This, as a passing interest in HN and other sources started recently, I think, by a former big shot at Pixar who wrote (or was written about) having a blind mind's eye. Personally this article turned my world slightly upside down since I can't visualise. Instead I conceptualise ideas in total "darkness", without any visual imagery of any kind. I never thought twice about it and assumed everyone use the term "visualise" to describe what I'm experiencing. Because of the story posted, I learned after 43 years of existence in this body, that many people use the term visualise because they "visualise" imagery. I kinda felt cheated out of a really cool trait I suddenly never possessed (although it does now explain a lot of things I think might be related).
This is just a collection of things I've read that might or might not be related, mixed with my intuition of what might or might not be related:
* Absolute rubbish sense of direction. I get lost on a straight road with a GPS. I can't look at a map and visualise a route - i need to properly understand it or know it from repetition (a lot of).
* maybe a plus, maybe not even related - i can visualise sounds and music. I can play back a song or compose a tune in my head. I can "speak" in any accent in my head perfectly - it doesn't translate if I try it out loud but that is just bad speech skills. I also do some music production so this helps though I admit replicating the sound I hear is often very hard.
* No attachment to past events. I can't "visualise" past arguments or bad events, so I'm left with a concept of them which very quickly fades away as it's just "words". Bygones are really bygones. This one I read somewhere as related. Not sure it is, but I do relate.
* I can't draw to save my life, but I can at least copy something if it's simple and right in front of me. Always at awe at people who can draw out of their head (and I'm a son of an artist).
* I remember events from a very early age (earliest memory is from 3 years old approx). But again, I remember specific actions i've done, and can recall the scene, but not visually. Just the idea/concept of it.
* Just generally feeling like I missed out on something that is really cool. And more than that, missed out on the fact I'm missing out for 43 years.
* I rarely remember dreams, but when I do it's a treat because in my dreams I do "see" the dream. I'm always excited when I wake up remembering a dream. It doesn't last though, I forget it soon enough, but that initial moment I know I "saw" something is really nice.
* All those exercises of seeing a photo and then having to recall it - I find those really hard. I can only recall what I memorised verbally (One shoe, two combs on a table etc) - but can't recall the image itself visually.
This is fascinating. What about visualizing geometrical objects and doing design ? I would assume that architecture or mechanical design would be something you would have a hard time.
and yes, mechanical design is hard for me, but I can hold a concept of very large software systems in my head and understand how it all connects conceptually.
One more thing, related or not: I play guitar and keyboard. Not virtuoso but I can play. I can only remember chords I practised or used from muscle memory, and although I play both for over 25 years, I can't for the life of me remember the notes on the strings beyond the two E-s. Keyboards are easier for me in that regard. I also never remember chords for songs so me playing is pretty much either improvisations or having a song chords in front of me.
Are you sure you don't just have low-level visualization skills? I think it's like a skill that you must practice. I spend about 30 minutes before bed imagining various 3D shapes on a stage and rotating them. This exercise improves my visualization.
Nothing. Total darkness. Now, to make thing more 'interesting', my wife is a Yoga teacher who also runs Yoga Nidra sessions, as well as doing Hypnotherapy. I'm no stranger to guided meditation and visualisations but when I'm asked to visualise X or Y, I conceptualise it. I can detail it in words, but I's concepts, not visuals. I'm aware of the idea of it, but don't see it. not a glimpse. My wife altered her instructions since we found this out giving a place for the mind-blinds like me.
Maybe you're expecting too much from visualization. Obviously people aren't "seeing" anything. What happens if you try to conceptualize a pyramid from one angle, then conceptualize it from that angle +10˚, then + 10˚, ...? Ta-da, instant visualization.
I'm at 0/10 for visualising, total blackness. I'd have to do that via a word picture - like reading a dictionary definition for integrity and thinking about and exploring the concepts.
