I am in the group that didn't realize people were being literal when talking about imagining things until I learned about the term aphantashia as an adult. I don't think I have issues with facial...
I am in the group that didn't realize people were being literal when talking about imagining things until I learned about the term aphantashia as an adult. I don't think I have issues with facial recognition, but I cannot recall faces aside from recognition. As an example, if I was asked to describe my own mother's face I would draw a blank.
I've always attributed this to why I don't find reading particularly interesting and why I've given up all attempts I've ever made at art (the not being able to visualize my goal). I also don't remember dreams, so not really sure what's going on there. I'd find it interesting though if I were to learn that my dreams are visual and I never recall them specifically because I can't visualize them consciously.
Oh god when a book starts describing the landscape. Just kill me now. On the plus side, I will never worry about how the protagonist in the movie adaptation doesn't look like their description in...
Oh god when a book starts describing the landscape. Just kill me now.
On the plus side, I will never worry about how the protagonist in the movie adaptation doesn't look like their description in the book, or how people imagined it. I didn't know what they were supposed to look like anyway. If anything, reading a book after a movie is better.
It really did seem like people used the terms seeing or minds eye as if it was just a metaphor.
Fun trick I learnt was to ask someone to think of a table with a red apple on it. Then ask them what color or material the table was. Most respond instantly, aphantasiacs will look at you puzzled.
As an example, if I was asked to describe my own mother's face I would draw a blank.
Yeah uhh my mom has dark colored hair. That's as far as I get.
I can’t even see the apple (or its color (or the table)). Like, I know what an apple looks like, and I know what colors an apple can be, but in my mind it only appears as a sort of formless,...
I can’t even see the apple (or its color (or the table)).
Like, I know what an apple looks like, and I know what colors an apple can be, but in my mind it only appears as a sort of formless, nondescript round object. It exists as a somewhat vacant spatial placeholder that my brain “knows” is supposed to be an apple.
Somewhere else in my brain is a non-visual entry in my memory that exists as color = red or color = green depending on what I’m asked to summon.
If the color of the apple isn’t specified for me? Then I have no idea what the color is. It literally doesn’t have one, and I cannot manifest one except to basically think “hmm, apples are usually red, right?”
Additionally, those memory flags really only work for common things with obvious values.
An author will describe something unique with lots of visual detail, hoping to embed in my memory with entries like color = greens and blues,texture = weathered, lighting = dim. The moment those pass by in the text, they are GONE from my brain. Turn the page and ask me about a character’s hair color or the way the landscape looks, and I’ve got nothing.
Speaking of internal monologues, there's also a condition called anendophasia where you don't have one. This one is a REALLY new discovery, from what I can find it was just formally identified...
I can internally monologue and I can get songs stuck in my head, but music is simplified down to something closer to rhythmic poetry. There will be words and a beat, but instruments are gone. It's...
I can internally monologue and I can get songs stuck in my head, but music is simplified down to something closer to rhythmic poetry. There will be words and a beat, but instruments are gone. It's kind of like I've reduced it down to just what it takes to sing along.
I've described it to my wife as like I think in details. To use the apple example that keeps getting brought up: to me an apple is that white flash card with black sans-serif text that depicts a side view of a red delicious apple with exactly 2 knobs at the bottom and a short brown stem. I don't see this flash card in my mind though. It's just that when I think about an apple with no explicit descriptors I don't visualize some apple and then describe it, I just fetch the details about what a stereotypical apple is. These descriptors are still words though, which is where the internal monologue comes in.
I can't say if I experience the internal monologue the same as others though without knowing more about how they're normally experienced. I can say that it doesn't feel like I "hear" the words as much as they're "just there". They don't have a voice.
I'd say that sounds close enough to my own internal monologue, which I believe is considered "normal". I have the words, and sometimes there's a recognizable voice to it, but only when I'm being...
I'd say that sounds close enough to my own internal monologue, which I believe is considered "normal". I have the words, and sometimes there's a recognizable voice to it, but only when I'm being conscious of it. It's kind of weird to think about how the "voice" is very genderless and toneless, best word I have to describe it is "invisible" despite that usually being used for visual. It's not silent, because it's there, but it's also... not.
Also, now you have me wondering about how I think of music and songs. I think my mind also puts more emphasis on vocals, but the instrumentals are there, particularly when they're a focal point of the song. The songs are definitely "simplified" though. I'm guessing anauralia (inner ear) has a whole scale like aphantasia where some people "hear" nothing, and those who hear stuff in exact detail.
For the record, as far as I know I have none of these conditions. But I just learned the name of the lack of inner monologue today (anendophasia), and that anauralia exists and is a totally separate thing from that and aphantasia. So, I have no clue what actually defines a "baseline" mind anymore because we take that stuff for granted. And now I'm wondering what if someone has all three...
For me, my internal monologue is "silent" but somehow masculine in some indistinct way? (I'm cis-male.) It's not my voice, precisely, but it has some abstract quality to it that is male. When I'm...
For me, my internal monologue is "silent" but somehow masculine in some indistinct way? (I'm cis-male.) It's not my voice, precisely, but it has some abstract quality to it that is male. When I'm reading something written by a woman, the voice doesn't change exactly, but it has an abstract feminine quality to it instead.
