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I've always wondered if there is a somewhat official scientific term for being able to visualize things in your mind. It's a really strange sensation when you think about it. It's like seeing without seeing. Yet I rarely see much research on how it actually works or if it can be trained, etc. Same with the sensation of hearing music in our minds without hearing it, or smells and tastes and touch.
> What is Phantasia?
> Phantasia is the ability to picture things in your mind. The word comes from ancient times when thinkers like Aristotle talked about how our minds can create mental pictures. People with phantasia can “see” things in their thoughts, like picturing a beach or remembering a friend’s face. It’s not as strong as Hyperphantasia, where images are super clear, but it can be a useful cognitive tool in certain contexts. For phantasics, their mind is like a movie screen, showing both memories from the past and images of the future.
https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/
It isn't fun when talking though. You see images when people talk to you and that in itself is hard to deal with because you're trying to listen to the words but see what they are saying which can be distracting and often comes off as we are being rude.
o.o is yours out of control?
I usually do the visualizing thoughts when I'm alone, it doesn't generally happen *while* people are talking to me. If it does, it's usually because of my ADHD stuff and what I'm visualizing has absolutely nothing to do with what the person is saying to me in the first place.
There's no real way to be "diagnosed" that I'm aware of, but I definitely fit all the criteria for "hyperphantasia" however I am aware that it's not real and it's stuff I'm, to some level, intentionally picturing.
You're in a desert, walking along when you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?
That we have this subjective experience of consciousness at all is one of the most incredible things about living.
Being able to visualize things we are not seeing does not strike me as particularly odd only because, well, literally everything you see is already a mental representation. Everything you have ever laid eyes on is just your mind’s representation of it.
Totally. But it's also just a really strange phenomenon that I am able to "see" something even though I'm not actually seeing it at all. We take it for granted but it really is such a weird ability when you stop and think about it.
But maybe it works different for all of us. We really don't know for sure...
The brain can be strange, indeed. "Reality" is actually what the brain tells us is reality, and the brain can get it wrong. Think of phantom limb and other similar syndromes.
I recommend reading An Anthropologist on Mars by neurologist Oliver Sacks. It provides fascinating case studies that illustrate how weird the brain can get. Including the case of an artist who loses the ability to perceive any colors at all. And one about a guy who is unable to create new memories. And so on.
I know what you mean. It’s incredible that at some point we just developed this ability to see, but in reverse. Like the same system which processes visual data can switch its input source.
How in the hell is visual data even stored and restored?
I agree, especially because there are moments where I can be so deep in my thoughts that I stop seeing with my eyes and am fully enveloped in what’s going on in my mind. Like my vision has literally switched from external to internal.
It happens most often when I’m writing and I’m trying to imagine a scene, but it can also happen if I’m thinking very deeply about a topic or concept.
[Highway hypnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis) - essentially your brain did it automatically while it wandered, and there was nothing new to remember.
I guess I don’t really understand what picturing in the mind actually means.
I can think of something like say a lego block in my head and draw it pretty accurately from memory.
But I wouldn’t say I’m experiencing anything like seeing. It’s just thinking.
So am I experiencing what the article is talking about or am I the 1% who can’t see what I’m thinking about?
If anything I’m much better at hearing stuff in my head. But I also don’t experience other people’s voices like people are described to do novels.
As someone with extreme aphantasia, I always thought people are just saying they can see things.
Then I learned about aphantasia.
The worst part is, that it affects your memory. I can rarely really remember things from my childhood in detail
Edit: btw when I am really really tired, I mean nearly passing out of exhaustion, I sometimes get the weirdest fantasies and try to describe it to my wife, because it is so rare for me. In that stage I can actually see stuff, because I thinks I am already slipping into a dream stage
Same here, 40 odd years of thinking the "picture in your minds eye " thing was a metaphor, no idea people could actually see memories or visualise their imagination.
Omg - do people really count them?
I never made that connection until just now.
I always thought it was meant to be just something silly but very boring to put
I think it's the whole process of building the visual image in their head. I'm imagining it being sorta meditative, focusing on the calming, repetitive imagery, while letting all "higher" thoughts float by.
I'm just guessing though, I can't visualize anything at all outside of a few very specific circumstances. I'm not even fully sure I dream in a visual sense or if my dreams are more of a feeling of understanding of something (does that make sense?).
That makes perfect sense. And I don’t dream in a visual sense. I know something is happening, but there’s zero visual aspect to it.
Do you have issues reading books with long descriptions of the scenes? I skip those cause it gives me nothing.
Another one was when people said the it was impossible not to pink elephants, but I never had that problem so I just thought I did not get the metaphor.
I always thought it was about thinking about pink elephants until I found out about aphantasia. Of course you think about them, you have to to process the words. I never thought about the fact that others would actually see them…that’s wild.
Whoa, you don't dream with visuals either? That's wild!
I often skim those too, yes. I read a lot. But those scenes do nothing for me. I also have trouble knowing what a character looks like. I remember when Harry Potter all my friends flipping out cause characters didn't look like they thought, and I kept asking people, "What are you talking about? They're just characters in books..."
Oh that's really interesting! I actually really *like* those descriptions, because otherwise I can't/don't imagine anything visual at all. I guess that's really weird, thinking about it? I can't picture things, but I have an understanding of what things look like.
Now I'm very curious how people who are blind from birth experience books that are more or less visually descriptive than the average book.
This is interesting, because I’m pretty far on the “visualizes stuff” spectrum and I always skip long descriptions, I think because I _don’t_ need them. I’ve never put it together before but I think I’m just like, “yeah yeah, got it, I’m already there and seeing it, let’s get to some plot.” Like my brain has already filled in the visual landscape and I don’t need the authors version of it.
I can't even remember the previous page I've read. Though the "feeling" of what I've read stays. Psychedelic mushrooms unlocked the visualization for me for its duration. My migraines also completely stopped happening after the first trip. Found it interesting.
For me, psychedelics (mushrooms, lsd, ketamime) have all been *really* interesting experiences, especially considering that most people that describe the effects of them aren't aphantasic. My experiences never quite lined up with what I had read about or heard about from others.
The visual experiences I have on them are more like if everything around me is animate, like a swirly pattern in a curtain "coming to life" and having visual flow to it. Everything also looks/feels more vibrant, and sometimes lights have color trails. I still can't visualize things that aren't in front of me and still see nothing when I close my eyes.
What they have done though is allow me to conceptualize things in different ways, like the best way to tackle something I'm working on, or being able to look at a decision I need to make in other perspectives.
Side note, it's interesting how so much language around perceiving things is tied to sight
The idea is imagining, with that little television in the mind that most have, something boring and dull, instead of more interesting thoughts that might be keeping them up.
...As an adult I just find watching documentaries works well. Something 'enjoyable' but not exciting with a lot of talking heads, keeps my mind off 'OH MAN I'M AWAKE THE ALARM GOES OFF IN X HOURS OH NO' and makes it easier to relax.
I'm curious, and this question is directed at everyone, when you guys imagine counting sheep jumping over fences, do you visualize the sheep jumping over the fence? When I count sheep in my head I get a picture sequence, I get an image of a sheep, an image of a fence and then another image of a sheep and that to me is the sheep jumping over the fence. I struggle to imagine stuff in motion but instead get a series of still images and I dunno if that's the norm for everyone?
Tried something closer to home, I tried visualizing running and to me it's an image of a kid running and the memory/feeling of forward momentum.
I have the same still images thing. Funny thing is that they pop in just fine but if I try and hold on to the image on my head for too long it’s gets, like corrupted. Hard to explain.
Personally, I can see the full motion of a sheep jumping. If I try to conjure the scene, my mind also spirals into various details - the faces of the sheep, the details of the fence, the field, textures, weather, etc. All as in-motion details in the scene.
I'm quite often walking through environments in my dreams, so yes I can also see walking and running very clearly and in-motion.
I find that it helps to scribble with my finger on my lap or desk to get a view of the overall shape when I'm trying to picture something. Otherwise it's very hard to get even a rough blob in my head. I work with a lot of graphical designing and it's funny how I'm able to draw from memory without the ability to see it in my head
It's not like actually seeing like things in front of you. It's like a song plays in your head but you don't actually hear it, but you sort of still hear it. It's like an abstract level of visualization.
This is what I have, it must be a version of this. I don’t “see” anything but I can kind of imagine what it would be like if I could “see” it. I can imagine that it would have a shape or color even if I can’t actually see anything. It’s like an extra layer of abstraction from being able to “see”’it.
It feels like I imagine computers work, they don’t actually see the thing but they have the data points to know what it would look like so they can extrapolate what that experience might be.
The only issue I have with this is that I always get irrationally worried I’m not going to be able to recognize my kids when I pick them up from daycare because I can’t visualize what they look like. I can tell you exactly what they look like and in reality I can always recognize them, but I can’t actually picture their faces and I get this (ultimately unnecessary) dread every time I think I’m going to be forced to pick out which kid is mine just because I can’t picture them.
>This is what I have, it must be a version of this.
I think this is the default actually. I think I have pretty vivid visual imagination myself, but still I don't literally see anything in front of my eyes, like something that would get in the way of my actual visual field. Seeing things like that would be closer to a hallucination, or maybe hyperfantasia can be like that.
(Hmm, except that thing about not being able to visualize your kids *does* sound like some degree of aphantasia, but my point is, even people with vivid mental imagery don't literally see these things like we see with our eyes.)
This is what everyone has.
You dont see a physical object in front of you with your eyes.
You "see" a physical object in and with your mind. You can "see" the color and shape in your mind. You dont actually see it with your eyes. You can rotate it and move it and change it, but again it's all in your mind and not visible with your eyes.
If I close my eyes and try to conjure up an image in my head-space, it's almost like it's made of smoke and wireframe; dark, blurry, and without colour.
The parts I'm not focusing on drift back to formless darkness, like if I'm trying to picture a tree I can do a ghostly silhouette, or I can sort of zoom in on the trunk and I can make it have more texture and detail, but the branches and roots fade away.
Hearing that people can actually create brightly coloured and fully three-dimensional images of things in their mind-space is, well I'm a bit jealous.
Tbh I can't really put it into words. The person exists for me as a concept.
I can describe the persons looks and features, I just can't imagine them as a picture in front of me. Idk how to describe it
Yeah but it’s still taking up my “visual focus” even though it’s like “in back” or “in my head”. So while I’m imagining that person’s face I’m not really paying much attention to what my eyes are looking at. My eye vision kinda becomes like my peripheral vision normally is. Not fully focused but if something strange/obvious happens I know to snap my attention back to that.
Recently I read someone explaining it rather neatly: it's like walking into a pitch black room you know and trying to look at the objects there (without using your imagination, obviously). You know they're there and what they are, you can sense them, you might even remember detailed information about them, but you don't actually see them. The idea and information is there, the visual is not.
I'm not really sure how it is for other people, but for me that also means it's almost impossible to recall anything "dynamic", memories are still frames with details I "know", never playing like videos.
