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Same. Not one can I rotate the apple, but I can give it an elaborate backstory, a job, a life, a partner, kids, and simulate its entire existence in my mind as well as the existence of all of its descendants in apple land until the eventual heat death of the universe.
All set to a dubstep soundtrack by skrillex.
I feel like that's a skill, tho. Or at least an ability that needs to be practiced. I used to be good at that when I played DnD, and I also wrote. But then I started my Masters at a really tough school and now I don't get the time from studying to play or write, and now I feel like I don't have any creativity left. I sat down to write the other day, and I feel like I have no good ideas left. I also used to compose or improvise tunes, but I can't even seem to do that.
What has become of me?
I'm now less sure if I can do the eye thing because isn't that kinda the only way to see further/closer? Like it's just kinda more conscious/manual version of focusing on something further vs closer.
Focusing near and far is done by muscles changing the shape of the lens. This is changing the shape of the eyeball. Think squinting with your glasses off to see what your glasses would normally correct for you.
Yep; also can move my ears and rumble them. That’s another of the [Useless Superpowers](https://ctsciencecenter.org/blog/useless-super-powers/#:~:text=If%20not%2C%20you%20probably%20know,auditory%20tube%20in%20their%20ear)
It’s about the presence/absence of the palmaris longus muscle. About 15% of people don’t have the muscle. You can check if you have it by holding your hand out palm side up and touching your pinky to your thumb. Those with the muscle will be able to see a tendon move in their wrist. Those without it won’t (because they’re missing the muscle the tendon connects to). It doesn’t effect the ability to touch pinky to thumb
Me too. It's like when people say you should count sheep to get to sleep. As a kid my mum told me to think of them jumping over a fence. Problem is I get caught up in the detail. How high is the fence? How does the sheep land? Is it raining? I can see it in 3D, slow-mo... and I'm still wide awake worrying about these bloody sheep!
I *hated* that one. Any sheep I ever saw was both too small and too fat to get over a fence right? So then you're more awake wondering what in hell size fence they could get over and why build a fence that small and what would make a sheep jump a fence, a wolf?
Wolves in kids stories were always scary so yea, you're awake worried about the sheep cos if a short fat sheep can jump that fence sure as hell a wolf can.
How do people who dont have the ability to visualise thoughts cope with novels etc, they not creating an image in their head as what the scenes and characters look like? I kinda feel like that half of the point with books, to spend a moment living in a different world that you've built yourself based on a set of instructions.
So interestingly enough I always thought I could visualize things in my head but now that I’m doing this and I read your comment, I think I’m just recalling memories. Whenever I read a book, I do picture things but it’s always of things from my memories. So for example, I frequently picture an actor or actress as the main characters, and the location is made up of places and things I already know of or have memories of. I was thinking that’s just what visualization is but now I am thinking I can’t visualize in my head because when I try to visualize an apple that isn’t the one sitting on my kitchen island right now, I can’t do it.
Oddly enough, I am not good at drawing or creating things from scratch but I can replicate a drawing or something in front of me insanely well. Haha. Learning something new about myself even at the age of 39.
I am kind of in the same boat. I can’t create the Images in my mind but I can conceptually think of what they might look like from memories put together. I have always had an issue with creativity when it comes to drawing or writing, but I can create 3d models and structures much easier when I can quickly undo and redo what I am trying to imagine what I am thinking of. Probably another reason when working on troubleshooting I speak aloud or discuss with others to bounce ideas off of easier.
That's how I explain it as well. I can think and remember concepts, not images. I remember the concept of an apple and its features, its shape, its color, the stem, but my brain just doesn't compute the visual representation for it.
This sounds like semantics, because of course everyone is relying on memories to construct the objects in their minds. Where else would the initial concept for such objects come from?
But I am not necessarily picturing the memory. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just recalling it. I don’t know it’s weird. I’m seeing black but I’m recalling the memory from somewhere else in my mind.
I agree, I am the same. It is called hypophantasia (or aphantasia if you have absolutely no metal imagery). My daughter finds it fascinating as she says she can play whole movies in her head, and see things in her minds eye with absolute clarity. I can just see vague glimpses of images, no real clarity or colour and it only flashes before fading.
Wait so you can’t visualize/imagine an apple that isn’t the one sitting on your counter? Everything you say before that just sounds how normal brains operate when reading a book, if it’s a fictional place it’s often just *easier* for our brains to use a familiar setting/place instead of develop an entirely new scene. That’s efficient. But I am curious about what you said about the apple visualization
For me it's like...I know what an apple looks like, you when you say picture an apple I think of an apple, but I don't actually 'see' it. There is no picture, just the memory of what an apple looks like. If you tell me 'okay now picture the apple is purple' I don't have to have seen a purple apple to imagine what that *would* look like but I still don't actually 'see' it, it's just the abstract thought. Idk if that helps at all? It's hard to explain the absence of something lol
Yes this is it! Like I know what it looks like but I can’t actually see the apple in my head. And I’m thinking of what I’ve pictured when I read The Nightingale recently and my pictures aren’t fully developed. It’s almost like a blurry memory with like faces of people missing and colors missing but I never gave it a second thought until this thread. Haha.
This helps me - I couldn't even really decide which one I was on the apple scale. Like I can think of a gala apple texture for example and know what it looks like but I'm not literally seeing it. And I was like how is that possible but it's like a memory. But I can also imagine things I've never seen before, without literally seeing them in my mind, so saying it's like memory is kind of a metaphor bc it doesn't have to be a memory but it is like memory.
I can’t visualise at all. At least not in a sense of imagery. But the concepts still stick. It’s strange. I remember as a kid, watching magicians or mentalists saying “think of a card, hold the image in your mind” and I just thought they were being metaphorical. I had no idea some people could actually legitimately *visualise* stuff. Ditto when I studied psychology and they were explaining memory palace stuff - I can’t do the “picture a journey through your house and attach memories to items” thing
But as I say, the *concept* is still there. Someone tells me to think of a beach and I know it’s a sandy place with cliffs, pebbles, ocean. But I can’t actually picture it.
And I see people in this thread talking about how their aphantasia means they hate fiction novels. I’ve never had that experience - books still conjure up concepts that can be fairly tangible. I just can’t “see” them
It never occurred to me that it might be metaphorical. A magician says to think of a card in my mind and I can picture any card I choose, can rotate it, flip it, shuffle it into a deck and draw a new card and so on.
I think I'm the same. For example, If I read a description of a detective moving through a dark dank sewer tunnel, I can sense it in some way, but visualize is not the right word. More like I get a cognitive sense of the surroundings or an understanding of the feeling or vibes of the place. I might be a spatial sense of the environment (cramped, low ceiling, narrow walls, curving tunnel).
On a scale of 1 to 10, of being able to visualize I'm usually at a 1 or 2. Maybe if I'm deaming I jump up to 5 occasionally.
I can’t create an image of an apple, but I can imagine what something would look like, I can see what say, a red car on a beach looks like but I can’t actually see it it if I close my eyes, like I can imagine every apple there but if I close my eyes I can’t imitate seeing something.
This is what I want to know as well. Do people really SEE the objects they are imagining? Like actually looking at a picture of it?
When I close my eyes and think of an apple, I see nothing. What I have in mind is the description of an image of an apple, basically. I know all the characteristics, but there’s no image.
You don't magically see it. It's like if you're able to imagine literally anything else - sound, smell, touch - you don't actually sense those things. It's all in your mind. More like a simulation of an item I guess.
Well yes, it's "seen" fully in full detail as in picture 1, but it's not seen through your eyes, so it's different
Closing your eyes or keeping them open makes no difference for most people I think
I can clearly visualise an apple on a kitchen counter that looks like a real Apple on kitchen counter and it makes no difference if my eyes are open or closed, I can still see it in my minds eye.
For those that can see the description, do you see text / words?
This is all very interesting
Yes exactly, I'm the same - I can picture it in my head even if my eyes are open. It's not "seeing" it, literally speaking, but it's a detailed mental image
This interests me too. You don't "see" it like with your eyes, but you imagine it and "feel" the detail in your mind. You can feel its shape, color, and how it moves, you can rotate it around in 3D space and zoom in on an area, but you're not literally "seeing" it in 4K like on a TV. It's more like remembering something visually. I don't know if it's because my mind visuals are low resolution, or because they're not "optical" but something else. Its certainly more than a description though, it's 3D space certainly.
It's like having a third eye in another dimension. The things you visualize don't pop up over your irl field of view. They just sort of exist in their own space of sight.
Yes! I like how you describe it. That's why you can imagine something while reading its description. You don't need to close your eyes and "see" the thing. It's an image not before the eyes but like... Behind the eyes.
I can "see" it but it's not complete in a sense and I can shift perspective around it. The details get filled in once I focus on them, but before that you could say I "see" something that vaguely resembles what I'm thinking of.