Similarly, when I have a song stuck in my head (which is almost always—currently it's "Tainted Love"), my mental representation of the song isn't fully formed. The instrumentation is simplified in some way. I think the vocals are probably the closest. If I really concentrate, I think I can "fill the song out," so to speak, but it's hard to say what exactly is changing.
In imagining the apple on the table, I don't know that the table had a color, even though the apple was definitely red. Similarly, I couldn't say what the background was. It wasn't dark and it wasn't light, it was just... undefined.
The recurring theme is abstractness and indefiniteness. Dreams are the same way. They're more shallow than real life perception. I don't know if they're true for everyone.
An article about Zeman’s second paper appeared in the New York Times, and, after that, e-mails poured in. Around seventeen thousand people contacted him. Most were congenital aphantasics, and most not only lacked visual imagery; they could not mentally call up sounds, either, or touch, or the sensation of movement. Many had difficulty recognizing faces. Many said that they had a family member who was aphantasic, too. Most said that they saw images in dreams. Zeman recruited colleagues to work with him, and together they tried to reply to every correspondent.
Some people who wrote had once had imagery but lost it. About half of these had lost it as a consequence of physical injury—stroke, meningitis, head trauma, suffocation. The other half attributed their loss to a psychiatric cause—depersonalization syndrome, depression. A few told him that they thought they’d suppressed their capacity to visualize because traumatic memories had made imagery intolerable. [...]
...
Zeman also received messages from people who appeared to have the opposite of aphantasia: they told him that their mental pictures were graphic and inescapable. There was evidently a spectrum of mental imagery, with aphantasia on one end and extraordinarily vivid imagery on the other and most people’s experience somewhere in between. Zeman figured that the vivid extreme needed a name as well; he dubbed it hyperphantasia. It seemed that two or three per cent of people were aphantasic and somewhat more were hyperphantasic.
Many of his correspondents, he learned, had discovered their condition very recently, after reading about it or hearing it described on the radio. Their whole lives, they had heard people talk about picturing, and imagining, and counting sheep, and visualizing beaches, and seeing in the mind’s eye, and assumed that all those idioms were only metaphors or colorful hyperbole. It was amazing how profoundly people could misunderstand one another, and assume that others didn’t mean what they were saying—how minds could wrest sense out of things that made no sense.
Some said that they had a tantalizing feeling that images were somewhere in their minds, only just out of reach, like a word on the tip of their tongue. This sounded right to Zeman—the images must be stored in some way, since aphantasics were able to recognize things. In fact, it seemed that most aphantasics weren’t hampered in their everyday functioning. They had good memories for facts and tasks. But many of them said that they remembered very little about their own lives.
...
Isabel, like Parfit, remembered very little about her life. She kept boxes of souvenirs—ticket stubs, programs—but unless she looked at these things, or a friend reminded her, she didn’t recall most of the places she’d visited or things she’d done. She imagined that this could be a problem in a relationship, if you didn’t remember what you’d done together and the other person got upset and accused you of not caring, though fortunately she’d never been with someone like that. When she went out with friends who were full of stories, she’d worry that she wasn’t entertaining enough [...]
...
In talking to a friend of hers, an aphantasic painter who was one of Zeman’s research subjects, Clare had realized that she was the opposite—hyperphantasic. Her imagery was extraordinarily vivid. There was always so much going on inside her head, her mind skittering and careening about, that it was difficult to focus on what or who was actually in front of her. There were so many pictures and flashes of memory, and glimpses of things she thought were memory but wasn’t sure, and scenarios real and imaginary, and schemes and speculations and notions and plans, a relentless flood of images and ideas continuously coursing through her mind. It was hard to get to sleep.
At one point, in an effort to slow the flood, she tried meditation. She went on a ten-day silent retreat, but she disliked it so much—too many rules, getting up far too early—that she rebelled. While sitting in a room with no pictures or stimulation of any kind, supposedly meditating, she decided to watch the first Harry Potter movie in her head. She wasn’t able to recall all two hours of it, but watching what she remembered lasted for forty-five minutes. Then she did the same with the other seven films.
She tried not to expose herself to ugly or violent images because she knew they would stick in her mind for years. But even without a picture, if she even heard about violence her mind would produce one. Once, reading about someone undergoing surgery without anesthetic, she imagined it so graphically that she fainted. [...]
Thanks for sharing! I gotta try to find a copy of this article somewhere, or grab a sale subscription at some point, because this is very interesting to me. When I first heard about aphantasia a...
Thanks for sharing! I gotta try to find a copy of this article somewhere, or grab a sale subscription at some point, because this is very interesting to me. When I first heard about aphantasia a couple years back, I seriously questioned if I have it, and I’m pretty sure I do.
Like quite a few people in the comments here, when I try to picture something I don’t really picture it, I just can hold the concept of it in my mind, but without any associated imagery.
I barely remember dreams, if I dream at all, and my memory is absolutely terrible. It made my parents sad when I’ve brought up my bad memory of trips we’ve been on…but I can usually play it off, or truthfully say that the trips have shaped who I am even if I don’t explicitly remember all the things we did.
