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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

#321

Post by smokel »

costco wrote: post #316
hexaga wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm it's basically a blender model in my head I can ~arbitrarily transform at will. Worth noting it's not just visual, I can 'touch' the surface of the imagined object(s) or whack two together and 'hear' what that sounds like.

OK maybe I'm just jealous. I've only asked my siblings about this but none of them see anything either.

Ask these people to actually draw or paint the apples, and it quickly shows that they do not do lighting and shading correctly. Even with a lot of training.

Just look at art history. Only very few people managed to render things somewhat accurately before the invention of photography. And the consensus is that these exceptions (such as Holbein or Vermeer) used technological tricks to aid them.

My hypothesis is that people have an internal imagery that is extremely realistic and detailed, because they perceive the actual world in exactly the same way, using the same processes. One does not "see" the image on the retina in their mind's eye, one "sees", if I'm allowed to use the metaphor, the vector embedding somewhat further down the line.

Now, if people train their mind to actually see more detail, they find out that the brain is actually rather limited in comparison to a camera.

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

#322

Post by foobarchu »

harimau777 wrote: post #258

I've sometimes wondered if I could have aphantasia or perhaps be low enough on the visual imagery spectrum to have some of the practical effects of aphantasia. When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar must…

I consider myself aphantasic and would describe my process similarly. I can kind of "draw" shapes in my head with sort of strokes of light like a kid writing their name in the air with a sparkler. While doing it, I can in fact feel my eyes physically moving around under their lids. Anything that isn't a rudimentary shape is out. This comes in handy while thinking about software because I can pretty easily create and trace connections between things in a sort of imaginary network.

I experience basically the same thing with sounds, which I've never heard anyone talk about. If you ask me to imagine the guitar solo from "sweet child of mine", I'm not going to hear the actual song in my head, I'm going to hear essentially the same thing as if you asked me to describe it (with lots of beedly dee type sounds). I can recognize a person's voice, but I can't will it into existence without hearing it, instead I would hear my own imitation of them, however bad that is. I'm not sure if that's a common experience but media tells me it's not.

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

#323

Post by smokel »

snaeker58 wrote: post #231

I really hate these aphantasia questions. It feels too subjective. I can visualize in a sense, but I would never talk of an image. In fact closing my eyes makes it harder for me to imagine anything. I can recall my dream from last night for example, I can describe it quite well. If you now would ask me to in my mind modify for example the color of the floor, I couldn’t. Because in “dream reality” I very much remember…

Seconded. It is unfortunate that social media polarises the two camps. I'm happy that people start considering this subject as a "spectrum", which allows for some more interesting discussions.

What I find strange is that so many people actually believe that their brains have a built-in raytracer. Why did, say, Boris Vallejo need real-life models and photography if there are so many people out there who can simply visualize everything in an instant?

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

#324

Post by cucustiuc »

jackjeff wrote: post #195
danybittel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's the other way around, people with Aphantasia trend towards tech. Especially software is very abstract, you can visualize parts of it in your head but it's often not enough precise or just too complex. Even a small imprecision makes it pointless, which is very frustrating. Compare that to something like (UI) design, architecture, animation, visual effects etc. Where even rough visualizations help a lot.

Do people without aphantasia actually visualize for loops, class hierarchies, design patterns, etc…? If not it would be easy to explain the result of the “visualize an apple” test. It’s just like visualizing a “for loop”. You’ve got a good idea of what’s it like and yet visualize absolutely nothing.

I do visualize images I have seen in the past that represent class hierarchies, I can visualize UML representing design patterns, and also can visually compose these UMLs, I can even write code in my head as I see it on the screen, for example I can change background color or font. I can only do it for small snippets, but I do see them they are not just text. Whenever I want to solve a high level design problem I actually see the systems stylized, a cache, a database, client, server, arrows between them, the same way they appear on the screen. I can easily imagine all kinds of dashboards charts and whatnot. All these to some degree of complexity, I need to make some effort to actually take a mental picture of the screen remember and visualize it after a period, unless is something I see every day. So yes people can use images to do their work every day as programmers.

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

#325

Post by dbingham »

harimau777 wrote: post #258

I've sometimes wondered if I could have aphantasia or perhaps be low enough on the visual imagery spectrum to have some of the practical effects of aphantasia. When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar must…

This sounds very similar to my experience as well. Memory and mental visualization are very fuzzy. Like a camera with a dirty lens and very narrow focus. I can't even imagine my wife or children's faces clearly. I can picture an environment, but it's like a low res image or impressionistic painting.

