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Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

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

#381

Post by layer8 »

hexaga wrote: post #361
layer8 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means you should be able to create a drawing/painting of the apple (or of whatever scene) as if it were standing in front of you?

Do you generally expect anyone to be able to create a drawing/painting of anything in their visual field? Just because I'm staring at the grand canyon doesn't mean I can put it to paper. That takes extensive practice and skill.

I‘m saying you should be able to do it as well as if it were in your actual visual field. Which might be very badly, depending on talent and experience, but not worse. And I was asking a question, if this is your actual experience. Because while I can visualize and rotate and transform objects in my mind, it’s not comparable to actually seeing them, and it doesn’t translate to being able to draw/paint them as well as if they were in front of me, by far.

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

#382

Post by sfpotter »

khazhoux wrote: post #358
sfpotter wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just normal. I wouldn't overthink it. If you were truly "aphantasic", you'd know; if you truly had preternatural visualization abilities, you'd know.

Respectfully, you don’t know which experience is really normal (most common)

It's easy to infer which is normal based on one's experience of the world. The world would be very different if it were otherwise.

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

#383

Post by vonunov »

I emailed Adam Zeman (the neurologist who coined the term being discussed here) a while back seeking clarification about exactly what the experience of visualizing something should be like -- pasting the thread below.

His replies were short, but he managed to pack into them not only a comprehensible answer to my question, but also hinted at something I really hadn't expected in his two-word final reply: "Pseudo- mostly..."

To clarify, a pseudohallucination is a "hallucination" that you know isn't real. A hallucination, strictly speaking, is imaginary sensory input that you don't realize is imaginary. So, his reply seems to suggest that he's encountered people whose hyperphantasic pseudohallucinations (being able to overlay vivid visualizations onto the field of stuff they're actually seeing with their actual eyes) sometimes cross the line into bona fide hallucinations; i.e., they lose track, even if only temporarily, of what's real and what's imagined. Which is just endlessly fascinating.

Readers/commenters on this topic may find it interesting -- sorry, most of it is me going on about what my visualization is like, but I guess it forms the necessary backdrop for some of his answer to be useful anyway.

This topic, or the comments diverging from it, also seems to overlap with the topic of "unsymbolized thinking"; I've dumped some more stuff of possible interest on that: https://www.pastery.net/vvapdr/ with a bit of context in another comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40774163

======== Me: ========

Hi,

I'm looking for some clarification on the exact nature of visualization as I'm not sure what it's meant to be like.

The Wikipedia article on aphantasia mentions activation of the visual cortex. So am I supposed to be generating an actual visual input that I feel like I can see with my eyes?

When I visualize something, it's not really there on that literal visual level. I physically see the inside of my eyelids and the visualized image is not projected such that I feel like my eyes are actually seeing it. Instead it's somewhere else; sometimes it feels as if it's somewhere behind my eyes. Nonetheless, the image can be vivid in its own way, precise and consistent. I can rotate and manipulate it. I can move a light source around the object and "see" the shadow change, or place my point of quasi-view within a scene. This comes along with mental impressions of other sensory inputs that, similarly, are "vivid" but clearly not actually being sensed from the outside world.

Is this what it's supposed to be? What point on the scale would reflect this in the visualization quiz?

Thanks

======== Adam: ========

…it sounds to me as if you are in the 3-4/5 territory…seeing imagery as if you were ‘really’ seeing is the exception, but for most of us visual imagery has a visual ‘feel’, which sounds to be the case for you…

======== Me: ========

Thanks for the reply. To clarify, the "really seeing" exception is akin to a visual hallucination, or rather pseudohallucination?

======== Adam: ========

Pseudo- mostly…

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

#384

Post by GoblinSlayer »

zug_zug wrote: post #351
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…

Agree 100%. I pretty much discount everything everyone says until we start running hard science experiments. One way to measure scientifically is to ask somebody to picture a room. The the experimenter keeps describing adding items to the room until the experimentee can no longer recall. By defining positions for all these items one could verify it is indeed visual memory by asking location questions. I don't know if…

I have a pretty strong geometric imagination, but it's shape alone. When I try to convert it to a colored raster image, I get a transparent silhouette. How would you differentiate that? Also constructing an image by description isn't the same as making an image by myself from nothing.