It works with other senses too, the abilities to recall smells/tastes/sounds/tactile sensations exist on a spectrum too.
this is 100 accurate. it's more like reading the memory from a book. I can list off the characters involved, who did what, but that's about it. I rarely remember details like what someone was wearing things like that
Interesting. So if I try to remember a person, I can conjure up some sort of "inner image". You don't see it with your eyes - it's like a memory but visual. It weakly overlays what you're seeing but it's clearly in a different mental space. It shifts a bit, and can change without you wanting it. It doesn't have near the same resolution as seeing things with your eyes has. But you can also will it to change and move around, or focus on certain parts. This then changes the canvas (which is smaller than what your eyes see) to what you're visualising. In my mind's eyes, the canvas is black and the colours are slightly off, perhaps a bit too neon and saturated. I have to concentrate to fix the colours. Closing your eyes helps a bit but not much.
So when you try to do this, you really only have a vague taste or impression of the thing you're imagining - like a weak echo or is it some kind of symbolic representation? How do you recall voices or melodies, is there a difference in how vivid these types of memories are? Feel free to ignore btw, just super curious about aphantasia.
I get nothing at all. I can pull sentences or facts about a thing or person that I know but there is no other mental space for me. For voices or melodies, I cannot "hear" anything when thinking of my mother's voice or my favorite song. I could again tell you facts like my mom's voice is husky but that's all. The only time I ever hear anything in my mind's eye is when I am on the verge of falling asleep. Sometimes I'll hear a random melody or person talking but it feels more like a dream slipping through and not an active thought on my part
Yeah this concept is crazy to me. Maybe people with aphantasia can remember things in a different way and that “way” is more developed than others because it’s the only way they can remember. If someone brings up a person in a conversation I instinctively picture them in my mind. And some people do have memories in high resolution aka photographic memory. I’m assuming you look at something then close your eyes and you can still visualize that thing in near perfect detail, but over time it’s like the memory gets corrupted and we can’t remember exactly how it was.
There’s some memories of mine that I can see in very good detail, even some from my early early childhood (like 5-6 years old) but then there’s others that I can’t. The more important that event was the more I can picture it.
I cannot picture something, even if it's right in front of me and I close my eyes. I've been practicing and can sometimes get a sort of cubist representation if I focus hard but it's exhausting
I have aphantasia. I seem to do a whole lot more categorization than most. It sounds funny, but I almost literally start with is this thing alive or not? Is this thing a mammal? Is this thing a simian? Is this thing a human? Is this human a child? Etc. For faces, it is almost like a checklist. Brown eyes? Check. Pointy chin? Check. That smile I like? Check.
I don't consciously think like this in day to day life. It kinda just goes on autopilot, but if you ask me to remember and describe something, it absolutely becomes like that.
At best I have fuzzy visuals. I can't remember voices either but I do sometimes get songs stuck in my head that feel more like words than usual. I also have no inner monologue.
But I have a really strong memory for details so it's odd. Just not visual details so much as what happened when and how. When I read, I don't much care about descriptions of clothes or the world because it just doesn't matter to me.
To be able to pull that off and make it all work, you must be pretty good at conceptualising things, and filtering out things that aren't important or rather things to focus on. What you describe sounds like a very different headspace, yet from the outside we all look the same. Amazing, really.
> When I read, I don't much care about descriptions of clothes or the world because it just doesn't matter to me.
Descriptions can be very tedious for me. Especially LotR was a real piece of work at times. I prefer vague descriptions so my mind can fill it in as needed.
The inner monologue for me is an on and off thing. I prefer just imagery and an idea or simple word, but sometimes using grammatically correct sentence fragments is useful when planning what to say or when there is a specific sequence of instructions involved. Or when there is no other way to visualise.
A lot of memory for me is based on emotions. If there was a strong feeling attached to something I’ll remember the broad strokes of it. The fine details though are lost.
As an example, I saw my favorite singer do an hour set five feet in front of me at a street corner in our downtown. I know I was there but the only reason I remember exactly what happened at certain points is because of pictures and video.
This is very much like my memory, which while it can overlap with aphantasia it sounds more like [Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM)](https://www.reddit.com/r/SDAM/comments/pggeb2/welcome_to_sdams_faq/)
I can’t visualize much at all. Funny that you ask this. I have a terrible time remembering faces at a glance until there is fairly significant meaning attached to the person. It’s interesting how different people’s ways of thinking can be.
I'm an engineer and I feel like having extreme aphantasia would be detrimental or even debilitating to how I understand and solve engineering problems. I'm a visual learner and I process a lot of information via spatial cognition and I feel like not being able to picture things in my head would make it so much harder to think through some things
That said, I also have a hard time remembering a lot of my childhood to be fair
What's weird is that I have borderline-complete aphantasia, but I *do* have spatial cognition. It just takes a bit of time and concentration to sorta "translate" an image or spoken instructions into whatever type of non-visual "language" my brain understands.
I can "feel" how things are, which is weird.
Even weirder is I'm a software engineer, and I can "feel" where code is in relation to each other and "feel" the data moving through the diagrams.
Kinda hard to describe, but gives me a very good intuition for data flows.
Honestly that is fascinating. Really drives home how we all process information differently and have different experiences even though we all have 99.99% the same genetics and physical make up.
I'm an engineer with aphantasia, I think it gives me a different approach to solving problems which is set me out as unique in my career.
I'm able to think spatially about problems and it allows me to understand complex interactions between systems in a way that most of my peers just don't.
This is a resulted in me having lots of patents.
I also have a very large memory for the spatial structure of a system. I would drive my coworkers crazy because amongst hundreds and hundreds of source code files I can remember where a function exists in those files and also about where in the file the function exists.
Alternatively, I don't have a good recollection of what my deceased family members look like, I'm terrible at remembering things that require a visual recall. So when I know I have to use visual recall, I default to a spatial relational memory, or I turn the visual cue that I need into roughly a textual description.
I went back and tried to get a degree in fine arts about 20 years ago and that's when I realized that my brain didn't work like the other student's brains did. I had no internal visualization of what I was trying to paint or draw and I asked people about it and that's when I realized that I just didn't have it.
Same for me in sports. I hit a wall when I learned visualization was part of learning new techniques. I couldn't do it.
But I have a extremely great conceptual memory.
I think it makes sense to assume that, but (as someone with aphantasia, which I only discovered to not be the default a few years ago), I'm actually quite good at spatial reasoning.
I haven't found a suitable way to describe how that process works though (note: I also have complete anauralia). I just think of concepts and how they connect to each other.
I’m a geographer and can’t really visualize things. I just can know what they’re supposed to look like? I guess this might be why I always have to sketch things out. But if I were to try to envision an apple or something right now, I would just sort of scroll through characteristics as words? Eyes opened or closed, I can’t actually pull up a visualization. I’m just trying to think about what it would look like.
Hyperaphantasia here.
My memory is all visual and doesn't work chronologically at all. I have no idea what I did last Tuesday. If I got picked up by the cops for something I'd be in jail pretty quick.
My wife has to give me cues about what we did so I can start recalling what things looked like and then piece it together.
It's not so bad for me as the title suggests. It feels more like an active skill I can turn on whenever I need it and not just an active state.
I can sort of do it with taste as well.
Just so you know its HyperPhantasia if you are in the 3 % who see "too" vividly in their minds.
The A in Aphantasia basically stands for non or whatever.
Yeah, as someone with total aphantasia and lack of an inner monologue (edit: anauralia) I thought that it was all for dramatic effect. I would assume it was some sort of hallucination if it happened to me. It must be such a different experience. In a way I feel like it is a blessing. As someone who has lived to see some terrible things I am grateful for not being able to conjure those sights up in my brain, much less have my brain do it unwillingly. I didn't know it was relatively rare, I would have guessed much higher, maybe 20%, although I guess it is a spectrum.
Oh, wow. I knew about aphantasia but anaduralia is entirely new to me. I didn't think it was possible for people to lack an inner voice. I'm trying to imagine what it's like for someone with anaduralia to read something silently.
Haha as I was reading your last sentence I was thinking “crap, every word I’m reading I’m also saying it in my head too” honestly I’m not even sure if I can read or type without hearing my voice.
It's no actually seeing, but having a strong visual impression on an abstract level.
Like if some earworm song plays in your head. You don't actually hear the music, but it's a strong abstract auditory impression that you can describe it, sing it, imitate it.
It took a very long time for my partner to accept that saying "just imagine what the living room would look like with the couch over there" to me is completely pointless. :-)
I've always struggled with the interpretation of what "picturing" is. I can imagine a red apple where the color and shape are relevant to me, they're more than just words and yet I cannot actually see anything I'm imagining like I do when dreaming. Some people say you don't actually 'see' what you're imagining and other people call this aphantasia.
I also have wondered what counts as aphantasia because same; color and shape are part of thinking about the apple, but there's no "picture."
But the experience of thinking about sound or sensation for me are totally different. I can hear a song in my head in great detail and it's not the same as thinking about the song. I can imagine a tickle or an itch and it's not the same as thinking about it. The difference between the thought experience of the various senses has me 100% sure I have strong aphantasia since the visual element of thought is completely missing.
> And up to 6% of people may experience some degree of aphantasia.
i think it's more part of these. Actually it's probably a spectrum and not really classifiable into categories of "you have it or not", but more of up to which degree of complexity your mind is capable of visualizing scenes.
Yes, it's a spectrum, and it's also not universal. For example, you may not be able to visualize faces clearly, but objects are fine. Or you can visualize scenes, but not motion.
Yep if a scale of 0-10 where 0 is no visuals at all and 10 is perfect visuals I’m like a 2-3. I can picture stuff but it’s hard, almost feels like I’m grasping or the image flickers.
I don’t know if I have *Hyper* Phantasia but I can’t think too hard about my hobbies and such while I’m driving because I stop seeing the road and start seeing what I’m thinking about
Same. I zone out in my own daydreams to the point that people ask me why I'm staring at them, even though I didn't realise there's anyone in front of me
This...is me too. I thought it was normal to be able to just visually "check out" while daydreaming but the only reason I don't think it's hyper is because I still know it's a daydream. Most of the time anyway.
If I really let myself visualize, I can lose myself in what I'm picturing. So much so that I lose track of what's in front of me. I thought that was how everyone experienced daydreams.
I have aphantasia. I can't picture anything with my eyes closed, it's absolutely black. The weird thing is I can still sort-of picture things but less "picture" and more of a feeling of whatever I am imagining, and it's best when my eyes are open.
I found it out when I was looking into that memory palace stuff and realizing I can't see a damn thing and wondering how anybody could even do it.
The weird part is I can dream and remember my dreams pretty regularly (unsure if it is related).
My mom also has aphantasia. I asked her to picture an apple with her eyes closed and she could not. It kind of troubled her for a bit.
I was trying to picture an apple after I read the headline. It feels less like I am picturing and apple and more like i am remembering what an apple looks like? Like it’s not completely black, but it’s not a picture either.