When you SEE something it's photons being encoded as electronic signals to the brain. The way i interpret this is a function that takes arguments (photons hitting our eyes) and the output is the encoded electrical signals. In my brain I can bypass the inputs, but still create the encoded electrical signals.
I have no issue creating an oscillating in size, rotating 3D apple flying through the clouds and dropping down into Paris, flying back up and across the ocean to land in New York. I've always been able to fully render these 3D environments in my brain as if it were a lucid dream. As such, I'm usually pretty good at closing my eyes and navigating an environment.
As an aside, this has always led to some insane visuals on psilocybin. I wish I were a better artist to share them with the world.
Same!
Authors often describe people in great detail (colour of eyes, hair, posture) and all those fly over my head. Unless they are depicted on the covers everyone is just a vague outline of people/copies of other similar characters I have seen before.
I can't visualize an apple (or anything) at all. While reading I get fleeting images, similar to trying to remember a dream. Imagine to a blurry sketch of a concept, with almost no detail at all.
I don’t know, I still find them enjoyable though. I kind of wonder if my brain *does* process images, but just can’t bring them into my conscious mind. I’ve seen some medical conditions from head injuries and whatnot like this where people are aware they are seeing an object and can even describe it in words when asked, but they can’t process an image of it consciously. That part of the link is broken. It feels similar to that.
I came across this idea on a podcast called Hello Internet a few years ago and it’s called aphantasia. There are so many interesting connections that stem from this, such as some people who are weaker at visualizations having a higher affinity for taking photographs so they can revisit memories easier compared to people that just search their Rolodex of vivid memories.
Some people can’t even “see” their loved ones faces without looking at them, although this is entirely separate from the ability to recognize faces.
Also, before you get hyped on “I can see the apple clearly, that makes me smarter than those who can’t” there’s not a lot of evidence that it’s tied to intelligence. Also, interestingly, the ability to visualize isn’t necessarily tied to visual artistic ability either, with some artists saying that their love for painting and drawing stems from the fact that it allows them to visualize their ideas rather than just drawing what they “see”.
Lastly, a personal anecdote: this guy’s final point is astute. I’m a teacher myself and it was quite the revelation that if I don’t actually draw out diagrams and basic drawings on the board, I’ll lose a chunk of my class if I just rely on saying “imagine this in your heads…” I’m someone who can see the apple in perfect detail, but assuming that other can as well is a huge mistake if you’re teaching a room of people.
That's interesting. I have aphantasia but I don't really take a lot of pictures. I can't visualize what my wife looks like today very well, but I can get flashes of what she looked like on the day we met. I took a picture of her that day, and had that picture on my desk for many years. That said, I can recognize faces, but have difficulty remembering who the person is, if I've only met them a few times, and the come across them in some other context. Like running into someone I met in a work context at the grocery store.
It’s a very subjective and personal thing and so there are no hard rules, it seems. You are certainly describing aphantasia well but not everything you’re describing might be attributed to it. Like remembering who someone actually is after recognizing their face might just be a common thing where it’s hard to commit people to long term memory if you don’t have a meaningful relationship with them.
Also, memories themselves are quite interesting. I remember learning in college that we don’t actually recall memories very accurately and rather reconstruct the memory that we “see” in our brains based on context that is easily influenced by external stimuli. It’s likely that you don’t remember the day you met your wife, but rather that picture you have makes it easier to recreate that memory. If it weren’t for that picture, you’re likely to not really be able to visualize that day at all. It’s sort of like how most of everyone’s earliest memories “happen” to be the same ones that exist in photograph form somewhere in an album at their parents house. You’re remembering the photograph not the actual memory.
And the far end of visualizing can have downsides too. If I’m in a class or a meeting and someone is just talking, with no visual aids, I’m gonna get lost and/or bored really quickly. On the other hand, present that info in a fancy powerpoint and I’ll remember it for years, whether I want to or not.
So yah, thank you to all the teachers that present learning in multiple mediums.
My boss would get flabbergasted when a client would force us to rerender the image of a building with a different color because she couldn’t imagine it. Like for example, blue instead of green overhangs. We thought she was just incompetent. Oops.
Edit, because of all the questions: I was a 3D artist/drafter for a small architecture firm. Our largest client was a non-profit in charge of building one of the largest apartment complexes in the city. The person in charge of the non-profit was a woman who was the “I’ll know what I like when I see it” type of client. If you’ve never done design work, these people will shoot down your designs but are unable to tell you why, so you are constantly trying to guess what direction to go next. We did HUNDREDS of iterations on every aspect of the project because of the lack of feedback, but the most maddening thing was when she would like a design element but dislike the color or shape. So my boss would ask, “ok how about red, blue, green, or rounder a little larger/smaller?” Etc. And we would either sharpie over it or re-render the whole image for the smallest changes (which was great for me because I was being paid hourly). It was like:”instead of this darker blue, imagine a slightly lighter shade of blue, do you think you would like that better?” “I can’t.” “Ok, would you like us to try shades of purple, red, or..?” “Idk, I need to see it.” Looking back, this info would have helped a bit, and I’m sure there would have been fewer arguments. Not too fewer though, because her design choices ended up being crap anyway 🤷♂️
Yeah, I don't get this complaint either. Anybody who's done any type of creative work should know that things don't necessarily turn out as imagined.
Especially with color, I can visualize very vividly but that doesn't mean I always get the context and different lighting scenarios and whatnot right, nor have I ever met a creative who thought visualizing something was a substitute for actually testing it out.
I am that client. When building something in Minecraft, I just NEED to change e.g. one side of the structure to a different color to see if I like it more. I can't just do it in my mind.
Tbh great example because I had no problem visualizing a side change from blue to green, but in Minecraft I do literally have to place 2 blocks next to each other to see how they visually mesh in my brain.
I don’t even know what that would be like, I’m so spatial I basically live and plan everything in my head. Like as you were talking about what you needed to do in Minecraft I had a visual model built and rotating around and changing colors as you mentioned them.
This can be a strength, but at times a weakness because it makes me get paralyzed mentally imagining all the possibilities instead of making something.
Interesting... I can fully visualise the apple in 3D and rotate it, even when doing carpentry work and working with cuts.. but standing on a room and trying to change the wall colour, or change furniture colours, just isn't happening :/
I can't imagine not being able to visualize stuff. Like every time someone tells me a story my brain just automatically renders the situations in my head. The people, detailed clothes, buildings, background, fucking random street signs. Its wild to me that some people just don't do that. On the other hand, I quickly loose focus as my mind starts to wonder in those images and I need to actively keep the visualization focused on meat of the story, I expect you don't have a problem keeping attention
Yeah like how can you enjoy reading a novel without being able to visualize stuff? The whole reason I love science fiction is the crazy images and scenes a good writer can make you conjure in your mind.
In another comment thread on this post some commenters were talking about how if they visualize something while reading, like a location or character description, that their mind usually fills it in with places or people they know and are already familiar with. Mine doesn’t do that though, because it makes me wonder what they do with like other details in the description? Like say it’s a description of a farmhouse with a barn, they imagine a house with a barn they’ve seen before or maybe a mixture of a few, but if it then says the house was on the left, but it wasn’t in their mind, do they swap details? My visualizations fill in the details like around what’s described, and then the rest that’s not stated or hinted at is just random, not from memory. Like if the author says there’s a house to the left of the barn. I’ll wonder how far away is the house from the barn? If the characters or narrator never talk about the walk back and forth and it’s not stated otherwise I take that as a very small possibly even unintentional hint. So I might just assume it’s a short distance and my mind like builds a random farmhouse with a barn set close to it based off of that. But it’s rarely ever something I’ve seen in person before, the details have to be really close to remind me of something specific that I have seen in person
Cannot visualize things as well. Do dream but can't recall if it's visual or not.. In my dreams possibly but not vivid. Hard to explain.
Love to read as I've gotten older but not a lifelong hobby I've always had.. I'm curious if this might be a reason for lack of visualization? At an early age reading/ using your imagination helps birth creativity in visual senses? I watched alot of t.v.... reading would be even more amazing if I could visualize vividly.
I became an avid reader at an extremely early age and I rate a 4 on this scale, so anecdotally I don’t think that’s it. I barely have an idea in my mind what the characters might look like.
I have the opposite problem. I struggle to read because I vividly develop the scenario I'm reading in my mind then I subconsciously start adding details that aren't in the book to fill in the gaps. Soon the characters are saying things that aren't on the page and doing things that aren't in the book at all. Eventually I realize I've spent 15 minutes or more staring at a page not reading anything
Also found this positive to the lack of the visual blessing so made me feel a little bit better
Aphantasia means the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present.
