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Poll: Can you visualize details with your eyes closed?
41 points by mercutio2 on Dec 16, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 60 comments
There is a condition called "Aphantasia" [0]. People with this condition don't have a "mind's eye". This condition appears to have some correlation with folks with "nerdy" aptitudes, math, CS, etc.

When I first heard of this condition, I thought, "Wait, what? Are you telling me that when people say they see something in their 'mind's eye' they mean they really see it? I thought that was just a figure of speech for thinking about the thing."

I'm curious what people on HN experience when thinking about a real-world object.

Specifically, if I ask you to close your eyes and think of an elephant's head, do you:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

See an elephant's head, in lush cinematic glory, with accurate shape, texture, and coloring
58 points
See something, but it's not particularly true-to-life, or true to the last picture of an elephant you saw
24 points
See nothing but the back of your eyelids, try as hard as you can
22 points
See a cartoon or outline of an elephant's head, with some detail lacking but something you are confident represents the proportions of a real elephant you've seen before
17 points
Something else
10 points



I see it, but on a different "channel" than my main vision. It's like this old idea where there is a little humunculus in your head viewing the output of your eyes on a screen - imagine a second screen for imaginations beside it. But I don't see it spatially next to my normal vision, maybe overlaid or "somewhere else".

The resolution of the elephant is initially bad, my head doesn't bother to fill in all the details at once. But if I concentrate on a specific part, say the ear, it will fill in all the details like the hairs and the texture of the skin.

I think I could say each of the answers would be correct to me. Of course I don't see an image like I would see of a real elephant. I see black with occasional colorful noise. So does that mean I have aphantasia? On the other hand, I can "consider" the image in any detail in this part of my mind that is similar but distinct from my regular vision. Is that seeing?

I would speculate here that maybe people don't have different experiences, but they just describe the same complex thing in very different ways...


This describes mostly what I'm experiencing. Its kind of like remembering a dream. The elephant is in a black void for me (kind of above my forehead?). And the details of what I'm imagining is like LOD in a video game.


I’m the same as you, except for me, the position is directly behind my eyes in place of my main vision, it is in a black void for me too

If I switch to my minds eye, the LOD res’s up and I see it in full cinematic 4k, textures, shadows, everything but my normal vision “switches off” (I’m aware there’s light there, but no more detail than that)

Seems like for me it’s one or the other


Elaborate "switch to my minds eye"? How do you do that?

I don't think I have such a mode. Sometimes when I'm bicycling for ~20 minutes with nothing happening, I'll involuntarily switch to some enhanced-imagination mode for a moment, but I can't do that on demand.


Hmmm, good question, I don’t know how to describe it other than it “feels” like my consciousness which normally occupies my head totally and equally, “pulls back” to the back of my head, my vision switches off (it’s not dark it’s just I’m not paying attention to it) and then the imagined imagery takes centre stage in my “vision” or whatever word describes my synthesised imagination theatre.

To turn this on it takes effort and directed focus - the action is voluntary and feels like it takes effort, every time I do it my eyes lose focus and look straight ahead, I cannot do it while I’m looking up/down etc (I just tried). It’s a mental only exercise, it’s almost like you know when you move the muscles behind / beside your ears and you can wiggle your ears a little? That pull-back sensation is just like that.

To turn it off and return to normal takes no effort, it’s almost like dropping a ball and it falls to the ground, I just release and normal vision and stream of consciousness resumes.

I probably did a terrible job of explaining that, sorry


Yeah I can do both at the same time. It takes me more effort to add details to things.


I have to go with "something else". I can "visualize" the elephant's head, but I don't "see" it. That is, I can perceive a visual image of sorts, but its clarity is on par with seeing something at night by the faintest moonlight. It's a little worse than that, even, because I'm also actually seeing with my eyes at the same time, even if they are closed. There is some color and detail, but again very minimal.

One analogy would be hearing a conversation in a crowded room where music is playing. I can focus on the conversation, even while still hearing the music, and tell you some details of the conversation, such as who is speaking and tone of voice, but not actually understand the words.


I don't have to close my eyelids to see it in my mind and closing them only gives me a slightly better result, or different at least. I can see all the colors but nothing like the vivid cinematic description that people seem to be upvoting the most..

Are people exaggerating? Or are they actually capable of watching HDR content in their heads.


I can even see down to the skin pours of the elephants skin. Good thing about the mind is, I can do infinite zoom.


I can't figure out which one of your poll answers is supposed to correspond to "vague and fleeting recollection". That's what it is usually like for me. Like I am remembering, and need to concentrate to see glimpses of parts of it.