One part of your synopsis of the article that sticks out to me is the:
The other half attributed their loss to a psychiatric cause—depersonalization syndrome, depression.
I did have pretty bad undiagnosed “depression” throughout high-school and maybe earlier, and I wonder if that played a role.
I know growing up I would devour books, and I still do, but I do find myself skimming long and wordy descriptions of things, so I tend to prefer books that are “witty” than overly descriptive if that makes sense. I can also really only describe plots, but not what characters or scenes look like, outside of like a very general idea. I can definitely do a better job with movies or tv show characters, but I also don’t think I could describe more than outfit and hair color, if even that.
But I’ve always struggled with trying to do anything artistic or decorative without a reference of basically exactly what I want in front of me. It drives my wife nuts to no end when we’re trying to pick out outfits or decor…no I have no idea if this rug will look good in our house unless we physically place it in the house.
I wish I knew if I’d always had aphantasia, or if it was something that I somehow developed (or if there was some way to “regain” visualization abilities).
I only discovered I have aphantasia 2 years ago, aged 38. It was quite the bizarre realisation that most people actually can mentally visualise things, it stunned me to be honest and definitely...
I only discovered I have aphantasia 2 years ago, aged 38. It was quite the bizarre realisation that most people actually can mentally visualise things, it stunned me to be honest and definitely felt weird for a while. I’ve read of some people becoming super depressed after finding out, I was bummed for a bit, mostly about how I imagine most people can dwell on fond memories aided by visual memory. On reflection I think explains a few things about me as a person and my preferences. The main two being that I have always loved music and film but struggled to get into fiction writing. I also seem to deal with grief quite quickly and always have done. The crazy thing to me is that it is such a recent discovery scientifically, you’d have thought this would have been known about for 100’s of years and well studied. I can definitely relate to a lot in the article, thanks for sharing.
Right, I’m off to sleep… where I do actually see things in my dreams!
I've known for a little while now that I belong in this group, with overlapping prosopagnosia (face blindness). For my side, I do okay with fiction writing. But yes ditto on grief. Probably easier...
I've known for a little while now that I belong in this group, with overlapping prosopagnosia (face blindness).
For my side, I do okay with fiction writing. But yes ditto on grief. Probably easier because I can't "re-live" memories. No audio / scent / visual / touch flash backs.
I also see dreams: they're pretty indistinguishable from experiencing reality (while I'm dreaming the inconsistencies are not apparent).
The knowledge seemed to him more personal than an ordinary fact, but he could not feel or picture what it had been like to be that boy in the kitchen.
Basically this is spot on. Memories are composits reconstructed from known facts every single time. Might also contribute to how much I am open to being wrong about my past assumptions: there was maybe a fact missing or misfiled, cool, I'll fix it, and no need for memory video editing. ( I choose to do this, though, I don't just believe everyone of course)
Not that surprising to me. We only know our own minds, so it's hard to realize that our "normal" might be different from everyone else's unless we explicitly discuss it. And aphantasia is directly...
The crazy thing to me is that it is such a recent discovery scientifically, you’d have thought this would have been known about for 100’s of years and well studied.
Not that surprising to me. We only know our own minds, so it's hard to realize that our "normal" might be different from everyone else's unless we explicitly discuss it. And aphantasia is directly tied to how we think, which is such a basic thing and would barely ever come up in casual conversations. As the article notes, even the current research started when a man lost the ability to visualize things in his mind after a surgery. Same goes for the historic cases mentioned. If someone's born with it, it most likely won't ever come up because you'd assume everyone is the same way.
The mind is a crazy thing, and psychology and neuroscience are still fairly young fields compared to other sciences. I can't guess how many other potential conditions relating to "basic" cognition or perception have yet to be discovered because people just don't think to ask or mention it.
I suppose this is a weird question, but how do you know you visualize when dreaming? The only way I can imagine saying I can visualize while dreaming would require being able to recall visuals...
I suppose this is a weird question, but how do you know you visualize when dreaming? The only way I can imagine saying I can visualize while dreaming would require being able to recall visuals from my dreams, but recalling visuals is a problem in itself.
Dreams are different than imagination and activates elsewhere in the brain too. Dreaming can be actively experienced by the brain and thus you can see dreams while they happen even if you can't...
Dreams are different than imagination and activates elsewhere in the brain too. Dreaming can be actively experienced by the brain and thus you can see dreams while they happen even if you can't imagine things while awake.
I rarely dream, nor do I mentally see things, but I do know when I'm dreaming. Sometimes.
I am also one of these folks. My wife and I are self described "aphantasia"-havers (aphantasic)? There are things that blew my mind when I realized people could literally conjure up images in...
I am also one of these folks. My wife and I are self described "aphantasia"-havers (aphantasic)?
There are things that blew my mind when I realized people could literally conjure up images in their mind.
For me, a lot of it is just a "knowledge" of something. I don't literally "see" a mental image of a thing. I understand the concept of a tree, the rough scale, the color and texture, but I don't see it.
