
bill-...](http://www.strabismusworld.com/practical/interview-how-bill-
johnston-discovered-stereo-vision-at-the-age-of-70/)

To quote the relevant interview section:

"MICHAEL: On April 9th, 2015, you reported another new and delightful
phenomenon had occurred in your vision. This might give us a clue as to what
happened in your brain.

BILL: Because of the congenital amblyopia and suppression of the bad eye, my
brain developed abnormally. I was never able to visualize arithmetic problems
or to spell words in my head but if I wrote them down on paper, I was an ace
at it. Fortunately, my school didn’t conduct spelling bees or I would have
been awarded the dunce cap.

Recently, the problems and words started appearing in my head just as though
they are written on paper. I can spell a word simply by reading off the
letters that I see in my mind’s eye. I think that when my lazy eye turned on
fifteen months ago, the now unsuppressed new image in the visual cortex
stimulated my brain’s neural plasticity to begin creating new neural
passageways and my new ability to visualize is a product of this. Is this
compatible with current theory?"

Anecdotal, sure, but come the hell on, Science should investigate this, we
don't have much other clues as to the causes & treatment.

------
graeme
Did anyone ever have hypnagogia (visions before sleep) and then lose it or
have it become much less vivid? That happened to me. I'm trying to figure out
if I just lost it gradually, or if it happened due to antibiotics. It happened
fairly rarely but consistently, but when I had antibiotics for MRSA, I
remember the normally vivid colourful visions became dark.

Since then if I do have them it's as though they're faded and behind a screen,
I can only glimpse them and it's hard to keep them going as I can barely see
them.

In regular life I recall once having had more vivid visualizations when
remembering, but it's hard to know. How reliable is a memory of a memory? If I
had these, I had lost these long before hypnagogia went away.

I have excellent spatial recall though, and can "visualize" a day in terms of
the spatial placement of things and events. I just can't see it.

------
adverbly
Yup another person here who just discovered that they probably have this.

My experience is that I only see black, but I can still think/reason about
things.

In the interest of cataloging other cognitive functions:

1) Sense of direction - Terrible. I get lost very easily - I do better if I am
really focusing hard on the path I take, but that is never the case and I
frequently find myself lost without a maps app, even after only a couple
turns.

2) General Memory - Very poor. Was below average at spelling. Terrible at
trivia.

3) Forward Digit span - Well above average. 9 digits.

4) Ability to rotate 3d objects - Above average. Took a spacial rotation test
in university and scored in the top few percent out of several hundred
participants.

5) Ability to slice 3d objects on a plane - Well above average. Aced a test in
university(300 participants, only 1 other individual aced it).

------
disillusion
Holy crap, this has blown my mind.

I've always thought that "visualizing" something is a metaphor for "think
about it" or "list the properties you know".

This explains so much, at least for me.

How I always skip the long visual descriptions in books since they add nothing
to the story; there is no visual component to reading a book. Why meditation
is nearly impossible unless I manage to think about nothing, which is
extremely hard. How I can recognize faces but not describe them, even those
close to me, other then a short list of features that stand out.

Or how I can recognize a smell, but I can't tell you what the smell of a
hamburger is unless I actually have one in front of me. Why people describe
dreams or memories like watching a movie, while it's more a combination of
emotions, situation descriptions and something that feels like the
echolocation of a bat. What some people mean when they can hear a person speak
or have a discussion in their head.

It explains why it's so easy to recall emotions and factual information, but
nearly impossible to recall anything else. Why my "now" is so strongly
affected - emotions experienced in the current moment tend to influence the
vague feelings of the past, as if it's always been that way. Why it's always
been so difficult to work towards certain goals, unless they're divided up
into sub goals that are so close as to be easily attainable. Anything further
in the future is nearly incomprehensible. Why it's so easy for me to navigate
through bad experiences, but not for others, because beyond needing to process
the emotions, the rest will fade away like all other experiences.