Yet somehow, there is a non visual spatial sense to this, so I could sort-of know - more like a muscle memory of knowing how far to turn a dial, or how far to reach to scratch my toe - if the planned pyramid were going to overlap with a wall.
Visualisation in a way that completely phases those with pictorial ability. :)
Have you tried LSD or DMT? And what about when you pull up to do a skateboard trick or something? Can't you visualize yourself doing the trick? Or what about sexual fantasies? I feel like you're being stubborn.
I have, and yep there were definite clear and strong visual hallucinations, with my eyes open (as far as I can remember). I'd never heard of aphantasia back then so I had no concept I wasn't just the same as everyone else. So there was no closing my eyes and trying to visualise on acid...
I'd do skateboard or cycling by the seat of my pants - it's more a feel, a spatial sense, and a muscle memory thing again. I can definitely get a sense of doing it, so perhaps it stems more from touch than sight?
Same with the sexual - it's the concept, the thought, the emotion, the feels. The sense of touch is definitely quite strong here. Visual needs pornhub. Sorry! :)
Often, with a memory, I can see it in my minds eye just as if it was a picture in front of me. Right now, I'm visualizing a portrait of my mom, and now, the time as a kid I pet the tongue of a killer whale at Sea World.
I think they are actually seeing things. My wife can bring up images at will. She can layer them on reality without even trying. and since I learned about this I've been asking people - most do "see" things to various degrees. I'd love to have that. I see absolutely nothing. If I close my eyes, I'm blind. I'm not sure this inability to visualise is uncommon. I think it's a pretty common thing. Maybe you and me are in the same boat - conceptualising, but not visualising.
Hmmm... I can not confirm or deny having taken these on public forums, but I'm pretty very sure these DO indeed bring in the visuals. The latter I would risk saying goes beyond visuals. More "transportative" if that is a word. I think the blindness is in it's natural unassisted form - but like anything software, can be hacked with the right patch.
Interesting. I'm also blessed with total darkness. Would you mind expanding on how your wife changed instruction? I've tried meditation quite a few times and always struggled to "get it". I think that's in no small part as every guiding audio has you visualising a hillside or something, which usually results in a system crash. :)
Just altered her instructions slightly. Instead of something like "Visualise a ball of light in front of you in the space between the eyebrows", she would also add that if you are unable to visualise you can think of the that ball of light as a concept or idea. I think she's just saying for me though :)
Did you just "discover" that blindness now or were you aware of it always? I just assumed everybody "visualise" in concepts so never gave it a second thought.
Been aware of it for a few years since the reports of the university study started coming out. I always assumed everyone was the same too, and any prose talking of "now see that balloon, rotate it, make it bigger..." was just overblown metaphor or their inner internet marketer coming out.
Which was a bit of a surprise as the other 50 years I'd never thought to query anyone about it. I asked quite a few friends when I first found out, and no doubt annoyed them with silly questions.
yeah pretty much the same here, only my 'awakening' to my blindness is not even 2 months old... Now i wonder what else I've taken for granted but is very much not so
Imagine a man is walking down the street of a town. He finds the shop he was meaning to buy something in and enters it.
Now, were you imagining this scene from a particular viewpoint? Did the man turn to the left or to the right? Was he wearing any particular clothes? Were they any particular color? Was the front of the store of any particular material? And could you still see the man in the store even though he might be, from your mind's eye's point of view, be behind a wall?
It's interesting. The very first time I read it, I don't imagine anything. The idea almost sits "latent" like quantum superposition until I really think about "imagining" it. Even then though, it's not particularly natural to do so.
Every time this is on HN it's really just a bunch of people talking about their experiences, and this is just a link to wikipedia, not much more to discuss here. Not very interesting.
But it's still wild to me. I could answer zero of those questions. I "picture" nothing. It seems crazy that most people are seeing images in their brain all the time. Above someone tried to "help" someone visualize who couldn't by saying, imagine a pyramid, now move it 10 degrees, instant visualization. And no, that doesn't work. I don't "imagine" a pyramid, or anything, in a way that has motion or or direction or color.