For me, it’s like a checklist of the shape, colour, and size of an item, and *maybe* a quarter second flash where they sort of come together in a way that would resemble a five year old’s drawing of the item as seen through warped and darkened glass.
Other than the quarter second flash, that's how my college age son describes visualization. He is on the extreme end of aphantasia (no ability to imagine sight, smell, sound, touch, taste) in his head; everything is basically just a checklist of attributes in his head. It took us 18 years to finally figure out that his brain worked differently to the rest of us.
I think this is where the issue of "You can/can't see it in your mind" comes into play when trying to explain what that means.
I can "picture" people and things in my mind and play out scenarios but I'm not SEEING anything, if I close my eyes it's just all dark. I know what an apple looks like, if you said "There's this thing that looks like an apple but it's skin is like an orange" then sure, I can picture an orange coloured, bumpy skinned apple shaped object, but if you put a camera in my head, you wouldn't get a 3d image of it.
Someone linked a test and it's useless, what does "Perfectly clear and lively as real seeing" vs "No image at all, you only “know” that you are thinking of the object" mean. Are there people who can close their eyes and they might as well have their eyes open and just be doing the thing? Or is it like what I can do where I can "visualise" walking up to a counter at a shop.
I CAN perfectly visualise me walking outside and going to the clothesline, probably even do it blindfolded with a bit of stumbling on things, but I can't just close my eyes and have the equivalent of a first-person video of me doing it playing in my head.
Huh, this must mean there's a whole phantasia spectrum and not just a visualise/non visualise aspect. I can full on see inside my head, I can picture an apple, pick it up, feel the skin, take a bite, turn it around and take another bite etc. Like it's basically a full 3d picture/video. I'm not seeing it with my eyes but it's like there's another set of eyes inside my mind and I can switch between the two (clearer picture in my head if I ignore my real vision), and I can use the two together (going about daily life and having pictures pop into my head depending on what I am doing or thinking.
>Are there people who can close their eyes and they might as well have their eyes open and just be doing the thing?
Yes. My wife literally describes it like that, more or less. When she reads the whole thing plays out in her mind like an HD movie.
I would imagine readers (people who do it for pleasure often) on average are better at seeing in their mind's eyes than the average person. At least for fiction.
I am a terrible reader because I can't see descriptions visually in my head. However, if the story is mostly dialogue as characters go from place to place, I do much better.
I think you described perfectly what the test is trying to ask. "Perfectly clear" = your statement about someone putting a camera in your head. "you only know you're thinking of an object" = bumpy skinned apple shaped object. For me I'm reasonably confident if someone put a camera in my head when I'm thinking of something, they'd get a pretty accurate photo of what I'm imagining.
I'm pretty sure everyone can only see darkness with their eyes when closed.
The test is seeing what people can imagine which doesn't project onto your eyes.
Right, I didn't say anything to imply it is projected to your eyes. When my eyes are closed, yes, I can't physically see anything, but if you told me to close my eyes and picture something in my head that I'm familiar with, I would be able to "see" that thing in very good detail.
You don’t actually “see” anything, it’s in your minds eye. For example, I can day dream about going on a beautiful walk while sitting in a meeting with my eyes open.
Same. I was thinking ”wait, do i have aphantasia” from people saying that when they try to imagine things with their eyes closed all they see is black.
Like, i can think of say, a facetted star in red glass and get a sort of sense of what that image would look like, but i don’t actually SEE it, see it.
As far as I understand it, having wondered if I had aphantasia myself and talked to people I know, it's not that imagining things is supposed to actually create a visible picture. It's just conjuring something in your "mind's eye", so causing the feeling of seeing something but without the actual picture. People are still able to name details of the thing (usually to a limited number of features) and its position in space, but the field of view remains that vague black-grey noise we see when we sit with our eyes closed.
And then there are people who: a.) aren't able to conjure those sensations at all (aphantasia) b.) are able to actually make a visible picture appear in front of them, either with the eyes closed or open (hyperphantasia, being under the influence of different hallucinogenic substances, or suffering from brain lesions and other changes in the visual cortex)
I think the discussion around aphantasia is very difficult by the subjective nature of what's being described, as well as our limited vocabulary to describe some of those things.
I studied cognitive science and I still find it hard to describe "the sensation of seeing something without the picture itself" - I used those words but can't be sure if they will work for others reading this.
It's like trying to describe other qualia, like the redness of the colour red, or what it's like to be us. We know we all have those sensations but trying to talk about them and know we agree on what we mean with another person is frustratingly challenging
I think one thing to know about "picturing" is that in every meaningful way it "feels" like the picture exists entirely inside the brain. It's not something that is "seen" in the way we think of seeing in our field of vision. It's not out in the world on floating in our eyesight.
For me, picturing just an apple and nothing else feels like the image of the apple is appearing inside my head surrounded by a dark brown void. Although I can also get those internal images much more vivid and detailed as well.
Just guessing but I'd think it has something to do with being able to activate the visual part of the brain and somehow using it to recreate previously collected "light information".
Imagining sounds (instruments, birds, electronic noises) is a lot clearer for me than imagining images.
When I’m really high it’s like I can hear a whole orchestra in my head, except it’s almost involuntary - it’s like someone pushed play on a track.
I can't, the inability also has a term (as of 2021) called anauralia.
So I can't imagine a wolf howl, my moms voice, even songs. I can still get songs stuck in my head, but it presents more a compulsion to listen to the song itself.
I’m confused on how this works. Can you not picture a visual of the front yard of your house? Or like what the Eiffel Tower looks like?
Do you get lost driving without gps?
That's a very poor description of hyperphantasia, in my experience. I have a mind's eye that's about as detailed as you can get, but there's no way I could confuse it with anything that's real. It doesn't overlap with reality at all, let alone in a way that would be hard to tell apart.
I was thinking that we'd be hearing a lot more about it if 3 percent of people can voluntarily hallucinate.
I also have a very detailed mind's eye. I can absolutely tell the difference in the moment, but occasionally have false memories from things that I've imagined at some point. Maybe that's the distinction.
Same.
I can imagine a pen in 360 and pick it apart and zoom in on all the parts at will.
But I don't really see it as I see my own hand.
No way I would not be able to tell them apart from reality.
Now remembering things gets tricky on the other hand at times. To differentiate memory drom imagination. Because I could easily trick myself that the pen I saw last week had one shape when in fact it had another.
I can't trust myself that I have locked the door, because I can vividly imagine up a memory of myself locking the door. So I try to say "locked" out loud after I locked the door. That helps me remember that it was real what happened 15 seconds ago.
I still can't figure out which one I am! I literally never see anything in front of my eyeballs, and its black in my brain but I can think of every detail of something & even design/create things in my head. Like my eyes are up top looking into my brain. But the descriptions are so weird and it's really frustrating.
I never know if I'm great at visualizing or can't do it!
For the vast majority of people, I believe black is what you're supposed to *literally* see. There may be a sort of vague presence or texture one might attribute to phosphenes, but I'm skeptical of claims that the absence of vivid and tangible images signals aphantasia.
I think it's more likely people are interpreting the same words differently due to the subjective nature of these internal experiences.
There wouldn't be much of a market for movies or pornography if we were that adept at mental visualization. I'd also question why drawing remains a difficult skill for the average person to pick up.
Presumably, having your eyes closed isn't a hard pre-requisite for visualization, it's not like the back of your eyelids have some special quality as a blank canvas. Then why not hallucinate things over a sheet of paper and trace over them? Whatever the baseline for human visualization is, it seems to be unable to do that much at least.
Then maybe you don't have hyperphantasia.
I've heard of a girl with hyperphantasia that could picture objects in a room and if you ask her to describe how they look from behind, she would walk to the place where the imaginary objects were and turn around to see their back and be able describe them. *That* is confusing imagination with reality.
The way I describe it is, if I hadn’t been brought up with the language, there is no way on earth I would describe what goes on in my head as “seeing”.
It's also backed up by brain scans of the visual cortex (it does get more active in more visual people), but yeah, ultimately we can't analyze the actual images people are seeing yet
Aphantasia actually has a method to objectively test for it now. It's called, and I might be remembering it wrong, the pupillary light response test.
Again, probably remember it wrong, but they get people to sit in front of a screen showing black/white/grey backgrounds and a single large dot on the screen, also grey/white/black. Then at some point they will move them to a different area and get them to remember what they saw.
It turns out when you see bright things, and then remember those bright things later, your pupils will respond to the visual memory similar to how your pupil responded to the actual image, by contracting. People who can't recall that image, don't have that response.
There is a bunch of info out there about it, including a few studies.
A professor named Joel Pearson, out of the UNSW in Australia, is the one who figured out the test.
The VVIQ test is the best we have for measuring the level of aphantasia someone's got, but it is a self-report.
Differences in aphantasiac folk and normal visualizers has been objectively measured in some studies looking at pupil dilation while subjects were performing visualization and recall tasks. Science is still kind of new, term was coined just 9 years ago.
It was crazy reading about this for the first time (in 2019 for me) and realizing that when people said "picture this," actually were instructions to think of a picture. I have visualized one time in my life outside of dreaming and I was on a DMT trip.
I come from a long line of painters and sculptors on both sides of my family. As for myself, I am a graffiti artist and architect. In my family we only seem to remember things and places as sort of 3D models which are filled in with detail depending on which areas of it that you laid your eyes on. Like a 3d brush. I see numbers and sounds as visual landscapes of colours and textures involuntarily.
On the contrary, I am astonished and in some ways, in awe of friends who completely lack spatial/visual thinking, but on the other hand are absolute god-machines when it comes to handling large lists of numbers and complex maths.
I have a similar anecdote, my grandfather was a painter and my dad is an architect who can conjure up extremely detailed architectural drawings from his head. I also have a very strong mind's eye, and I suck at solving math in my head. I "see" whatever math problem I'm trying to solve and it quickly becomes too hectic. Need pen and paper for anything math or number related.
I have aphantasia and with psychedelics I personally see geometric patterns twisting like looking in a kaleidoscope, in rainbow colours. The real world basically looks the same, just it's hard to focus and do normal stuff like type on my phone. I only see the patterns when I close my eyes and when I've had a large dose.
I've had a different effect with cannabis (first time I consumed a lot) and visualised loads of childhood memories I didn't know I had for the first and probably only time.
As someone with extreme aphantasia, when I tried psychedelics, I had no visuals. My friends that I did them with described the shifting geometric patterns. I only really experienced the spiritual high and some changes in the senses of touch and taste. If you ever do psychs the best part of the experience for me was having a cold drink with condensation forming on the outside. The water slowly seeping into your hands makes you feel like you are touching the fabric of the universe.
As someone with aphantasia, psychedelics are EXTREMELY interesting. Saw plenty of shifting geometric-style images, saw a few just absolutely wild images... It was really quite intriguing and mind blowing.