Some of those might be because of something unrelated. But somehow, reading
this article, has answered a ton of questions I didn't even know I had.

My mind is truly blown.

Though one aspect I don't have: If I think about a song I know well, I can
play it in my mind. The experience is almost, but not completely, like hearing
the song in reality. So at least there's that. And that also explains why
music is so much more "real" then anything else to me.

------
moopling
So reading this has made me realise that my mental visualisation might not be
normal. I definitely can't visualise images photo-realistically, there's maybe
a similarity to synesthesia where I visualise some colours but I know it's my
mother, a room, etc and it's sort of helpful for remembering other properties
of that thing I'm visualising. Some things I can kind of visualise photo-
realistically (in the sense it might be similar to a dark room where you only
catch flashes of the thing): things I build from first principles (like say a
mental model of a pulley system or an electronic circuit).

I'd literally always assumed this was just how peoples brains worked, I'd be
interested in hearing if this is or isn't similar to other people.

~~~
ndnxhs
I can mostly picture things but its not particularly vivid like a photo. If I
think of a big area it kind of seems like there is a spotlight of detail where
the focused area I am thinking of will be fairly detailed but the rest fades
away.

------
topmonk
I can visualize things, but only for a brief moment. Then, it takes
intentional effort to bring up the image again.

I can also visualize something rotating or in motion (or my minds eye in
motion) for a few seconds. I often feel a little dizzy when I do this.

Can most people create a mental image and hold it for a long time?

~~~
cartoonfoxes
I would describe it as an inherently animated medium. I find it difficult to
keep an unchanging image in mind, though it does make an excellent meditation
exercise.

My mind's eye isn't like a framebuffer that I render to. Trying to visualize a
direct analog of a still image is difficult, feels unnatural, and requires
concentration.

Moving scenes are easier, even if the objects are unchanged. It's easier still
when the nature of the objects change too. I think it must exercise the
brain's simulation and prediction hardware - it's easier to render and it has
a smaller memory footprint. I can "look" at a sphere, but after only a short
while it starts to change, move, or rotate as though my camera is changing
position. It might spontaneously change color from "red" to "blue", or start
to squish into a spheroid. Or change into a scoop of mint chocolate-chip ice
cream. Or other elements might come into view.

The changes aren't random - it feels like the scene takes input from a stream
of thought just on the edge of consciousness. Maintaining the integrity of the
scenegraph - the state and location of the objects requires constant
corrective input to return it to its desired configuration. This is a separate
and distinct act from the concentration required to "view" the scene in
greater detail.

The bigger the scenegraph, the harder it is to stop the motion. I can
visualize what starts to feel dreamlike in its detail and complexity, but it
becomes impossible to freeze the scene.

------
oluckyman
Most people could draw a bicycle well enough while looking at it. But most
people are hopeless when asked to draw a bicycle from their imagination. But
most people don’t have aphantasia. I do, so am sceptical when people say they
can picture a bicycle (say) in their “mind’s eye”.

~~~
NamTaf
I suspect this is more that when people look at a bike, they don't notice
detail and just recall the concept of a bike having two wheels - one forward
and one back, a seat, some handles, etc.

Their failure to draw an accurate bike is in fact proof they don't have a
photographic memory, rather than they can't visualise one. That is to say,
they're entirely capable of visualising a bike that is incorrect from an
engineering design perspective.

~~~
oluckyman
Then the “images” most people say they can imagine in their “mind’s eye” might
be little different from what an aphantasiac like me would produce if asked to
draw them. Perhaps I am not missing much at all.

------
karrotwaltz
A bit off topic, but I hope I'll find I'm not alone: my "mind" is color-blind
to some degree.

It's very hard for me to remember colors, if someone cut their hair I'll
notice it easily, but if they change color (e.g blonde to brown), I'll have an
unsettling feeling but it's very hard for me to pinpoint what has changed.