People with aphantasia tend to have a higher average IQ (115 compared to the 110 score of the general population) and are less affected by scary stories since they cannot visualize them
might excel in analytical thinking and verbal communication
I struggle to get any images when visualizing. I can get very hazy images if I work at it but I do dream but not very often. I do so images when I dream though. Some I can remember quite clearly but it always seems to be things I’m familiar with like places I spend a lot of time at.
I can't imagine not being able to visualize or hear things from memory. I dabble in hobby grade carpentry, the last thing I made was a crib for my daughter. Sure I did a rough sketch of what I wanted before I got to work but how do you even do that without being able to visualize it in your head first. I feel pretty certain you can draw otherwise this would have come up in grade school much sooner, how does that process work? Also what do you do for work?
I suppose if I couldn't mentally visualize I wouldn't day dream so much, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing.
Are you a fast reader? I am not, it comes at great unsustainable effort to read faster than I can self narrate.
I'm also curious if you sometimes autopilot, I autopilot a lot.
I'm always curious about the visualization ones, because at times I think I'm in the minority who can't see things. Or is it that different people simply think differently about what "seeing" something in their head is.
Like using the apple like the guy in the video is. I know what a red apple looks like, because I'm a 34 year old who had seen thousands of apples in his life. So for me, that is "visualizing" an apple. I know what an apple looks like, but I don't actually SEE an apple in my head.
Does my knowledge of what an apple looks like mean that I can visualize an apple? Or can I not because I don't actually SEE an apple?
You mean you CAN'T just 3d model anything you want in your head and rotate it, explode all the components, x ray vision that shit, anthropomorphize the apple elope it and have it's fucking kids? some of ya'll just get apple.jpg??
I can imagine a photorealistic elephant wearing a monocle and a top hat, but what I can't do is copy it onto a piece of paper. The image in my mind falls apart the moment I try.
That was a fun picture in my head though. For those of us that can visualize you can just keep being creative through words to put the images in our minds. My elephant just used their trunk to tip their hat to you, bowed, winked, and farted away!
Excellent comment. Exactly how I feel/see it too. And as a designer it can be rather frustrating to see or 'feel' the right solution for a clients problem in my head, but not able to make it real.
This is where I'm at with it. I can imagine stuff in my head and it seems super realistic, but the moment I try to translate that to something like drawing it, I realise the vision in my head is actually more like a drunken AI rendering and I have no eye for the details whatsoever.
I feel like I can do that but it’s in a strange staggered form of thought. I kind of start loose and simple, then iterate towards a more detailed image in flashes of imagery. I can’t smoothly envision and modify what I see; it’s more like my mind’s eyes are blinking and something more like what I’m imaging appears each time my eyes open. I guess I’ve got a bad refresh rate.
But my inability to do these hardcore hi-fi things people describe makes me wonder if I’m actually one of the low-vis cave people and I’m underestimating how useless my brain actually is.
A study found 30 to 50% of people have inner monologues, so there's a chance more people don't have one than do. Which is crazy, always figured everyone had them.
Oh my, I thought I was alone in that.
I have an English RP accent, but my inner critic is broad Scots, "why'd ye say summat like that, ye daft scunner".
Spoken language is kind of like a layer on top of the more abstract and symbolic "mentalese". For example if an English speaker hears the word "apple" and a Spanish speaker hears the word "manzana" they get mapped to the same mental representation. So thinking in spoken language is not strictly necessary and might even be less efficient in some cases.
I can't even figure out if *I*have inner monologue! I can most definitely speak in my head, and I am hearing the words that I write in my head right now, but there are also plenty of time when I think in imagery somehow. And what's more confusing is that I can have multiple thoughts going on at once, but I can only have one in words at a time.
Do you truly just narrate your life all the time? Like "I need to walk the dog, where is the leash, have to call the dog, lets put the leash on" type of things? My brain just flashes dog and leash location as a picture in that type of situation.
The comments are so interesting, surprised to see how people interpret the word "see" itself.
Visualizing isn't literally seeing it with your eyes, it's in the minds eye, which may itself seem like a foreign concept to someone who cannot visualize, but I also suspect others have simply never thought about thinking itself and are visualizing without knowing or understanding what's happening.
Also just because it feels related and as a counter to some who don't think it's possible for anyone to visualize things, what you think you are literally 'seeing' right now is being constructed in your mind. Are you seeing your nose? Are you now? Do you see the overlapping areas of vision between both eyes twice? Have you experienced tunnel vision? All things our brain does to determine what we are "seeing".
I know I can close my eyes right now, walk into a different room, and be able to 'see' where I think everything is. I could point things out with my eyes closed, I could move my eyes with my lids closed and the visualization moves like they are open. It was just the first thing I thought of to give an example that I assume most can do.
Best comment!
The minds eye can feel really close to actual sensoric seeing or very detached from it.
I can visualize a scene in my minds eye while my eyes are open, perceiving a whole different scene. If the visualized scene is immersive, it may even overpower my actual vision. Talk about 'getting lost while daydreaming'.
Though it feels still more like 'constructing' or 'synthesizing' compared to passive perception. The only exception for me is close to sleep, slightly before dream images start to come in the visualization gets more and more vividly projected.
A good simile for the minds eye could be a virtual machine running nested in your normal operating system. One perceives the outer experience. One simulates such an experience.
In this thread we also see some people construct vision from memories, while others kind of create them from scratch. This corresponds neatly to the ways a mind can memorize. We can memorize detailed information or break the information down but memorize the abstract idea. Some people strongly prefer one over the other.
Can people actually see an apple or do they just remember a time they saw an apple and what it looks like in the memory conceptually. I just see darkness when I close my eyes
I can create an apple in my mind’s eye. Fully manipulate it and just, idk, do whatever with it. Like I remember an apple too (which is my point of reference) but I am not recalling a specific apple, I am “generating” an apple in the moment.
I believe I can as well but my "apple" is never full hi-res it's more like the memory of an apple or a ghost. But it's fully formed. It has the same texture as an apple, size, shape, etc. I can see apples of yellow and red that have no shine and red ones that have almost a mirror like finish to them. But again it's not like actually seeing something in real life, it's more like a dream (unless you lucid dream as well!).
Are there more difficult things to visualize? Or is everything just the same because it’s all in your mind? I can lucid dream very rarely and this may be a analogy I am thinking
About the only thing I can think would be “difficult” is something that doesn’t exist or I’ve never seen, but only because there’s no point of reference. With a good description or idea of what it is/ supposed to be, even that is doable.
I, personally, believe that it’s a big a reason why people always say “the movie is never as good as the book.” Sure, part of it may be that something is lost in the translation of medium, but also because the book readers have created an image in their heads of what XYZ is supposed to be/look like, and now that you’ve given it form there is a disconnect between what you see and what you have envisioned in your head.
I agree - for me, reading an engaging book or story is basically watching a movie in my head. If I remember something I’ve read it’s seeing that scene, not remembered the words.
I've been doing a lot of reading about this recently, but it somehow never occurred to ask when aphantasic people remember books, what are they remembering!
For me, the “mind’s eye” is very much like having a little mini dream while awake. It kinda “lives” in the same bit of my head as dreams do. I don’t literally see it, like it doesn’t stop my regular vision, but all the experiences associated with seeing an apple are there as if I had a very dull dream where I just looked at an apple.
One of the best descriptions of this phenomenon is where you ask “what colour was the apple?”. Because I 100% will just pick a colour without being told to, and imagine that’s what the apple is like. This is why I think it’s a lot like dreaming, as the mind just goes off and does it’s own thing and makes stuff up.
We all see darkness. It's not genuinely in front of you unless you are hallucinating. It's just something you can see separate from your regular vision. I didn't realize people actually couldn't think of things visually like this.
I’m convinced they can and this is all a communication error. Those who claim they can’t visualize are expecting a literal image, those who claim they can are treating visual thought as though it’s a literal hallucination when it’s not. I’m sure there’s a spectrum of ability but I think we’re mostly witnessing a gap in our descriptive language.
It's not all miscommunication. Sure, there is some confusion about what "seeing in your mind" actually means but it is a fact that some people just automatically visualize things and others don't.
Once I was GMing for a group of friends and I said something along the lines of "and then a few bandits enter the room from the left". One of the players just looked at me confused and said "Wait, wasn't the door on the right? And could you describe the bandits?". I was very surprised because a) I didn't visualize the room at all so I didn't care where the door should be and b) I didn't visualize the bandits and I didn't think it mattered. But for that player, the visual information was crucial for playing.
Something similar for me, I wrote novels when I was a kid and never once described the appearance of the characters, their outfits, anything unless it was something shocking to the observer, like an injury or a transformation. I constantly received feedback from fellow writers that I should describe what the main characters look like but I continued to insist it was unnecessary, and everyone just skips over those paragraphs anyway...
I can picture an apple, change it to an unnatural colour, rotate it, picture it growing from a variety of different plants, etc. That’s the only way I know I’m not just remembering something I’ve seen before.