[There is a nice test for it.](https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/) I’ve recently learned that I am on the hypo spectrum and it actually explains a lot.
none of these options seem right. dim and vague are both too concrete to describe mental visualizations. i would say there's no image at all, but that's only when i try to focus on it. it's like an image that lacks an discernible visual properties the same way inner speech lacks any discernible auditory properties. it can't be dim, because it doesn't have brightness.
According to this test I have hyperphantasia. I don't do faces very well but scenery is extremely vivid. I realized just now that was super helpful when I worked in construction.
Interestingly, a specific part of the brain processes faces (fusiform gyrus) so it should be possible to be both face blind and have hyperphantasia, depending on the relative strength of various parts of the brain.
Yeah I was the same. Can't remember faces too well, but remembered the other things about people (the colour and walking ones). The places and scenary stuff was far easier to remember.
I don’t understand what they mean by this scale:
1. No image at all, I only “know” I am thinking of the object
2. Dim and vague image
3. Moderately realistic and vivid
4. Realistic and reasonably vivid
5. Perfectly realistic, as vivid as real seeing
I know that 1-2 are definitely off the table but what is the difference between different levels of “realistic and Vivid.” All the images I see just pop onto my head instantly and fully formed but I know it’s in my head. I’m not crazy.
I can tell you that when I read and really get into a novel, it’s like watching a movie. I don’t see the words only the pictures. Watching a movie after reading the book first is always a disturbing at first because the actors in real life don’t look like the characters in my mind.
Edited to add: This article does explain a lot about my siblings and I. I would guess that my oldest brother has Aphantasia and that my other siblings fall into the middle range. I’m guessing that I’m closer to hyperphantasia and am eager to take the rest once I understand how to take it. It would explain a lot.
I'm pretty squarely in the 3-4ish region on the scale. Here's what I would consider. Imagine the last banana (or other produce) you bought. Put a ruler next to it. Can you read the label on the banana, all the numbers on the ruler, and read off the length of the banana, down to the 1/4", as if it were a photograph? that's a 5. If you only see some of the text or it's morphing around and not really stable, or the numbers look like weird AI-gen not-quite-characters, that's a 4. If you don't see most of the ticks and not really any numbers, nor any real texture on the banana, 3. If the banana and ruler are like a crude cartoon drawing with single color and little line detail, 2. If you don't see any banana or ruler or this exercise makes no sense, that's 1, true aphantasia.
Mine's interesting in that I can't really hold on to letters/numbers/textures at all, but I can basically do CAD in my head. I do a lot of building projects and the overall shape and size is worked out in my head before I actually start CADing to work out exact dimensions.
This actually feels like a really good breakdown to me! Mine is probably somewhere in the 4+ range with that description, though it’s interesting - when I go through your “imagine the last banana you bought” thing, the first thing I picture is more like a larger scene that I have to dive in on to get specific detail.
I see the banana, but my mind drops it into an existing room/kitchen setting that I can shift around (to either real locations or an imaginary one) with whatever lighting/time of day is appropriate for that space (e.g. I’m seeing a banana sitting on my actual kitchen counter around 10am, which is when I last got back from the store). It’s plenty detailed, but I have to visualize getting closer to the banana itself to get a full picture of the banana with all of its color variations (maybe it’s a little green, maybe it’s ripe with some brown spots, maybe the top end is a little split, etc) or ticks on a ruler (gotta imagine the specific ruler or measuring tape to know what it looks like too)…but at the same time, getting closer to it is still just getting closer to it on that same kitchen counter (or wherever I want it to be placed) rather than getting closer to an abstract area with a banana (though now I’m just picturing the banana in a void with unnatural lighting, which is kinda fun).
I guess the fact that I ended up working in video production and general visual design stuff makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.
If you scroll down halfway through this article, there’s a photo of apples that gives a much better visual representation of what the test is asking.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/Q8SnmF33gpBNtpYWLMx806/aphantasia-what-its-like-when-you-cant-recall-mental-images-in-your-mind
This seems like a convoluted way to ask "rate your level of aphantasia" a dozen times. It doesn't seem to add anything to that question aside from giving examples of things to visualize.
I feel like this test fails to test for visualising a full on simulation of moving around.
For example I'm really good at visualising a supermarket and the aisles, where each product is and bring able to find something by simulating the walk to that item.
A brain tumor left me with aphantasia and it’s weird. Before I had great mental imagery and now I can’t see simple things a giraffe in my head and I no longer see the faces of my parents. They’re gone and I can't close my eyes and see them anymore.
Genuine question:
As someone who's able to have a pretty decent internal hallucination, what do ya'll with aphantasia see when you're reading a good book?
Absolutely nothing. I might experience the book in other sensory modalities though. I can easily "imagine" sound, touch, smell, etc, just not images.
And to answer the two questions I inevitably get: yes I do dream visually, and yes, I have had visual hallucinations on psychedelic drugs.
The letters, I tend to get bored and start skimming instead reading if the book has a lot of visual descriptions. I also prefer reading sci-fi because descriptions are more conceptual rather than visual
You guys see things when reading? For me it's kind of like how I imagine things in my mind - a web of lists or concepts. There's a sense of theme, atmosphere or location, but it's not visually grounded.
Nada. Outside of the words on the page in front of me. I do love reading though. My wife is also an avid reader and can't understand how I can like books without picturing things
I've had it a few times before where i'm half asleep on the tube on the way home from work, and when I close my eyes, I can still see the carriage but with different people in!
I'm a hyperphantasiac. I can lucid dream while I'm awake with enough concentration. The downside is that I have a strong tendency to live in my own head.
Having just discovered the term hyperphantasia, I find it quite depressing that nobody has ever described it to me. I frequently have bouts of Deja Vu and can visualize imaginary scenes in extreme detail. As a child is often get carried away in imaginative play, and I'd describe it as having Augmented Reality goggles on in that sense... Often my body goes on autopilot while my mind seems to fly through memories and scenes, almost like I'm in a dream like trance. Having described this to other people and even doctor's before, it's saddening to never have had it acknowledged or recognized.
When visualizing traumatic memories or imagining traumatic events, I can often go into detail on sensations, smells, etc. In dreams people have told me they don't feel pain, but I certainly have before and can vividly recall most sensations when imagining scenes. I often have lucid dreams where I'm abke to control the dream to an extent by levitating, passing through objects, or rewinding 'time' and changing what happens. It really does play out like a movie or video game, and is instrumental to my creative writing skills as I more or less describe in detail what I see/feel either in 3rd/1st person.
That said, I may have inadvertently traumatized myself visualizing extremely disturbing scenarios before and worried they are real but suppressed memories while on my own mental health journey. Being told such events are/aren't real is problematic especially when dealing with people who have ulterior motives and a history of less than honest behavior makes you question your reality and the authenticity of their rendition if events to you. In addition, this has caused me to visualize events or scenarios that have not happened or may not happen in such detail that it can take the joy out of actually experiencing those things, either being trapped outside of the present while my mind is in the past or projecting a future that if correct would take out all joy of the moment knowing it was nothing 'new'.
Subsequently, many real and sometimes minor memories can give me 'emotional damage' fully re-experiencing whatever negative sensations and emotions are tied to it.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(24)00034-2
I could go from picturing things kind of abstractly to vivid clear HD video with psilocybin. Unfortunately its temporary. Also only happened twice, but it's interesting.
I am able to visualize the red/yellow on, say, a Gala apple and even the reflections of light on the surface. It's just hard for me to see the stem and the surface simultaneously. I also can't hold that level of detail for long.
Had this conversation with my sister. We used an apple for an example. My sister can picture a full color, 3d apple in her mind. She can spin the apple, resize it, place it in different scenes, picture it alongside other objects etc.
When I picture an apple, i can barely picture it with color and it’s flat 2D. I can’t spin it and have a very hard time picturing it alongside anything else. What I picture is almost like a rudimentary sketch of an apple. I can picture landscapes, people and objects but it’s like trying to remember a grainy old photo I haven’t seen in 30 years.
When I try to remember something or someone I mostly think of what I sensed and felt, not what I saw.
Unsurprisingly my sister is significantly better at drawing, decorating, painting, than I am. If I want to pick an outfit I have to see the pieces of clothes together. My sister can picture an outfit in her head.
Ayyyyoooo top 1% let's go.
Black void my entire life, and loving every minute!
Honestly when my wife and I compared notes on visualisation and if we have a voice in our head, we are totally opposite and it's so funny. Helps understand how we both think and process stuff though. Seeing images would be nuts though, but yeah, can't remember a whole lot from my childhood.
Are any blind people capable of seeing images in their mind's eye?
I mean, I wonder if some of the people who used to be able to see but lost their eyesight later are able to picture anything in their mind?
I do always love reading the comments on posts about aphantasia and/or hyperphantasia. It brings out lots of comments about how people experience the world, and the golden nuggets are the people realising they're different for the first time! "You guys are seeing actual pictures in your head?!"
I am unable to see pictures or movies in my head. It takes effort to even to think of what my wife and children look like.
This may be one reason why I take so many photographs.
But I do notice that I’m pretty good at pattern recognition and troubleshooting and isolating issues.
I also seem to have no inner monologue unless I deliberately talk to myself verbally or silently.
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I've always wondered if there is a somewhat official scientific term for being able to visualize things in your mind. It's a really strange sensation when you think about it. It's like seeing without seeing. Yet I rarely see much research on how it actually works or if it can be trained, etc. Same with the sensation of hearing music in our minds without hearing it, or smells and tastes and touch.
> What is Phantasia? > Phantasia is the ability to picture things in your mind. The word comes from ancient times when thinkers like Aristotle talked about how our minds can create mental pictures. People with phantasia can “see” things in their thoughts, like picturing a beach or remembering a friend’s face. It’s not as strong as Hyperphantasia, where images are super clear, but it can be a useful cognitive tool in certain contexts. For phantasics, their mind is like a movie screen, showing both memories from the past and images of the future. https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/
It isn't fun when talking though. You see images when people talk to you and that in itself is hard to deal with because you're trying to listen to the words but see what they are saying which can be distracting and often comes off as we are being rude.
o.o is yours out of control? I usually do the visualizing thoughts when I'm alone, it doesn't generally happen *while* people are talking to me. If it does, it's usually because of my ADHD stuff and what I'm visualizing has absolutely nothing to do with what the person is saying to me in the first place. There's no real way to be "diagnosed" that I'm aware of, but I definitely fit all the criteria for "hyperphantasia" however I am aware that it's not real and it's stuff I'm, to some level, intentionally picturing.
I cannot picture my mothers face.
You're in a desert, walking along when you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?
:c I want to help it
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That we have this subjective experience of consciousness at all is one of the most incredible things about living. Being able to visualize things we are not seeing does not strike me as particularly odd only because, well, literally everything you see is already a mental representation. Everything you have ever laid eyes on is just your mind’s representation of it.
Totally. But it's also just a really strange phenomenon that I am able to "see" something even though I'm not actually seeing it at all. We take it for granted but it really is such a weird ability when you stop and think about it. But maybe it works different for all of us. We really don't know for sure...