When I'm asked to describe a person I'm extremely unlikely to give hair or
skin color, and I can't even tell the color of the eyes of anyone of my family
right now, I just don't know.

When I remember colors it's more like I remember a textual description. My
eyes are green, I know because I remember it being written on my ID, not
because I've seen them in the mirror this morning.

~~~
kszxgz
So which characteristics do you describe when you're asked to describe a
person? Which features do you imagine? The shape of their head?

I would assume that most people have some form of non-visual, database-like
memory for each person.

(I sometimes lose the ability to recognize people when they change their
haircut, when they wear a different type of clothes, or when they meet me in
an unfamiliar setting.)

~~~
karrotwaltz
Tall, round face, short hair, wearing glasses, with mustache and beard, thick
eyebrows. There are still plenty of ways to describe someone's face without
using colors, but to be perfectly honest I'm terrible at describing people I
can easily recognize.

------
aristophenes
How many other things are like this? What abilities do I have that are rare,
that I take for granted and think everyone else has them? What abilities am I
completely ignorant of because I don't have them? I think this is a source of
great misunderstandings because we think others think like we do. Something
that is obvious to us is obvious to them. But that is not the case.

I used to get a lot of push-back about ideas at work in ways that confused me.
I have started to develop a habit of stating the obvious, what I think doesn't
need to be said and I usually would leave unsaid. It has been surprising to me
how often the things I was skipping over are viewed as novel ideas.

------
dammitfoo
Has anybody with Aphantasia read 'Moonwalking with Einstein' by Joshua Foer or
'The Memory Book' by Harry Lorayne? I recently started working on improving my
memory using mnemonic techniques described in these books. And, let me tell
you, they ALL rely on visualization. It's just so shocking to me that some
people just won't be able to do this!

Has somebody with aphantasia tried any mnemonic techniques to remember things?
Do you have problems recalling events long after they occur (like events from
your childhood)? Do you ever daydream?

~~~
Henk0
I'm aphantasic, and I read that book during psychology studies. I actually
used the method of loci for a social psychology exam where we got 320 total
questions + answers and a random set of those questions would be on the exam.
I used my parents farm as the location. It worked surprisingly well for me,
considering I couldn't actually 'see' any of it, but rather used my inner
spatial sense, combined with alliterations/rhymes for some connections, to
form the memory.

I have very vague memories from childhood (and in general). It's all quite
abstract, with the spatial sense substituting for real imagery, and perceiving
'silent' voices when recalling conversations. There's no smell, taste or
physical sensation. If I remember an embarrassing situation, there is the an
emotional component (cringe), but even the emotional component is usually
quite weak

Daydreaming: Not in the way that I think people mean when they talk about
daydreaming. I'll close my eyes and think sometimes. I usually get bored with
that pretty quickly though, since it's just inner monologue/dialogue without
any real sonic component

------
Lapsa
I've got this. Keep telling this story often. Pictures in my mind are
exceptionally rare. Even dreams are mostly just feelings and emotions or
something. But I can "visualize" sound. On couple occasions have even managed
to "replay" well known music in my mind near indistinguishable from the real
thing (phantom of the opera in case you were wondering). And I got an ability
to pinpoint loudest frequencies in a sound spectrum. Think a lot of it has to
do with the way we individually interpret the world.

------
bbayer
I am surprised that nobody mentioned pineal gland. As Descardes, it is where
soul sits. Pineal gland also called "third eye". Pineal gland gets light
information from skin and eyes and produces melatonin. Melatonin is a
serotonin-derived hormone that modulates sleep patterns. People who has
aphantasia also report that not having dreams. Calcification of pineal gland
is proved scientifically and mostly caused by fluoride. Aphantasia might be
related to this.

~~~
jxelam
People with aphantasia may or may not dream visually. There's actually quite a
range of experiences just within dreaming. For example, not everyone dreams in
colour and not everyone dreams in first person.

------
kszxgz
While I previously thought I might have aphantasia, I now tend to think that
most people lack the ability to imagine face or other complex objects. HN
threads tend to confirm this.