I imagine the man walking right to left from the other side of the street, the scene was black & white like an old movie and the man was dressed accordingly, hat included, the shop front made of wood panels. You said the man entered the store, but you stopped at that moment, so don't ask what happened later.
While reading your first two sentences I just imagined it on the detail level of xkcd comics.
Then when reading your question about the viewpoint the details increased and saw the stream from the perspective from a top of a building. The man did not wear any clothes. I could not tell the material of the store front because it's just as it were roughly sketched. When thinking about the man in the store a scene from little britain [1] comes to my mind.
edit: actually when thinking about it most images in my head are mashups of memories. Like I am sure the street I imagined comes from either a tv show or some language learning materials that where used to introduce vocabulary related to shopping or urban life.
I didn’t visualize it when I first read your comment, but I can visualize it if prompted. This might be because information can be parsed and stored more quickly in abstract terms, that is, without visualization.
Somewhat related to my comment - I'm sure that, as with most things in the human experience, there's a wide spectrum.
What's the difference between imagining something and seeing a picture? That's kind of rhetorical, and kind of not. The article that this page links to from 2005 says:
"Asked to imagine a familiar item or recall a recent event, most people can call to mind an image that is less vivid than the original but has a visual ‘feel’. This expresses our capacity to experience visual mental imagery."
Which is still super vague as to what people do when they "call to mind" something, or what a visual feel is...
> Which is still super vague as to what people do when they "call to mind" something, or what a visual feel is...
I think it's pretty easy to explain relatively unambiguously though.
When you're looking at an object, let's say an orange, you are experiencing a unique, particular sensation which usually only happens when you're looking at an orange. Being able to visualize things is to be able to create the same sensation wilfully even when you're not looking at an orange (albeit of perhaps a lesser intensity).
Most people who suffer from this could be shown a 3d modeling or CAD tool. I would explain it as having access to this when you close your eyes, except its hazy and comes in and out of focus.
It can also be used to conjure a short movie like sequence or animation as well. I most frequently use it to plan routes in my mind whether its in the car or how I'm going to move through a particular space it helps orient you and improves reaction speed and can be tied to muscle memory. It takes some focus and is rarely used simultaneously with other activities. It's more like a planning or focusing activity for brief bursts before you take action.
Its actually quite like those slow motion 360 sequences in the matrix. I think that's probably why that film technique gained such traction, as its a slowed down version of what our brains do when we use our visual memory to navigate our movement.
That's a good description, and seems to align with what I think I feel - a sensation, I tried to think of examples that weren't images for me, but just a sensation, but I think, at least in my 30 second brainstorm, I always got an image, but it was always a very simplified one, and the more complex the idea, the shorter the sensation. This was not done scientifically at all, but what I'm trying to say is thanks: that's a pretty succinct description that I can get behind.
A useful analogy is that 'call to mind visually' is to seeing as thinking something is to hearing yourself say something. The calling to mind is necessarily less intense as seeing because while you are calling to mind your visual system is preoccupied with other visual stimuli.
It's not terribly surprising it's vague as it's an entirely internal mental experience that has no hard external effect like other mental differences (I hesitate to say issue or problem since) and the description in both directions is hard.
I have aphantasia and I found out three years ago when I heard the research on radio, that others do see images in their mind.
So far, it has been very problematic to explain to others what it is like to not see images in your mind, I guess because it is fundamentally a process of understanding.
There is a reddit community /r/aphantasia if anyone want to know how it is from their point of view.
Personally, I suspect an analogy along the lines of... if my brain has a GPU to process what I actually see with my eyes, then the conjured images in my minds-eye are just my brain leveraging that GPU for processing other thoughts or memories. As a consequence, I get a sensation similar to "seeing" when I think. Perhaps people with aphantasia can't input their own thoughts into their GPU?