I think that if I really meditate or get closer to sleeping then things get clearer. It also helps if I'm not tired or have just been visualizing things a lot recently, like reading a novel. It's never particularly clear though (while wide awake).

I know that I visualize things clearly at least when I am asleep, because when I wake up from dreaming I can still remember/see what I was dreaming about for a few moments.

I suspect that part of it is that I really don't "need" to visualize things clearly for most of my work. What I need to do is work in abstractions and state changes. But maybe I am just a bit stupid in terms of visualization.


That's me. It's less seeing, but more like recalling a memory.


I don't "see", as in, it does not start feeling like my closed eyes are sending signals of an elephant or some residual image of it. However, I am able to "visualize" an elephant in outline and some detail within that darkness. It remains clear that it's not from the eyes, but it also shows up in the perception nevertheless.

My best guess would be that the neural pathways related to an elephant would partially be firing, yet, the neural pathways from the eyes aren't, and the brain remains aware of this.


I have an extremely vivid internal imagination that could picture pretty much anything on demand. The same thing with my internal dialogue, I could basically "summon up" songs or vocals in other voices or just lines for movies basically just everything that I've ever heard at least once before.

For visualizing things I don't even really need to close my eyes I could just I guess you could call it daydream and just focus on trying to picture these things with my eyes open and it's like I could see both what my eyes see and what I'm imagining at the same time not like overlaid into reality or anything but just like two separate streams playing at once but giving time slicing to each with obviously more going to reality because that's kind of more important.

Edit: it's actually really hard for me to imagine that people can't do this and I've been working really hard on trying to not be judgmental against people who can't because it just seems so natural to me. And it's not like I'm psychotic or something or schizophrenic... I got my mental issues like long diagnosed ADHD since I was 2 years old but that doesn't disconnect me from reality in any way.

But I do know that there are some people out there who, are probably maybe fundamental religious people, who have a issue realizing that thoughts that they have aren't actually things that they consciously want to do... Like they judge themselves upon the sins that they think of in their mind. I find that weirder honestly. Imagine being haunted by judging yourself and your own moral compass upon the random brain firings that your subconscious has and brings to your consciousness. That's a self-imposed to hell that I couldn't even imagine, I mean they are just thoughts, learn how to meditate or something, let thoughts wash over you and realize that they are just thoughts don't try to push them down or silence them because that's not how brains work. Oh and also don't act on them but that shouldn't really have to be said. You're sentient being and you can filter what your subconscious thinks and what your consciousness picks up from it.


What has always fascinated me about playing music in my head is that it can be background music to my inner voice, i.e. they seem to be on different channels.


YES!! but for me its not actually the full the song, just my voice singing a line or two, and it feels like sometimes i cant even control it it's just happening at the back of my mind


Are you good at drawing? Will you be able to draw the elephant or just it's head in full detail correctly at least?


I had exactly the same reaction as you. I thought it was a metaphor for decades. I think I read about it on Nautilus or Aeon around 2016/17, can't remember. When I am fully conscious, there is no inner eye for me, nothing. Sounds, noises and voices, on the other hand, are not a problem. I can play mental audio within limits. Are there actually people who can imagine smells or other sensory impressions at will? I dream partly in color, partly in black and white, sometimes more, sometimes less realistic in the representation. So, I know what it must be like to have a minds eye. When I'm half asleep during the waking/sleeping phase, it seems to me that I can deliberately invoke images. Aphantasia seems to me to be less a lack of functionality than one that is not activated under certain conditions. It's a spectrum, there are people like me and there are people who can imagine incredibly realistic inner worlds, and I envy them a little. But I suspect that this characteristic comes with its own problems.

It's a little sad that I can't conjure up mental images of significant personal events, such as the birth of my children. The first time I held them in my arms. On the other hand, reports of atrocities and the like do not induce any inner images. I literally can't imagine anything in them, so they don't trigger a visceral reaction. That's a plus.


See what I want to think about, but it is an unstable image flash against a dark background. Details seem there, but not enough persistence of vision to observe them. Can keep flashing the images as necessary, but it doesn't have the same persistence as reality or dreaming.


I would say it's like when looking at something in real life, I can focus deeply on one thing but not on everything in the "field of view": it's easy to imagine a detailed textured closeup of an elephant's head "in lush cinematic glory" but applying that detail to an entire elephant feels impossible because I can't just focus on every detail on an entire elephant at once. Mind's eye sounds accurate as it really kind of feels like looking at something.