In other words, while I can't imagine my family members' faces, I also don't
think many people can.

If not proven otherwise, I now assume that most people forget the visual
memory of faces after a few seconds while preserving the ability to recognize
people.

Obviously this excludes people with photographic memory.

~~~
interfixus
Thanks. You wrote my comment :)

------
_Microft
I read somewhere that aphantasia can be changed if one practises visualizing
things by sitting with closed eyes, describing _aloud_ to either a partner or
a recorder what you _want_ to see in more and more detail until an image
actually develops. It shouldn't take more than a month with a similar time
investment like meditation (i.e. like 20 minutes a day).

Speaking out loud what you want to see seemed to be important from what I
remember.

------
SUr3na
I don't quite get this idea. Is the ability to draw reflection of a sign (as
if it was in mirror) or transposing a matrix or 'seeing' the graph of a
function in my mind the same thing? I am terrible at remembering faces in
details I can defiantly say if I saw a face before in my life or not but if
you tell me to describe face of people who I lived with for many years I can't
"see" them in my mind.

------
ranie93
>He asked 540 members of staff to take a test of the vividness of their visual
imagery.

I wonder what this test encompassed, and if its available online-- anyone
know?

~~~
glitchy
I'm not certain which test Catmull used, but the article links to this one:
[https://wh.snapsurveys.com/s.asp?k=148940557153](https://wh.snapsurveys.com/s.asp?k=148940557153)

------
JustSomeNobody
I am a bit confused here. If I am in a dark room and I close my eyes, all I
see is black. I cannot, however hard I try, visualize the beach in my field of
"vision" in front of me. However, if I relax I can picture the beach and the
emerald water and white caps and the pier going out into it. But those images
are ... further back in my head, not in front of my eyes.

------
pbhjpbhj
Here's another potentially related issue: "memory palaces".

I tried memory palaces, place this there, place that here - but really it just
failed for me, I couldn't remember any details about the place. I've
remembered a full pack of cards just by repetition before (a while back!) but
memory palaces just didn't work for me at all.

Maybe that's down to aphantasia??

------
jonplackett
Didn't know Catmull had this - really interesting that someone with no mind's
eye became obsessed with visualising things externally by creating 3D worlds.

I have aphantasia too and I really like Photoshop or other graphics software
because it can be my temporary mind's eye

Do any other people here with aphantasia do this too?

~~~
sergioj97
I can't fully understand the nature of this condition. Can you visualize
faces? I assume you can't, but I guess you will be able to, say, describe
someone's face without having him/her standing right in front of you, am I
right?

------
taternuts
So I just realized I have this. I feel very weird right now knowing that
people had this super-power that I don't. Kind of feels like the first time I
found out my vision was god awful and that everyone else couldn't see detail
past 5 feet.

------
anitil
While we're all talking about internal imagery, does anyone have an equivalent
'deafness' in music?

If I concentrate hard I can very clearly hear music as if I'm listening to it,
though I often need to subvocalize to keep it on track

~~~
gwern
There's amusia, which is being tone-deaf; there's musical anhedonia (not
enjoying or being emotionally moved by music); and anecdotally there are very
large differences in ability to hear music - Beethoven, of course, but you can
see a mention elsewhere in the comments of another composer, and here's one
anecdote I was amazed by:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/agfbt1/am_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/agfbt1/am_i_weird_thread/)

"This is why my favorite thing to do is drive and listen to music. I have
thousands of songs I have coded to mental movies, all of which are (to me)
incredibly exciting. It's legitimately more pleasurable than sex. I don't have
much drive towards TV and books because I have this. I've never actually asked
if other people can do this. AFAIK, it's just a me thing."

(Although maybe he's just really bad at sex.)