My wife and I are both software engineers, and I come from a background in mathematics. I think I view "objects" in my mind sort of the way I would a data model. I know the property, the shape, and the structural interactions of an object. As you would a data class defined in some programming language, but I cannot conjure an image.
This extends to my dreams. I don't really "see" things, but I can remember scenery and settings. It's very hard to explain.
One thing that is of note, I believe. Before this whole "aphantasia" popularity in recent years, there was no word for any of this. I remember trying out things like Sensory Deprivation tanks (which most people hallucinate in), and all I could see were the "pressure waves" caused by the blood flow in my eyes. No imagery whatsoever. My close friends, however, described seeing fantastic images.
Initially when I discovered that this was "not" the normal experience I was honestly pretty bummed about it. I remember feeling like I was missing out on something integral to the human experience. It's been years since, and more thoughts on the matter have lead me to the conclusion that my inability here has helped shaped me in ways I really have come to be proud of. It has helped me be talented (I think) in areas of logical thinking, mathematics, and abstract concepts.
Hah! I also am aphantasic. The one time I did Salvia, which normally involves hallucinations, those waves were all I got. That, and my mind trying to figure out why I'd been struck blind (because...
Hah! I also am aphantasic. The one time I did Salvia, which normally involves hallucinations, those waves were all I got. That, and my mind trying to figure out why I'd been struck blind (because my eyes were closed.) It wasn't something I wanted a second shot at. Maybe this is why?
I wonder if we'd also have atypical responses to psychedelics and mind altering substances. +1 on the object oriented mental processes. It's cool, we get to instantiate abstract classes with no...
I wonder if we'd also have atypical responses to psychedelics and mind altering substances.
+1 on the object oriented mental processes. It's cool, we get to instantiate abstract classes with no properties filled in.
I love when these posts about aphantsia pop up. It's nice to know I'm not alone. My favorite way to demonstrate/explain to people is by asking them a question. "Think of an apple. What color is...
I love when these posts about aphantsia pop up. It's nice to know I'm not alone.
My favorite way to demonstrate/explain to people is by asking them a question. "Think of an apple. What color is it?"
People with mental imagery will respond almost immediately and say "red." The few aphantasiacs I've asked, look at me and it seems like they don't understand the question. They/we have a concept of an apple in our mind, but unless it's specified, it's just an apple. Not red, or green, or yellow, it just IS an apple.
Right. We're thinking about the quintessential Apple, the Omni Apple which can be any and every apple. And then some people with autism will also look at the question funny because they'd be...
Right. We're thinking about the quintessential Apple, the Omni Apple which can be any and every apple.
And then some people with autism will also look at the question funny because they'd be thinking of a very specific apple that at one point existed and they've interacted with, not a generic red.
I'm an aphantasiac that went through Calc 3 and differnetial equations in college. I graduated with a chemical engineering degree. The only time I ever "visualized" anything was an experience with...
I'm an aphantasiac that went through Calc 3 and differnetial equations in college. I graduated with a chemical engineering degree.
The only time I ever "visualized" anything was an experience with Magic Mushrooms. It also made calc 3, and all the spatial stuff click, a weird Ah HA moment.
Engineering as well. I’m not sure how you build something physical without being able to see it in your head first. Of course, I’m sure there are plenty of mechanical engineers that don’t have a...
Engineering as well. I’m not sure how you build something physical without being able to see it in your head first. Of course, I’m sure there are plenty of mechanical engineers that don’t have a mind’s eye. I’d love to hear from one.
Funny. I'm not a mechanical engineer by schooling, but Chemical. I suppose in my education the drawings were just rough sketches. You did the math to get the dimensions (of a reaction tank for...
Funny. I'm not a mechanical engineer by schooling, but Chemical. I suppose in my education the drawings were just rough sketches. You did the math to get the dimensions (of a reaction tank for example).
The way I describe my "mental images" is like a list of specifications. But I think that lines up quite well with engineering. What's an engineering drawing but a list of specifications?
I have a concept of an apple, but you need to define the color, whether it has a stem, how many feet it has, is it bruised, etc. while It doesn't sharpen a mental image, it gives me the context of what is intended.
I am a software engineer and mathematician and am aphantasic. I know this may sound pompous, but genuinely, is there any questions you'd like to ask? I'm happy to explain my thought process on how...
I am a software engineer and mathematician and am aphantasic.
I know this may sound pompous, but genuinely, is there any questions you'd like to ask? I'm happy to explain my thought process on how I tackle complex problems and build things without visualization.
When designing a system (my day job as a Software Engineer), I first "talk" through the problem in my head. Like literally perform an inner monologue describing to myself at a high level what I...
When designing a system (my day job as a Software Engineer), I first "talk" through the problem in my head. Like literally perform an inner monologue describing to myself at a high level what I would like to accomplish.
This sort of is uncannily like a the "thought process" you might see when you show the thinking on a large language model like o1. I will converse with myself and find myself saying in my own head "wait, if this system has this delay, then it can cause a bottleneck here".
Once that process has "wrapped up", I put things to diagram or tickets if they warrant it. So if something is going to be sufficiently difficult for me to convey to someone else via description, I will diagram the architecture (mermaid diagrams, excalidraw, good ol' pen and paper, etc).
