Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Aphantasia: A life without mental images

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 78 posts

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#11

Post by Nav_Panel »

dcw303 wrote: post #9

I have this too. If I try to recall images of people close to me, I get an instinctive flash, which is like an outline. If I try to focus in on the detail, the image disappears. Happens in dreams to some extent too - I generally dream normally (?) but if I become lucid then everything I try to look at disintegrates. For the record, I'm a programmer who always wanted to do something artistic. Coming to the realization…

I'm pretty sure it's common for programmers to be below average visualizers. I was interested in this topic in college and asked around in my software developer friend group and many also didn't visualize well. My unscientific hypothesis is that programming requires a much larger language based memory than visual memory, so people sort themselves based on their skills.

However, this doesn't disqualify you from the arts under any circumstances! You might never be a photorealistic painter, but you might be better at, say, photography, as it's more about elimination of elements, or certain types of illustration (or music but I assume by "artistic" you meant visual arts). And, as usual, it's mostly hard work and only like 10% talent...

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#12

Post by meric »

EC1 wrote: post #10
claar wrote: post #5

I've always known I'm terrible at visualizing. The first question from the quiz in the article is "Conjure up an image of a friend or relative who you frequently see". I chose my wife whom I see for hours each day. I tried to visualize what she looks like -- nothing. Is this really so rare?

On the opposite end I remember every face I've ever seen (that has been put to a name). I remember most names and faces from each of my elementary classes including pre-school. Completely useless skill as I can't remember other things to save my life unless I read them 100 times over.

You can use it to pretend you know everyone in a party even though all you know is their face and name. :)

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#13

Post by schoen »

claar wrote: post #5

I've always known I'm terrible at visualizing. The first question from the quiz in the article is "Conjure up an image of a friend or relative who you frequently see". I chose my wife whom I see for hours each day. I tried to visualize what she looks like -- nothing. Is this really so rare?

I don't think I have a very difficult time visualizing things, but I seem to have a hard time describing what people look like. Whenever anyone asks what person X looks like, I always really struggle with the question and rarely give a useful answer beyond things like skin color, hair color, and sometimes height. I don't know why this is at all -- whether my visual memories (maybe of specific people?) are missing fine details, whether I'm just generally lacking in practice in describing people's appearance in words, whether I'm especially inattentive to people's appearance, whether it's a psychological block, or something else. (I don't experience face blindness; I can easily recognize and distinguish people when I see them in person.)

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#14

Post by meric »

dcw303 wrote: post #9

I have this too. If I try to recall images of people close to me, I get an instinctive flash, which is like an outline. If I try to focus in on the detail, the image disappears. Happens in dreams to some extent too - I generally dream normally (?) but if I become lucid then everything I try to look at disintegrates. For the record, I'm a programmer who always wanted to do something artistic. Coming to the realization…

I can recall anyone in a scene. I think it's a detailed image I can zoomed in, and I think I have all their details (eyes, hair, eyebrows, etc) down. It's a full color scene where the person of interest can be moving in their characteristic walking style, waving their arms the way they wave their arms, and talk the way they talk. However if I try to focus on the details, it's all a blur. It's like when you have a small 50px by 50px photo, and it looks sharp. Zoom in, and you realise it was an illusion. That's exactly it for me.

I can imagine my girlfriend's foot a little more in detail, e.g. changes in skin tone, but I can't remember the shape of her individual nails. Some of the details of my girlfriend's, I can see in my mind, the others are mostly a blur. I can't see in detail what I haven't noticed in real life. The details I see are because there was a scene where she made a very appropriate facial expression in response to a situation and I remember that detail very clearly - like the way she smiled and tried to convince me everyone said she had a beautiful smile on our second date.

Also - I notice the images I conjure in my mind are always a lot dimmer in brightness than when seeing images with my eye. I can remember them being bright, but I see them as dim - even when imagining the sun and the sky. It's like looking at a computer screen in bright sunlight.

It still doesn't seem that vivid to some of the people described in the article.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#15

Post by nickledave »

Just want to point out that there could be a wide range of ability to recognize faces and it's probably realy hard to find a good measure of that. If someone shows you a picture of your wife (to take an example from one comment) and a picture of eg another woman with the same hair color, skin tone, whatever, would you be able to distinguish them? I'll bet you would unless you suffer from prosopagnosia, the loss of the ability to recognize faces that we know can occur after damage to a certain part of visual cortex. Then try to describe how you can tell the pictures apart. Not as easy. Artists (like the one in the article) spend all day thinking about faces (ok, not all artists, but many of them). They probably feel more confident in their ability to recognize faces and in their ability to describe them--because they discuss faces for portraits, with clients, etc. As a skeptical neuroscientist, I'm thinking you should hold off on diagnosing yourself with this condition until we come up with better evidence for it.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#16

Post by MarkPNeyer »

i used to have this ability. i know i had it as a child. i remember visualizing fantastically complex systems.

i seem to have lost it at some point in adulthood. i have no idea when.

i started doing it again while using drugs, and this caused me to become aware that i'd lost an ability i once had. it was very hard to explain to people what this ability was, but i rememberd being able to visualize fantastically complex scenes in my head, as a kid, and getting some sense of this back while high.

in the past i could imagine any complex system of gears - like a clock, and zoom in and look at any part of it.

it's like the projector bulb is broken. an image flashes and goes away.

has anyone found a way to redevelop this?

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#17

Post by franknord23 »

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #2

Wow, I finally have a word to describe my mental experience. To others, I've described the vividness of my memory as like a wireframe. I can feel spatial relationships but I don't see them like a picture in my head. There are occasions that I can see color in my minds eye, but it's mostly greyscale.

I'm probably similar. I can easily picture objects' outlines, wireframe style, even when they quickly rotate.

But colors are almost impossible. Also I don't “see” light.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#18

Post by cottonseed »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4
x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #2

Wow, I finally have a word to describe my mental experience. To others, I've described the vividness of my memory as like a wireframe. I can feel spatial relationships but I don't see them like a picture in my head. There are occasions that I can see color in my minds eye, but it's mostly greyscale.

How do you dream?

Rarely, if ever, and never as images. If your dreams are like movies, mine are like stumbling through a dark house.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#19

Post by [deleted] »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4
x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #2

Wow, I finally have a word to describe my mental experience. To others, I've described the vividness of my memory as like a wireframe. I can feel spatial relationships but I don't see them like a picture in my head. There are occasions that I can see color in my minds eye, but it's mostly greyscale.

How do you dream?

[deleted]

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#20

Post by rhino369 »

How clear are the pictures normal people can visualize. Is it like seeing but with your eyes closed? Because what I can do is nothing like seeing. Visual memory doesnt appear like a vision. Just a vague memory.

Can people actually see memories. I'm really missing out if so.

Post reply on HN