How blind photographers visualize the world

As for visualization, I can "picture" my living room, but when I try it's as if I'm walking through it with no light at all, but I'm familiar enough with it to know where to step because I know where everything is, more or less, and what I would be seeing if someone would turn on the light, i.e the couch is over there and if I'm not careful I'm going to step on the charger I left on the floor.

I didn't find out I was an aphant until my 50s. I thought "visualizing a beach" was a figment of speech. I assumed they meant thinking of it, not seeing it. Being alone in my head is like sitting in a quiet room with the lights off and is what I consider "normal". It's lead me to think that everyone has a lot of things happening on different internal "cpu cores" because this lack of stimulus makes it much more clear to me when ideas or solutions just pop into my head from some other part of me.

Just today a colleague was looking for AA batteries and told me we have none. An image of a 20 pack of green AA batteries laying on a white-grey shelf popped up in my head, I had no idea where or when I saw it but I knew it was real.

I checked three shelves of similar color with similar light conditions and there it was, a 20 pack of green AA batteries.

It's hard to describe the "image" I "see", it is very focused on the center of the image and the information is progressively "lost" towards the edges of the image, as if there was no edge to it like in real photos or virtual pictures. (kinda like vignette but with information)

But these things appear to not be directly linked - far more people have no voice in their head than have issues seeing things (about 2% or so see nothing). Similarly I was shocked to realise that a lot of people have no internal monologue or conversation - I have a constant monologue going in my head my ever waking moment other than when I suppress it with meditation.

Here's an interesting article that addresses some of these additional aspects [1], and which interestingly fall in the same trap of assuming their experience is universal when they write:

> The idea of an internal dialogue – rather than a monologue – will be familiar to anyone who’s ever rehearsed an important conversation, or rehashed an argument, in their mind.

But that is not true for me. I rehearse pretty much every conversation I know will happen, but the other side is always silent. I know what I think they'd answer and I practice my side, but there's no voice - mine or others - voicing the rest.

For others there is, and for some whole discussions with multiple different voices can happen (sometimes that can indicate a mental health problem, but usually that boils down to whether they're intrusive or beyond your control)

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-inner-...

In fact, I pointed out on another thread that I'm very fuzzy about the layout of code and things like syntax highlighting because my memory of code is largely driven by remember "visual" shapes of methods etc., even though I can't actually see them when they're not in front of me.

So the recall appears to be largely decoupled from actually seeing the images.

Interestingly, my recall appears to be more "abstract" and "cleaned up". E.g. I remember vividly (notice how often these words pop up, and I use them all the time myself, but just remember when I use them I use them in a more abstract sense) an exercise in art class at school where we were given the task of first drawing our shoes without looking under the desk, and then we were told to take a shoe off and put it in front of us and draw it.

I can remember clearly how the two drawings looked, but can't see them. The one I drew from memory had clear, firm lines, and was very precise, and the shading and shadows were idealised. It looked like a cartoon-shoe in a way - it was too tidy and clean to be the "real thing". The one I drew with my shoe in front of me had messy lines and shadows that reflected the light of the room at the time, and was far closer to an impressionist drawing. It was marginally closer to the real thing, but it wasn't "better" as art, just a very different style.

But the important bit to me is that in retrospect it's a demonstration that my recall of visual memories is there, and I can access them even if I can't see them.