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People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

dailyneuron.com

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Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#91

Post by gilleain »

Akronymus wrote: post #44
_ink_ wrote: post #38

The article is only about the absence of mental images, but the same is true for all other senses as well. People might be able to recall or imagine images, sounds, smells, tastes, feels while being awake or not. And it can be in all permutations, tho, vision affected seems to be quite common.

the only internal sense I have is my own voice. I cant even "imagine" music but rather hum it in my own voice at best. Same with others' voices

Interesting. I can replay or simulate other people's voices (real people, obv) and can 'hear' music I know by replaying it in my mind. Of course, not perfectly if I forget the words, it might fill in with some tum-te-tum, or only recall a fragment, but it's usually playing as at source. Makes earworms very annoying, of course.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#92

Post by Kiro »

tekla wrote: post #36
misthop wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a musician, but don't "hear" music in my head. I have an extensive memory of lyrics, and can guess the next notes of a song, but I use my inner monologue to sing or hum it in my head, I don't hear it. I can recall the visuals of a movie scene similar to how I can tell you how my office is organized. It is a spatial memory of where things are and aligned with each other. I don't replay the scene in any sense of th…

I'm pretty sure this is the default. Who literally hears music when thinking of it.

I do and just asked around among friends. Everyone did.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#93

Post by chiefgeek »

wongarsu wrote: post #63
chiefgeek wrote: post #17

I’ve worked as a professional photographer for twenty years and I visualize absolutely zero with my eyes closed. It’s only recently that I learned of aphantasia. Even on most psychedelic journeys I don’t have closed eye visuals, NN-DMT being the consistent exception. Everything is more of just a “knowingness”.

As somebody who only has closed eye visuals in deep meditation or in dreams, I would maybe describe what you call "knowingness" as "abstract representation"? As a kid I've always been really good at these "imagine how this shape folds in 3d" kind of tasks, and I would generally say I am above average at imagining how things relate to each other in 3d. I just can't turn it into an image in my mind's eye

Yes this. I have, based on a battery of spatial reasoning tests I took years ago, way above average spatial reasoning capabilities. I also notice a lot IRL that others do not, based on anecdotal evidence.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#94

Post by bethekidyouwant »

rolisz wrote: post #9
bethekidyouwant wrote: post #6

Aphantasia is fake. I can “see” when dreaming, ergo the brain simply (adaptively) suppresses the same when awake.

I don't see even when dreaming :)

You remember your dreams?

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#96

Post by godshatter »

pohl wrote: post #48
chiefgeek wrote: post #17

I’ve worked as a professional photographer for twenty years and I visualize absolutely zero with my eyes closed. It’s only recently that I learned of aphantasia. Even on most psychedelic journeys I don’t have closed eye visuals, NN-DMT being the consistent exception. Everything is more of just a “knowingness”.

What’s it like to dream while you’re sleeping? Do you ever “see” anything then?

I can't visualize at all when awake, but I have been into lucid dreaming in my past and my dreams were visual and more detailed than real life (no bad lenses for the light to go through, I guess). I can also visualize a little bit when on either edge of sleep. I've been noticing that the occasional images that I see in that state are becoming more colorful and detailed. I'm hoping that means actual phantasia in my future, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

I should add that the only things I've ever been able to see when fully awake that didn't come through my retinas are auras (I went through a "learn to read auras" phase a long time ago) and ghosts. Or at least things that I'm assuming aren't actually real, like images of a friend who died before I knew about it and a woman who watched me watch TV for a few weeks. So this might mean that I'm not a complete aphant, or it might mean (based on this article) that sometimes those brain regions/processes can still align for me occasionally.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#97

Post by nevinera »

wongarsu wrote: post #79
dataviz1000 wrote: post #57

A couple weeks ago, Neil deGrasse Tyson had neuroscientist David Eagleman as his guest on Star Talk. David discussed his friend and co-founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull, has aphantasia and that Catmull tested the directors and animators at Pixar, discovering that many of its top artists are also aphantasic! [0] They have a theory that artists who have to struggle more during the training and developing of being able to ex…

Or maybe seeing things in front of your mind's eye is not an essential quality for animating or computer graphics Personally I do have aphantasia, but I am great at reasoning about how things relate to each other in 3d and over time. From the little research that exists there are some hints that people with aphantasia might on average be better at this than people without it, and those seem like much more important q…

I am also a member of this club, and I think it's _very likely_ that aphantasics as a class have better 'spatial' skills/memory than typical, simply because we are forced to exercise that capability constantly.

Spatial mappings are essentially how I express memories that others seem to hold as mental images of some kind, many of those _essential to function_, like "how do I drive from A to B", "how do I accomplish this complex task", "how do I recognize a place I've been before" (that last one is.. an interesting issue, because it turns out the things I use to recognize a scene are _almost_ sufficiently unique, but _not quite_; I occasionally get locations confused entirely because their streets meet at the same angle/distances, or the hedge and building are similar heights).

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#100

Post by suddenlybananas »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #84
izzydata wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people that can "see" in their mind are over-estimating their ability and a lot of people who can't are under-estimated their ability. It's probably a spectrum like a lot of things are, except in this case it is exceptionally hard to to know where you fall on it. The gap may not be as wide as it sounds. Almost everyone is still a functioning thinking human afterall. If the gap were so wide it seems l…

But there are obvious giveaways. Among your friends and colleagues there are people who can’t sing and people with perfect pitch perception despite no training, ones that can barely coherently speak but can write beautiful prose and vice versa, some can stare at code for 12h straight while others find the sheer idea of it horrifying. There’s people who believe in ghosts or even believe they’ve seen ghosts while other…

I don't see how people being different from one another (uncontroversial, obvious basic fact) means that people have fundamentally different phenomenal experiences. You're conflating ability with experience when they are not the same thing.
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