If we're going to go along those lines, my GPU is not installed. Everything is coming out via the line printer.
My visualisation of images rates as 0/10 - power cut in a basement. I can't even create a colour (except the inside of my eyelids on a sunny day). Not even aware of a visual component in dreams.
But I can mentally 3D model. I can sort-of "just know" how things interrelate that is more an unconscious time and distance journey around the thing. It works well enough to plan a model, something I want to build from wood, or redesign the kitchen with an idea of where the possible clashes are, before I hit paper. So the spatial sense is there - somehow.
Explaining it without a lot of hand-waving "I just sort-of know" is a challenge I also fail at. It's more like asking you to visualise something non-visual like honesty I suspect.
I think that's a good analogy. From my hobby neuroscience studies I'd say that what we see in life is more or less a selective hallucination (we filter out, for instance, electromagnetic fields which bees can actually see) -- so it's almost more literal than merely it being similar to seeing. It likely is equivalent to seeing or very close. Dreaming, for instance, creates life-like imagery despite being technically disconnected from incoming light/inputs. Our brains are wild little nodes.
> I wonder if I'm really picturing things at all or if I'm just imagining them.
Anything you're picturing in your mind's eye would require the use of your imagination no? What is the significant difference between imagining and picturing something in your mind?
By my comment above I'm trying to determine whether or not I have Aphantasia. Before I found out that some people couldn't do it, I would've described myself as someone who could visualize things. Now that I know some people can't, how do I know that I can? Is it more vivid for others? Perhaps it's a continuum, with synesthetes at the other extreme?
EDIT: someone in this thread linked to a quiz that makes me think I'm likely somewhere in the 'normal' realm.
Something I don't see people mention much is a sense of dynamic resolution to mental imagery. I took the quiz posted here and it felt completely meaningless to me. If you want me to visualize a scene, there aren't really details until I give it details. If I'm told to imagine a wooden door with no other instructions it's like I'm seeing the door in a passing glance or out of the corner of my eye. If you ask me if it's "clear and vivid", I can make it that way to any arbitrary degree needed. Looking closer and seeing that the wood is old and somewhat warped, feel the cracks in the wood, look closer and see the brass on the handle has discolored slightly from use, etc etc. But it feels pointless to do. Certainly it's at least as detailed as a real life image, if I think about it, but it's definitely not like, crowding out my actual vision with it's sheer lucidity, which some of the answers seem to suggest.
I'm a highly visual person, I expect I'd score 5/5 on each of the 16 questions. In the absence of specific hints my brain will happily auto-generate arbitrary details. My mental imagery does, in fact, "crowd out my actual vision with it's sheer lucidity" as you so well put it. If I need to focus on what I'm actually seeing I sometimes have to exert mental effort to push visualization aside, in much the same way you might push down negative thoughts to calm anxiety before e.g. public speaking.
Conversely I find it very difficult to think about things which I can't visualize (but I'm good at coming up imagery to represent things). Most of my internal "dialog" is without words.
Maybe someone has better resources, but I found it interesting that the paper linked within about the particular patient MX, says, ...mental imagery is ubiquitous..., but I can't find an example of what people consider mental imagery.
Is what I consider mental imagery the same as someone else? I dunno.
FWIW, for me, mental imagery seems to take the form of a very brief flash when I'm thinking of a simple object, like a rock, for example. But I assume it extends into less concrete things like when I'm daydreaming, where there is no distinct clear image, it's more of an inner monologue of themes/intent with a few flashes of imagery here and there.
I have this (unable to have any kind of mental imagery at all, and discovered that it was not normal via the Facebook article by Blake Ross years ago) and unscientifically correlate this condition as part of my lack of ability to remember certain things and recall events with storytelling ability.
I also sometimes have problems remembering names and eventually forget faces as well if I'm out of contact with someone for a long time.