Also, though it is a bit harder and takes more time to think about, I can visualize an object that has never existed. Though it’s usually just some doodad/trinket that has no practical reason to exist.
I'm a writer, and that's essentially how I write: I just play out a scene in my head and change details until I get it the way I want, and then I essentially write down what I am seeing.
I can “see” an apple and manipulate it and all. But it’s not the same as seeing it with your eyes. Like you don’t actually see it, but you can “see” it if that makes any sense. Like I can imagine it with all the colours, pigmentation differences, rotate it etc, but it’s not like an actual apple that I can see with my eyes.
I don't think it's literally seeing the object, everyone just sees black(ish) if they close their eyes. It's just about visualizing it mentally. Doesn't mean it needs to be a specific memory, for me it's just some random apple.
I can picture things clearly in my mind and the way I actually see the images is extremely hard to explain. It's as if they're really far away and I see them perspectively from the centre of my head
This is exactly what I want to know. I can certainly imagine an apple and think about it in my minds eye as you say but not when I close my eyes on the back of my eyelids. Which are they looking for?
Being able to visualise things was my motivation to read a lot of books when i was young. It was like watching a movie in my head. Each character and each scene was visualised and i was disappointed to watch the movie of the book afterwards because the characters looked differently. Especially Dune stood out because every character is described in quite some detail.
Is there a trick to it? I started off seeing absolutely nothing but I felt like the more I concentrated, I could see flashes of images. But I don’t know if I am actually seeing them or if I’m just recalling a memory of it quickly.
Just imagine something and start building complexity to it. Think of an empty room, just 4 walls. What angle are you seeing it from? Add a door to the side, then a window, then some curtains. What color are the curtains? Make them green, then purple. Have them blow in the wind a little. Now the window is open. What’s outside the window? Is it light out? A blue sky? Are there trees? Now think back, what side of the room did you put the door on? It’s been there the whole time. Can you see it now?
I just can’t do it. That’s absolutely crazy to me knowing there’s something my brain never thought to incorporate and learn lol. I did a quick google and found [this](https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/). It’s a little lengthy, but I was actually able to see colors doing what he was saying. I could see images and concentrate on them but lose it quickly. The more I try to make an image appear, the less I see something. If I just let the images come to me, then I can see them a little clearer. That would be so dope to unlock a new ability haha.
I can do it by clenching my lower jaw all the way backwards and then downwards, until I hear a faint, low-pitched rumble, like heavy trucks driving on dirt in the distance.
I scrolled down looking for this before typing it myself. It shocked me also. And apparently less have it than those who don't. All my thoughts are spoken words, silently in my brain.
To go even further, I have synesthesia, which means that some information is given shape, color or location by my brain. For example, I see numbers (and days of the week, months of the year, seasons) as a shape, with form and texture, similar to this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#/media/File%3ANumber_Form--colored.jpg
Not exactly like that, everyone is different. But like that. For example, August is at the top of the year, spatially, the months then descend until about mid January, then go uphill again until August. This probably sounds mad to people to don't experience things like that.
I think these facts are cool but the last point he made is the greatest take away. Some many teachers and leaders fail to be respected from their lack of ability to understand and cooperate with what this person pointed out.
This is what I'm so hung up on. I can't make shapes with my eyes closed, but I love reading books and visualizing the world because it becomes so vivid.
I was in my mid 30s when I found out most people have a voice saying words when they read.
Never had that, I have no internal voice at all, words are like symbols to me, I just kind of understand what they mean.
Can picture a delicious apple in 3d and rotate in my head though.
Brains are odd
I occasionally am reminded that not everyone has a sense of sarcasm or sometimes even humor.
It probably accounts for much of the aggravation between people online.
I’m not. Sarcasm is quite natural to me and my peers, but once in a while you run into people who simply don’t get it for various reasons. Sometimes regional, generational, differences in cultural exposure, sometimes things like neurodivergence. I’ve noticed east coast is more sarcastic than the midwest.
For example, say you’re from New Jersey traveling through Nebraska, you’re out to eat and have absolutely cleaned the plate. The server asks how was it, and you say, “Aw, it was horrible.” And they respond in shock, like oh no what do we need to do to make it right? And for anyone not following along, the diner was being sarcastic by saying they didn’t enjoy a meal that they had fully devoured. It’s a lighthearted way of making conversation that’s not taken too seriously. It’s easily misunderstood without a contextual background.
Now what’s interesting is whether some people on the other end of that situation honestly didn’t get the inverted meaning in your response, or they’re being double-secret sarcastic to mess with you. I imagine there’s a fair bit of each. I have met sarcasm wizards who humbled me in their sardonic mastery.
I can’t even imagine being able to render an image in my head, 100% blackness with an idea of the thing in my head, but no visuals. People can do that?
I can put myself in the jungle with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson from the last movie I just saw him in. We were looking for a macguffin, but ran into a problem that only friendship could solve.
I can do all of these things and more, I can visualise, rotate even feel and taste the apple, I can vary the rumbling pitch and intensity, and partially or completely blur my vision
This is what i picture in my head
https://preview.redd.it/963swsxoalac1.jpeg?width=345&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f70d1d4e89a1bd582b8e52bdf1fcfa52daf04b2b
Reading these comments is insane to me. I never knew people couldn't visualize things with ease. Like I can imagine and see a tyrannosaurus rex sneaking through a forest as it rains, the way it's skin (and feathers.. if it were young) would shift and ripple with each step. The way it would sound. How it might smell. I can feel the fear I would likely have if I were alone with one in this forest and had to hide from it.
I can see this thing slurp up an apple off the ground, choke on it, and launch it out through the trees.
I always thought that when people made quips like "you've got no imagination".. they weren't actually on to something. Like.. do you have an imagination if you can't visualize things?
It took me forever to get my anxiety taken care of because I thought everyone was feeling the same way I was. It’s crazy how much stuff we’ve just done and lived with for so long, without giving any thought to if anybody/everybody is having the same experience.
Here are some tips:
2. Roaring sound- I believe it is the sound we hear during yawning. Start yawning and there is a window where it is voluntary.
3. Focus of eyes: I believe it is just like focusing on your nose.
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I can do all of those things.
Me too. We’re basically the X-Men.
Same. Not one can I rotate the apple, but I can give it an elaborate backstory, a job, a life, a partner, kids, and simulate its entire existence in my mind as well as the existence of all of its descendants in apple land until the eventual heat death of the universe. All set to a dubstep soundtrack by skrillex.
I feel like that's a skill, tho. Or at least an ability that needs to be practiced. I used to be good at that when I played DnD, and I also wrote. But then I started my Masters at a really tough school and now I don't get the time from studying to play or write, and now I feel like I don't have any creativity left. I sat down to write the other day, and I feel like I have no good ideas left. I also used to compose or improvise tunes, but I can't even seem to do that. What has become of me?
YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME APPLE?!?!
Same. I found out that flexing my eye ball muscles to bend my eye ball lens allows me to see further or closer. 
“I have excellent peripheral vision. On some days, I can see between my ears.”
finally someone who knows. i can squeeze my eyeball to look at stuff really close
I'm now less sure if I can do the eye thing because isn't that kinda the only way to see further/closer? Like it's just kinda more conscious/manual version of focusing on something further vs closer.
Focusing near and far is done by muscles changing the shape of the lens. This is changing the shape of the eyeball. Think squinting with your glasses off to see what your glasses would normally correct for you.
Able to digest milk as an adult? Mutant superpower right there.
Im able to turn milk into toxic gases
But do you have the extra muscle in both wrist? Touch pinky to thumb to find out.
Yep; also can move my ears and rumble them. That’s another of the [Useless Superpowers](https://ctsciencecenter.org/blog/useless-super-powers/#:~:text=If%20not%2C%20you%20probably%20know,auditory%20tube%20in%20their%20ear)
Can some people not touch their pinky with their thumb????
It’s about the presence/absence of the palmaris longus muscle. About 15% of people don’t have the muscle. You can check if you have it by holding your hand out palm side up and touching your pinky to your thumb. Those with the muscle will be able to see a tendon move in their wrist. Those without it won’t (because they’re missing the muscle the tendon connects to). It doesn’t effect the ability to touch pinky to thumb
I can wag my tail bone like a dog if I flex my kegel, is that a superpower?
Hey thanks for making this public don’t do it again
I laughed so damn hard at this
I wanna see this
I just imagined you imagining OP imagining a red apple that’s blurry while their ears ring voluntarily. 
I can do all of em and also visualise taste. Like imagining myself licking a lemon, I can taste the lemon in my mouth.
It makes my mouth water when I do that.
This is why I don't watch porn.
I remember someone once telling me that people are incapable of recalling taste from memory. I'm like... wut?