It's also impossible to say whether it's accurate or not. It feels accurate enough without a direct comparison but it's not concrete or static enough to really say much more than that. When I imagine something and then try to recreate it in a real medium (drawing etc) it can come out differently, though then again I really suck at drawing so who knows.


One time I lost a slip of paper with a girl's phone number on it. I looked everywhere for two weeks. So frustrating - I could picture it right in front of me but I couldn't find it. I eventually read the number off my visual memory of the note, even though I had never memorized the number. Another time someone spoke to me in a loud bar and I couldn't hear a word. A week later I zoomed in on the memory and was able to lip-read what they said. Ironically I can't remember faces.


This reminds me of one the funniest things that ever happened to me. About 50 years ago, in a century and location far, far away (art gallery in LA, Friday night, opening of a show) I talked a bit with a woman whom I found interesting and asked for her phone number. She wrote it down for me on a scrap of paper.

A few days later I called and got a recording: "You have dialed incorrectly; that number is not in service; please try again."

Done, same result.

A while later I bumped into the art gallery woman somewhere; me being me, I'd kept the scrap of paper in my wallet. I said to her, "We met a while ago; you gave me your number but it's not in service."

She said, "You must have remembered it incorrectly."

I took out her number — written by her — and showed it to her and pointed out she'd written it down for me.

She looked at it and walked away.


That sounds a bit like a photographic memory to me


This is btw. a big issue when you teach things. As someone who can imagine geometry and light, rotate and manipulate it in my head, saying things like: "Just imagine a sliced donut intersected with a cylinder".

Some people will and some people won't be able to do that, and those who can't very likely will blame themselves for not being able to understand it. But as educators we need to make sure we give people without mental images actual images they can look at.


This is a fascinating question. I can visualize mathematically described shapes without any issue. But if you ask me to visualize anything real world, I get absolutely nothing.


"Just imagine a sliced donut intersected with a cylinder"

I have trouble with linguistic reasoning and I would greatly struggle with a phrase like this, even in a context where I am sure the meaning should be obvious. Visually I can imagine hundreds of ways to slice a donut and hundreds of ways to intersect that with hundreds of cylinders. But linguistically I am slow and dumb :) and would need you to specify how you're slicing the donut and where the cylinder is going.

I have to work hard to connect verbal reasoning with non-verbal implicit information - even in simple numbers sometimes I have to carefully think "no, she said from zero, that means you start AT zero, not at one. Otherwise she would have said after zero." The verbal confusion - and psychological insecurity - can sometimes obliterate what had been a solid intuitive understanding of the problem.


This was just a contrived example, in reality I would

A.) try to express the details using my hands or

B.) Explain it more detailed (e.g. Imagine the donat is laying flat on the desk and we slice it sideways so we get two rings, we take half of it, ..." or best

C.) Show a visualization (obviously the best option)

Language is imprecise as you rightfully mentioned and mamy people will have similar problems to yours, which is why adding the context needed to have the picture is needed.


I think a sharp knife cutting a donut at an angle through the center is quite enough of a problem to imagine for most people! ;-)


Odd and surprising, I've never done that kind of imagining and now that you describe it in a relatable way, I found myself doing it.

There is a natural instinct to return back to my normal way.

Thank you for the insight!


For me, it has always been black or blank. As in what you see when you open your eyes in a completely dark room.

The most surprising thing to me is that this "condition" is not that well studied. Just shows how much we human still don't know and has many more science discovery to make.

I remember there was old post on HN about it from someone who used or still working in Amazon. I am on my phone now so may be someone else could search and copy the link.


i would say that I can imagine picture, how something looks like, but it's kind of like bypassing some image recognition parts of brain and just fire "detected objects" neurons. wg. when I imagine elephant I think I can "see" but when I want to eg focus at exact unusual place, like eyebrows (does elephants have them? I cannot really see those details)

one also interesting thing is that when I read some book I can "see" story to point where I do not really notice text in the book I'm reading.

I think that I'm in the opposite camp than OP, because when I first heard about condition where some people cannot imagine things or do not have inner voice I had hard time to understand how such people think, because for me such visualizations are integral part of thinking. I guess this is one of those things that are hard to comprehend the other side.

Edit: for people believing they can see details there is interesting experiment I saw: try to draw a bike from memory. Everyone can recognize a bake but when you try to draw it, you might be surprised that you might not be able to reconstruct correctly some parts


I can trace a cartoony outline of an elephant’s head, but it’s not in the same buffer/canvas on which my vision appears. It’s a separate scratch pad for imagination and distinct from vision.