Anyone else with aphantasia relate to this, or are my issues unrelated?
My wife, who describes herself as having very vivid mental imagery and says she has involuntary photographic memory at times (as in she does not know what triggers a memory to be completely photographic), has superb memory, and I personally believe it's what enables her to quickly learn so many languages.
So as a result (I know, based on sample size one), I'm led to personally believe that my memory-related issues may have some correspondence to aphantasia.
> Anyone else with aphantasia relate to this, or are my issues unrelated?
as another aphantasic, the only overlap i've got with you is perhaps in the face stuff. i'm slow to recognize faces, but i don't think that's connected.
> So as a result (I know, based on sample size one), I'm led to personally believe that my memory-related issues may have some correspondence to aphantasia.
i doubt there's a general connection. my memory is generally excellent, certainly superior to most people i work/interact with.
Ah this was so surprising to me as well. It was mind blowing suddenly realizing how powerful other people's visual imagination is.
Allow me to contribute to the sample size:
I probably have aphantasia. It requires a lot of effort to imagine simple, basic visual details when thinking of something. I am terrible at describing faces of people I see every day, let alone strangers.
But when I do see someone I know, I usually recognize them instantly, even if their face changed a bit (facial hair change, long time no see etc).
I also am great with names. Once I get to know someone, I'll probably remember their name for a very long time (decades). I can remember the full name of most of my friends from 15 years ago. But other than that, my memory is really bad.
I do have one odd thing that I've always wondered. Most women's faces look like the same to me. In movies, I have a hard time knowing which women they are talking about (and it takes some time to associate a name to a face). Yet, I have no such problem with men.
Possibly related, I am attracted to men, which could explain why I can easily differentiate each men, but most women look the same for me.
I have a form of aphantasia, and also poor memory of certain kinds, usually when there's a physical component to the remembering. Names from faces is a big challenge for me by default, but I've learned to practice.
The linked Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) wikipage only provides a hard-to-read Youtube video or software download as sources. Here's a link to the 16-question quiz from aphantasia.com (JS required): https://aphantasia.com/quiz/
I'll add a YMMV, as aphantasia.com adds the following caveats: "...it can be hard to classify the vividness of a mental image on a scale from 1-5 when you have nothing to use as a reference point. It is difficult to rank your vividness of mental imagery when you can’t know how strongly other people visualize. The test asks you to compare the vision in your head with how you know it looks in real life in order to reconcile this somewhat: is the scenario you are being asked to visualize equally vivid to its real world counterpart, a little less vivid, or not vivid at all/non-existent?
Further, any test that relies on self-reporting will always be subject to some bias due to the fact that you are more likely to subconsciously (or consciously) choose answers that will give you the result that you want. "
I don't doubt the experience, but the fact strikes me as impossible.
Everything you "see" around you, that your eyes are not pointed directly at, right at this moment, is 100% visualized, in full perspective and living color.
So, unless you have extreme tunnel vision (which does exist, but they can't drive, or read at any speed), you have excellent visualization capacity.
I am forced to conclude that you have, instead, very strong suppression of non-sensory-driven visualization.
I also "have" (feels weird) aphantasia. Well, it's kinda hard, but I actually do look at a fair bit of antique furniture, and do a little wood working and repair, and I focus on materials, measurements and condition. Then when in place I can move things around and get a feel for a layout. A couch I would go by measurement largely, I know what's too big for my living room. For colors I try to use a color wheel or look for other peoples pictures online like "oak pub table with blue walls" etc.
A little slow, but this video is fantastic for describing the feeling of aphantasia and it's sort of doubly fascinating that the incredibly talented artist who made it suffers from it (as I'm the flip side, great at visualizing and horrid at creation)
All of the articles I have seen seem to focus on being able to recall imagery. Is there a similar difference in ability of recalling other senses? I can visualize in my head to some degree and I can recall sounds to some degree, but I don't think I can "smell in my head" for example.