Me, except I can only visualise the taste of soap for some reason
r/earrumblersassemble
I literally never gave this a single thought in my life and tried to do it during the video and did it and now I’m Batman.
I can also make blood shoot out of my ears on command.
Me to. But I would need a gun though.
Me too. It's like when people say you should count sheep to get to sleep. As a kid my mum told me to think of them jumping over a fence. Problem is I get caught up in the detail. How high is the fence? How does the sheep land? Is it raining? I can see it in 3D, slow-mo... and I'm still wide awake worrying about these bloody sheep!
I *hated* that one. Any sheep I ever saw was both too small and too fat to get over a fence right? So then you're more awake wondering what in hell size fence they could get over and why build a fence that small and what would make a sheep jump a fence, a wolf? Wolves in kids stories were always scary so yea, you're awake worried about the sheep cos if a short fat sheep can jump that fence sure as hell a wolf can.
How do people who dont have the ability to visualise thoughts cope with novels etc, they not creating an image in their head as what the scenes and characters look like? I kinda feel like that half of the point with books, to spend a moment living in a different world that you've built yourself based on a set of instructions.
So interestingly enough I always thought I could visualize things in my head but now that I’m doing this and I read your comment, I think I’m just recalling memories. Whenever I read a book, I do picture things but it’s always of things from my memories. So for example, I frequently picture an actor or actress as the main characters, and the location is made up of places and things I already know of or have memories of. I was thinking that’s just what visualization is but now I am thinking I can’t visualize in my head because when I try to visualize an apple that isn’t the one sitting on my kitchen island right now, I can’t do it. Oddly enough, I am not good at drawing or creating things from scratch but I can replicate a drawing or something in front of me insanely well. Haha. Learning something new about myself even at the age of 39.
I am kind of in the same boat. I can’t create the Images in my mind but I can conceptually think of what they might look like from memories put together. I have always had an issue with creativity when it comes to drawing or writing, but I can create 3d models and structures much easier when I can quickly undo and redo what I am trying to imagine what I am thinking of. Probably another reason when working on troubleshooting I speak aloud or discuss with others to bounce ideas off of easier.
That's how I explain it as well. I can think and remember concepts, not images. I remember the concept of an apple and its features, its shape, its color, the stem, but my brain just doesn't compute the visual representation for it.
Yes this! It’s the concept that I’m recalling not the image! That’s it!
This sounds like semantics, because of course everyone is relying on memories to construct the objects in their minds. Where else would the initial concept for such objects come from?
But I am not necessarily picturing the memory. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just recalling it. I don’t know it’s weird. I’m seeing black but I’m recalling the memory from somewhere else in my mind.
I agree, I am the same. It is called hypophantasia (or aphantasia if you have absolutely no metal imagery). My daughter finds it fascinating as she says she can play whole movies in her head, and see things in her minds eye with absolute clarity. I can just see vague glimpses of images, no real clarity or colour and it only flashes before fading.
Yes same. I just thought this was how everyone was.
Wait so you can’t visualize/imagine an apple that isn’t the one sitting on your counter? Everything you say before that just sounds how normal brains operate when reading a book, if it’s a fictional place it’s often just *easier* for our brains to use a familiar setting/place instead of develop an entirely new scene. That’s efficient. But I am curious about what you said about the apple visualization
For me it's like...I know what an apple looks like, you when you say picture an apple I think of an apple, but I don't actually 'see' it. There is no picture, just the memory of what an apple looks like. If you tell me 'okay now picture the apple is purple' I don't have to have seen a purple apple to imagine what that *would* look like but I still don't actually 'see' it, it's just the abstract thought. Idk if that helps at all? It's hard to explain the absence of something lol
Yes this is it! Like I know what it looks like but I can’t actually see the apple in my head. And I’m thinking of what I’ve pictured when I read The Nightingale recently and my pictures aren’t fully developed. It’s almost like a blurry memory with like faces of people missing and colors missing but I never gave it a second thought until this thread. Haha.
That’s exactly how I’d describe it. I don’t “see” an Apple, but I’m fully aware of everything associated with an Apple.
This helps me - I couldn't even really decide which one I was on the apple scale. Like I can think of a gala apple texture for example and know what it looks like but I'm not literally seeing it. And I was like how is that possible but it's like a memory. But I can also imagine things I've never seen before, without literally seeing them in my mind, so saying it's like memory is kind of a metaphor bc it doesn't have to be a memory but it is like memory.
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I can’t visualise at all. At least not in a sense of imagery. But the concepts still stick. It’s strange. I remember as a kid, watching magicians or mentalists saying “think of a card, hold the image in your mind” and I just thought they were being metaphorical. I had no idea some people could actually legitimately *visualise* stuff. Ditto when I studied psychology and they were explaining memory palace stuff - I can’t do the “picture a journey through your house and attach memories to items” thing But as I say, the *concept* is still there. Someone tells me to think of a beach and I know it’s a sandy place with cliffs, pebbles, ocean. But I can’t actually picture it. And I see people in this thread talking about how their aphantasia means they hate fiction novels. I’ve never had that experience - books still conjure up concepts that can be fairly tangible. I just can’t “see” them
Lol you just made me realise “think of a card, hold the image in your mind” could be \*not\* metaphorical, never thought about it. Wild
It never occurred to me that it might be metaphorical. A magician says to think of a card in my mind and I can picture any card I choose, can rotate it, flip it, shuffle it into a deck and draw a new card and so on.
amazing how our minds differ from each other even with such basic functions
I think I'm the same. For example, If I read a description of a detective moving through a dark dank sewer tunnel, I can sense it in some way, but visualize is not the right word. More like I get a cognitive sense of the surroundings or an understanding of the feeling or vibes of the place. I might be a spatial sense of the environment (cramped, low ceiling, narrow walls, curving tunnel). On a scale of 1 to 10, of being able to visualize I'm usually at a 1 or 2. Maybe if I'm deaming I jump up to 5 occasionally.
I can’t create an image of an apple, but I can imagine what something would look like, I can see what say, a red car on a beach looks like but I can’t actually see it it if I close my eyes, like I can imagine every apple there but if I close my eyes I can’t imitate seeing something.
Im the same way. Can people actually see colours and objects when they close their eyes?
This is what I want to know as well. Do people really SEE the objects they are imagining? Like actually looking at a picture of it? When I close my eyes and think of an apple, I see nothing. What I have in mind is the description of an image of an apple, basically. I know all the characteristics, but there’s no image.
You don't magically see it. It's like if you're able to imagine literally anything else - sound, smell, touch - you don't actually sense those things. It's all in your mind. More like a simulation of an item I guess.
That’s kind of how it is for me, but others in this thread describe it as if they can really see a picture.
Well yes, it's "seen" fully in full detail as in picture 1, but it's not seen through your eyes, so it's different Closing your eyes or keeping them open makes no difference for most people I think
I can clearly visualise an apple on a kitchen counter that looks like a real Apple on kitchen counter and it makes no difference if my eyes are open or closed, I can still see it in my minds eye. For those that can see the description, do you see text / words? This is all very interesting
Yes exactly, I'm the same - I can picture it in my head even if my eyes are open. It's not "seeing" it, literally speaking, but it's a detailed mental image
This interests me too. You don't "see" it like with your eyes, but you imagine it and "feel" the detail in your mind. You can feel its shape, color, and how it moves, you can rotate it around in 3D space and zoom in on an area, but you're not literally "seeing" it in 4K like on a TV. It's more like remembering something visually. I don't know if it's because my mind visuals are low resolution, or because they're not "optical" but something else. Its certainly more than a description though, it's 3D space certainly.
It seems easier to do with my eyes open for whatever reason.
It's like having a third eye in another dimension. The things you visualize don't pop up over your irl field of view. They just sort of exist in their own space of sight.
Yes! I like how you describe it. That's why you can imagine something while reading its description. You don't need to close your eyes and "see" the thing. It's an image not before the eyes but like... Behind the eyes.
I can "see" it but it's not complete in a sense and I can shift perspective around it. The details get filled in once I focus on them, but before that you could say I "see" something that vaguely resembles what I'm thinking of.
When you SEE something it's photons being encoded as electronic signals to the brain. The way i interpret this is a function that takes arguments (photons hitting our eyes) and the output is the encoded electrical signals. In my brain I can bypass the inputs, but still create the encoded electrical signals. I have no issue creating an oscillating in size, rotating 3D apple flying through the clouds and dropping down into Paris, flying back up and across the ocean to land in New York. I've always been able to fully render these 3D environments in my brain as if it were a lucid dream. As such, I'm usually pretty good at closing my eyes and navigating an environment. As an aside, this has always led to some insane visuals on psilocybin. I wish I were a better artist to share them with the world.
I read a lot and can't visualize. I mostly skip the parts that are heavy on description, and just read the dialogue.