I can think very clearly in text however, so I can imagine vivid descriptions of a physical environment and with descriptions of fine detail. But it's stored as text, and only blurrily rendered to images.

Recently, I've gradually realized that I struggle to recognize faces and some significant chunk of my social anxiety comes from this. If I see a face often enough or in large enough doses I can recognize it, but if I see it only occasionally and for brief encounters, I really struggle. I think it may be related to my inability visualize.

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

#326

Post by aeturnum »

A really interesting question here, to me, is if aphantasia is more common now than it was before. There's a whole collection of non-"neurotypical" conditions that seem more common now (though its always possible they are just diagnosed more and more likely to be expressed in lifestyles that require more complex thought). It also seems likely that our focus on literal "visualization" (picturing a picture) is amplified by the media that surrounds us - thousands of high fidelity photos of the world. Perhaps previous generations simply had less cause to try to visualize things in a "photo-realistic" way?

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

#327

Post by quantum2022 »

speedylight wrote: post #113
quantum2022 wrote: post #5

I wonder if this could be induced in people who suffer from hallucinations to reduce or eliminate their symptoms? Maybe their system is rigged into overdrive the other way. It says on wikipedia that there are 'cases reported of acquired aphantasia'.

I don’t think hallucinations and having a “minds eye” are the same thing. A minds eye is different in the sense that it’s entirely separate from the “visual feed” you get from your eyes, they’re not combined so you can’t really mistake them as a hallucination; hallucinations trick you into seeing things that are not really there such as when people with schizophrenia can see people who are not actually with them — I…

I found a reddit post about it and I think you may be correct, though it seems like their hallucinations aren't 'full fledged' (they report seeing shadows, not people or what have you): https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/baf5fv/can_peop...

I also found this study asking a similar question about many different types of mental illnesses, though some of it is about making people that have aphantasia better able to visualize to treat things like PTSD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9614338/

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

#328

Post by Jordan-117 »

snaeker58 wrote: post #238
Jordan-117 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly, though less about the lack of objective testing and more about the inability to even be sure we're talking about the same thing. Like I can visualize stuff fine, but not literally see it like some Hololens overlay -- it's in a sort of abstract internal space separate from what you see with your eyes. Sometimes I wonder whether some self-diagnosed aphantasiacs only think they are because they overest…

I disagree. Asking someone to name shapes that resemble for example the Sydney Opera house seems to me just a test of creativity, not ability to “visualize” something in your head. I don’t think we’ll ever get a test, because the entire concept of visualization and imagination is so unquantifiable and abstract. We’re all black boxes in a way to each other, with no real way of describing or showing each other how our…

It is a creativity test, but doesn't how you get there matter? From what I understand, aphantasiacs think in words, verbalized concepts, remembered facts, relationships, etc. So I'd expect that to make a visual analogy they'd have to first think through the properties of the thing -- "OK, I know this building is white, triangular, curved, near the water..." -- and then come up with other things those attributes describe. But I can just "see" the shape and color of the building in my mind's eye, and mentally make it be something similar, without any internal monologue at all. Actually, if you just gave me a written description of these traits, I'd have a harder time coming up with examples because they're just abstract properties without any specific image to anchor them to -- I could do it, but I'd have to think about it some. But doing the same exercise with a mental image feels much easier.

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

#329

Post by costco »

booleandilemma wrote: post #271

Does anyone else think this is complete bullshit?

I, a random HN user, can personally attest to having never pictured anything and being a 5 in the sense of this image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Aphantas...

And apparently they can prove differences with MRIs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186241/

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

#330

Post by beaugunderson »

costco wrote: post #304

I don't see anything. I feel like we're talking past each other. I am skeptical that "visualize an apple" to some people gets them the mental equivalent of a Blender model where they get a 360 degree view of the image and from there they are able to apply arbitrary transformations. I can "replay" songs in my head with pretty good fidelity to the original if I remember enough of it, but I think that's fairly common.

Can you change the songs you replay in your head? I think there is a spectrum of audio imagination as well. For example, I can speed up/slow down, add reverb, change pitch, remix, change lyrics, etc.
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