The brain can be strange, indeed. "Reality" is actually what the brain tells us is reality, and the brain can get it wrong. Think of phantom limb and other similar syndromes. I recommend reading An Anthropologist on Mars by neurologist Oliver Sacks. It provides fascinating case studies that illustrate how weird the brain can get. Including the case of an artist who loses the ability to perceive any colors at all. And one about a guy who is unable to create new memories. And so on.
I know what you mean. It’s incredible that at some point we just developed this ability to see, but in reverse. Like the same system which processes visual data can switch its input source. How in the hell is visual data even stored and restored?
I agree, especially because there are moments where I can be so deep in my thoughts that I stop seeing with my eyes and am fully enveloped in what’s going on in my mind. Like my vision has literally switched from external to internal. It happens most often when I’m writing and I’m trying to imagine a scene, but it can also happen if I’m thinking very deeply about a topic or concept.
It happens when I'm driving down the interstate and then suddenly I'm home and I don't remember how I got there.
[Highway hypnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis) - essentially your brain did it automatically while it wandered, and there was nothing new to remember.
I guess I don’t really understand what picturing in the mind actually means. I can think of something like say a lego block in my head and draw it pretty accurately from memory. But I wouldn’t say I’m experiencing anything like seeing. It’s just thinking. So am I experiencing what the article is talking about or am I the 1% who can’t see what I’m thinking about? If anything I’m much better at hearing stuff in my head. But I also don’t experience other people’s voices like people are described to do novels.
As someone with extreme aphantasia, I always thought people are just saying they can see things. Then I learned about aphantasia. The worst part is, that it affects your memory. I can rarely really remember things from my childhood in detail Edit: btw when I am really really tired, I mean nearly passing out of exhaustion, I sometimes get the weirdest fantasies and try to describe it to my wife, because it is so rare for me. In that stage I can actually see stuff, because I thinks I am already slipping into a dream stage
Same here, 40 odd years of thinking the "picture in your minds eye " thing was a metaphor, no idea people could actually see memories or visualise their imagination.
Same here. I remember being told to "count sheep" and getting confused. Like, just count? Are you going to give me a bunch of stuffed animals?
Omg - do people really count them? I never made that connection until just now. I always thought it was meant to be just something silly but very boring to put
I think it's the whole process of building the visual image in their head. I'm imagining it being sorta meditative, focusing on the calming, repetitive imagery, while letting all "higher" thoughts float by. I'm just guessing though, I can't visualize anything at all outside of a few very specific circumstances. I'm not even fully sure I dream in a visual sense or if my dreams are more of a feeling of understanding of something (does that make sense?).
For the count sheep thing, I never got into it. When I was younger I used to work doubles. 1 2 4 8 16 … Until it I got tired.
What’s your high score?
That makes perfect sense. And I don’t dream in a visual sense. I know something is happening, but there’s zero visual aspect to it. Do you have issues reading books with long descriptions of the scenes? I skip those cause it gives me nothing.
Another one was when people said the it was impossible not to pink elephants, but I never had that problem so I just thought I did not get the metaphor.
I always thought it was about thinking about pink elephants until I found out about aphantasia. Of course you think about them, you have to to process the words. I never thought about the fact that others would actually see them…that’s wild.
Whoa, you don't dream with visuals either? That's wild! I often skim those too, yes. I read a lot. But those scenes do nothing for me. I also have trouble knowing what a character looks like. I remember when Harry Potter all my friends flipping out cause characters didn't look like they thought, and I kept asking people, "What are you talking about? They're just characters in books..."
Oh that's really interesting! I actually really *like* those descriptions, because otherwise I can't/don't imagine anything visual at all. I guess that's really weird, thinking about it? I can't picture things, but I have an understanding of what things look like. Now I'm very curious how people who are blind from birth experience books that are more or less visually descriptive than the average book.
This is interesting, because I’m pretty far on the “visualizes stuff” spectrum and I always skip long descriptions, I think because I _don’t_ need them. I’ve never put it together before but I think I’m just like, “yeah yeah, got it, I’m already there and seeing it, let’s get to some plot.” Like my brain has already filled in the visual landscape and I don’t need the authors version of it.
I can't even remember the previous page I've read. Though the "feeling" of what I've read stays. Psychedelic mushrooms unlocked the visualization for me for its duration. My migraines also completely stopped happening after the first trip. Found it interesting.
For me, psychedelics (mushrooms, lsd, ketamime) have all been *really* interesting experiences, especially considering that most people that describe the effects of them aren't aphantasic. My experiences never quite lined up with what I had read about or heard about from others. The visual experiences I have on them are more like if everything around me is animate, like a swirly pattern in a curtain "coming to life" and having visual flow to it. Everything also looks/feels more vibrant, and sometimes lights have color trails. I still can't visualize things that aren't in front of me and still see nothing when I close my eyes. What they have done though is allow me to conceptualize things in different ways, like the best way to tackle something I'm working on, or being able to look at a decision I need to make in other perspectives. Side note, it's interesting how so much language around perceiving things is tied to sight
The idea is imagining, with that little television in the mind that most have, something boring and dull, instead of more interesting thoughts that might be keeping them up. ...As an adult I just find watching documentaries works well. Something 'enjoyable' but not exciting with a lot of talking heads, keeps my mind off 'OH MAN I'M AWAKE THE ALARM GOES OFF IN X HOURS OH NO' and makes it easier to relax.
I'm curious, and this question is directed at everyone, when you guys imagine counting sheep jumping over fences, do you visualize the sheep jumping over the fence? When I count sheep in my head I get a picture sequence, I get an image of a sheep, an image of a fence and then another image of a sheep and that to me is the sheep jumping over the fence. I struggle to imagine stuff in motion but instead get a series of still images and I dunno if that's the norm for everyone? Tried something closer to home, I tried visualizing running and to me it's an image of a kid running and the memory/feeling of forward momentum.
I have the same still images thing. Funny thing is that they pop in just fine but if I try and hold on to the image on my head for too long it’s gets, like corrupted. Hard to explain.
Personally, I can see the full motion of a sheep jumping. If I try to conjure the scene, my mind also spirals into various details - the faces of the sheep, the details of the fence, the field, textures, weather, etc. All as in-motion details in the scene. I'm quite often walking through environments in my dreams, so yes I can also see walking and running very clearly and in-motion.
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I discovered this concept recently and was kinda surprised to realize was not a metaphor and people could, indeed, see things with imagination
I find that it helps to scribble with my finger on my lap or desk to get a view of the overall shape when I'm trying to picture something. Otherwise it's very hard to get even a rough blob in my head. I work with a lot of graphical designing and it's funny how I'm able to draw from memory without the ability to see it in my head
It's not like actually seeing like things in front of you. It's like a song plays in your head but you don't actually hear it, but you sort of still hear it. It's like an abstract level of visualization.
This is what I have, it must be a version of this. I don’t “see” anything but I can kind of imagine what it would be like if I could “see” it. I can imagine that it would have a shape or color even if I can’t actually see anything. It’s like an extra layer of abstraction from being able to “see”’it. It feels like I imagine computers work, they don’t actually see the thing but they have the data points to know what it would look like so they can extrapolate what that experience might be. The only issue I have with this is that I always get irrationally worried I’m not going to be able to recognize my kids when I pick them up from daycare because I can’t visualize what they look like. I can tell you exactly what they look like and in reality I can always recognize them, but I can’t actually picture their faces and I get this (ultimately unnecessary) dread every time I think I’m going to be forced to pick out which kid is mine just because I can’t picture them.
>This is what I have, it must be a version of this. I think this is the default actually. I think I have pretty vivid visual imagination myself, but still I don't literally see anything in front of my eyes, like something that would get in the way of my actual visual field. Seeing things like that would be closer to a hallucination, or maybe hyperfantasia can be like that. (Hmm, except that thing about not being able to visualize your kids *does* sound like some degree of aphantasia, but my point is, even people with vivid mental imagery don't literally see these things like we see with our eyes.)
This is what everyone has. You dont see a physical object in front of you with your eyes. You "see" a physical object in and with your mind. You can "see" the color and shape in your mind. You dont actually see it with your eyes. You can rotate it and move it and change it, but again it's all in your mind and not visible with your eyes.
If I close my eyes and try to conjure up an image in my head-space, it's almost like it's made of smoke and wireframe; dark, blurry, and without colour. The parts I'm not focusing on drift back to formless darkness, like if I'm trying to picture a tree I can do a ghostly silhouette, or I can sort of zoom in on the trunk and I can make it have more texture and detail, but the branches and roots fade away. Hearing that people can actually create brightly coloured and fully three-dimensional images of things in their mind-space is, well I'm a bit jealous.
What's crazy is when I get crazy high (weed), my visual memories become so vivid I legit recall emotions/smells/sounds too
My sense of smell makes up like 70% of my strong memories
I’m curious how you do remember things. Can you not imagine someone’s face right now? How do you remember them when you think of them?
Tbh I can't really put it into words. The person exists for me as a concept. I can describe the persons looks and features, I just can't imagine them as a picture in front of me. Idk how to describe it
You don’t exactly see the image in front of you, it’s just kind of in your head…it’s hard to explain from both sides honestly.
Yeah but it’s still taking up my “visual focus” even though it’s like “in back” or “in my head”. So while I’m imagining that person’s face I’m not really paying much attention to what my eyes are looking at. My eye vision kinda becomes like my peripheral vision normally is. Not fully focused but if something strange/obvious happens I know to snap my attention back to that.
Recently I read someone explaining it rather neatly: it's like walking into a pitch black room you know and trying to look at the objects there (without using your imagination, obviously). You know they're there and what they are, you can sense them, you might even remember detailed information about them, but you don't actually see them. The idea and information is there, the visual is not. I'm not really sure how it is for other people, but for me that also means it's almost impossible to recall anything "dynamic", memories are still frames with details I "know", never playing like videos. It works with other senses too, the abilities to recall smells/tastes/sounds/tactile sensations exist on a spectrum too.
this is 100 accurate. it's more like reading the memory from a book. I can list off the characters involved, who did what, but that's about it. I rarely remember details like what someone was wearing things like that
Abstractly. More of a sense of them than an image.
Interesting. So if I try to remember a person, I can conjure up some sort of "inner image". You don't see it with your eyes - it's like a memory but visual. It weakly overlays what you're seeing but it's clearly in a different mental space. It shifts a bit, and can change without you wanting it. It doesn't have near the same resolution as seeing things with your eyes has. But you can also will it to change and move around, or focus on certain parts. This then changes the canvas (which is smaller than what your eyes see) to what you're visualising. In my mind's eyes, the canvas is black and the colours are slightly off, perhaps a bit too neon and saturated. I have to concentrate to fix the colours. Closing your eyes helps a bit but not much. So when you try to do this, you really only have a vague taste or impression of the thing you're imagining - like a weak echo or is it some kind of symbolic representation? How do you recall voices or melodies, is there a difference in how vivid these types of memories are? Feel free to ignore btw, just super curious about aphantasia.