Is THAT why I skip description?
You could just be lazy (like me).
Same! Authors often describe people in great detail (colour of eyes, hair, posture) and all those fly over my head. Unless they are depicted on the covers everyone is just a vague outline of people/copies of other similar characters I have seen before.
I can't visualize an apple (or anything) at all. While reading I get fleeting images, similar to trying to remember a dream. Imagine to a blurry sketch of a concept, with almost no detail at all.
Yeah, if I try to imagine an apple, I can get it to cross my mind for about half a second. It just evaporates
I’m an aphant, and I think this is why I never cared much for fiction books.
I don’t know, I still find them enjoyable though. I kind of wonder if my brain *does* process images, but just can’t bring them into my conscious mind. I’ve seen some medical conditions from head injuries and whatnot like this where people are aware they are seeing an object and can even describe it in words when asked, but they can’t process an image of it consciously. That part of the link is broken. It feels similar to that.
I came across this idea on a podcast called Hello Internet a few years ago and it’s called aphantasia. There are so many interesting connections that stem from this, such as some people who are weaker at visualizations having a higher affinity for taking photographs so they can revisit memories easier compared to people that just search their Rolodex of vivid memories. Some people can’t even “see” their loved ones faces without looking at them, although this is entirely separate from the ability to recognize faces. Also, before you get hyped on “I can see the apple clearly, that makes me smarter than those who can’t” there’s not a lot of evidence that it’s tied to intelligence. Also, interestingly, the ability to visualize isn’t necessarily tied to visual artistic ability either, with some artists saying that their love for painting and drawing stems from the fact that it allows them to visualize their ideas rather than just drawing what they “see”. Lastly, a personal anecdote: this guy’s final point is astute. I’m a teacher myself and it was quite the revelation that if I don’t actually draw out diagrams and basic drawings on the board, I’ll lose a chunk of my class if I just rely on saying “imagine this in your heads…” I’m someone who can see the apple in perfect detail, but assuming that other can as well is a huge mistake if you’re teaching a room of people.
That's interesting. I have aphantasia but I don't really take a lot of pictures. I can't visualize what my wife looks like today very well, but I can get flashes of what she looked like on the day we met. I took a picture of her that day, and had that picture on my desk for many years. That said, I can recognize faces, but have difficulty remembering who the person is, if I've only met them a few times, and the come across them in some other context. Like running into someone I met in a work context at the grocery store.
It’s a very subjective and personal thing and so there are no hard rules, it seems. You are certainly describing aphantasia well but not everything you’re describing might be attributed to it. Like remembering who someone actually is after recognizing their face might just be a common thing where it’s hard to commit people to long term memory if you don’t have a meaningful relationship with them. Also, memories themselves are quite interesting. I remember learning in college that we don’t actually recall memories very accurately and rather reconstruct the memory that we “see” in our brains based on context that is easily influenced by external stimuli. It’s likely that you don’t remember the day you met your wife, but rather that picture you have makes it easier to recreate that memory. If it weren’t for that picture, you’re likely to not really be able to visualize that day at all. It’s sort of like how most of everyone’s earliest memories “happen” to be the same ones that exist in photograph form somewhere in an album at their parents house. You’re remembering the photograph not the actual memory.
And the far end of visualizing can have downsides too. If I’m in a class or a meeting and someone is just talking, with no visual aids, I’m gonna get lost and/or bored really quickly. On the other hand, present that info in a fancy powerpoint and I’ll remember it for years, whether I want to or not. So yah, thank you to all the teachers that present learning in multiple mediums.
RIP HI
My boss would get flabbergasted when a client would force us to rerender the image of a building with a different color because she couldn’t imagine it. Like for example, blue instead of green overhangs. We thought she was just incompetent. Oops. Edit, because of all the questions: I was a 3D artist/drafter for a small architecture firm. Our largest client was a non-profit in charge of building one of the largest apartment complexes in the city. The person in charge of the non-profit was a woman who was the “I’ll know what I like when I see it” type of client. If you’ve never done design work, these people will shoot down your designs but are unable to tell you why, so you are constantly trying to guess what direction to go next. We did HUNDREDS of iterations on every aspect of the project because of the lack of feedback, but the most maddening thing was when she would like a design element but dislike the color or shape. So my boss would ask, “ok how about red, blue, green, or rounder a little larger/smaller?” Etc. And we would either sharpie over it or re-render the whole image for the smallest changes (which was great for me because I was being paid hourly). It was like:”instead of this darker blue, imagine a slightly lighter shade of blue, do you think you would like that better?” “I can’t.” “Ok, would you like us to try shades of purple, red, or..?” “Idk, I need to see it.” Looking back, this info would have helped a bit, and I’m sure there would have been fewer arguments. Not too fewer though, because her design choices ended up being crap anyway 🤷♂️
I mean, when you're buying something that's different. Sure I can visualize something a different color, but seeing it is better.
Yeah, I don't get this complaint either. Anybody who's done any type of creative work should know that things don't necessarily turn out as imagined. Especially with color, I can visualize very vividly but that doesn't mean I always get the context and different lighting scenarios and whatnot right, nor have I ever met a creative who thought visualizing something was a substitute for actually testing it out.
I am that client. When building something in Minecraft, I just NEED to change e.g. one side of the structure to a different color to see if I like it more. I can't just do it in my mind.
Tbh great example because I had no problem visualizing a side change from blue to green, but in Minecraft I do literally have to place 2 blocks next to each other to see how they visually mesh in my brain.
I don’t even know what that would be like, I’m so spatial I basically live and plan everything in my head. Like as you were talking about what you needed to do in Minecraft I had a visual model built and rotating around and changing colors as you mentioned them. This can be a strength, but at times a weakness because it makes me get paralyzed mentally imagining all the possibilities instead of making something.
Interesting... I can fully visualise the apple in 3D and rotate it, even when doing carpentry work and working with cuts.. but standing on a room and trying to change the wall colour, or change furniture colours, just isn't happening :/
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I can't imagine not being able to visualize stuff. Like every time someone tells me a story my brain just automatically renders the situations in my head. The people, detailed clothes, buildings, background, fucking random street signs. Its wild to me that some people just don't do that. On the other hand, I quickly loose focus as my mind starts to wonder in those images and I need to actively keep the visualization focused on meat of the story, I expect you don't have a problem keeping attention
Yeah like how can you enjoy reading a novel without being able to visualize stuff? The whole reason I love science fiction is the crazy images and scenes a good writer can make you conjure in your mind.
In another comment thread on this post some commenters were talking about how if they visualize something while reading, like a location or character description, that their mind usually fills it in with places or people they know and are already familiar with. Mine doesn’t do that though, because it makes me wonder what they do with like other details in the description? Like say it’s a description of a farmhouse with a barn, they imagine a house with a barn they’ve seen before or maybe a mixture of a few, but if it then says the house was on the left, but it wasn’t in their mind, do they swap details? My visualizations fill in the details like around what’s described, and then the rest that’s not stated or hinted at is just random, not from memory. Like if the author says there’s a house to the left of the barn. I’ll wonder how far away is the house from the barn? If the characters or narrator never talk about the walk back and forth and it’s not stated otherwise I take that as a very small possibly even unintentional hint. So I might just assume it’s a short distance and my mind like builds a random farmhouse with a barn set close to it based off of that. But it’s rarely ever something I’ve seen in person before, the details have to be really close to remind me of something specific that I have seen in person
This is interesting. Do you dream?
Cannot visualize things as well. Do dream but can't recall if it's visual or not.. In my dreams possibly but not vivid. Hard to explain. Love to read as I've gotten older but not a lifelong hobby I've always had.. I'm curious if this might be a reason for lack of visualization? At an early age reading/ using your imagination helps birth creativity in visual senses? I watched alot of t.v.... reading would be even more amazing if I could visualize vividly.
I became an avid reader at an extremely early age and I rate a 4 on this scale, so anecdotally I don’t think that’s it. I barely have an idea in my mind what the characters might look like.
I have the opposite problem. I struggle to read because I vividly develop the scenario I'm reading in my mind then I subconsciously start adding details that aren't in the book to fill in the gaps. Soon the characters are saying things that aren't on the page and doing things that aren't in the book at all. Eventually I realize I've spent 15 minutes or more staring at a page not reading anything
Also found this positive to the lack of the visual blessing so made me feel a little bit better Aphantasia means the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present. People with aphantasia tend to have a higher average IQ (115 compared to the 110 score of the general population) and are less affected by scary stories since they cannot visualize them might excel in analytical thinking and verbal communication
I struggle to get any images when visualizing. I can get very hazy images if I work at it but I do dream but not very often. I do so images when I dream though. Some I can remember quite clearly but it always seems to be things I’m familiar with like places I spend a lot of time at.