I have used CAD tools, but I do not do them for my professional work. Only for personal 3D-Printing in the one-off. I am incapable of "imagining" addendums to objects in 3D models, even if I am literally looking right at them. I typically just have to try things until it "looks right".
Damn, how many aphantasics do we have on Tildes?! I'm one too. Best I can manage is a dim wire frame that pops into my mind for about the duration of a camera flash in a pitch black room, and I...
Damn, how many aphantasics do we have on Tildes?! I'm one too.
Best I can manage is a dim wire frame that pops into my mind for about the duration of a camera flash in a pitch black room, and I can't flash that camera more than once every couple of minutes for any given scene. No colors or textures, just vectors, shapes, edges. I can't remember dreams at all, not even a tiny fraction of them.
I've got the omnipresent visual snow and tinnitus to go with it, though the migraines stopped once I was out of my 20s. Even magic mushrooms and LSD hit my mind like a brick wall - I don't think it's possible for me to have hallucinations, I've tried on several occasions. The closest I get is some washed out almost transparent pastel rainbow stripes if I stare at a bright white wall while under a heavy dose. I do get enhanced color perception and the 'breathing' visual effect while tripping, but no trails.
Never seemed to bother me when reading books, doing calculus or physics, or various engineering tasks. Never bothered me on the art either, but then I don't imagine an image and try to draw it, I just start plopping things down onto the paper and working with them once I can look at them. I'd say the only thing about it that bothers me is the reflexive irritated eye-roll I do every time I hear someone say the word "visualize" when trying to explain something. That technique is utterly useless to me.
My audio memory is probably better than normal, though. If I listen to your voice for about five minutes and we don't talk again until twenty years later on the phone, I'll recognize you from just your 'hello' even if your voice has changed. Using this to freak people out is kinda fun. I can play back complete songs I've heard in my head like there's an embedded mp3 player in there if I've heard it enough times, though it's not instantly memorized and I do forget them over time.
I was doing some digging on this out of curiosity some time ago and found some anecdotal evidence that Ayahuasca and DMT can 'cure' it for some people - and not just while high, I mean permanently after one dose. Doesn't work for everyone, but apparently the heavy psychedelics do work for some people. Haven't tried either of those yet myself. In fact being able to remember everything I'd seen before seems like hell - all that visual crud in the brain would clog up and slow down my thinking like a Tildes front page full of cat pictures.
I also found some meditation techniques that presented a method for training that visualization process. I tried it out of curiosity and after some practice it did seem to work - I could lift a small image off a page and keep it around like the tiny spot you'd see from staring at the sun, and lasting about that long. Didn't bother keeping up with it though, as I said it doesn't seem useful to me.
I'm surprised I didn't see my own situation represented here so I'll add another to the pile- I don't have aphantasia but it is the default state for how I imagine things. For example when asked...
I'm surprised I didn't see my own situation represented here so I'll add another to the pile- I don't have aphantasia but it is the default state for how I imagine things. For example when asked to imagine an apple- it's formless, shapeless, it's a symbol or concept of an apple. It's only when I'm asked "what color is it?" that that it actually jumps into a visualization and takes on a shape, color, all the other visible and tangible aspects of a real apple. Despite this I actually have a pretty active imagination, I spend a lot of time playing out stories in my head or playing with concepts like "seeing" beyond your typical range of vision.
Like many of you I also have prosopagnosia, though I'm not sure if that's connected with this in my case. I have no problem visualizing a person just am not able to form that shape into a good representation of anyone I actually know beyond facts like hair color, eye color, noted prominent features or scars, etc
I am in the group that didn't realize people were being literal when talking about imagining things until I learned about the term aphantashia as an adult. I don't think I have issues with facial recognition, but I cannot recall faces aside from recognition. As an example, if I was asked to describe my own mother's face I would draw a blank.
I've always attributed this to why I don't find reading particularly interesting and why I've given up all attempts I've ever made at art (the not being able to visualize my goal). I also don't remember dreams, so not really sure what's going on there. I'd find it interesting though if I were to learn that my dreams are visual and I never recall them specifically because I can't visualize them consciously.
Oh god when a book starts describing the landscape. Just kill me now.
On the plus side, I will never worry about how the protagonist in the movie adaptation doesn't look like their description in the book, or how people imagined it. I didn't know what they were supposed to look like anyway. If anything, reading a book after a movie is better.
It really did seem like people used the terms seeing or minds eye as if it was just a metaphor.
Fun trick I learnt was to ask someone to think of a table with a red apple on it. Then ask them what color or material the table was. Most respond instantly, aphantasiacs will look at you puzzled.
Yeah uhh my mom has dark colored hair. That's as far as I get.
For whatever reason my table was dark wood with a large frilly white cloth draped over it.
It’s funny how a lot of these tests involve apples.
I can’t even see the apple (or its color (or the table)).
Like, I know what an apple looks like, and I know what colors an apple can be, but in my mind it only appears as a sort of formless, nondescript round object. It exists as a somewhat vacant spatial placeholder that my brain “knows” is supposed to be an apple.
