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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

#181

Post by danybittel »

perrygeo wrote: post #68

There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported. Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogr…

I'd say it's the other way around, people with Aphantasia trend towards tech. Especially software is very abstract, you can visualize parts of it in your head but it's often not enough precise or just too complex. Even a small imprecision makes it pointless, which is very frustrating. Compare that to something like (UI) design, architecture, animation, visual effects etc. Where even rough visualizations help a lot.

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

#182

Post by corysama »

listenallyall wrote: post #170
SaidinWoT wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only tell you that I do not have mental imagery and am not constantly surprised by my surroundings. Object permanence has absolutely no dependency on visualization; it is completely unsurprising to me that the stop sign near my house looks the same each time I encounter it. I totally get that you, having lived a life where mental imagery is such an integral part of your baseline experience, assume that many of…

In another comment you wrote "stop sign is a red octagon (with a white boundary) with the word "STOP" in the center. I could draw you a plausible picture of one without issue". The fact that you knew all of that without having to actually find a stop sign and look at it, that's mental imagery. It may be a skill some people are very good at (i.e. they can remember lots of small details) and others are not, but it's no…

What I know is that people describe not having aphantasia like

“I’m sitting in a room with a dog and a TV. Then someone says ‘visualize a stop sign.’ And, so then I’m sitting in a room with a dog, a TV and a stop sign. I’m know the stop sign isn’t real. It might be fuzzy or even black & white. But, I can see it between the dog and the TV.”

Well… I know exactly what a stop sign looks like. But, there’s no stop sign in the room with me and my dog. It’s not there at all.

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

#183

Post by jumploops »

perrygeo wrote: post #68

There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported. Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogr…

In my case, I seem to have enhanced spatial reasoning when thinking about objects, rather than something visual.

For example, if I’m asked to think of an apple, I don’t see an apple (with no color etc.), but I can “feel” an apple in the sense that I can abstractly reason about the 3D space of an apple.

Again, there’s nothing visual about it. It’s almost as if I’m blind, and can form and reason about an apple as if I had only ever been able to hold one.

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

#184

Post by justsomehnguy »

saghm wrote: post #147
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. T…

> 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.

We are very good at remembering and recognizing small details. You may have a trouble with faces yet you may have no trouble with a minor details what makes you recognize the person even if you actually struggle to recognize their face.

Anecdata: I always had not such a good eyesight, which, of course, only got worse with the age. Recently I stood at the bar entrance and recognized a friend from ~30 meters, despite what:

- he was in an unfamiliar to me clothing

- he wasn't with a cane like our previous couple of meetings (broken leg)

- I can't see shit at ~2 meters

Just a combination of his height, walking pattern and ~hair colour (and what he definitely headed to that bar and was not passing by) made me recognize him despite what I, quite literally, barely could see him.

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

#185

Post by notaigenerated »

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.

Your brain isn't broken. You're just a man.

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

#186

Post by whitehexagon »

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…

Interesting, combined with the article below I also start to wonder about more connections/correlations.

I have many vivid dreams a night, and often wake feeling exhausted. I have been thinking this might be my brain overcompensating for aphantasia. First time I have heard of SDAM, and that certainly applies to me, along with face/name memory, especially people out of context.

I speculated the other day that it could be 40 years programming has rewired my brain. Great at making logical connections, mapping/route memory is amazing, along with logical analysis.

Probably SDAM is related to depression too. If we are not able to recall the happy times/memories in the same way as other people do, not counting those technical solution wins!

Also as bad as my memory is, SDAM or old age ;) it actually feels worse since Covid and plenty of fuzzy/foggy brain days.

'Sleep deprivation disrupts memory' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40681345

[edit] tried to explain it better.

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

#187

Post by pretendscholar »

xnickb wrote: post #72
perrygeo wrote: post #68

There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported. Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogr…

For me it's the other way around. I was always good at abstract sciences, like math and theoretical physics. Partially because I could operate in my mind with my very own abstractions. But I'm for example very bad at chess and tetris, because I can't visualize. This has been true for me at least since I was 5.

It’s funny though you can learn to visualize in chess through solving puzzles. I couldn’t do it at all at first but after awhile it clicked and I could just move pieces in my head.

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

#188

Post by leames99 »

For me, visualisation is related to memory recall. If someone asks me to imagine a scene, I'll run through memories of actual experiences and combine them where necessary to produce an approximation. For aural imagination, such as music composition, I imagine snippets of music I've heard, then combine them. There is a visual component to that, but it's symbolic, not vivid. If I need to imagine something I haven't experienced, it's like a combination of line drawings, animation and written and spoken language. It would look like a mess if I could project it. Colours are there, but they're not vivid. They're more like bad watercolours. If I take my time, I can clear up the image, and over time it becomes more vivid. This is actually how I write. It's a slow process, but it's the only way I can think clearly. I find social conversation difficult because it tends to move faster than my ability to visualise so I find it dull and uninspiring. I prefer to spend my time slow-reading literature.

Contextual conversations are ok, such as business or academic conversations, because the language is generally a closed set and visualisations are well practiced. But social situations can be without context, and difficult to navigate.

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

#189

Post by tgdude »

jumploops wrote: post #183
perrygeo wrote: post #68

There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported. Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogr…

In my case, I seem to have enhanced spatial reasoning when thinking about objects, rather than something visual. For example, if I’m asked to think of an apple, I don’t see an apple (with no color etc.), but I can “feel” an apple in the sense that I can abstractly reason about the 3D space of an apple. Again, there’s nothing visual about it. It’s almost as if I’m blind, and can form and reason about an apple as if I…

I have the same experience. Often times I find myself skipping steps when explaining things to other because I'm referencing a very obvious (to me) spatial disconnect between two concepts. I've also noticed that I'll gesture to where in my mind those concepts are located spatially.

Other quirks:

- I am also always aware of which direction "home" is. I can't remember ever being lost.

- I have an automatic annoyingly good memory for songs and sounds

- "Remembering" feels more like a bundle of sense impressions being re-expressed than it does recall. This is nice because I get much more "complete" impression of what my mind remembers happening. Not sure when this changed for me but it was after definitely after a few years of meditating.

None of this is ever visual though.

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

#190

Post by listenallyall »

ergonaught wrote: post #145
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…

"mind's eye" is a metaphor. You, like everyone else, have two eyes, in the front of your face. There isn't an extra one embedded in anyone's brain.
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