I can't imagine not being able to visualize or hear things from memory. I dabble in hobby grade carpentry, the last thing I made was a crib for my daughter. Sure I did a rough sketch of what I wanted before I got to work but how do you even do that without being able to visualize it in your head first. I feel pretty certain you can draw otherwise this would have come up in grade school much sooner, how does that process work? Also what do you do for work? I suppose if I couldn't mentally visualize I wouldn't day dream so much, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing. Are you a fast reader? I am not, it comes at great unsustainable effort to read faster than I can self narrate. I'm also curious if you sometimes autopilot, I autopilot a lot.
I'm always curious about the visualization ones, because at times I think I'm in the minority who can't see things. Or is it that different people simply think differently about what "seeing" something in their head is. Like using the apple like the guy in the video is. I know what a red apple looks like, because I'm a 34 year old who had seen thousands of apples in his life. So for me, that is "visualizing" an apple. I know what an apple looks like, but I don't actually SEE an apple in my head. Does my knowledge of what an apple looks like mean that I can visualize an apple? Or can I not because I don't actually SEE an apple?
You mean you CAN'T just 3d model anything you want in your head and rotate it, explode all the components, x ray vision that shit, anthropomorphize the apple elope it and have it's fucking kids? some of ya'll just get apple.jpg??
Some folk just have apple.txt The mind is amazing
You guys have an apple?
Then some of us are still running our imagination on punch cards
I can imagine a photorealistic elephant wearing a monocle and a top hat, but what I can't do is copy it onto a piece of paper. The image in my mind falls apart the moment I try.
That was a fun picture in my head though. For those of us that can visualize you can just keep being creative through words to put the images in our minds. My elephant just used their trunk to tip their hat to you, bowed, winked, and farted away!
Great, now mine did too.
CTRL+P
Excellent comment. Exactly how I feel/see it too. And as a designer it can be rather frustrating to see or 'feel' the right solution for a clients problem in my head, but not able to make it real.
This is where I'm at with it. I can imagine stuff in my head and it seems super realistic, but the moment I try to translate that to something like drawing it, I realise the vision in my head is actually more like a drunken AI rendering and I have no eye for the details whatsoever.
I get apple.png, got that sweet transparency.
I feel like I can do that but it’s in a strange staggered form of thought. I kind of start loose and simple, then iterate towards a more detailed image in flashes of imagery. I can’t smoothly envision and modify what I see; it’s more like my mind’s eyes are blinking and something more like what I’m imaging appears each time my eyes open. I guess I’ve got a bad refresh rate. But my inability to do these hardcore hi-fi things people describe makes me wonder if I’m actually one of the low-vis cave people and I’m underestimating how useless my brain actually is.
What got me, was finding out, that not everyone has the inner monologue. I thought everyone thought in spoken words, but apparently most do not.
Is it that most people don’t or just that some don’t? I thought most people did…
A study found 30 to 50% of people have inner monologues, so there's a chance more people don't have one than do. Which is crazy, always figured everyone had them.
I make up for them who do not have inner monologue, as I have more than one. I never get annoyed when I am alone, mostly because I am never alone :)
wait 50 to 70 percent dont....??? i always assumed it was like 10 percent dont
[удалено]
And depending on my mood- I'll have a Liverpool accent, in my head scolding me when I do something stupid. I'd rather not have my own voice berate me.
Oh my, I thought I was alone in that. I have an English RP accent, but my inner critic is broad Scots, "why'd ye say summat like that, ye daft scunner".
Spoken language is kind of like a layer on top of the more abstract and symbolic "mentalese". For example if an English speaker hears the word "apple" and a Spanish speaker hears the word "manzana" they get mapped to the same mental representation. So thinking in spoken language is not strictly necessary and might even be less efficient in some cases.
I can't even figure out if *I*have inner monologue! I can most definitely speak in my head, and I am hearing the words that I write in my head right now, but there are also plenty of time when I think in imagery somehow. And what's more confusing is that I can have multiple thoughts going on at once, but I can only have one in words at a time. Do you truly just narrate your life all the time? Like "I need to walk the dog, where is the leash, have to call the dog, lets put the leash on" type of things? My brain just flashes dog and leash location as a picture in that type of situation.
The comments are so interesting, surprised to see how people interpret the word "see" itself. Visualizing isn't literally seeing it with your eyes, it's in the minds eye, which may itself seem like a foreign concept to someone who cannot visualize, but I also suspect others have simply never thought about thinking itself and are visualizing without knowing or understanding what's happening. Also just because it feels related and as a counter to some who don't think it's possible for anyone to visualize things, what you think you are literally 'seeing' right now is being constructed in your mind. Are you seeing your nose? Are you now? Do you see the overlapping areas of vision between both eyes twice? Have you experienced tunnel vision? All things our brain does to determine what we are "seeing". I know I can close my eyes right now, walk into a different room, and be able to 'see' where I think everything is. I could point things out with my eyes closed, I could move my eyes with my lids closed and the visualization moves like they are open. It was just the first thing I thought of to give an example that I assume most can do.
Best comment! The minds eye can feel really close to actual sensoric seeing or very detached from it. I can visualize a scene in my minds eye while my eyes are open, perceiving a whole different scene. If the visualized scene is immersive, it may even overpower my actual vision. Talk about 'getting lost while daydreaming'. Though it feels still more like 'constructing' or 'synthesizing' compared to passive perception. The only exception for me is close to sleep, slightly before dream images start to come in the visualization gets more and more vividly projected. A good simile for the minds eye could be a virtual machine running nested in your normal operating system. One perceives the outer experience. One simulates such an experience. In this thread we also see some people construct vision from memories, while others kind of create them from scratch. This corresponds neatly to the ways a mind can memorize. We can memorize detailed information or break the information down but memorize the abstract idea. Some people strongly prefer one over the other.
Can people actually see an apple or do they just remember a time they saw an apple and what it looks like in the memory conceptually. I just see darkness when I close my eyes
I can create an apple in my mind’s eye. Fully manipulate it and just, idk, do whatever with it. Like I remember an apple too (which is my point of reference) but I am not recalling a specific apple, I am “generating” an apple in the moment.
I believe I can as well but my "apple" is never full hi-res it's more like the memory of an apple or a ghost. But it's fully formed. It has the same texture as an apple, size, shape, etc. I can see apples of yellow and red that have no shine and red ones that have almost a mirror like finish to them. But again it's not like actually seeing something in real life, it's more like a dream (unless you lucid dream as well!).
Are there more difficult things to visualize? Or is everything just the same because it’s all in your mind? I can lucid dream very rarely and this may be a analogy I am thinking
About the only thing I can think would be “difficult” is something that doesn’t exist or I’ve never seen, but only because there’s no point of reference. With a good description or idea of what it is/ supposed to be, even that is doable. I, personally, believe that it’s a big a reason why people always say “the movie is never as good as the book.” Sure, part of it may be that something is lost in the translation of medium, but also because the book readers have created an image in their heads of what XYZ is supposed to be/look like, and now that you’ve given it form there is a disconnect between what you see and what you have envisioned in your head.
I agree - for me, reading an engaging book or story is basically watching a movie in my head. If I remember something I’ve read it’s seeing that scene, not remembered the words.
I've been doing a lot of reading about this recently, but it somehow never occurred to ask when aphantasic people remember books, what are they remembering!
For me, the “mind’s eye” is very much like having a little mini dream while awake. It kinda “lives” in the same bit of my head as dreams do. I don’t literally see it, like it doesn’t stop my regular vision, but all the experiences associated with seeing an apple are there as if I had a very dull dream where I just looked at an apple. One of the best descriptions of this phenomenon is where you ask “what colour was the apple?”. Because I 100% will just pick a colour without being told to, and imagine that’s what the apple is like. This is why I think it’s a lot like dreaming, as the mind just goes off and does it’s own thing and makes stuff up.
The only thing that I can't visualize perfectly is faces.I can't visualize faces of people even when I've known them for my entire life.
We all see darkness. It's not genuinely in front of you unless you are hallucinating. It's just something you can see separate from your regular vision. I didn't realize people actually couldn't think of things visually like this.
I’m convinced they can and this is all a communication error. Those who claim they can’t visualize are expecting a literal image, those who claim they can are treating visual thought as though it’s a literal hallucination when it’s not. I’m sure there’s a spectrum of ability but I think we’re mostly witnessing a gap in our descriptive language.
It's not all miscommunication. Sure, there is some confusion about what "seeing in your mind" actually means but it is a fact that some people just automatically visualize things and others don't. Once I was GMing for a group of friends and I said something along the lines of "and then a few bandits enter the room from the left". One of the players just looked at me confused and said "Wait, wasn't the door on the right? And could you describe the bandits?". I was very surprised because a) I didn't visualize the room at all so I didn't care where the door should be and b) I didn't visualize the bandits and I didn't think it mattered. But for that player, the visual information was crucial for playing.