This separate canvas is extremely limited compared to my actual vision. I can only focus on very small parts of it at a time, it’s about as accurate as drawing in the sand with a finger.


It's not exactly what you'd call "seeing". It's more like it's rendering to an off-screen buffer somewhere -- I'm able to perceive imagery and details if I actively think about them, but not in the same way I see things with my eyes.

I'm convinced most people experience the same thing, but they lack the ability to communicate their experience so their descriptions sound wildly different. If it were possible to step inside my brain for a moment and take a peek, one person might say I see things in vivid detail, whereas another might say I don't see anything at all.


I can see highly detailed visions of objects, however they tend to change in subtle ways the more I look at them, and at the edges of the image it tends to be foggy.

If I try to expand my attention with more details around the edges, the image will begin to morph in some ways very similar (but also not similar) to Google's Deep Dream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream

I also can typically recall very accurate images of actual elephants, and where I saw them last, like from a documentary or a zoo, however my brain will fill in details. So I can't usually look at a license plate and decode it after the fact, but sometimes I can, which is pretty neat when it works. (Not something I can rely on unfortunately)


It depends. If I spend a week looking at elephant heads, I'll see them even if I don't want to. I have this problem any time I get really into a video game.

I forget the name, but there was a free to play Starcraft clone/homage I got hooked on. After a while, entire scenes would play out in my vision when I wasn't focusing on anything. Doesn't seem to happen as much these days, but I also have a healthier relationship with my hobbies.

This also happens with (fiction) books to some extent.

Not being able to visualize stuff hasn't been an impediment to visual art. On the flip side, being able to compose entire songs in my head hasn't been a benefit to making music: it collapses on contact with reality.


I think this is a different phenomenon - I forget the name, but basically, your brain produces more of the behaviour that you rehearse with it. In my youth I played a lot of Tetris, to the point where I would ‘see’ (almost hallucinate, really) fitting shapes into the tops of hedgerows and skylines when I was outdoors.


Nothing, but similar to other accounts a small sensation of knowing what it should look like without the visual.

Shocked when I learned my immediate family member can actually visualize things without even closing their eyes which lets them essentially 'trace' what they're envisioning.

My best friend also is incapable of seeing things with eyes closed - they were a bit upset when I brought it to their attention.

Interestingly enough, of everyone I know I have the most vivid, engrossing, lucid dreams. Guess all that brainpower when sleeping saps the power supply for during the day.

My significant other only dreams in Black and White, which was more mindblowing to me than seeing black.


I watched too many vfx movies. I can zoom in to the mites in their eyelashes.


I have two modes depending on the task, a two dimensional one as in seeing the elephant which is in colour - though nowhere near as good as a picture! - and a three dimensional one in which I can imagine it in three dimensions but not in colour it sort of is inside my body rather than in my mind's eye and the bits have a feeling which can be vague if not well known. I can imagine moving mechanisms quite well.


Mine is kind of between full cinematic details and outline. If I could see in full detail I would be able to draw it. But I know I can't, not without a reference image. I do see a cinematic elephant but when I try to focus on details they are fuzzy. I know where the head, trunk and teeth are and the shape of whole head but not sure where exactly the eyes are, it's fuzzy around there.


I can see something like an outline of the head with the tuskers and the trunk.

If I concentrate hard, I can see the eyes and ears rather detailed, with all the wrinkles.

OT, I can hardly visualize peoples faces, but easily e. g. 3D imaginations of molecules and more technical things.

There seems to be a 'cure'. Search on Youtube for 'aphantasia' and 'image streaming'. I didn't try it, yet.


I'd like to highlight how some sort of aphantasia might feature psychological aspects.

Within this little experiment, I have high difficulties to visually an elephant head. But I easily see Tree Trunk character from Adventure Times. I wonder if an elephant head is a fatherly intimidating symbol I'm uneasy with. Or if I suffer Prosopagnosia rather than Aphantasia.


I can instantly conjure up any image. The longer I focus the more clear the image becomes, up to photo-real or even perhaps 'hyper-real'. I don't have anything approaching what I would call a 'photographic memory', but I can see music notation in my mind's eye, surely as a result of staring at so much of it over the years.


Are you good at drawing those images too?


Regretfully not, but I'm also not very good at drawing period, even with a reference photo


I can pull specific, full and quality images and "scenes" with related emotions from memory.

When prompted to answer the question, it's constructing the image on the fly. A moving image that is partially created and then only remembered if I put energy into remembering it.

The fidelty is one step lower than full cinematic lush glory, and above all the other answers.


