Aphantasia

[Aliquid]

So, I just recently discovered I have a condition called "Aphantasia". All my life when someone said "visualize this in your head", I thought they were being metaphoric, or figurative rather than literally meaning "see this thing in your mind".

I can't "see" things in my mind, and find it amazing that other people can. I hear in my mind, I have an "internal monologue" where I talk in my head (all the time), but I can't see, or smell, or feel (do people do that too?)

Apparently this is rare, like 2% of the population. But I never realized it. I guess you just assume that how your mind works is "typical", and since people rarely talk specifically about how they think, you don't realize when you aren't "typical".

Any other Aphantasiacs out there?

[Tarmor]

I was reading about that only last week. I dream in full colour movies (as such), and play/replay music or speech in my head at will. My internal monologue keeps revising what I'm trying to write as I'm writing this.
I always had trouble with the idea of "counting sheep" to try to fall asleep. I never questioned this before, just knew I couldn't do it.
I can structure images in my mind - it's hard to actually describe it. I construct an outline or shape, and define it as having colour, but its never a proper image like what I 'really' see - its always sort of hazy or like its superimposed on (or under) the black and colour/white/whatever speckles that I see when my eyes are closed.
I don't think I have Aphantasia, but after what I've read recently I don't think my mind's eye is typical. Since I've never asked any of my friends (or anyone) what they actually see/think I really don't know what is normal.

[Imbalance]

I have heard of this. I have the opposite problem. I have had to arduously strive to not outright reject reality most of my life. It has been useful in my career, being able to envision the finished product at the earliest stages of design, but it's terribly inefficient when I can't turn it off. Most people call it daydreaming.

[Aliquid]

I can structure images in my mind - it's hard to actually describe it. I construct an outline or shape, and define it as having colour, but its never a proper image like what I 'really' see - its always sort of hazy or like its superimposed on (or under) the black and colour/white/whatever speckles that I see when my eyes are closed.

I might be similar. I don't "see" the images that I structure in my mind, but I almost "feel" their shape and location (I don't assign color though). Everything ties to relative location, so if I think of a D&D miniature that I own, I don't see it, but I know where it is on the shelf back at home... I can't describe how I do this without seeing it, but it is like closing your eyes and knowing where your hand is in relation to the rest of your body. You just sense it. Likewise, if you ask me to visualize a rainbow, I can't, but I remember where I was when I saw one, what direction I was looking, what my surroundings were, and how to pinpoint my location on a map.

I have heard of this. I have the opposite problem. I have had to arduously strive to not outright reject reality most of my life. It has been useful in my career, being able to envision the finished product at the earliest stages of design, but it's terribly inefficient when I can't turn it off. Most people call it daydreaming.

Does this happen for all of your senses? Do you smell and feel and taste and hear?

[Imbalance]

Does this happen for all of your senses? Do you smell and feel and taste and hear?

It can, but most of those are tied to experience and memory. I can't imagine a flavor I've never tasted before, but I'll guarantee that onions on my donut will make me spit it out without ever having to bite into it. I can imagine a blue dog and know that it's fur still feels like dog fur, that his nose is wet, his breath is hot, etc. I can compose music and hear it played on different instruments.

But visually, there seems to be no limit. I remember as a very young child learning the names of basic colors, and I had images of what various combinations of them would look like that came flooding back years later the first time I saw pearlescent paint at a car show. I don't have x-ray vision, but given real world information through observation I can "see" inside of an object, though I'm not always correct and sometimes mislead myself into overlooking the obvious. Nothing in the Monster Manual shocks me because I've seen it all before inside my head. I'm not trying to brag this up as some wondrous super power, since it used to get me into a lot of trouble when I was young.

[Aliquid]

It can, but most of those are tied to experience and memory. I can't imagine a flavor I've never tasted before, but I'll guarantee that onions on my donut will make me spit it out without ever having to bite into it. I can imagine a blue dog and know that it's fur still feels like dog fur, that his nose is wet, his breath is hot, etc.