Somewhere else in my brain is a non-visual entry in my memory that exists as
color = redorcolor = greendepending on what I’m asked to summon.If the color of the apple isn’t specified for me? Then I have no idea what the color is. It literally doesn’t have one, and I cannot manifest one except to basically think “hmm, apples are usually red, right?”
Additionally, those memory flags really only work for common things with obvious values.
An author will describe something unique with lots of visual detail, hoping to embed in my memory with entries like
color = greens and blues,texture = weathered,lighting = dim. The moment those pass by in the text, they are GONE from my brain. Turn the page and ask me about a character’s hair color or the way the landscape looks, and I’ve got nothing.This is so intriguing to me. Can you hear things in your mind? As in, either music/sounds you've previously heard, or an internal monologue?
Speaking of internal monologues, there's also a condition called anendophasia where you don't have one. This one is a REALLY new discovery, from what I can find it was just formally identified last year.
And looking that up just now introduced me to anauralia, a lack of internal auditory imagery.
The human mind is seriously crazy.
I can internally monologue and I can get songs stuck in my head, but music is simplified down to something closer to rhythmic poetry. There will be words and a beat, but instruments are gone. It's kind of like I've reduced it down to just what it takes to sing along.
I've described it to my wife as like I think in details. To use the apple example that keeps getting brought up: to me an apple is that white flash card with black sans-serif text that depicts a side view of a red delicious apple with exactly 2 knobs at the bottom and a short brown stem. I don't see this flash card in my mind though. It's just that when I think about an apple with no explicit descriptors I don't visualize some apple and then describe it, I just fetch the details about what a stereotypical apple is. These descriptors are still words though, which is where the internal monologue comes in.
I can't say if I experience the internal monologue the same as others though without knowing more about how they're normally experienced. I can say that it doesn't feel like I "hear" the words as much as they're "just there". They don't have a voice.
I'd say that sounds close enough to my own internal monologue, which I believe is considered "normal". I have the words, and sometimes there's a recognizable voice to it, but only when I'm being conscious of it. It's kind of weird to think about how the "voice" is very genderless and toneless, best word I have to describe it is "invisible" despite that usually being used for visual. It's not silent, because it's there, but it's also... not.
Also, now you have me wondering about how I think of music and songs. I think my mind also puts more emphasis on vocals, but the instrumentals are there, particularly when they're a focal point of the song. The songs are definitely "simplified" though. I'm guessing anauralia (inner ear) has a whole scale like aphantasia where some people "hear" nothing, and those who hear stuff in exact detail.
For the record, as far as I know I have none of these conditions. But I just learned the name of the lack of inner monologue today (anendophasia), and that anauralia exists and is a totally separate thing from that and aphantasia. So, I have no clue what actually defines a "baseline" mind anymore because we take that stuff for granted. And now I'm wondering what if someone has all three...
For me, my internal monologue is "silent" but somehow masculine in some indistinct way? (I'm cis-male.) It's not my voice, precisely, but it has some abstract quality to it that is male. When I'm reading something written by a woman, the voice doesn't change exactly, but it has an abstract feminine quality to it instead.
Similarly, when I have a song stuck in my head (which is almost always—currently it's "Tainted Love"), my mental representation of the song isn't fully formed. The instrumentation is simplified in some way. I think the vocals are probably the closest. If I really concentrate, I think I can "fill the song out," so to speak, but it's hard to say what exactly is changing.
In imagining the apple on the table, I don't know that the table had a color, even though the apple was definitely red. Similarly, I couldn't say what the background was. It wasn't dark and it wasn't light, it was just... undefined.
The recurring theme is abstractness and indefiniteness. Dreams are the same way. They're more shallow than real life perception. I don't know if they're true for everyone.
From the article:
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Thanks for sharing! I gotta try to find a copy of this article somewhere, or grab a sale subscription at some point, because this is very interesting to me. When I first heard about aphantasia a couple years back, I seriously questioned if I have it, and I’m pretty sure I do.
Like quite a few people in the comments here, when I try to picture something I don’t really picture it, I just can hold the concept of it in my mind, but without any associated imagery.
I barely remember dreams, if I dream at all, and my memory is absolutely terrible. It made my parents sad when I’ve brought up my bad memory of trips we’ve been on…but I can usually play it off, or truthfully say that the trips have shaped who I am even if I don’t explicitly remember all the things we did.
One part of your synopsis of the article that sticks out to me is the:
I did have pretty bad undiagnosed “depression” throughout high-school and maybe earlier, and I wonder if that played a role.
I know growing up I would devour books, and I still do, but I do find myself skimming long and wordy descriptions of things, so I tend to prefer books that are “witty” than overly descriptive if that makes sense. I can also really only describe plots, but not what characters or scenes look like, outside of like a very general idea. I can definitely do a better job with movies or tv show characters, but I also don’t think I could describe more than outfit and hair color, if even that.
But I’ve always struggled with trying to do anything artistic or decorative without a reference of basically exactly what I want in front of me. It drives my wife nuts to no end when we’re trying to pick out outfits or decor…no I have no idea if this rug will look good in our house unless we physically place it in the house.