I see it not from my eyes but from somwhere else not obstructing my vision i can see and visulise at the same time


"See nothing but the back of your eyelids, try as hard as you can". That's me... I have aphantasia.


Every thought we have is visual. My theory is some people are in touch enough with their thought process that they consider the thought an image but others focus on strictly on the image coming from their eyes. It's a question of focus.


Depends on how sleepy I am. In a near dream state I can visualize almost anything. Fully inhabiting my left brain wide awake, all I get is words and the black of the back of my eyelids.


I think I picture an accurate elephant head, but I may just be fooling myself into thinking I picture that. I don't trust my brain farther than I can throw it.


delecti comments [0] on a variant of this test [1] which I thought was interesting.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38655858

[1] https://i.imgur.com/gpN7EcP.jpeg


I think I see details, but the details are all wrong compared to what I see when I open my eyes.


Aphantasic, so nada.


When I read this, some kind of interferences/ images are parasitizing my mind; drawn cartoon with colors of the princess in Aladdin, the Disney one; cinematic/documentary video of a cobra in the desert that rises up its head.

Sometimes it's voices, sometimes it's music; what parasites lives in the mind of someone that has aphantasia ? How do you think when solving a mathematical problem ? How do you design an algorithm ?


For me it’s semi-visual. More symbolic somehow.


Then you have symbolic parasites ?


Yes you can use this name for your new Techno EP or Garage Rock band


I believe it is much more common for people to recall specific sounds, especially music, and to be able to imagine different sounds in different contexts, even variations on sounds you might not have heard before. For me, visualizing elephants is quite similar to imagining sound, but "weaker." So I can imagine a either a cartoon elephant on a 2D screen, or a "photorealistic"[1] 3D elephant I can rotate around, etc. It is much "fuzzier" than auditory stuff and requires more focused concentration; relatedly, I am a fairly talented guitarist but absolutely dreadful at visual art.

Another example: it was recently demonstrated that rats can use their imagination for problem solving[2]; specifically, they can visualize (or "visualize"?) the layout of a maze they've learned, thinking though what paths to take based on their memories. It seems beyond the reach of current science to answer what the rats were thinking about exactly: maybe it was pure olfactory and tactile reasoning. But whatever it was, there were clear neural correlates between those thoughts and the physical layout of the maze.

Another example I can't find the source of now: crows were trained to respond to an extremely faint pulse of light beamed onto a wall. The intent was to make the crow uncertain about whether they actually saw the pulse and monitor their brains while doing so. After the pulse was shown, the crows seemed to compare their recent sensory experience against their past memories, trying to rule out false positives. Think about doing this yourself: you might initially think you saw a pulse, compare to the memory of the last time you actually did see a pulse, and realize that the actual pulse was clearly brighter, so whatever you saw was probably either a flicker or an illusion. OTOH if whatever you saw actually was quite bright and circular, it was probably a pulse. Crows seem to have similarly advanced reasoning.

Putting these together, I am wondering if perhaps "they really see it" is a phrase whose meaning is entirely determined by the listener. Humans have impressive cognitive diversity and, just as some people are truly tone-deaf, some people have "true" aphantasia. But for many people, I wonder if the difference between "visualize a picture in your mind's eye" and "recall the visual details of this object" might largely be a difference in viewpoint and perception, rather than actual recall or reasoning ability.

[1] I do not mean that my imagination is actually true to life. Crudely, I mean that I can semi-plausibly BS details similar to an AI neural network. So I picked "lush cinematic glory" but for me "accurate shape, texture" involves a very loose definition of "accuracy." I suspect that's true for everyone that doesn't actually live and work with elephants. I don't have to BS the details of my own cats.

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh5206


For me, it's much harder to visualize with my eyes closed (not impossible, just not as easy)... when I close my eyes, it's mostly black with some kind of overlay of what I was last looking at -- like burn-in on a screen.

But with my eyes open I can imagine up the elephants or anything else just as detailed as those that I saw in person (either via recall of what I have seen or imagining up something new). I've never given any thought to this... but now trying to explain that I can see something with my eyes open while still seeing whatever I am looking at at the same time sounds really odd. I wonder if the visual stimulation and recall are somehow linked, or maybe I just need to practice with my eyes closed.


> Specifically, if I ask you to close your eyes and think of an elephant's head,

I don't visualize it unless I want to, so I abstract this by default.

But if you said to visualize it I would.

I guess it's like the weaker emotions such as empathy, I can turn it on when I have to and just leave it off when it's not in use.




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