But can you actually "feel" the fur in your mind?

I can compose music and hear it played on different instruments.

That's interesting too. I have an internal monologue in my head, with me constantly talking through things to myself, and that's all I can hear. So If I want to "hear" music, my internal monologue needs to sing it. If I want to "hear" a drum beat, my internal monologue literally makes the sounds as if I were making drum noises. If I can't make the sounds with my mouth, I can't hear it in my head.

Nothing in the Monster Manual shocks me because I've seen it all before inside my head. I'm not trying to brag this up as some wondrous super power, since it used to get me into a lot of trouble when I was young.

I know what it is like to non stop daydream, but it is just my internal monologue telling me in depth stories.

[Imbalance]

But can you actually "feel" the fur in your mind?

With my slimey, green tentacles, if I'm so inclined. I've had dreams about stepping on my own nonexistent tail and wasted time imagining the weight of the cybernetic implants that will allow me to play both fretboards of a double neck guitar with four arms. It might be a sickness, but yes I can see, feel, and hear doing that, pretty much simultaneously.

I know the inner monologue thing, too, as that's usually what helps me get a grip. It's usually that "quit goofin' off!" admonishment from knowing the consequences of losing focus. It was also sometimes complete, outward conversations. And yes, just like Sheldon, my mother had me tested and I'm not insane. I just have a really vivid, often over-active imagination.

Just reading your post, I can see you and the efforts you make to reproduce a song you know from memory. Having never met you, the assumptions my mind makes are probably nowhere close to reality, but your words conjure a full suite of unreal sensory observations. It's turning it off and putting you back into a faceless paragraph on a screen that's the trick.

[Ornithologist]

I got it too.

For me growing up, counting sheep was the act of closing my eyes and slowly saying "one sheep, two sheep" etc... in my internal monologue. Though I have found a beneficial side effect for those of you who might not know it yet. You can never get an image stuck in your head. The following has been spoilered for those with the opposite problem.

Spoiler: hidden for your safety.

Show

Imagine a turkey vulture vomiting up whole hotdogs into a trash pile covered in dead rats.

Now, not only can I not see the above thing. It will not linger in my brain, to disgust me any further now that I have stopped actively looking at that. So yay?

One thing that some people don't get about it, and that helped researchers figure out its a real thing is that it doesn't effect hallucinations or dreams. Involuntarily visualizations are apparently from a different part of the brain. Because I do get vivid dreams occasionally, but I cannot make anything happen like that visually when I'm awake.

[Imbalance]

Like, Oscar Meyer or Hebrew National?

[Ornithologist]

Like, Oscar Meyer or Hebrew National?

uh... I have no idea. Lets go with Oscar Meyer, because Theme song. I couldn't tell the difference once its out of the package in any case.

Back on topic, They have started getting some good tests out there to help identify it more often.

[Samba Mentality]

I’m kind of the opposite, and I’m realizing it more so lately in a big shift in my life. I tend to speak/act before thinking, and then I keep visualizing the moment over and over again involuntarily, whether or not it was embarrassing. I lose focus a lot in conversations, for example, visualizing that moment when I said something without tact three hours ago. That’s probably just my anxiety though...

[Aliquid]

I’m kind of the opposite, and I’m realizing it more so lately in a big shift in my life. I tend to speak/act before thinking, and then I keep visualizing the moment over and over again involuntarily, whether or not it was embarrassing. I lose focus a lot in conversations, for example, visualizing that moment when I said something without tact three hours ago. That’s probably just my anxiety though...

I don't visualize things but I remember conversations and events. And I'll be walking down the street minding my own business and something will trigger a random memory from long ago... and if it was embarrassing I experience the embarrassment all over again, as if it just happened. I'm not just talking about something three hours ago. It will often be something from 30 years ago.