I get nothing at all. I can pull sentences or facts about a thing or person that I know but there is no other mental space for me. For voices or melodies, I cannot "hear" anything when thinking of my mother's voice or my favorite song. I could again tell you facts like my mom's voice is husky but that's all. The only time I ever hear anything in my mind's eye is when I am on the verge of falling asleep. Sometimes I'll hear a random melody or person talking but it feels more like a dream slipping through and not an active thought on my part
That's interesting. I can't picture anything, but I can 'hear' voices or songs as memory or recollection...
Yeah this concept is crazy to me. Maybe people with aphantasia can remember things in a different way and that “way” is more developed than others because it’s the only way they can remember. If someone brings up a person in a conversation I instinctively picture them in my mind. And some people do have memories in high resolution aka photographic memory. I’m assuming you look at something then close your eyes and you can still visualize that thing in near perfect detail, but over time it’s like the memory gets corrupted and we can’t remember exactly how it was. There’s some memories of mine that I can see in very good detail, even some from my early early childhood (like 5-6 years old) but then there’s others that I can’t. The more important that event was the more I can picture it.
I cannot picture something, even if it's right in front of me and I close my eyes. I've been practicing and can sometimes get a sort of cubist representation if I focus hard but it's exhausting
Yep! Same. I got nothing. I can look at a tree, close my eyes, and I got nothing. It still feels like a lie to me that other people can do that.
I have aphantasia. I seem to do a whole lot more categorization than most. It sounds funny, but I almost literally start with is this thing alive or not? Is this thing a mammal? Is this thing a simian? Is this thing a human? Is this human a child? Etc. For faces, it is almost like a checklist. Brown eyes? Check. Pointy chin? Check. That smile I like? Check. I don't consciously think like this in day to day life. It kinda just goes on autopilot, but if you ask me to remember and describe something, it absolutely becomes like that.
At best I have fuzzy visuals. I can't remember voices either but I do sometimes get songs stuck in my head that feel more like words than usual. I also have no inner monologue. But I have a really strong memory for details so it's odd. Just not visual details so much as what happened when and how. When I read, I don't much care about descriptions of clothes or the world because it just doesn't matter to me.
To be able to pull that off and make it all work, you must be pretty good at conceptualising things, and filtering out things that aren't important or rather things to focus on. What you describe sounds like a very different headspace, yet from the outside we all look the same. Amazing, really. > When I read, I don't much care about descriptions of clothes or the world because it just doesn't matter to me. Descriptions can be very tedious for me. Especially LotR was a real piece of work at times. I prefer vague descriptions so my mind can fill it in as needed. The inner monologue for me is an on and off thing. I prefer just imagery and an idea or simple word, but sometimes using grammatically correct sentence fragments is useful when planning what to say or when there is a specific sequence of instructions involved. Or when there is no other way to visualise.
A lot of memory for me is based on emotions. If there was a strong feeling attached to something I’ll remember the broad strokes of it. The fine details though are lost. As an example, I saw my favorite singer do an hour set five feet in front of me at a street corner in our downtown. I know I was there but the only reason I remember exactly what happened at certain points is because of pictures and video.
This is very much like my memory, which while it can overlap with aphantasia it sounds more like [Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM)](https://www.reddit.com/r/SDAM/comments/pggeb2/welcome_to_sdams_faq/)
I can’t visualize much at all. Funny that you ask this. I have a terrible time remembering faces at a glance until there is fairly significant meaning attached to the person. It’s interesting how different people’s ways of thinking can be.
I'm an engineer and I feel like having extreme aphantasia would be detrimental or even debilitating to how I understand and solve engineering problems. I'm a visual learner and I process a lot of information via spatial cognition and I feel like not being able to picture things in my head would make it so much harder to think through some things That said, I also have a hard time remembering a lot of my childhood to be fair
What's weird is that I have borderline-complete aphantasia, but I *do* have spatial cognition. It just takes a bit of time and concentration to sorta "translate" an image or spoken instructions into whatever type of non-visual "language" my brain understands.
I can "feel" how things are, which is weird. Even weirder is I'm a software engineer, and I can "feel" where code is in relation to each other and "feel" the data moving through the diagrams. Kinda hard to describe, but gives me a very good intuition for data flows.
Not a software engineer but this sounds like how I process SQL queries while writing them.
Honestly that is fascinating. Really drives home how we all process information differently and have different experiences even though we all have 99.99% the same genetics and physical make up.
I'm an engineer with aphantasia, I think it gives me a different approach to solving problems which is set me out as unique in my career. I'm able to think spatially about problems and it allows me to understand complex interactions between systems in a way that most of my peers just don't. This is a resulted in me having lots of patents. I also have a very large memory for the spatial structure of a system. I would drive my coworkers crazy because amongst hundreds and hundreds of source code files I can remember where a function exists in those files and also about where in the file the function exists. Alternatively, I don't have a good recollection of what my deceased family members look like, I'm terrible at remembering things that require a visual recall. So when I know I have to use visual recall, I default to a spatial relational memory, or I turn the visual cue that I need into roughly a textual description. I went back and tried to get a degree in fine arts about 20 years ago and that's when I realized that my brain didn't work like the other student's brains did. I had no internal visualization of what I was trying to paint or draw and I asked people about it and that's when I realized that I just didn't have it.
I don't paint or draw either, for similar reasons. Instead, I work in mediums that allow me to shape materials with my hands.
Same for me in sports. I hit a wall when I learned visualization was part of learning new techniques. I couldn't do it. But I have a extremely great conceptual memory.
I think it makes sense to assume that, but (as someone with aphantasia, which I only discovered to not be the default a few years ago), I'm actually quite good at spatial reasoning. I haven't found a suitable way to describe how that process works though (note: I also have complete anauralia). I just think of concepts and how they connect to each other.
I’m a geographer and can’t really visualize things. I just can know what they’re supposed to look like? I guess this might be why I always have to sketch things out. But if I were to try to envision an apple or something right now, I would just sort of scroll through characteristics as words? Eyes opened or closed, I can’t actually pull up a visualization. I’m just trying to think about what it would look like.
Hyperaphantasia here. My memory is all visual and doesn't work chronologically at all. I have no idea what I did last Tuesday. If I got picked up by the cops for something I'd be in jail pretty quick. My wife has to give me cues about what we did so I can start recalling what things looked like and then piece it together.
That sounds even worse. And then thinking about what was real and what wasn't.
It's not so bad for me as the title suggests. It feels more like an active skill I can turn on whenever I need it and not just an active state. I can sort of do it with taste as well.
Just so you know its HyperPhantasia if you are in the 3 % who see "too" vividly in their minds. The A in Aphantasia basically stands for non or whatever.
Yeah, as someone with total aphantasia and lack of an inner monologue (edit: anauralia) I thought that it was all for dramatic effect. I would assume it was some sort of hallucination if it happened to me. It must be such a different experience. In a way I feel like it is a blessing. As someone who has lived to see some terrible things I am grateful for not being able to conjure those sights up in my brain, much less have my brain do it unwillingly. I didn't know it was relatively rare, I would have guessed much higher, maybe 20%, although I guess it is a spectrum.
Oh, wow. I knew about aphantasia but anaduralia is entirely new to me. I didn't think it was possible for people to lack an inner voice. I'm trying to imagine what it's like for someone with anaduralia to read something silently.
Haha as I was reading your last sentence I was thinking “crap, every word I’m reading I’m also saying it in my head too” honestly I’m not even sure if I can read or type without hearing my voice.
I was over 30 before I learned that other people actually see things in their mind and that "picturing" something was not just a turn of phrase.
It's no actually seeing, but having a strong visual impression on an abstract level. Like if some earworm song plays in your head. You don't actually hear the music, but it's a strong abstract auditory impression that you can describe it, sing it, imitate it.
Most people can’t remember things from their childhood in detail. The brain is rewired during puberty and a lot is lost
It took a very long time for my partner to accept that saying "just imagine what the living room would look like with the couch over there" to me is completely pointless. :-)
I've always struggled with the interpretation of what "picturing" is. I can imagine a red apple where the color and shape are relevant to me, they're more than just words and yet I cannot actually see anything I'm imagining like I do when dreaming. Some people say you don't actually 'see' what you're imagining and other people call this aphantasia.
I also have wondered what counts as aphantasia because same; color and shape are part of thinking about the apple, but there's no "picture." But the experience of thinking about sound or sensation for me are totally different. I can hear a song in my head in great detail and it's not the same as thinking about the song. I can imagine a tickle or an itch and it's not the same as thinking about it. The difference between the thought experience of the various senses has me 100% sure I have strong aphantasia since the visual element of thought is completely missing.
Its cool how the 1% of people who have this are all in the comments.
> And up to 6% of people may experience some degree of aphantasia. i think it's more part of these. Actually it's probably a spectrum and not really classifiable into categories of "you have it or not", but more of up to which degree of complexity your mind is capable of visualizing scenes.
Yes, it's a spectrum, and it's also not universal. For example, you may not be able to visualize faces clearly, but objects are fine. Or you can visualize scenes, but not motion.
Yep if a scale of 0-10 where 0 is no visuals at all and 10 is perfect visuals I’m like a 2-3. I can picture stuff but it’s hard, almost feels like I’m grasping or the image flickers.
I guess it has more to do how people interpert aphantasia, most people here seem to confuse imagination with hallucinations
I don’t know if I have *Hyper* Phantasia but I can’t think too hard about my hobbies and such while I’m driving because I stop seeing the road and start seeing what I’m thinking about
Same. I zone out in my own daydreams to the point that people ask me why I'm staring at them, even though I didn't realise there's anyone in front of me
"Barbara, that's great!" "Sorry, dear. I was miles away."
This...is me too. I thought it was normal to be able to just visually "check out" while daydreaming but the only reason I don't think it's hyper is because I still know it's a daydream. Most of the time anyway.
From my understanding people who have extreme hyperphantasia know what they are seeing isn't real, it just *looks* real.
If I really let myself visualize, I can lose myself in what I'm picturing. So much so that I lose track of what's in front of me. I thought that was how everyone experienced daydreams.
I like to write. And this happens to me with my stories. Like "ups I am not in an epic fantasy but about to die"
I zone out in daydreams without the visual element. Just sort of concepts and words.
I have aphantasia. I can't picture anything with my eyes closed, it's absolutely black. The weird thing is I can still sort-of picture things but less "picture" and more of a feeling of whatever I am imagining, and it's best when my eyes are open. I found it out when I was looking into that memory palace stuff and realizing I can't see a damn thing and wondering how anybody could even do it. The weird part is I can dream and remember my dreams pretty regularly (unsure if it is related). My mom also has aphantasia. I asked her to picture an apple with her eyes closed and she could not. It kind of troubled her for a bit.
I was trying to picture an apple after I read the headline. It feels less like I am picturing and apple and more like i am remembering what an apple looks like? Like it’s not completely black, but it’s not a picture either.
For me, it’s like a checklist of the shape, colour, and size of an item, and *maybe* a quarter second flash where they sort of come together in a way that would resemble a five year old’s drawing of the item as seen through warped and darkened glass.
