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

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

#101

Post by tluyben2 »

beardyw wrote: post #83

I am not sure about this. If you stare at anything for long enough you get peculiar effects in your vision (try it). That said, in the last year or so I have begun to enjoy music from the extractor fan in our kitchen. Each time it is on I hear a random genre of music - plain chant, brass band, jazz, etc. I don't experience it in any other context (or any other hallucinations before you ask). Anyone else get something…

When I am in the shower, I hear all kinds of music, usually classical, I hear people talk, birds whistle etc. In our car aircon I hear jazz. It is kind of nice.

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

#102

Post by npteljes »

merpnderp wrote: post #31

That was seriously uncool and no fun. I almost immediately saw crosshatching bars and shapes maybe like fractals, and then the center of the screen seemed to form a white sphere and a f'ing nightmare came crawling out of it filling me with dread, and then I closed the page. Took about a minute. Did it a second time maybe 30 minutes later and it quickly resolved into spinning wind turbines blades, dozens of them, circ…

I had bouts with nightmares and such and a technique I found is that when the horrors begin to appear, I consciously try to be unaffected by them. To try to at least delay what you just described, that feeling of dread taking over you. While you can't really have control over the outside world and the horrors within it, you can at least have control over your reactions to it. And reactions to stimuli like this red flashing thing, and many other situations, are really about just the reaction of the mind, filling in the blanks, trying to make sense. The more you can relax that effort, the less horrific it will become. Similar to relaxing a muscle cramp. I'm not saying that I'm very good at this all, but going this way has helped me a lot already.

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

#103

Post by AndrewDucker »

edem wrote: post #92
beardyw wrote: post #83

I am not sure about this. If you stare at anything for long enough you get peculiar effects in your vision (try it). That said, in the last year or so I have begun to enjoy music from the extractor fan in our kitchen. Each time it is on I hear a random genre of music - plain chant, brass band, jazz, etc. I don't experience it in any other context (or any other hallucinations before you ask). Anyone else get something…

I once had a friend who said that his brother could dance to any "music". This included the sound of oil being heated in a pan. I also have some flashbacks sometimes, when I hear familiar sounds and I sometimes see things in a fractal structure (this plant is especially trippy: https://naturgarden.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/A-tuja-gon... ). Now that I mentioned the extractor fan...have you listened to Sleep Resear…

This kind of thing was referenced, comedically in the UK TV series Spaced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfSndZPynQk

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

#104

Post by dorkwood »

the_af wrote: post #40
dorkwood wrote: post #21

I watched this for ten minutes and didn't see anything (apart from a flashing red screen). I'm supposed to be the artistic one in the family, so I can't help but feel slightly disdapointed. I've always suspected that people who claimed they could visualize things with great clarity were lying (the "images" in my mind's eye are very fleeting, lacking in detail, and can't be focused on -- like they're on the extremes o…

> I've always suspected that people who claimed they could visualize things with great clarity were lying I know this will do nothing to dispel your suspicion, but I can see people and places with great clarity, detail, in color and moving, and if I focus on them they are not fleeting (I get involuntary images that are fleeting though). You'll be right to dismiss my claim -- I'm some random stranger on the internet a…

There's a test I'd like to give someone with your abilities one day, and I'd love if you took the time to try this. I forget where I originally saw it, but it goes something like this:

Imagine you're looking down on a grid of squares. It's a little bit like a chess board, but it's only four squares wide and four squares high. In each square is a single letter, and each horizontal row spells a four-letter word. The top row spells "SEER" , the second row spells "SLAP", the third row spells "HEAL", and the bottom row spells "TRIM". While visualizing this grid of letters in front of you, can you now tell me which words you see running either vertically or diagonally? You should be able to do this by looking at the grid and without having to do any sorting of letters in your mind.

My suspicion is that people who claim they can visualize images perfectly won't be able to do this, despite only having to memorize four words to complete the picture.

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

#105

Post by dkarras »

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…

Yes, can somewhat explain it like grinding over something over and over again. Trying senseless combinations of something to solve something yada yada. Sometimes related to what I'm working on at that particular time. I always think it is my brain's way of consolidating new information. Nonetheless it is very unpleasant.

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

#106

Post by bluehex »

pigbearpig wrote: post #66
_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?

I'm in the same camp, thinking I probably have aphantasia. Before I read about it I didn't call it anything because I had no concept that there was anything lacking in my experience. I thought it was just how everyone's mind worked. I had no idea that people could actually see things that they visualized. I had always thought that the term "visualize" was just an exaggerated metaphor for imagining. For example I can imagine a little island in a field of blue ocean with a palm tree growing out of it just fine, I can conceptually place the objects around in this imaginary scene and have a sense for where the things are in relation to one another and what shapes and colors they are, but I can't for the life of me "see" a single thing no matter how much I focus on it. It might sound contradictory but I don't know how else to describe it.

I have only experienced something that sounds like how normal folks see in their minds eye once, on the cusp of falling asleep, hypnagogic hallucinations began but I was somewhat in control of what I was seeing, I could change the image at will to whatever I imagined. It lasted but a couple of minutes before I fell asleep. Someone that has a normal mind's eye - and has also experienced the pre-sleep hallucinations - would have to tell me if my experience was similar to a normal imagination though. It could be that my hypnagogic episode was far more vivid than a typical person's visual imagination during normal waking hours though, too, who knows? I did feel very jealous though after that episode thinking that most people probably have such an ability to visualize like that while awake.

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

#107

Post by Clockmaker »

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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

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

#108

Post by lvncelot »

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…

Yes absolutely, it feels like the brain is in problem-solving mode without a concrete problem to solve. It's maddening. I often experience those "dreams" when under stress.

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

#109

Post by LordGrey »

dorkwood wrote: post #21

I watched this for ten minutes and didn't see anything (apart from a flashing red screen). I'm supposed to be the artistic one in the family, so I can't help but feel slightly disdapointed. I've always suspected that people who claimed they could visualize things with great clarity were lying (the "images" in my mind's eye are very fleeting, lacking in detail, and can't be focused on -- like they're on the extremes o…

Watching that for 10 minutes was really irritating. I saw nothing but red and black flickers the entire time.

I learned about six months ago that Aphantasia was a thing, and that I seem to have it. For me, this was a cool (if massively annoying) confirmation.

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