------
dynamite-ready
Would anyone imagine (no pun) this condition has any bearing on the current
theory of how empathy is formed in the human mind (mirror neurons and 'replay'
neural networks)?

~~~
_Microft
If I recall correctly, aphantasia has no measurable effects on anything beside
the ability to voluntarily visualize things (unvoluntary visualizations like
under drugs or visual dreaming does/can even happen for people with
aphantasia). I can't cite a source for that now (and frankly have no idea how
I could find out).

------
madebysquares
I find this fascinating I wonder if I some altered form of this where I can
visualize most things but they are never accurate depictions always deformed
in some way.

------
colordrops
I'm really curious about what someone with aphantasia experiences while
tripping on LSD. Visuals are a large part of the experience.

~~~
russelldc
I have aphantasia, an absolute 0 on the visualization scale. Not sure about
LSD, but I've had vivid open and closed-eye visuals on quite large doses of
psilocybin. Even though those visuals tend to lean more to the involuntary
side, it feels like there's at least some level of control, so it's pretty
exciting to experience that for the first time in my life. I very rarely had
lucid dreams as a child, but I couldn't control the narrative, I just knew I
was dreaming.

~~~
jxelam
Do you get any closed-eye visuals while falling asleep? Obviously psilocybin
massively increases ability at this, but I've found practising daily at night
can increase control and level of detail dramatically over the course of a few
months.

And from there it's possible, with effort, to do it while awake and with eyes
open. If you've ever read Roald Dahl's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar",
I've found the experience remarkably reminiscent.

I'm not sure if it's the same mechanism as aphants have, as it still feels far
more laboured than what they describe and very much still in the realm of
closed-eye visuals, but I've found it's better than nothing.

~~~
russelldc
Yes, I rarely experience hypnagogia just before I fall asleep, and it seems
like I can force it to happen if I focus on my eyelids. Though, paradoxically,
as soon as I realize it's happening, it's gone.

------
booleandilemma
It feels like 1/2 the commenters here have aphantasia. Just how common is
this, anyway?

~~~
gwern
Selection bias. The 95% without aphantasia aren't going to chime in saying
'oh, I'm normal, just like everyone else', but people with aphantasia will be
extremely excited about it, especially if they just found out.

------
egypturnash
I almost wonder if artistic training tends to make you _not_ get better at
visualizing stuff. Why should you? It's _right there in front of you_ and
you're turning it into what you want it to be with your
pencils/pens/brushes/stylus.

I am a pro artist and my visualization is mediocre at best most of the time.
I'm not aphantasiastic but I am sure not one of those artists who can imagine
an entire drawing perfectly and "trace" it onto the page. Every now and then
the right neurons connect and I can visualize stuff, sometimes sober,
sometimes not. Smoking a sativa-dominant strain of marijuana sometimes gives
me a _huge_ boost to my internal visualization but I almost never do this
because it also tends to make me super paranoid. There's a graph to be made
similar to the XKCD Ballmer Peak one. [1]

And then there is that one artist at Termite Terrace[2] who got in a car
accident, hit his head, and suddenly had that imagine-and-trace skill. Brains
are weird.

1: [https://www.xkcd.com/323/](https://www.xkcd.com/323/) 2: the unofficial
name of the 1940s Warner Brothers animated shorts studio

------
justwalt
Can people with this condition dream? And if yes, then what is that like in
comparison?

~~~
chousuke
I suspect I have aphantasia or at least extremely limited voluntary
visualization (I can with some effort make myself feel like I'm maybe
experiencing something that could be related to a visual sensation, but I
would hesitate to call it imagery).

I do still see dreams, but extremely rarely. They're very different from any
sort of pseudo-visualization I might be experiencing consciously, much closer
to the actual visual sensation I get with eyes open. It's also _much_ harder
to remember anything about them.

Just recently I had my first experience of a lucid dream, which was pretty
exciting. Unfortunately, the only thing I remember about it is the realization
of what it was and then flying around (somewhere, no idea where) for a while
until I woke up.

I also remember that it was a visual sensation, though I don't remember the
visuals themselves.

