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

Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

sciencealert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 149 posts

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#61

Post by Agingcoder »

postalrat wrote: post #27

Somewhat unrelated but has anyone here experience fever dreams where you are surrounded by something you can't quite comprehend and can't do anything but try to comprehend it? It's almost like a huge maze, grid, or some other pattern but painful to look at. The dream tends to be extremely unpleasant and usually returns after falling back asleep. I was trying to explain it to a friend the other day and didn't do a ver…

It happened to me once. The world around me was turning into swiss-cheese holed lego bricks, which was ok. However, it was also 'folding' into some kind of lower dimension (2.5d?), and I couldn't understand the fold, so it became very unpleasant.

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#62

Post by invaliduser »

postalrat wrote: post #27

Somewhat unrelated but has anyone here experience fever dreams where you are surrounded by something you can't quite comprehend and can't do anything but try to comprehend it? It's almost like a huge maze, grid, or some other pattern but painful to look at. The dream tends to be extremely unpleasant and usually returns after falling back asleep. I was trying to explain it to a friend the other day and didn't do a ver…

I can relate with a very bad dream I had when I was maybe 7 or 8, it involved not a maze but fractal patterns of eggs and gears (although at the time I didn't know what fractal was, so I perceived it as "growing and growing to no end"). This happened once in my life, and it was 40 years ago, but I still remember how terrified I was, and I also remember how I have been scared for literally years after this episode to have this bad dream again.

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#64

Post by buss »

nasalgoat wrote: post #37

Absolutely nothing for me, but after reading up on Aphantasia and the link it has to a lack of autobiographical memory, it makes sense. I have a condition called Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory ( http://sdamstudy.weebly.com/what-is-sdam.html ) which means I can barely remember anything from my life and what little I do remember is vague and fuzzy. Intereesting correlation.

I know I'm aphantasic, but never heard of SDAM. Describes me so well! I remember nearly nothing of my life.

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#65

Post by pigbearpig »

Akronymus wrote: post #3
Kaibeezy wrote: post #2

Not sure if science or joke I don’t get :(

You may the following illuminating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://old.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewsGmhAjjjI

How is that illuminating? You're linking to Wikipedia, Reddit, and YouTube for a medical condition? Please.

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#66

Post by pigbearpig »

_virtu wrote: post #6

As someone who has thought that I've had aphantasia for the past six or seven years (thank you hn for teaching me about aphantasia), I'm going to give this a shot.

What did you call it seven years ago before the term aphantasia was coined?

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#68

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

I also cannot recollect visual things in mind eye. It is strange to explain but I am good with inventing things and imagining complex things but I cannot see anything in mind eye. It is not visual it is more as abstract "shape", shape is not good word as it is visual, in my case try to imagine shape more as intuition or feeling. I do not know how to explain.

I was kind of annoyed by this finding that I started trying different ways to imagine objects. Few months ago interesting thing happen, I woke up really early and stayed up after 2am, when I got in bad, I was in state that I passed state of sleepy, so my mind was fully conscious, (state you can choose do you want to get up or not at any time), and then stream of images appeared from single point, that point grew and like accessing some optic cable hole, and it was vivid very vivid like reality. It lasted just a few 10 - 30 sec before I was knocked of and started sleeping.

It look like my left side of brain (logic) was so tired that handed over everything to right side (pictures colors) additionally leaving spectator (chartering voice) awake for little while. I am no medical person just interpreting subjective experience so do not take any of this as fact. I just remember that at at that point that I had feeling that Logical side of brain imposed some kind of dictatorship on imaginative side of brain, because of job or past experiences. That time logical brain was too tired after more than 20hrs of coding and thinking so it seems went away for a sleep fraction of time earlier than the imaginative side. :)

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#69

Post by y2bd »

recursive wrote: post #53
miloignis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have experienced something similar, where I have to find the right configuration for some pattern, sometimes grounded in like how my sheets and blanket wrap around my body in order to create or fix some dream machine. It's not a fully formed concept, but I'm trying to fix it and arrange the pattern in my mostly-sleeping state - it's always impossible and I have to recognize what I'm doing, fully wake myself…

Yes. I get this. It's kind of a problem some time. My brain gets trapped in a loop of trying to solve some puzzle or system of constraints, but none of it is based on anything. I couldn't even describe it. It's more like patterns of faux-logical systems. When I recognize it happening, I can usually snap out of it.

Loop is the right word for me. I’ll suddenly get stuck in a loop of subdividing a cube into smaller cubes over and over, or squaring a number over over. Never accurately, just…visually? It’s happened to me twice, both times when I was quite sick. It’s absolutely terrifying and feels like my mind is broken beyond repair. I’m getting upset just thinking about it.

Re: Simple test reveals if your mental images are more vivid than other people's

#70

Post by rags2riches »

postalrat wrote: post #27

Somewhat unrelated but has anyone here experience fever dreams where you are surrounded by something you can't quite comprehend and can't do anything but try to comprehend it? It's almost like a huge maze, grid, or some other pattern but painful to look at. The dream tends to be extremely unpleasant and usually returns after falling back asleep. I was trying to explain it to a friend the other day and didn't do a ver…

It's been decades since I had fever dreams. But my memories include strange shapes and motions and things being somehow upside down or otherwise inverted. Most of all, I remember an absolutely overpowering sense of dread over how everything was impossible. What was happening should not be happening. It could not be happening. The terror only grew as the impossibility continued.
Post reply on HN