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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

#221

Post by lannisterstark »

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…

>And I don’t know what I had for breakfast today ಠ_ಠ

what the fuck

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

#222

Post by animal531 »

gnz11 wrote: post #53
e38383 wrote: post #25

Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.

I am also the same as the person in the article. Pure speculation on my part, but I am convinced that it’s the people who can fully visualize things that are the outliers and not the other way around.

When awake I imagine things but they're fleeting, hazy etc. and I have to really concentrate.

But something happened to me a few years ago, I can't really say what. Basically my dreamscape when I was asleep changed. I went from sort of greyscale dreams with 1-2 people at a time, very little audio to basically full-blown movie quality with up to thousands of people in the scene. Long ago I achieved a lucid dreaming state but it was always a bit boring somehow, there wasn't much happening. Now I can do the same and there's a whole storyline going on for me to experience.

Also when waking up I could now just turn around and immediately go back to sleep and resume the dream.

My point in all of that is that somehow when my full conscious mind isn't present it's as if in computer terms I just have a lot more CPU power available for creating the scenery, up to the point where it's as real as real life. I'm sure it's not a "CPU" issue, the brain should easily be powerful enough to do it while conscious, but maybe it's more of a survival thing.

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

#224

Post by isoprophlex »

markers wrote: post #202
isoprophlex wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds incredibly sad and frustrating. I can't imagine what it's like to suddenly lose that ability, being so dependent on it. Indeed many of my childhood memories are mostly sequences of pictures, the emotional content kind of "floats" on the imagery. It must be very frustrating, being forced to reinvent how you experience your inner life and memories. Edit, after reading some more comments: are you musically i…

It sucks, but that's life - there are worse things and life is still plenty enjoyable. In addition, I lost my sense of smell/taste completely and that was much worse to be honest (but still, you learn to live without and focus on what's good). If I had to choose between the two, I'd choose being able to smell/taste any day. Funnily enough not because of food, but actually because of the added experience you get when…

Thanks for the thoughtful, thorough reply. Here's to hoping you don't get another bad reinfection!

It's such a weird disease, covid. Makes you wonder what we'll eventually find out about all these long-tail symptoms in 20 years.

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

#225

Post by vidarh »

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'm not convinced. I have aphantasia, yet I know I have vivid visual dreams, and I have at least once experienced even more vivid imagery in a waking state while meditating. I don't think - at least not for everyone - that the ability isn't there. It seems like something is inhibiting it when I'm awake. That, if anything, makes it a lot more frustrating. E.g. I've chased that meditation experience for a long time

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

#226

Post by coldblues »

andoando wrote: post #220
coldblues wrote: post #217

I'm very interested in this topic, so I'll go ahead and describe my experience. I can imagine anything with my eyes open. Any object on my desk, or a place, a drawing, abstract geometry or pretty much anything I have a reference to. If I were to visualize an apple in real life, with my eyes open, this is how the process would go: Imagine you're taking photos of the world 5 times a second. You then take those pictures…

That sounds heavenly to me.

It is such an essential part of my life that suddenly losing these abilities would be devastating. Aphantasia should be considered a disability. I feel as if you're losing an essential part of human experience.

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

#227

Post by koliber »

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.

There’s a recent episode of the Radiolab podcast about aphantasia. They specifically talk about a test for the condition. It’s worth the 30 minute listen.

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

#228

Post by leipie »

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 feel my memory/imagination is abstract, spatial, relational and factional. With that prompt I "see"/experience looking at the dark with a torch. I go over all the details one by one, but I don't see them it's just abstract concepts, like colour, shape and location. I don't "see" a whole picture when zooming out. It's just the aggregate concept. This might also be related to my dyslexia, why I'm good at abstract stuff like maths/programming and why I'm very good at direction and path finding. I have a good memory (but more of an indexing problem as I grow older ;) I consider myself quite creative (I love DIY stuff and creating things), but especially at improving, tweaking. Less so at starting from scratch. I have an eye for details. That's why I'm great at pairing on tasks. I have never experienced these things as a disability, but more so as talents.

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

#229

Post by Eric_WVGG »

wingerlang wrote: post #4
constantcrying wrote: post #3

I still have a hard time believing this is actually real. I also don't see how you actually could do many jobs with this condition. At least I couldn't imagine doing any job I ever head without the ability to manipulate visual information in my head.

On the other hand I have a hard time believing people actually fully see visual information in their head.

It cracks me up —- every time this topic comes up, a few people chime in to say that people who claim they can visualize things are just lying.

No dudes, we can see the Mona Lisa just by thinking about it. Quite literally. I can see Luke and Obi Wan sitting in the hut discussing the Force, and that blue hologram of Carrie Fisher, in detail. And of course there’s audio, now the Cerveza Cristal theme is rattling around my head.

The “screen” even has a location, it’s behind my eyes, maybe an inch above and ahead of my ears. Someone else in this thread said something about “closing your eyes, if you just see light…” no, that’s wrong, the picture is in a different place entirely.

(I’m probably a two or one on that “red star” test.)

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

#230

Post by markers »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #212
markers wrote: post #191

I got aphantasia from Covid, apparently it's an extremely rare side effect - so rare I've only found a handful of people on the entire internet who've experienced it. So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize, I used to be extremely good at visualizing. Most major impact (apart from the loss of ability to daydream) is that my memory is worse, as my memory was very much based…

> So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize True, but this is not the same as being born aphantasic. I'm thinking that people like me who have never had the ability to draw pictures in their head have decades of dedicating brain power to alternative ways of thinking about the world that you wouldn't have in place. You wouldn't be able to compare the experience in any real de…

I fully agree, especially since it hasn't been that long since I got it. I notice my brain is thinking a bit differently already, but my memory is extremely wired to thinking visually, so I'm for sure impaired compared to someone born with aphantasia. A friend of mine who has aphantasia is much better than me on remembering facts and thinking logically for instance.

Reading reddit etc, there are so many people getting very distraught and worse when they discover they have aphantasia (and reddit, for many people, is a magnifier for such thoughts unfortunately). Having been very good at that ability and then lost it I can provide some perspective on that. I would be lying if I didn't admit it's a very nice ability to have, but I also wouldn't really bother spending much energy on considering how life would be if one had it, but rather as you and the article points out, focus on the strengths one builds without it.

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