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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

#141

Post by mostly_lurks »

I'm (apparently) aphantasic, having learned about the concept on a couple of months ago. However unscientific the [VVIQ](https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/) is, I couldn't answer a single question with anything other than "No image at all."

What I find interesting is that for the past few years I've also been getting regular IV ketamine infusions to treat major depression. The imagery I visualize during these infusions is hyperreal and unlike anything I've ever experienced. I see these full-motion, hyper-detailed, 3D environments that absolutely blow my mind. I also seem to have fairly vivid dreams but when I'm conscious, I can't visualize anything to save my life.

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

#142

Post by saghm »

lurking_swe wrote: post #92
neongreen wrote: post #88

Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes . Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for…

correct - it’s like playing an extremely low resolution “replay” of that moment in time.sometimes the frames skip but it’s still visible to me.

Huh, when reading the parent comment I didn't think it applied to me because I felt like I remember stuff that happened in enough detail to walk through the sequences of events that happened, but reading this makes me think that maybe I don't actually have it because it's nothing I'd describe as being able to "watch" it as much as just recall the details. I could potentially imagine a visualization of the vents I remember, but I certainly don't remember what enough of the details actually look like to replay the real thing.

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

#143

Post by fredguth »

mmh0000 wrote: post #105
neongreen wrote: post #88

Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes . Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for…

You’ve just made me realize that my brain is (more) broken than I thought it was. This explains why I lose every argument with my wife about things that happened in the past.

Oh no… that is just every marriage.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

neongreen wrote: post #88

Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes . Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for…

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by ergonaught »

auggierose wrote: post #97

What frustrates me about things like that, there seem to be no proper tests for that. Shouldn't there be an easy test for Aphantasia, for example, that doesn't ask me things like "do you have a mind's eye" (what does that even mean?). Such a test should not ask the test subjects to self-diagnose themselves, but it should objectively test abilities and put them on a scale. Anything else really is not that helpful.

fMRI can probably spot it for people like myself who are fully aphantasic.

But:

1. "Imagine a table. There is a ball on the table. The ball rolls off the table onto the floor."

2. "From memory, what color was the ball? The table? The floor? What did you see under the table?"

Neither I nor any other, uh, aphants, that I have known have answers to those questions. Imagination still works, and answers to those questions can be produced interactively if handled appropriately, but, ex: we weren't imagining colors and we didn't see anything at all much less "under the table".

Alternative:

1. "What do you think people do, specifically, when they "count sheep" to go to sleep?"

Our answers to that should just be hilarious for you. Hi-larious.

Understand that we thought you folks "visualizing in your minds eye" were speaking metaphorically. Entirely metaphorically.

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

#146

Post by LouisSayers »

majiy wrote: post #31

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…

For me, I can imagine the feeling of being on a windy path, spatially aware of the paths the forest, the mountains - even a stream, but in terms of "seeing" it's more like walking into your bedroom in the dark and knowing where the bed is.

I also can vividly "hear" music, not really voices, but I can put a track on in my head almost as if listening to the radio. For people that can't do this, it might sound great - and it is quite cool except for waking up many mornings with a random track stuck in your head or hearing a particular riff over and over again.

I don't tend to remember faces of people I've recently met - there are times when someone says hi, starts chatting and I think "who the hell is that?"

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

#147

Post by saghm »

majiy wrote: post #31

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…

> 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.

I'm the same way. I can almost replay entire songs in my head, and if I hear a repeated sound I can replay it slowed down in my head to count it, but in college I discovered that I had trouble recognizing faces of people when I'd meet them a second time. This hasn't happened much in other parts of my life, so I attribute it to the large volume of new people I'd meet regularly in college compared to the other parts of my life, but it's still something that I think I struggle with more than average.

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

#148

Post by Daub »

8note wrote: post #125
Daub wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". As someone who paints landscapes, I have a huge amount of trouble with this prompt. I am trying to construct something that is topographically feasible and artistically agreeable. I can imagine walking through a wood, but not alongside one. I know (of course) that it is possible to walk along…

Put yourself on the side of a mountain, with a steep drop off on the left. Far to the left, you can see more mountains, but trees and hill block your view on the right. It's really common to see while hiking, though usually you turn to the downhill side to take a picture

Yeh... I can now see that. Thanks. Context is everything. Though I paint landscapes, I rarely stray outside the city. hence my knowledge of landscapes is mostly from paintings, not real life. The scene you describe is difficult to find in the painting lexicon (for it's asymmetry), though doubtless common in nature.

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

#149

Post by auggierose »

trescenzi wrote: post #131
menotyou wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick test: Try to imagine the following and then answer the questions beneath. Imagine a table with a ball on it. A person is approaching the table, pushes the ball gently, and the balls starts to roll. Questions: (1) What color has the ball? (2) Is the person male or female? (3) What material is the table made of? (4) When you answered questions (1)-(3), did you know the answer beforehand, or did you think about wh…

I like this test because it’s not your answer, it’s your reaction to the question that matters. If you read this and think “uhh is that a trick question?” then you probably have aphantasia. My initial reaction to reading this the first time was to go reread the story more closely to find the answer. But the answer isn’t in the story. For many people the answer is just a truth that exists when they hear the story and…

Maybe you are just very lazy at filling in the details of the scenery? A questionnaire based approach doesn't sound very objective to me. A condition with the only "realiable" diagnostic being the VVIQ test, is not a condition at all.

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

#150

Post by stephen_g »

majiy wrote: post #31

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…

I think my auditory visualisation is on the outlier side, I will literally sit in the car with nothing on the stereo just humming along to what I’m imagining in my mind.

It’s almost like I’m actually hearing music (or I can imagine people speaking in basically any accent) - even full orchestral. But it’s subtly different in a way I can’t really describe.

My image visualisation is much weaker, I can imagine moving images, in colour and everything but it’s much more vague.

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