I wish I knew if I’d always had aphantasia, or if it was something that I somehow developed (or if there was some way to “regain” visualization abilities).
I only discovered I have aphantasia 2 years ago, aged 38. It was quite the bizarre realisation that most people actually can mentally visualise things, it stunned me to be honest and definitely felt weird for a while. I’ve read of some people becoming super depressed after finding out, I was bummed for a bit, mostly about how I imagine most people can dwell on fond memories aided by visual memory. On reflection I think explains a few things about me as a person and my preferences. The main two being that I have always loved music and film but struggled to get into fiction writing. I also seem to deal with grief quite quickly and always have done. The crazy thing to me is that it is such a recent discovery scientifically, you’d have thought this would have been known about for 100’s of years and well studied. I can definitely relate to a lot in the article, thanks for sharing.
Right, I’m off to sleep… where I do actually see things in my dreams!
I've known for a little while now that I belong in this group, with overlapping prosopagnosia (face blindness).
For my side, I do okay with fiction writing. But yes ditto on grief. Probably easier because I can't "re-live" memories. No audio / scent / visual / touch flash backs.
I also see dreams: they're pretty indistinguishable from experiencing reality (while I'm dreaming the inconsistencies are not apparent).
Basically this is spot on. Memories are composits reconstructed from known facts every single time. Might also contribute to how much I am open to being wrong about my past assumptions: there was maybe a fact missing or misfiled, cool, I'll fix it, and no need for memory video editing. ( I choose to do this, though, I don't just believe everyone of course)
Not that surprising to me. We only know our own minds, so it's hard to realize that our "normal" might be different from everyone else's unless we explicitly discuss it. And aphantasia is directly tied to how we think, which is such a basic thing and would barely ever come up in casual conversations. As the article notes, even the current research started when a man lost the ability to visualize things in his mind after a surgery. Same goes for the historic cases mentioned. If someone's born with it, it most likely won't ever come up because you'd assume everyone is the same way.
The mind is a crazy thing, and psychology and neuroscience are still fairly young fields compared to other sciences. I can't guess how many other potential conditions relating to "basic" cognition or perception have yet to be discovered because people just don't think to ask or mention it.
I suppose this is a weird question, but how do you know you visualize when dreaming? The only way I can imagine saying I can visualize while dreaming would require being able to recall visuals from my dreams, but recalling visuals is a problem in itself.
Dreams are different than imagination and activates elsewhere in the brain too. Dreaming can be actively experienced by the brain and thus you can see dreams while they happen even if you can't imagine things while awake.
I rarely dream, nor do I mentally see things, but I do know when I'm dreaming. Sometimes.
I am also one of these folks. My wife and I are self described "aphantasia"-havers (aphantasic)?
There are things that blew my mind when I realized people could literally conjure up images in their mind.
For me, a lot of it is just a "knowledge" of something. I don't literally "see" a mental image of a thing. I understand the concept of a tree, the rough scale, the color and texture, but I don't see it.
My wife and I are both software engineers, and I come from a background in mathematics. I think I view "objects" in my mind sort of the way I would a data model. I know the property, the shape, and the structural interactions of an object. As you would a data class defined in some programming language, but I cannot conjure an image.
This extends to my dreams. I don't really "see" things, but I can remember scenery and settings. It's very hard to explain.
One thing that is of note, I believe. Before this whole "aphantasia" popularity in recent years, there was no word for any of this. I remember trying out things like Sensory Deprivation tanks (which most people hallucinate in), and all I could see were the "pressure waves" caused by the blood flow in my eyes. No imagery whatsoever. My close friends, however, described seeing fantastic images.
Initially when I discovered that this was "not" the normal experience I was honestly pretty bummed about it. I remember feeling like I was missing out on something integral to the human experience. It's been years since, and more thoughts on the matter have lead me to the conclusion that my inability here has helped shaped me in ways I really have come to be proud of. It has helped me be talented (I think) in areas of logical thinking, mathematics, and abstract concepts.
Hah! I also am aphantasic. The one time I did Salvia, which normally involves hallucinations, those waves were all I got. That, and my mind trying to figure out why I'd been struck blind (because my eyes were closed.) It wasn't something I wanted a second shot at. Maybe this is why?
I wonder if we'd also have atypical responses to psychedelics and mind altering substances.
+1 on the object oriented mental processes. It's cool, we get to instantiate abstract classes with no properties filled in.
I love when these posts about aphantsia pop up. It's nice to know I'm not alone.
My favorite way to demonstrate/explain to people is by asking them a question. "Think of an apple. What color is it?"
People with mental imagery will respond almost immediately and say "red." The few aphantasiacs I've asked, look at me and it seems like they don't understand the question. They/we have a concept of an apple in our mind, but unless it's specified, it's just an apple. Not red, or green, or yellow, it just IS an apple.
Right. We're thinking about the quintessential Apple, the Omni Apple which can be any and every apple.
And then some people with autism will also look at the question funny because they'd be thinking of a very specific apple that at one point existed and they've interacted with, not a generic red.
I didn't even consider how my aphantsia interracts with my AuDHD... Oh boy what a new can of worms this is...
