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Aphantasia and Psychedelics

psychedelirium.substack.com

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Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#41

Post by bethekidyouwant »

drcongo wrote: post #25
loves_mangoes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The visuals you get from psychedelics and the visuals from imagination are different. Psychedelics seem to affect your real visual field. You're not imagining textures melting with colors and walls turning into liquid, it becomes what you see. I normally have aphantasia, at about 2/5 on one those pop scales that show various versions of an apple. I can sort of rotate geometric shapes without the notion of color or te…

I'm quite strongly aphantasic, I can, for a split second, hold the essence of a thing in my brain, but it's not even vaguely visual. I have though, several times, experienced almost exactly what you decribe - also while laying in bed trying to get to sleep. Every now and then I can kind of see a room, sometimes the room I'm in, sometimes not, even though my eyes are closed. I love it. I can't switch what I'm seeing t…

I can also only experience true visualizations when falling asleep or dreaming. I concluded that being awake (correctly?) suppresses vivid visuals and some people when awake simply do not have this (mal?)adaptation.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#42

Post by haswell »

card_zero wrote: post #29
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also lost the ability to think in images after a series of surgeries at 13. I went from being a very imaginative kid with dream like states while awake to purely lexical. I stopped enjoying playing pretend with my sister basically overnight, I just couldn't see it any more. I still do have visual dreams though they are rare, I can no longer conjure any sense of an object while awake. I have a couple images from bef…

I respect you, fellowniusmonk, but all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression. People want me to be nice about this and acknowledge that the thing exists because they all say it does. The best I can offer is acknowledgement that you all say it does. On the other hand, you have a special claim to plausibility because of the surgery. Oh wait cardiovas…

As someone with aphantasia, all I ever get from people who can visualize is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment, etc.

By definition, this will always be the case until we have a deep enough understanding of the brain to diagnostically assess this.

What I can assure you is that I cannot see/imagine with my mind, and that many other aspects of my life make sense given this limitation, e.g. when people describe their experience of reading books and mental world building, it’s entirely foreign to me. Or when my brother describes his ability to create mind palaces, manipulate visual concepts mentally as if he were using CAD software, etc. it seems preposterous.

But I have to take his word that it’s something he can actually do. Such is the nature of this subject.

Until I discovered the concept of aphantasia in my early 30s, I genuinely thought that people’s descriptions of “visualization” were just a figure of speech. It was mind blowing to learn that people actually see anything more than nothing at all, and a lifetime of experiences and confusion about what other people described about theirs suddenly made sense.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#43

Post by icepush »

deepvibrations wrote: post #34

Curious - do people see a picture perfect apple when they close their eyes? If you ask me to imagine a red apple, i can, but i have the image somewhere other than my actual vision... If i close my eyes I can't manipulate that space to show the apple.

There is a very huge spectrum of answers for this, ranging from complete inability to picture literally anything to being able to visualize it with greater clarity than their actual eye-balls.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#44

Post by perrygeo »

card_zero wrote: post #20
mdswanson wrote: post #10

An aphantasia "beginner's guide" for those who aren't familiar or just want to learn more: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

I feel in my gut that this is fad-driven internet bullshit, and I would like to learn less, if it were possible. > Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. > Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers. Hmm

Aphantasia makes a number of testable hypotheses and can/has/continues to be dealt with as a serious scientific question. But instead of taking the time to do even the bare minimum of research, you trust your gut to tell you that it's bullshit. Classy.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#45

Post by card_zero »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #39
card_zero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect you, fellowniusmonk, but all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression. People want me to be nice about this and acknowledge that the thing exists because they all say it does. The best I can offer is acknowledgement that you all say it does. On the other hand, you have a special claim to plausibility because of the surgery. Oh wait cardiovas…

If your core issue is with trying to quantify and observe others Qualia I think you're going to have a hard time. I still have people tell me I must be faking my colorblindness, or just treat me like I'm blind. Normally teenagers, theory of mind is tough at that age. I'm not sure nice or just a smidge of humility/uncertainty in expressing doubt. Propagation of information pre-internet was so low people just couldn't…

Well, I'm an artist, but I don't insist that I can visualise things vividly, whatever that really means.