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

#385

Post by smokel »

adastra22 wrote: post #378
smokel wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure that you actually see the details, and that you are not merely experiencing the feeling of seeing those details? Have you tried drawing the Mona Lisa from various angles? To what level of detail can you comfortably reproduce it?

> How can you be sure that you actually see the details, and that you are not merely experiencing the feeling of seeing those details? Is there a meaningful distinction?

Most certainly. In the first case one can actually use data to base decisions on. In the latter, one is merely hallucinating something which has less information value.

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

#386

Post by adastra22 »

smokel wrote: post #385
adastra22 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can you be sure that you actually see the details, and that you are not merely experiencing the feeling of seeing those details? Is there a meaningful distinction?

Most certainly. In the first case one can actually use data to base decisions on. In the latter, one is merely hallucinating something which has less information value.

In both cases you're "merely" experiencing the feeling of seeing those details. That's what it means to remember something with a brain.

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

#387

Post by lannisterstark »

adastra22 wrote: post #372
lannisterstark wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would I remember that? Why wouldn't you lol

Because it's useless information. Some people (like my wife) remember literally everything, at least until their brain fills up. I, on the other hand, have to explicitly commit to memory things I want to recall later. If I don't, it's gone. And why go through the effort of committing something as useless as what I ate for breakfast?

You have to realize that it's you who is the oddball, not the rest of us.

It's not useless information - I get to track what I ate when, I get to figure out the recipe if I like something etc etc. Imagine going "What you had for breakfast is useful information" as if your brain isn't already full of useless information.

> at least until their brain fills up.

(X) That's not how it works.

>If I don't, it's gone.

As I said, for the rest of us, it isn't an issue. We just remember. You don't - so you just go "it's useless information." It's not for us.

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

#388

Post by lewispollard »

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…

A key thing here is that you can train the ability to visualise. You probably don't spend very long per day trying to picture your friend's face with the glasses and mustache, but if you did, you'd find that over time, your ability would increase.

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

#389

Post by ryanjshaw »

markers wrote: post #364
ryanjshaw wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why I was downvoted (I know it wasn't you), but it sounds like we are on the same page. It's important because in my case I think quite differently from how it seems most people do: I have a sort of "conceptual graph" that I sense my way around. When people discuss stuff, I update that graph. Often this causes issues in personal relationships, but in other ways it's helpful. I tend to detect incompatible inf…

I think I know which ability you refer to, as my fear when I discovered this was that I couldn't work as a software developer anymore (before I got a grasp of what had actually happened, it took a while to actually understand the extent). I used to visualize arrays/tables/graphs in my head (like images/fancy animations) and do operations on them to imagine how one could transform them etc. But I also had/have a nativ…

Geez, what a rough time! Fascinating, though, yes I too have that "sense" of data structures - really interesting to hear that others do too!

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

#390

Post by adastra22 »

lannisterstark wrote: post #387
adastra22 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's useless information. Some people (like my wife) remember literally everything, at least until their brain fills up. I, on the other hand, have to explicitly commit to memory things I want to recall later. If I don't, it's gone. And why go through the effort of committing something as useless as what I ate for breakfast?

You have to realize that it's you who is the oddball, not the rest of us. It's not useless information - I get to track what I ate when, I get to figure out the recipe if I like something etc etc. Imagine going "What you had for breakfast is useful information" as if your brain isn't already full of useless information. > at least until their brain fills up. (X) That's not how it works. >If I don't, it's gone. As I s…

As you are discovering in this thread, everyone's brain works differently. You are exhibiting the mind projection fallacy--assuming that everyone else's mind works the way yours does. In fact, neurodiversity is a thing and pretty much every person out there has a unique mental experience.
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