Mirror: https://archive.is/P4RgL
This sounds like it could be a learning difference as well, visualization is so important when learning in depth math and physics.
I'm an aphantasiac that went through Calc 3 and differnetial equations in college. I graduated with a chemical engineering degree.
The only time I ever "visualized" anything was an experience with Magic Mushrooms. It also made calc 3, and all the spatial stuff click, a weird Ah HA moment.
Engineering as well. I’m not sure how you build something physical without being able to see it in your head first. Of course, I’m sure there are plenty of mechanical engineers that don’t have a mind’s eye. I’d love to hear from one.
Funny. I'm not a mechanical engineer by schooling, but Chemical. I suppose in my education the drawings were just rough sketches. You did the math to get the dimensions (of a reaction tank for example).
The way I describe my "mental images" is like a list of specifications. But I think that lines up quite well with engineering. What's an engineering drawing but a list of specifications?
I have a concept of an apple, but you need to define the color, whether it has a stem, how many feet it has, is it bruised, etc. while It doesn't sharpen a mental image, it gives me the context of what is intended.
I am a software engineer and mathematician and am aphantasic.
I know this may sound pompous, but genuinely, is there any questions you'd like to ask? I'm happy to explain my thought process on how I tackle complex problems and build things without visualization.
Do you draw diagrams when doing geometric problems? Have you used CAD tools?
When designing a system (my day job as a Software Engineer), I first "talk" through the problem in my head. Like literally perform an inner monologue describing to myself at a high level what I would like to accomplish.
This sort of is uncannily like a the "thought process" you might see when you show the thinking on a large language model like o1. I will converse with myself and find myself saying in my own head "wait, if this system has this delay, then it can cause a bottleneck here".
Once that process has "wrapped up", I put things to diagram or tickets if they warrant it. So if something is going to be sufficiently difficult for me to convey to someone else via description, I will diagram the architecture (mermaid diagrams, excalidraw, good ol' pen and paper, etc).
I have used CAD tools, but I do not do them for my professional work. Only for personal 3D-Printing in the one-off. I am incapable of "imagining" addendums to objects in 3D models, even if I am literally looking right at them. I typically just have to try things until it "looks right".
Damn, how many aphantasics do we have on Tildes?! I'm one too.
Best I can manage is a dim wire frame that pops into my mind for about the duration of a camera flash in a pitch black room, and I can't flash that camera more than once every couple of minutes for any given scene. No colors or textures, just vectors, shapes, edges. I can't remember dreams at all, not even a tiny fraction of them.
I've got the omnipresent visual snow and tinnitus to go with it, though the migraines stopped once I was out of my 20s. Even magic mushrooms and LSD hit my mind like a brick wall - I don't think it's possible for me to have hallucinations, I've tried on several occasions. The closest I get is some washed out almost transparent pastel rainbow stripes if I stare at a bright white wall while under a heavy dose. I do get enhanced color perception and the 'breathing' visual effect while tripping, but no trails.
Never seemed to bother me when reading books, doing calculus or physics, or various engineering tasks. Never bothered me on the art either, but then I don't imagine an image and try to draw it, I just start plopping things down onto the paper and working with them once I can look at them. I'd say the only thing about it that bothers me is the reflexive irritated eye-roll I do every time I hear someone say the word "visualize" when trying to explain something. That technique is utterly useless to me.
My audio memory is probably better than normal, though. If I listen to your voice for about five minutes and we don't talk again until twenty years later on the phone, I'll recognize you from just your 'hello' even if your voice has changed. Using this to freak people out is kinda fun. I can play back complete songs I've heard in my head like there's an embedded mp3 player in there if I've heard it enough times, though it's not instantly memorized and I do forget them over time.
I was doing some digging on this out of curiosity some time ago and found some anecdotal evidence that Ayahuasca and DMT can 'cure' it for some people - and not just while high, I mean permanently after one dose. Doesn't work for everyone, but apparently the heavy psychedelics do work for some people. Haven't tried either of those yet myself. In fact being able to remember everything I'd seen before seems like hell - all that visual crud in the brain would clog up and slow down my thinking like a Tildes front page full of cat pictures.
I also found some meditation techniques that presented a method for training that visualization process. I tried it out of curiosity and after some practice it did seem to work - I could lift a small image off a page and keep it around like the tiny spot you'd see from staring at the sun, and lasting about that long. Didn't bother keeping up with it though, as I said it doesn't seem useful to me.
I'm surprised I didn't see my own situation represented here so I'll add another to the pile- I don't have aphantasia but it is the default state for how I imagine things. For example when asked to imagine an apple- it's formless, shapeless, it's a symbol or concept of an apple. It's only when I'm asked "what color is it?" that that it actually jumps into a visualization and takes on a shape, color, all the other visible and tangible aspects of a real apple. Despite this I actually have a pretty active imagination, I spend a lot of time playing out stories in my head or playing with concepts like "seeing" beyond your typical range of vision.
Like many of you I also have prosopagnosia, though I'm not sure if that's connected with this in my case. I have no problem visualizing a person just am not able to form that shape into a good representation of anyone I actually know beyond facts like hair color, eye color, noted prominent features or scars, etc