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Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

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Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#51

Post by 0xfaded »

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

Wow, I just learned something new about myself.

If I attempt the red triangle thought, I can place the concept of a triangle in space, but I can't see it.

Similarly for the beach, my mental model is all the concepts accociated with a beach positioned in 3d space, but I don't "see" anything.

However, on rare occasions I have "seen" things in my mind in absolutely perfect detail, but I have no control over what I see. I've also heard complete orchestras but have no control over what they play. Otherwise my inner ear is very limited.

I've always wanted to tame these abilities but don't know where to start.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#52

Post by JohnBooty »

There are a lot of basic assumptions about thought that don't apply to everybody.

My wife, for example, can't process "left" and "right" without great effort.

She's intelligent and is a gifted artist in a variety of mediums, and is not dyslexic in the least. But if you tell her to "turn right" in a car it's very confusing for her to translate that into which direction she should take.

Even more confusingly, she's a very good navigator, much better than I! I process "left" and "right" like a "normal" person and yet I'm legendarily bad at finding my way while driving.

I've tried to get her to explain the left/right difficulty and it's hard for her to put into words, because of course how can you explain how your brain doesn't work? The most she's been able to say about it is that she understands what her "left arm" or "left foot" is but can't translate that to what my "left" is, or vice-versa.

Anybody else ever heard of or experienced anything like this?

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#53

Post by JohnBooty »

kaoD wrote: post #3

> If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. Yes, with great detail. > If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!) > And mom’s face? Of course. Not at all! I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind. My experience with imagining faces: I get th…

It's not uncommon, I don't think. A lot of people have trouble with faces (in various ways, and to various extents) despite having otherwise "normal" visual processing and memory.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#54

Post by cottonseed »

Thanks for sharing.

I'm also aphantasic and the fun part of reading this was the differences between our internal experiences. I have a great sense of direction and I love navigating and exploring new places.

I don't really have a mind's ear, either, just the "milk voice" as he calls it, although when I started studying Chinese and learning the tones, I had this crazy experience where I heard a melody in my head for the first time. Now I'd say I have something like a speaker that sometimes plays music, but I can't really control it. (Great, now I can get music stuck in my head.)

I have a similar experience with episodic memory, which is strange, because generally I have a great memory. In high school, I could read a chapter of a book and remember it word for word the next day (but my memory was not photographic!) I've always been deeply unsentimental and, instead of being sad about it, my attitude has always been "destroy the past to create the future."

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#55

Post by UniZero »

blakeross wrote: post #29

I would be curious to see how the HN community scores on this aphantasia survey embedded in the BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054 . Perhaps there's a connection between programmers and this condition. Will you take it and report your score? The survey is oversimplified, obviously, but it was devised by the Exeter neurologists who are studying this. I got the lowest score (8/40) since none of the qu…

I got 20 out of 40.

When I try to picture the examples in my mind, they all start out as a blurry blob like impressions that increase in detail gradually. It's as if I'm watching the drawing process occur step-by-step.

In the beach example I saw the following features appear one after another in this order: the sand, the water horizon, a set of palm trees on each side, a pirate ship, the sun, and a gift shop.

I never see whole images appear instantly but have met people that claim such.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#56

Post by heliumcraft »

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

I really enjoyed reading this. Very well written!

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#57

Post by kaffeemitsahne »

JohnBooty wrote: post #52

There are a lot of basic assumptions about thought that don't apply to everybody. My wife, for example, can't process "left" and "right" without great effort. She's intelligent and is a gifted artist in a variety of mediums, and is not dyslexic in the least. But if you tell her to "turn right" in a car it's very confusing for her to translate that into which direction she should take. Even more confusingly, she's a v…

When I took driving lessons my instructor asked if I had any difficulty with left vs. right, I thought it was a strange question at the time but I guess it's not that uncommon.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#58

Post by jacinda »

berekuk wrote: post #50
jacinda wrote: post #48

As a child, my dad had the "Mega Memory" tapes around the house and I remember listening to them. Very early on in the lessons, the instructor talks about using basic association because we "think in pictures." As an example, he noted that if he said the word elephant, people picture an elephant, not the word "e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t." I must have been eight or nine at the time and remember being terribly confused because I…

My experience is closer to yours than to the author of the original post. 1) I have a phonological loop and can easily imagine music. 2) My visuospatial sketchpad (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddeley%27s_model_of_working_... ) is almost entirely spatial. I don't know the color of the floor in my kitchen, unless I paid attention to it specifically and verbally in the past. But I can use memory palace successful…

Interesting. I hadn't read about that model of working memory before but going through the article it does sound like we have similar experiences.

1) I also have a phonological loop - and would consider this the strongest part of my memory. I have a relatively easy time memorizing large volumes of text and my verbal aptitude on tests has always been extremely high. I also have an aptitude for foreign languages and enjoy studying them as a hobby.

2) I would agree. I could probably tell you the color of the floor of the kitchen where I'm currently living, but any past place would be difficult. I've experimented with a memory palace before so I believe it would work in theory but I haven't practiced enough to know for sure.

3) Sometimes I wonder this as well. I frequently have very vivid dreams and occasionally have flashes of things that I think are mental imagery but they're fuzzy and not something I can really do on demand.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#59

Post by jacinda »

blakeross wrote: post #29

I would be curious to see how the HN community scores on this aphantasia survey embedded in the BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054 . Perhaps there's a connection between programmers and this condition. Will you take it and report your score? The survey is oversimplified, obviously, but it was devised by the Exeter neurologists who are studying this. I got the lowest score (8/40) since none of the qu…

12/40

I work as a software engineer. The rainbow and characteristic body poses are the only thing that I can even vaguely "see" (and that was being generous).

However, on the question about a lightning storm I can hear lightning striking around me but not see any images.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#60

Post by josephagoss »

blakeross wrote: post #2

I'm the author of this post, happy to answer any questions. About me: I was formerly a director of product at FB and a founder of Firefox. My YC startup became FB's first acquisition. I'm focusing more on creative writing these days (wrote the Silicon Valley spec script and the Theranos parody that have come up on HN a few times.) Aphantasia was a pretty weird discovery for me given this new focus.

Have you ever tried any psychedelics? Feel free not to answer.

I am very curious if they could make that connection. I know LSD puts the brain's visual processing into overdrive, perhaps it might make the connection strong enough to give you this mind's eye, even if only temporary.

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