[Skydow]

I feel like I can visualize things properly, but I'm not sure how upfront "Picturing" things is supposed to be-thus, I'm not actually sure if there's something up with me or not. I think I picture things just fine, however.

[Ornithologist]

I feel like I can visualize things properly, but I'm not sure how upfront "Picturing" things is supposed to be-thus, I'm not actually sure if there's something up with me or not. I think I picture things just fine, however.

The best quick indicator I have seen people say in conversation (including others in this very chat and myself last year when I figured it out), is the following.

Would you ever discuss visualizing something as either a metaphor for thinking about it, or as being a figurative statement? if you can close your eyes and literally see images of loved ones, places, and/or objects; then you are in that normal majority.

So, there is a guy who is trying to challenge the world record for memorization of random things. One of his techniques is to close his eyes, and walk around a set path inside his house in his head, where he has placed either the name, or picture of the item he is trying to recall. When I learned about this technique years ago I figured he was being metaphorical. No. That dude is literally walking around in his house inside his head to remember things like the names of 50 random people he just met.

I had to sit down when I figured out what was going on.



For people who want to check themselves, a place to reasonably self test is Here It will ask you to sign up your email, but you can just leave it blank.

[Tarmor]

Memory Houses/Palaces! I've heard variations on these through TV series, friends, magazines/newspaper, etc for a long time. Suddenly the idea doesn't seem completely stupid and useless! If other people can really visualize the actual house it makes sense. I have a very good memory, but it's never worked that way.
Thanks Ornithologist. I looked at that website too. More and more I'm convinced I have Aphantasia.

I've just been and asked simple questions (to me, strange to her) of my wife, like what do you see when you close your eyes, image a rose... We are not "seeing" the same things. I'm getting together with five mates this afternoon - I'm going to ask them the same sort of questions and get their responses.

Thank you Aliquid too, for starting this thread. It's got me thinking and questioning stuff that seemed odd in the past and now is making sense.

[Fiery Diamond]

So, I don't have Aphantasia - but I'm not in the typical majority either. My inability to vividly visualize is tied to a problem I have with visual perception in general. I perceive impressions of the whole, not collections of details. This has, for example, led to the situation where I've known someone for months - or even years! - and I can't tell you their hair color or length. I'll recognize that something is different if they dye their hair or get it cut... but without actual visual prompting, I can't pull those details to mind. You know those "spot the differences" puzzles with two nearly-identical pictures? They are impossible for me to do, because the similarities drown out the differences. It naturally follows, then, that my "mental images" aren't vividly detailed like some other peoples'.

[Tarmor]

Reporting back...
My mates and I had a very interesting conversation yesterday. It started with strange looks and odd comments, until they understood that I was serious and we all talked about how we think of things and how our mind works. None of them had ever really thought about the ability to visualise things in their head, and were quite suprised that I couldn't in the way they do. Of the seven of us around the table, five are "typical" and one of the other guys can't picture things either!

[Aliquid]

Thank you Aliquid too, for starting this thread. It's got me thinking and questioning stuff that seemed odd in the past and now is making sense.

It is a bit mind blowing, living your entire life not realizing your experience isn’t “typical”

Counting sheep makes sense now. The “imagine yourself at a beach” sort of thing is literal not some dumb metaphor. “Imagine the audience in their underwear” is literal. “Daydreaming” isn’t just wistfully thinking about things. Describing someone to a police sketch artist makes so much more sense now (I would be a horrible witness)

[Ornithologist]

It is a bit mind blowing, living your entire life not realizing your experience isn’t “typical”

This is the major sum of the medical/mental health/misc issues I have ever had. Its really turning into a pet peeve of mine.

[Devils_Advocate]

Previous thread.

It seems that those entirely without mental images are a small minority, but so those with eidetic imagery (and thus able to e.g. count the stripes on an imaginary tiger). Most fall somewhere in between.

