How to see bright, vivid images in your mind’s eye (2016)

However, this is the first time I've ever seen anybody even suggest a technique that might help with this, and it's something I've come to see as a real limitation. I very badly want a functioning "mind's eye" and if there's any chance practicing this for 10 minutes a day for a few months might achieve it, hell yes I'm going to try.

And when he did actually get to the technique, it wasn't "buy my book" or "sign up for this course". It was a simple and complete demonstration of something anyone can do at home for free. I didn't see any means of monetisation beyond views on the video itself, and he's welcome to his slice of my youtube premium.

I agree that the style is horrible, and that the information should be assumed to be bogus by default. But, fortunately, checking if there's any value in it for me is a cost-free, risk-free thing I can do in my spare time. Fingers crossed!

Edit: Oh, and the whole left brain, right brain thing is disappointing bollocks too. Still, I'm going to try this.

Edit 2: BTW, if you do have any serious aphantasia research sources I'd love to know about them. I've seen very little research into it. (And TBH I'm not really convinced it's worth significant research investment, any more than people not being able to whistle or raise one eyebrow is. I don't see myself as having a disorder, just an undeveloped ability.)

Edit 3: Somewhat relatedly I have also been mostly unable to hear sounds in my "mind's ear", although I am a keen amateur musician. I can imagine tunes but they are not accompanied by the timbre and richness of actual sounds. They're more of an abstraction. This is something I've made actual progress on, though. As a byproduct of learning sight-singing and transcription (as an adult, starting with movable-do sol-fa), I am able to hear sounds much more convincingly at times. I have to remember to exercise the ability, though, or I fall back to my old ways, and it still takes a lot of effort.

1. One way is the "behind the eyelids" technique, where the imagery seems to be coming from the retina, or at least I experience it that way. I cannot currently generate the high quality photographic imagery of the OP, and even the experience of colour is pretty sketchy. That's today, awake, although sometimes it gets better when I'm in bed and about to fall asleep. Either way, this only works if my eyes are closed, or it's pitch dark. With my eyes open, the signal from my retina washes out the image, which is very dim. One person I met who experiences this calls the experience "phosphenes". The experience doesn't look real, and I have no sense of depth or spatial location, like I do with vision. It is only partially under conscious control. I get images, then I "make suggestions" about what I want to see, and then it kind of drifts in the direction of what I want.

2. The other way works with my eyes open. I can do 3D objects, even set up a wire frame cube spinning around my head. The object can be "inside my mind" with no defined location, or I can locate it in space. I barely have any colour available in this subsystem, but that could be lack of practice. This is under full conscious control. I have no difficulty distinguishing these images from what I am seeing, I experience eyesight and these images as two different mental domains.

I just ran a test, and I can do both things at the same time, but it requires a lot of concentration and I'm not good at it.

I know from talking to people that there is a lot of variation in how people experience mental imagery.

Based on what I've read, LSD and psilocybin hallucinations may be be a more powerful version of "system 1" imagery as described above. That's because: at low doses, you can only see the hallucinations with your eyes closed, and they are only partially under conscious control. (There are instructions on the web on how to influence the imagery.)

UPDATE: I wondered whether my system 1 imagery is "in the retina" or "in the visual cortex". As an experiment, I stared at a bright light, then closed my eyes to see the retinal afterimage of the bright light. Everybody gets these afterimages. Then, I was able to modify the afterimage! After some work, I eventually changed the colour of the afterimage and made it into the centre of a flower. To my delight, the flower had an almost photographic quality. This doesn't really prove anything about retina vs visual cortex. But this is a better result than I've had in the past, before I read the ideas in this post.

Finally, the OP and video describes "image streaming", which seems to be a more advanced version of what I do when I try to shape a system 1 "retinal" image. Afterimages are one way to produce a seed image. In the past I've just created images starting from a black visual field, but I guess it's easier if you start with a seed. Apparently if you get really good then you can have full conscious control over system 1 mental imagery! I had not previously considered talking out loud to influence the image.

Now I'm wondering whether "microdosing", a Silicon valley practice that has been discussed on HN before, would improve your ability to perform "image streaming". Maybe other people with more knowledge of this can comment.

For the last one, I have made a jolting motion in a dream, like a kick, felt it, and that woke me up.