I'm looking at the brain scans in the article now. It's good that it's got 'em. Do they really mean what they're presented as meaning? It shows that some people, when told to imagine things, activate a bunch of brain regions. Some of those are also involved in actual looking, though not with clear purposes. Then there's also areas to do with memory and salience. I'll say that the people in this group are having a more emotional experience when they imagine. They give more of a shit, they pay more attention. I'm not sure that this qualifies as a skill, or an ability, or "seeing". But heck, what's seeing anyway?

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#46

Post by haswell »

card_zero wrote: post #20
mdswanson wrote: post #10

An aphantasia "beginner's guide" for those who aren't familiar or just want to learn more: https://aphantasia.com/guide/

I feel in my gut that this is fad-driven internet bullshit, and I would like to learn less, if it were possible. > Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. > Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers. Hmm

What are you trying to imply with the “hmm”?

I personally found out about my aphantasia when reading an article in Scientific American titled “When the Mind’s Eye is Blind”. A whole lifetime of experiences clicked into place.

So it’s not surprising that there would be an outpouring of new discoveries after more people learn of the concept.

Learning about aphantasia is how I learned people experience anything other than nothing visually in their mind’s eye.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#47

Post by card_zero »

eitland wrote: post #35
cnity wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut feel has always been that it is just a language thing where some people think that when others imagine things that they literally see it right in front of them _the same way_ they see real things. Like, when I imagine a scene or object in my head, I am not literally seeing it. It's like some vague in-between thing. And that people who claim to have aphantasia just have a higher bar for what it means to "see" s…

Maybe you have aphantasia as well. I had without knowing it. Some observations: Someone told me to close my eyes and think about "an apple at a table". Then I was told to open my eyes and tell what color the apple was. The question didn't make sense to me: I only thought about about the concept of "an apple on a table". When my eyes are closed it is black. Absolutely black. Blacker than a Norwegian winter night with…

Are you trying to help them believe?

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#48

Post by card_zero »

perrygeo wrote: post #44
card_zero wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in my gut that this is fad-driven internet bullshit, and I would like to learn less, if it were possible. > Dr. Adam Zeman, a neurologist from Exeter, receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known as patient MX. MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. > Media outlets like the New York Times report the findings. This leads to an outpouring of new discoverers. Hmm

Aphantasia makes a number of testable hypotheses and can/has/continues to be dealt with as a serious scientific question. But instead of taking the time to do even the bare minimum of research, you trust your gut to tell you that it's bullshit. Classy.

You didn't really say anything here yourself other than that you're awed by it. Also that I'm the one who has to do all the work apparently.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#49

Post by perrygeo »

card_zero wrote: post #48
perrygeo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aphantasia makes a number of testable hypotheses and can/has/continues to be dealt with as a serious scientific question. But instead of taking the time to do even the bare minimum of research, you trust your gut to tell you that it's bullshit. Classy.

You didn't really say anything here yourself other than that you're awed by it. Also that I'm the one who has to do all the work apparently.

If you're gonna come out and say "trust my gut, this is bullshit" - yes, you do need to do all the work.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#50

Post by card_zero »

graeme wrote: post #37
card_zero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect you, fellowniusmonk, but all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression. People want me to be nice about this and acknowledge that the thing exists because they all say it does. The best I can offer is acknowledgement that you all say it does. On the other hand, you have a special claim to plausibility because of the surgery. Oh wait cardiovas…

>all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression. Is there any other way to get information on what people see internally? The idea that great artists, for example, don't have dramatically different visualization than people who report not seeing sharp images or images at all seems like the theory in need of proof. You can't just say the evidence is subj…

Did I say I'm right? I assume we're all wrong in ways yet to be discovered, that's my default position on everything. And I've modified my viewpoint slightly just now: I accept that there are loose groups of people who experience imagination differently. So I'm being decently open-minded here, what do you want, blood?
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