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Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

theguardian.com

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Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#31

Post by majiy »

If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain".

The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path". Maybe, maybe the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and the path is a winding line ~~~ but that is already pushing it.

These kind of "mind-travels" are sometimes done at end of yoga classes. For me, they are complete pointless, and I usually fall asleep.

I have also great problems identifying faces, don't know if there is a connection.

On the other hand, I can vividly imagine sounds, including voices and music.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#33

Post by FeistySkink »

constantcrying wrote: post #24
FeistySkink wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a conceptual model of how things relate in space. Something like a class diagram or a DB schema. It doesn't need to be visual.

This seems totally contradictory to me.

How so? A DB schema is not visual: it's something that lives inside a DBMS. Boxes with arrows is a way to represent it. Text is another one.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#35

Post by antihipocrat »

e38383 wrote: post #25

Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.

When you read a word relating to something you've seen or regularly experienced, how is that processed by your mind?

For example if you were asked to draw and color a basketball, how would you approach the task without 'seeing' something in your mind?

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#36

Post by lambdaba »

e38383 wrote: post #25

Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.

Have you ever taken a hallucinogen?

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#37

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

tambre wrote: post #22
MoSattler wrote: post #20

I am curious: do people with aphantasia dream?

For me: yes. Dreaming is the only experience that kinda matches the descriptions of others' mind's eye. Day to day? Just blackness, only the light that comes through the skin of the eyelids.

I think that sounds normal. The mind's eye is more like evoking the sense of seeing something without actually seeing it.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#38

Post by madaxe_again »

shafyy wrote: post #13
constantcrying wrote: post #3

I still have a hard time believing this is actually real. I also don't see how you actually could do many jobs with this condition. At least I couldn't imagine doing any job I ever head without the ability to manipulate visual information in my head.

It is real. My partner has it. Interestingly, she is really good it visualizing 3D concepts in her mind, but not images. For example, when she walks through an apartment she can instantly draw a blueprint. Or when we move in multi-story building, she knows exactly where we are conceptually (I always get lost). So, these two things don't seem to be connected.

Interesting. My wife swears she has no visual mind, but she has remarkable spatial awareness when it comes to “this object will fit in that space, and must go through this sequence of manoeuvres to reach it” - she’d have Dirk Gently’s sofa up the stairs in a whistle.

She does get lost in car parks and shops, however, so it appears that either there’s a separate system for navigational reasoning, or she just doesn’t apply it to some contexts.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#39

Post by BigParm »

e38383 wrote: post #25

Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.

Do you dream? Dreams are generally heavy on mental imagery.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#40

Post by boricj »

e38383 wrote: post #25

Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.

Can you hear or imagine sounds in your head?
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