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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#211

Post by 1135813fib »

lampiaio wrote: post #199
jawns wrote: post #111

I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pret…

One thing I've always wanted to ask the aphantasia crowd: think of the Mona Lisa (or the Eiffel Tower). What happens?

i've always used this image [1] as an example; it's there, but there's no "seeing" attached, just the conceptual understanding.

[1] https://preview.redd.it/visualize-an-elephant-v0-p0bwbtow4pq...

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#212

Post by xlii »

I have aphantasia in both visual and audio forms. And I can tell you audio aphantasia is wild.

I cannot hear a song in my head if my life depended on it but then there are triggers that extract it music it.

Examples: "who let the dogs out" (I remember rhythm but not the music). I play piano for almost 2 years but I have no idea what's the each sound is. It gets even better. Even though I play and record [0] I can't remember my own compositions. They usually come back to me as a play on hands and not on audio.

I thought I was music deaf for the most of my life. My music teachers mocked me in my youth showing me as an example of someone with zero hearing.

My latest music teacher discovered that I actually have absolute hearing skill but... can't recall sound in my head. So I sense even slight shift in toning (e.g. given few variations of same melody I can tell which one is the original tuning) but I can't reproduce it.

[0]: https://on.soundcloud.com/Rv6t1jXzyAH8E2jEaY

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#213

Post by lefrenchy »

I struggle with this. I think i'm Aphantic, but then again I can imagine a red apple in my mind. But if i have my eyes closed, it's not like I see it in the black of my closed eyes. I just imagine it, with some detail but also limited detail? I guess that puts me slightly on the aphantasia side of the scale, but it feels very hard to understand my own subjective experience in contrast to the written version.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#214

Post by pdonis »

feoren wrote: post #207
mucha wrote: post #64

For folks that are thinking this is just semantics or qualia, the site mentions this: "We can also see activation in the visual cortex during fMRI studies, the area in the brain that processes images from the eyes, further suggesting actual visualization." (edited to add) Also, Aphants lack pupil response when asked to imagine dark/bright scenes: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220420092150.h...

Here's my problem with this: take an fMRI of a bunch of professional jugglers while they imagine juggling. Now take an fMRI of a bunch of non-jugglers while they imagine juggling. I promise you they will be strikingly different, with the professionals having all sorts of real-life coordination areas lighting up. Conclusion: some people are a-juggular and are wholly incapable of imaging juggling. Poll: are you a-juggu…

Learning to juggle involves easily observed objective activities that other people can check, and which can be learned that way--you can watch someone else juggling, read book that describes the tossing of the balls, etc.

How do you do any of that with visualizing? If I'm trying to learn to juggle, I can watch someone else juggling and say, I want to do that. How do I watch someone else visualizing and see what to do?

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#215

Post by v64 »

I have visual aphantasia but not aphantasia of any other senses, so I can assure you it's not a semantic misunderstanding. I play piano and can hear tunes in my head and use what I hear to play it out on the piano, like playing by ear but without actual sound. And I simply don't have this same ability with visualization.

However, I do visualize in my dreams, so from my own experience, I suspect that aphantasia is not a complete inability to visualize, but rather an inability to visualize intentionally. When I'm very sleep deprived or on psychedelics, my ability to conjure mental images changes, not necessarily to full visualization, but at higher levels than in normal life.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#217

Post by feoren »

pdonis wrote: post #214
feoren wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my problem with this: take an fMRI of a bunch of professional jugglers while they imagine juggling. Now take an fMRI of a bunch of non-jugglers while they imagine juggling. I promise you they will be strikingly different, with the professionals having all sorts of real-life coordination areas lighting up. Conclusion: some people are a-juggular and are wholly incapable of imaging juggling. Poll: are you a-juggu…

Learning to juggle involves easily observed objective activities that other people can check, and which can be learned that way--you can watch someone else juggling, read book that describes the tossing of the balls, etc. How do you do any of that with visualizing? If I'm trying to learn to juggle, I can watch someone else juggling and say, I want to do that . How do I watch someone else visualizing and see what to d…

Yes, it's harder to evaluate whether someone can visualize well, but that does nothing to invalidate my point.

Have you actually dedicated significant time to trying to learn how to visualize? I suspect that if you did, you'd realize: oh, wow, maybe I can actually get better at this. If most people who give it a serious effort also come to that conclusion, I feel like we've pretty much settled the question. So it is testable, just not as easily.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#218

Post by Jtsummers »

lefrenchy wrote: post #213

I struggle with this. I think i'm Aphantic, but then again I can imagine a red apple in my mind. But if i have my eyes closed, it's not like I see it in the black of my closed eyes. I just imagine it, with some detail but also limited detail? I guess that puts me slightly on the aphantasia side of the scale, but it feels very hard to understand my own subjective experience in contrast to the written version.

> But if i have my eyes closed, it's not like I see it in the black of my closed eyes.

Only the excessively literal think that this is what people mean when they say they "see" an image in their mind. Everyone else understands what you describe (imagining an object and conjuring up an image in your mind) as what the metaphorical "seeing" in "seeing in your mind" means.

What you describe, about imagining an apple, that's what people mean when they talk about seeing something in their mind.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#219

Post by perrygeo »

dooglius wrote: post #150
perrygeo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought "count sheep" just meant "please just go the f*k to sleep, kid". Literally counting sheep was too absurd. At the risk of sounding obvious, there are no sheep. No amount of trying to conjure pictures of sheep would work. I was very confused by this as a kid. Later in life, the realization moment came when I was watching a TV show, a police procedural where the witnesses described the suspect. Police were abl…

I thought the point of counting sheep was to do something boring and repetitive that puts your brain into a relaxed state

Visualizing a sheep is not something I can even do once. Let alone repetitively until it gets boring. Being asked to visualize is quite frustrating and confusing - especially to a little kid not sure exactly what he's supposed to be "seeing". Hardly relaxing.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#220

Post by throw4747283858 »

jpfromlondon wrote: post #178
andrewla wrote: post #120

It would take a lot to convince me that aphantasia or phantasia actually exist. Let's talk very specifically about the afterimage test here. Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia. But none of the other criteria seems to apply. I can imagine a song, and…

You're absolutely right. Nobody hallucinates or "sees" the object, it's like an object instantiation with default properties that you can name/describe, nothing more. If you quiz someone long enough you can get them to acknowledge they don't see anything "in their head" whatever that means. This nonsense makes me irrationally annoyed, I suspect because it's unfalsifiable attention seeking, some people I've met mentio…

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