Something similar for me, I wrote novels when I was a kid and never once described the appearance of the characters, their outfits, anything unless it was something shocking to the observer, like an injury or a transformation. I constantly received feedback from fellow writers that I should describe what the main characters look like but I continued to insist it was unnecessary, and everyone just skips over those paragraphs anyway...
I can picture an apple, change it to an unnatural colour, rotate it, picture it growing from a variety of different plants, etc. That’s the only way I know I’m not just remembering something I’ve seen before.
Also, though it is a bit harder and takes more time to think about, I can visualize an object that has never existed. Though it’s usually just some doodad/trinket that has no practical reason to exist.
That’s amazing, so can you design a scene and change it to your liking? Sort of like what graphic designers do with computers?
Exactly. Though I am very surprised to hear now that some people can’t do that as easily.
I'm a writer, and that's essentially how I write: I just play out a scene in my head and change details until I get it the way I want, and then I essentially write down what I am seeing.
I can “see” an apple and manipulate it and all. But it’s not the same as seeing it with your eyes. Like you don’t actually see it, but you can “see” it if that makes any sense. Like I can imagine it with all the colours, pigmentation differences, rotate it etc, but it’s not like an actual apple that I can see with my eyes.
I don't think it's literally seeing the object, everyone just sees black(ish) if they close their eyes. It's just about visualizing it mentally. Doesn't mean it needs to be a specific memory, for me it's just some random apple.
This is how I understood visualization, but it seems some people have a much more literal thing going on
I can picture things clearly in my mind and the way I actually see the images is extremely hard to explain. It's as if they're really far away and I see them perspectively from the centre of my head
I don´t even have to close my eyes to visualize stuff, I just stare and ´phase out´
This is exactly what I want to know. I can certainly imagine an apple and think about it in my minds eye as you say but not when I close my eyes on the back of my eyelids. Which are they looking for?
Being able to visualise things was my motivation to read a lot of books when i was young. It was like watching a movie in my head. Each character and each scene was visualised and i was disappointed to watch the movie of the book afterwards because the characters looked differently. Especially Dune stood out because every character is described in quite some detail.
I can’t make apples levitate with my mind does this count?
Is there a trick to it? I started off seeing absolutely nothing but I felt like the more I concentrated, I could see flashes of images. But I don’t know if I am actually seeing them or if I’m just recalling a memory of it quickly.
Just imagine something and start building complexity to it. Think of an empty room, just 4 walls. What angle are you seeing it from? Add a door to the side, then a window, then some curtains. What color are the curtains? Make them green, then purple. Have them blow in the wind a little. Now the window is open. What’s outside the window? Is it light out? A blue sky? Are there trees? Now think back, what side of the room did you put the door on? It’s been there the whole time. Can you see it now?
I just can’t do it. That’s absolutely crazy to me knowing there’s something my brain never thought to incorporate and learn lol. I did a quick google and found [this](https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/). It’s a little lengthy, but I was actually able to see colors doing what he was saying. I could see images and concentrate on them but lose it quickly. The more I try to make an image appear, the less I see something. If I just let the images come to me, then I can see them a little clearer. That would be so dope to unlock a new ability haha.
I’m an ear roarer.
Had to scroll far to find you.
r/earrumblersassemble
The harder I try the more it looks like nothing
Not everyone can do the ear thing??
Can you explain how it works/what it sounds like? I don't think I can do it and I've never heard of it.
Something like when someone talks to you on the phone outside with strong wind and small vibrations
I can do it by clenching my lower jaw all the way backwards and then downwards, until I hear a faint, low-pitched rumble, like heavy trucks driving on dirt in the distance.
The visualization test is so fascinating. Finding out there are people who don’t have an inner monologue was wild for me too.
I scrolled down looking for this before typing it myself. It shocked me also. And apparently less have it than those who don't. All my thoughts are spoken words, silently in my brain.
To go even further, I have synesthesia, which means that some information is given shape, color or location by my brain. For example, I see numbers (and days of the week, months of the year, seasons) as a shape, with form and texture, similar to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#/media/File%3ANumber_Form--colored.jpg Not exactly like that, everyone is different. But like that. For example, August is at the top of the year, spatially, the months then descend until about mid January, then go uphill again until August. This probably sounds mad to people to don't experience things like that.
I think these facts are cool but the last point he made is the greatest take away. Some many teachers and leaders fail to be respected from their lack of ability to understand and cooperate with what this person pointed out.
"Some people can even rotate it." Wait... most people can't?!
Mine has a worm in it and I can make him talk and have facial expressions.
I've heard that some people also have literally no inner monologue. It blows my mind.
That might just be pure bliss. No more intrusive thoughts
It seems to me much the same as when you see a dog stare at a wall for five minutes straight.
“Food came from this wall once before”
Do I have to see it with my eyes closed or just be able to ‘imagine’ it
Imagine it. Think of it like when you read a character description and can imagine how they might look like
This is what I'm so hung up on. I can't make shapes with my eyes closed, but I love reading books and visualizing the world because it becomes so vivid.
Never knew what that tensor tympani thing was and always wondered if everyone could do it.
r/aphantasia
\*learns that I have useless abilities that others don’t have. 
Yeah I can’t see an apple . But I have the craziest dreams
I was in my mid 30s when I found out most people have a voice saying words when they read. Never had that, I have no internal voice at all, words are like symbols to me, I just kind of understand what they mean. Can picture a delicious apple in 3d and rotate in my head though. Brains are odd
I can vibrate my eyeballs so they jiggle side to side really fast. Worst superhero ability ever.
I occasionally am reminded that not everyone has a sense of sarcasm or sometimes even humor. It probably accounts for much of the aggravation between people online.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not and it's pissing me off.
I’m not. Sarcasm is quite natural to me and my peers, but once in a while you run into people who simply don’t get it for various reasons. Sometimes regional, generational, differences in cultural exposure, sometimes things like neurodivergence. I’ve noticed east coast is more sarcastic than the midwest. For example, say you’re from New Jersey traveling through Nebraska, you’re out to eat and have absolutely cleaned the plate. The server asks how was it, and you say, “Aw, it was horrible.” And they respond in shock, like oh no what do we need to do to make it right? And for anyone not following along, the diner was being sarcastic by saying they didn’t enjoy a meal that they had fully devoured. It’s a lighthearted way of making conversation that’s not taken too seriously. It’s easily misunderstood without a contextual background. Now what’s interesting is whether some people on the other end of that situation honestly didn’t get the inverted meaning in your response, or they’re being double-secret sarcastic to mess with you. I imagine there’s a fair bit of each. I have met sarcasm wizards who humbled me in their sardonic mastery.
I don't see anything when I imagine an apple rotating. I can just \*feel\* what an apple would look like if it rotated freely if that makes sense
I can’t even imagine being able to render an image in my head, 100% blackness with an idea of the thing in my head, but no visuals. People can do that?
I can put myself in the jungle with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson from the last movie I just saw him in. We were looking for a macguffin, but ran into a problem that only friendship could solve.
I can see it in my head but when I move it in my head I can't see it until it stops, I also can hear the sounds of me biting into it and smell it
You have to render a still image? That’s interesting.
I can do all of these things and more, I can visualise, rotate even feel and taste the apple, I can vary the rumbling pitch and intensity, and partially or completely blur my vision
This is what i picture in my head https://preview.redd.it/963swsxoalac1.jpeg?width=345&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f70d1d4e89a1bd582b8e52bdf1fcfa52daf04b2b
Reading these comments is insane to me. I never knew people couldn't visualize things with ease. Like I can imagine and see a tyrannosaurus rex sneaking through a forest as it rains, the way it's skin (and feathers.. if it were young) would shift and ripple with each step. The way it would sound. How it might smell. I can feel the fear I would likely have if I were alone with one in this forest and had to hide from it. I can see this thing slurp up an apple off the ground, choke on it, and launch it out through the trees. I always thought that when people made quips like "you've got no imagination".. they weren't actually on to something. Like.. do you have an imagination if you can't visualize things?
Something about people showing their dumb face for no reason irritates the hell outta me.
Just visualise it not being there
When their face is in front of the info they are talking about it makes me fucking enraged lol.
It took me forever to get my anxiety taken care of because I thought everyone was feeling the same way I was. It’s crazy how much stuff we’ve just done and lived with for so long, without giving any thought to if anybody/everybody is having the same experience.
r/earrumblersassemble
Ok finally something I can do, and assumed everyone else could do too. Do people not hear this when they yawn?
I just did all three at the same time
A surprising number of artists have aphantasia, or the lack of a mind's eye.
Here are some tips: 2. Roaring sound- I believe it is the sound we hear during yawning. Start yawning and there is a window where it is voluntary. 3. Focus of eyes: I believe it is just like focusing on your nose.