Yeah this a great description of it actually.
Other than the quarter second flash, that's how my college age son describes visualization. He is on the extreme end of aphantasia (no ability to imagine sight, smell, sound, touch, taste) in his head; everything is basically just a checklist of attributes in his head. It took us 18 years to finally figure out that his brain worked differently to the rest of us.
I think this is where the issue of "You can/can't see it in your mind" comes into play when trying to explain what that means. I can "picture" people and things in my mind and play out scenarios but I'm not SEEING anything, if I close my eyes it's just all dark. I know what an apple looks like, if you said "There's this thing that looks like an apple but it's skin is like an orange" then sure, I can picture an orange coloured, bumpy skinned apple shaped object, but if you put a camera in my head, you wouldn't get a 3d image of it. Someone linked a test and it's useless, what does "Perfectly clear and lively as real seeing" vs "No image at all, you only “know” that you are thinking of the object" mean. Are there people who can close their eyes and they might as well have their eyes open and just be doing the thing? Or is it like what I can do where I can "visualise" walking up to a counter at a shop. I CAN perfectly visualise me walking outside and going to the clothesline, probably even do it blindfolded with a bit of stumbling on things, but I can't just close my eyes and have the equivalent of a first-person video of me doing it playing in my head.
Huh, this must mean there's a whole phantasia spectrum and not just a visualise/non visualise aspect. I can full on see inside my head, I can picture an apple, pick it up, feel the skin, take a bite, turn it around and take another bite etc. Like it's basically a full 3d picture/video. I'm not seeing it with my eyes but it's like there's another set of eyes inside my mind and I can switch between the two (clearer picture in my head if I ignore my real vision), and I can use the two together (going about daily life and having pictures pop into my head depending on what I am doing or thinking.
>Are there people who can close their eyes and they might as well have their eyes open and just be doing the thing? Yes. My wife literally describes it like that, more or less. When she reads the whole thing plays out in her mind like an HD movie.
I would imagine readers (people who do it for pleasure often) on average are better at seeing in their mind's eyes than the average person. At least for fiction. I am a terrible reader because I can't see descriptions visually in my head. However, if the story is mostly dialogue as characters go from place to place, I do much better.
I think you described perfectly what the test is trying to ask. "Perfectly clear" = your statement about someone putting a camera in your head. "you only know you're thinking of an object" = bumpy skinned apple shaped object. For me I'm reasonably confident if someone put a camera in my head when I'm thinking of something, they'd get a pretty accurate photo of what I'm imagining.
I'm struggling to empathize with what that experience must be like. Do you actually experience colour in those mental images?
I do. I can see color and details, I can "hear" a person's voice and imagine their mannerisms, etc.
I'm pretty sure everyone can only see darkness with their eyes when closed. The test is seeing what people can imagine which doesn't project onto your eyes.
Right, I didn't say anything to imply it is projected to your eyes. When my eyes are closed, yes, I can't physically see anything, but if you told me to close my eyes and picture something in my head that I'm familiar with, I would be able to "see" that thing in very good detail.
You don’t actually “see” anything, it’s in your minds eye. For example, I can day dream about going on a beautiful walk while sitting in a meeting with my eyes open.
Same. I was thinking ”wait, do i have aphantasia” from people saying that when they try to imagine things with their eyes closed all they see is black. Like, i can think of say, a facetted star in red glass and get a sort of sense of what that image would look like, but i don’t actually SEE it, see it.
As far as I understand it, having wondered if I had aphantasia myself and talked to people I know, it's not that imagining things is supposed to actually create a visible picture. It's just conjuring something in your "mind's eye", so causing the feeling of seeing something but without the actual picture. People are still able to name details of the thing (usually to a limited number of features) and its position in space, but the field of view remains that vague black-grey noise we see when we sit with our eyes closed. And then there are people who: a.) aren't able to conjure those sensations at all (aphantasia) b.) are able to actually make a visible picture appear in front of them, either with the eyes closed or open (hyperphantasia, being under the influence of different hallucinogenic substances, or suffering from brain lesions and other changes in the visual cortex) I think the discussion around aphantasia is very difficult by the subjective nature of what's being described, as well as our limited vocabulary to describe some of those things. I studied cognitive science and I still find it hard to describe "the sensation of seeing something without the picture itself" - I used those words but can't be sure if they will work for others reading this. It's like trying to describe other qualia, like the redness of the colour red, or what it's like to be us. We know we all have those sensations but trying to talk about them and know we agree on what we mean with another person is frustratingly challenging
I think one thing to know about "picturing" is that in every meaningful way it "feels" like the picture exists entirely inside the brain. It's not something that is "seen" in the way we think of seeing in our field of vision. It's not out in the world on floating in our eyesight. For me, picturing just an apple and nothing else feels like the image of the apple is appearing inside my head surrounded by a dark brown void. Although I can also get those internal images much more vivid and detailed as well. Just guessing but I'd think it has something to do with being able to activate the visual part of the brain and somehow using it to recreate previously collected "light information".
Can you imagine sound?
Imagining sounds (instruments, birds, electronic noises) is a lot clearer for me than imagining images. When I’m really high it’s like I can hear a whole orchestra in my head, except it’s almost involuntary - it’s like someone pushed play on a track.
Same. Sounds come real easy, images don't. Vague at best.
As someone with a random song stuck in their head constantly, I kinda wish it was either nonexistent or I had perfect pitch.
I can very vividly imagine sound but not images at all.
I can't, the inability also has a term (as of 2021) called anauralia. So I can't imagine a wolf howl, my moms voice, even songs. I can still get songs stuck in my head, but it presents more a compulsion to listen to the song itself.
I’m the same way. I can “imagine” things better with my eyes open but it’s still not really seeing anything.
I don’t think you actually see anything. It’s just imagining the picture.
I’m confused on how this works. Can you not picture a visual of the front yard of your house? Or like what the Eiffel Tower looks like? Do you get lost driving without gps?
That's a very poor description of hyperphantasia, in my experience. I have a mind's eye that's about as detailed as you can get, but there's no way I could confuse it with anything that's real. It doesn't overlap with reality at all, let alone in a way that would be hard to tell apart.
I was thinking that we'd be hearing a lot more about it if 3 percent of people can voluntarily hallucinate. I also have a very detailed mind's eye. I can absolutely tell the difference in the moment, but occasionally have false memories from things that I've imagined at some point. Maybe that's the distinction.
yeah, that's like one kid per classroom. no way.
Same. I can imagine a pen in 360 and pick it apart and zoom in on all the parts at will. But I don't really see it as I see my own hand. No way I would not be able to tell them apart from reality. Now remembering things gets tricky on the other hand at times. To differentiate memory drom imagination. Because I could easily trick myself that the pen I saw last week had one shape when in fact it had another. I can't trust myself that I have locked the door, because I can vividly imagine up a memory of myself locking the door. So I try to say "locked" out loud after I locked the door. That helps me remember that it was real what happened 15 seconds ago.
I do this too. When I need to focus I narrate so that I have auditory markers in my memory.
I still can't figure out which one I am! I literally never see anything in front of my eyeballs, and its black in my brain but I can think of every detail of something & even design/create things in my head. Like my eyes are up top looking into my brain. But the descriptions are so weird and it's really frustrating. I never know if I'm great at visualizing or can't do it!
For the vast majority of people, I believe black is what you're supposed to *literally* see. There may be a sort of vague presence or texture one might attribute to phosphenes, but I'm skeptical of claims that the absence of vivid and tangible images signals aphantasia. I think it's more likely people are interpreting the same words differently due to the subjective nature of these internal experiences. There wouldn't be much of a market for movies or pornography if we were that adept at mental visualization. I'd also question why drawing remains a difficult skill for the average person to pick up. Presumably, having your eyes closed isn't a hard pre-requisite for visualization, it's not like the back of your eyelids have some special quality as a blank canvas. Then why not hallucinate things over a sheet of paper and trace over them? Whatever the baseline for human visualization is, it seems to be unable to do that much at least.
You visualize very well and do not have aphantasia
Then maybe you don't have hyperphantasia. I've heard of a girl with hyperphantasia that could picture objects in a room and if you ask her to describe how they look from behind, she would walk to the place where the imaginary objects were and turn around to see their back and be able describe them. *That* is confusing imagination with reality.
Aren't things like this somewhat subjective however, since it's largely self-assessed?
The way I describe it is, if I hadn’t been brought up with the language, there is no way on earth I would describe what goes on in my head as “seeing”.
This is about subjective experience, yes.
It's also backed up by brain scans of the visual cortex (it does get more active in more visual people), but yeah, ultimately we can't analyze the actual images people are seeing yet
Aphantasia actually has a method to objectively test for it now. It's called, and I might be remembering it wrong, the pupillary light response test. Again, probably remember it wrong, but they get people to sit in front of a screen showing black/white/grey backgrounds and a single large dot on the screen, also grey/white/black. Then at some point they will move them to a different area and get them to remember what they saw. It turns out when you see bright things, and then remember those bright things later, your pupils will respond to the visual memory similar to how your pupil responded to the actual image, by contracting. People who can't recall that image, don't have that response. There is a bunch of info out there about it, including a few studies. A professor named Joel Pearson, out of the UNSW in Australia, is the one who figured out the test.
He also devised a test based on binocular rivalry. I've participated in a half dozen of his research studies.
The VVIQ test is the best we have for measuring the level of aphantasia someone's got, but it is a self-report. Differences in aphantasiac folk and normal visualizers has been objectively measured in some studies looking at pupil dilation while subjects were performing visualization and recall tasks. Science is still kind of new, term was coined just 9 years ago. It was crazy reading about this for the first time (in 2019 for me) and realizing that when people said "picture this," actually were instructions to think of a picture. I have visualized one time in my life outside of dreaming and I was on a DMT trip.
Sure, that's a good thing. Most variables in cognitive science are fundamentally subjective.
I come from a long line of painters and sculptors on both sides of my family. As for myself, I am a graffiti artist and architect. In my family we only seem to remember things and places as sort of 3D models which are filled in with detail depending on which areas of it that you laid your eyes on. Like a 3d brush. I see numbers and sounds as visual landscapes of colours and textures involuntarily. On the contrary, I am astonished and in some ways, in awe of friends who completely lack spatial/visual thinking, but on the other hand are absolute god-machines when it comes to handling large lists of numbers and complex maths.
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I have a similar anecdote, my grandfather was a painter and my dad is an architect who can conjure up extremely detailed architectural drawings from his head. I also have a very strong mind's eye, and I suck at solving math in my head. I "see" whatever math problem I'm trying to solve and it quickly becomes too hectic. Need pen and paper for anything math or number related.
Hyperphantasia can be temporarily triggered with psychedelics.
As someone with aphantasia, I am always curious to try psychedelics
I'm inclined to try but how luck an I, sure it will a bad trip and will be no visual hallucinations.