I hear in my mind, I have an "internal monologue" where I talk in my head (all the time)

"Internal monologue" is another thing that a lot of people assume is metaphorical, I think.

[mindstalk]

Would you ever discuss visualizing something as either a metaphor for thinking about it, or as being a figurative statement? if you can close your eyes and literally see images of loved ones, places, and/or objects; then you are in that normal majority.

Well, I'm not so sure. Neurodiversity is such that I believe there's something real here, but I also suspect there's disagreement on what it means to picture something. And since we don't actually share internal experience it's hard if not impossible to be precise.

Like, what does "literally see" mean? For me, it's not anything like a vivid hallucination. If I close my eyes, all I'm seeing is blackness (or rather the static of your retina in the dark.) If I imagine things with my eyes open, the imagination doesn't block anything I'm seeing (though it might distract me from paying attention to real details, but that's a low bar.)

OTOH, if I look at something, and then close my eyes, I still remember what I saw. Certainly the shape, and I can trace the outline of the remembered (or imagined) object with my eyes just as I could move my eyes around the contour of the actual object. I can imagine lines and labels and their locations well enough to create a new proof in geometry, as if I had sketched it out on paper but without doing so. Again, in a real sense I'm not seeing anything, but in another sense I have a mental scratch space and can place things in it as if it were an actual space.

Colors I'm rather less sure of. I can remember the fact of color, or attribute color to imagined things, but I'm not sure I can get emotional reactions from that, or evaluate color combinations via imagined perception. Not that I've tried much.

I also think I've increased my habit of visualization: I'll pay more attention to descriptive details, and try to conscious build up a mental picture, these days, whereas when I was younger I think I tended to breeze through more.

FWIW by default I'm more of a verbal/monologue thinker. If I'm counting it's much more natural and reliable for me to 'hear' English numbers than to visually imagine a changing counter. I think I *can* separate them: I just tried picturing a counter (1, 2, 3, etc.) while 'reciting' "a" over and over to suppress internal verbalization of the numbers, and it worked, though I also slipped up ("ten" with 10). I have imaginary conversations in my head much of the time. I was really proud when I did my first mental-only geometry proof. It took 40 minutes of concentration but I did it, "and I'm not a visual thinker."

So, there is a guy who is trying to challenge the world record for memorization of random things. One of his techniques is to close his eyes, and walk around a set path inside his house in his head, where he has placed either the name, or picture of the item he is trying to recall. When I learned about this technique years ago I figured he was being metaphorical. No. That dude is literally walking around in his house inside his head to remember things like the names of 50 random people he just met.

Yeah, the memory palace technique is historically common, though I never got a ton of use out of it. And yeah, I can at least call up some level of visual awareness, and imagine going up the stairs, or around the corner to the kitchen, though it's all rather more ghostlike and outline-y than looking at something with open eyes.

[Bonecrusher Doc]

I don't have aphantasia, but I do have trouble picturing people's faces... I can have a mental image of a person, but their face is just a blur. Given the difficulty I have recognizing people by their faces in real life, I suspect it is related to some form of prosopagnosia.

[Millstone85]

I hear in my mind, I have an "internal monologue" where I talk in my head (all the time), but I can't see, or smell, or feel (do people do that too?)

I can hear and see what I imagine, but neiter smell, taste or touch it.

Same thing when I dream. On that note, I experience some dreams as if I was there, with my eyes and ears. Other dreams are more like watching TV.

[Fiery Diamond]

I can hear and see what I imagine, but neiter smell, taste or touch it.

Same thing when I dream. On that note, I experience some dreams as if I was there, with my eyes and ears. Other dreams are more like watching TV.

Interestingly enough, my dreams are much more vivid than my imagination. I don't smell in my dreams, but I hear, see, feel, and taste. I even feel pain in my dreams, which made me wonder why the whole "pinch myself to see if I'm awake" never made sense to me.