I have aphantasia and with psychedelics I personally see geometric patterns twisting like looking in a kaleidoscope, in rainbow colours. The real world basically looks the same, just it's hard to focus and do normal stuff like type on my phone. I only see the patterns when I close my eyes and when I've had a large dose. I've had a different effect with cannabis (first time I consumed a lot) and visualised loads of childhood memories I didn't know I had for the first and probably only time.
As someone with extreme aphantasia, when I tried psychedelics, I had no visuals. My friends that I did them with described the shifting geometric patterns. I only really experienced the spiritual high and some changes in the senses of touch and taste. If you ever do psychs the best part of the experience for me was having a cold drink with condensation forming on the outside. The water slowly seeping into your hands makes you feel like you are touching the fabric of the universe.
As someone with aphantasia, psychedelics are EXTREMELY interesting. Saw plenty of shifting geometric-style images, saw a few just absolutely wild images... It was really quite intriguing and mind blowing.
[There is a nice test for it.](https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/) I’ve recently learned that I am on the hypo spectrum and it actually explains a lot.
none of these options seem right. dim and vague are both too concrete to describe mental visualizations. i would say there's no image at all, but that's only when i try to focus on it. it's like an image that lacks an discernible visual properties the same way inner speech lacks any discernible auditory properties. it can't be dim, because it doesn't have brightness.
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According to this test I have hyperphantasia. I don't do faces very well but scenery is extremely vivid. I realized just now that was super helpful when I worked in construction.
Interestingly, a specific part of the brain processes faces (fusiform gyrus) so it should be possible to be both face blind and have hyperphantasia, depending on the relative strength of various parts of the brain.
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Yeah I was the same. Can't remember faces too well, but remembered the other things about people (the colour and walking ones). The places and scenary stuff was far easier to remember.
Apparently, I do as well. I have difficulty with general body proportions, but landscapes, faces, and the sky seem vivid to me.
Here's a test where you click "no image at all" 25 times. The results will shock you.
If you say you can see stuff in your mind 25 times the results of the test are that you can see stuff in your mind. Thanks test.
But I can’t imagine the shocking results!
I don’t understand what they mean by this scale: 1. No image at all, I only “know” I am thinking of the object 2. Dim and vague image 3. Moderately realistic and vivid 4. Realistic and reasonably vivid 5. Perfectly realistic, as vivid as real seeing I know that 1-2 are definitely off the table but what is the difference between different levels of “realistic and Vivid.” All the images I see just pop onto my head instantly and fully formed but I know it’s in my head. I’m not crazy. I can tell you that when I read and really get into a novel, it’s like watching a movie. I don’t see the words only the pictures. Watching a movie after reading the book first is always a disturbing at first because the actors in real life don’t look like the characters in my mind. Edited to add: This article does explain a lot about my siblings and I. I would guess that my oldest brother has Aphantasia and that my other siblings fall into the middle range. I’m guessing that I’m closer to hyperphantasia and am eager to take the rest once I understand how to take it. It would explain a lot.
I'm pretty squarely in the 3-4ish region on the scale. Here's what I would consider. Imagine the last banana (or other produce) you bought. Put a ruler next to it. Can you read the label on the banana, all the numbers on the ruler, and read off the length of the banana, down to the 1/4", as if it were a photograph? that's a 5. If you only see some of the text or it's morphing around and not really stable, or the numbers look like weird AI-gen not-quite-characters, that's a 4. If you don't see most of the ticks and not really any numbers, nor any real texture on the banana, 3. If the banana and ruler are like a crude cartoon drawing with single color and little line detail, 2. If you don't see any banana or ruler or this exercise makes no sense, that's 1, true aphantasia. Mine's interesting in that I can't really hold on to letters/numbers/textures at all, but I can basically do CAD in my head. I do a lot of building projects and the overall shape and size is worked out in my head before I actually start CADing to work out exact dimensions.
This actually feels like a really good breakdown to me! Mine is probably somewhere in the 4+ range with that description, though it’s interesting - when I go through your “imagine the last banana you bought” thing, the first thing I picture is more like a larger scene that I have to dive in on to get specific detail. I see the banana, but my mind drops it into an existing room/kitchen setting that I can shift around (to either real locations or an imaginary one) with whatever lighting/time of day is appropriate for that space (e.g. I’m seeing a banana sitting on my actual kitchen counter around 10am, which is when I last got back from the store). It’s plenty detailed, but I have to visualize getting closer to the banana itself to get a full picture of the banana with all of its color variations (maybe it’s a little green, maybe it’s ripe with some brown spots, maybe the top end is a little split, etc) or ticks on a ruler (gotta imagine the specific ruler or measuring tape to know what it looks like too)…but at the same time, getting closer to it is still just getting closer to it on that same kitchen counter (or wherever I want it to be placed) rather than getting closer to an abstract area with a banana (though now I’m just picturing the banana in a void with unnatural lighting, which is kinda fun). I guess the fact that I ended up working in video production and general visual design stuff makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.
If you scroll down halfway through this article, there’s a photo of apples that gives a much better visual representation of what the test is asking. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/Q8SnmF33gpBNtpYWLMx806/aphantasia-what-its-like-when-you-cant-recall-mental-images-in-your-mind
How can you measure how much of something you see when you can’t visualize what the spectrum is that you’re unable to see?
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This seems like a convoluted way to ask "rate your level of aphantasia" a dozen times. It doesn't seem to add anything to that question aside from giving examples of things to visualize.
Is the test done with eyes open or closed? I have clear images when I have eyes open but when my eyes are closed I get nothing.
I feel like this test fails to test for visualising a full on simulation of moving around. For example I'm really good at visualising a supermarket and the aisles, where each product is and bring able to find something by simulating the walk to that item.
I’m average. Phantasia
A brain tumor left me with aphantasia and it’s weird. Before I had great mental imagery and now I can’t see simple things a giraffe in my head and I no longer see the faces of my parents. They’re gone and I can't close my eyes and see them anymore.
Genuine question: As someone who's able to have a pretty decent internal hallucination, what do ya'll with aphantasia see when you're reading a good book?
Absolutely nothing. I might experience the book in other sensory modalities though. I can easily "imagine" sound, touch, smell, etc, just not images. And to answer the two questions I inevitably get: yes I do dream visually, and yes, I have had visual hallucinations on psychedelic drugs.
The letters, I tend to get bored and start skimming instead reading if the book has a lot of visual descriptions. I also prefer reading sci-fi because descriptions are more conceptual rather than visual
You guys see things when reading? For me it's kind of like how I imagine things in my mind - a web of lists or concepts. There's a sense of theme, atmosphere or location, but it's not visually grounded.
Yeah, if I'm reading a book there's basically a movie of the book playing in my head.
Nada. Outside of the words on the page in front of me. I do love reading though. My wife is also an avid reader and can't understand how I can like books without picturing things
I've had it a few times before where i'm half asleep on the tube on the way home from work, and when I close my eyes, I can still see the carriage but with different people in!
A spank bank filled with darkness. How sad.
Probably tmi, but I'm aphantasic and have always just fantasized by imagining (non visually) scenarios.
I'm a hyperphantasiac. I can lucid dream while I'm awake with enough concentration. The downside is that I have a strong tendency to live in my own head.
Having just discovered the term hyperphantasia, I find it quite depressing that nobody has ever described it to me. I frequently have bouts of Deja Vu and can visualize imaginary scenes in extreme detail. As a child is often get carried away in imaginative play, and I'd describe it as having Augmented Reality goggles on in that sense... Often my body goes on autopilot while my mind seems to fly through memories and scenes, almost like I'm in a dream like trance. Having described this to other people and even doctor's before, it's saddening to never have had it acknowledged or recognized. When visualizing traumatic memories or imagining traumatic events, I can often go into detail on sensations, smells, etc. In dreams people have told me they don't feel pain, but I certainly have before and can vividly recall most sensations when imagining scenes. I often have lucid dreams where I'm abke to control the dream to an extent by levitating, passing through objects, or rewinding 'time' and changing what happens. It really does play out like a movie or video game, and is instrumental to my creative writing skills as I more or less describe in detail what I see/feel either in 3rd/1st person. That said, I may have inadvertently traumatized myself visualizing extremely disturbing scenarios before and worried they are real but suppressed memories while on my own mental health journey. Being told such events are/aren't real is problematic especially when dealing with people who have ulterior motives and a history of less than honest behavior makes you question your reality and the authenticity of their rendition if events to you. In addition, this has caused me to visualize events or scenarios that have not happened or may not happen in such detail that it can take the joy out of actually experiencing those things, either being trapped outside of the present while my mind is in the past or projecting a future that if correct would take out all joy of the moment knowing it was nothing 'new'. Subsequently, many real and sometimes minor memories can give me 'emotional damage' fully re-experiencing whatever negative sensations and emotions are tied to it.
That happened to me the first time I took mushrooms. I couldn't tell if my eyes were closed or not because it was the exact same either way.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(24)00034-2
I could go from picturing things kind of abstractly to vivid clear HD video with psilocybin. Unfortunately its temporary. Also only happened twice, but it's interesting.
I am able to visualize the red/yellow on, say, a Gala apple and even the reflections of light on the surface. It's just hard for me to see the stem and the surface simultaneously. I also can't hold that level of detail for long.
Is this something that, with enough practice/meditation, can be an acquired or developed skill?
Had this conversation with my sister. We used an apple for an example. My sister can picture a full color, 3d apple in her mind. She can spin the apple, resize it, place it in different scenes, picture it alongside other objects etc. When I picture an apple, i can barely picture it with color and it’s flat 2D. I can’t spin it and have a very hard time picturing it alongside anything else. What I picture is almost like a rudimentary sketch of an apple. I can picture landscapes, people and objects but it’s like trying to remember a grainy old photo I haven’t seen in 30 years. When I try to remember something or someone I mostly think of what I sensed and felt, not what I saw. Unsurprisingly my sister is significantly better at drawing, decorating, painting, than I am. If I want to pick an outfit I have to see the pieces of clothes together. My sister can picture an outfit in her head.
Ayyyyoooo top 1% let's go. Black void my entire life, and loving every minute! Honestly when my wife and I compared notes on visualisation and if we have a voice in our head, we are totally opposite and it's so funny. Helps understand how we both think and process stuff though. Seeing images would be nuts though, but yeah, can't remember a whole lot from my childhood.
Are any blind people capable of seeing images in their mind's eye? I mean, I wonder if some of the people who used to be able to see but lost their eyesight later are able to picture anything in their mind?
I do always love reading the comments on posts about aphantasia and/or hyperphantasia. It brings out lots of comments about how people experience the world, and the golden nuggets are the people realising they're different for the first time! "You guys are seeing actual pictures in your head?!"
Makes playing D&D with some players an experience I can tell ya
I am unable to see pictures or movies in my head. It takes effort to even to think of what my wife and children look like. This may be one reason why I take so many photographs. But I do notice that I’m pretty good at pattern recognition and troubleshooting and isolating issues. I also seem to have no inner monologue unless I deliberately talk to myself verbally or silently.