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Aphantasia and Psychedelics

psychedelirium.substack.com

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Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#61

Post by eitland »

card_zero wrote: post #47
eitland wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. Or maybe rather understand. For me it was a lightbulb moment just like my realisation of exactly how bad my colourblindness was: what is next to impossible for me to see (red drawings on woods in maps) was chosen by someone who thought it stood out.

I'm at least pointing out that I now know personally that there are multiple levels of visualisation, from me just "feeling" what it would mean to rotate a 3d object (it works, I can absolutely determine if it will fit but it is absolutely not visual) up to some close friends of mine that see vivid pictures of faces and can combine them with eyes closed.

For me who cannot see images except what I physically see it certainly is interesting to hear people describe remembering peoples phone numbers as text that they can see (I remember the feeling of myself saying it, not the sound) or memorising my name by mentally putting the image of ne next to their image of their brother who has the same name as me (!)

It really is funny, because I can draw. For example the famous "draw a bike" thing seems weird to me because I can't see myself making any of the mistakes from any of the drawings. Not because I can see a bike, but because I know it.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#62

Post by bonoboTP »

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…

I also have this mostly when I'm half asleep and have had some very 4K sharp lucid dreams as well, including seeing leaves on a tree up close and feeling the texture.

Under normal circumstances, my imagination is also colorless and is more about spatial layout and shapes. Like an untextured 3D model.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#63

Post by kakokiyrvoooo »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #41
drcongo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#64

Post by card_zero »

roxolotl wrote: post #58
suddenlybananas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah essentially, or alternatively neither group has visual imagery. I think it fundamentally comes down to phenomenology being very hard to express in language.

That’s why the self reports seem valuable to me. If someone says “I’ve never seen something in my minds eye” and then they do dmt and say “oh shit I can see things in my minds eye now I totally get what people mean now” it seems to imply there’s a spectrum of visualization capabilities. There’s also people who’ve gone in the opposite direction due to injury.

But people who do dmt are also liable to say "oh shit I can see the machine elves, I totally get what people mean now". Which is not to say that their reports are unreliable, just inscrutable.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#65

Post by malthaus »

i have aphantasia and extensive experience with psychedelics

for me, as long as my consciousness is still in control, i have no closed-eye visuals akin to what others see. the more i lose control/consciousness, the more visuals i get but only over a certain (high) threshold.

dmt is the only substance that consistently gives me visuals but only at close to breakthrough dosages where i effectively lose consiousness. and they are never "things", they are always the known patterns, ie just raw signals and nothing meaningful - but my mind interprets them in whatever it thinks sensible.

otherwise i hallucinate like i dream or think - in an abstract, non visual way, the only thing i "see" are white flashes in nothingness

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#66

Post by bonoboTP »

e-khadem wrote: post #22
thrance wrote: post #6

I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?". I can't for the life of me imagine an apple. At best, I get a very faint and dark picture of something resembling the fruit. Plus, there's one on the desk right next to me, so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the assignment, but here we are. On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall viv…

There is a simple (unofficial?) test for aphantasia, and I have tried it on many of my peers, it seems to be accurate. _Close your eyes and ask someone else to read the instructions for you. If you really want to take it stop reading here._ . . . Imagine a room with a table in it. Someone comes in, puts a ball on the table and the ball falls down from the table. - What age was the person that came in? - What hairstyl…

> Most other people would say, for example, there was a big brown table with metallic legs in the middle of the room, and the person that came in had a blue T-shirt.

I would only take that seriously from thoughful, detail-oriented, intelligent people who have demonstrated critical introspection abilities before. Otherwise I'd assume they are making it up post-hoc. People often swear up and down in witness testimonies about what they saw and it just turns out to be complete post-hoc fabrication of their mind, even if it seems true to them. Similarly I think they post-hoc think it was a big brown table but this is like a language model completing the sentence.

It's been shown how in split brain patients the language center of the brain can make up totally unsupported justifications for actions that "explain" its experience, fully unrelated to what actually happened.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#67

Post by card_zero »

eitland wrote: post #61
card_zero wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to help them believe?

Yes. Or maybe rather understand. For me it was a lightbulb moment just like my realisation of exactly how bad my colourblindness was: what is next to impossible for me to see (red drawings on woods in maps) was chosen by someone who thought it stood out. I'm at least pointing out that I now know personally that there are multiple levels of visualisation, from me just "feeling" what it would mean to rotate a 3d object…

Being able to draw better than people who can "visualize" better throws doubt on what type of thing "visualizing" really is.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#68

Post by cousinbryce »

bcraven wrote: post #8

I listened to a recent podcast that discussed why giving people with aphantasia the chance to see images is ethically complicated: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/third-eye-bl... (Presented by Alex Goldman from Reply All)

I have aphantasia, after psychedelic experiences for the next few nights I see small poorly defined things when falling asleep. I don’t enjoy it and the idea of seeing things all the time sounds exhausting. I also have a slight astigmatism and prefer not to wear my glasses because the details of perfect vision are tiring.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#69

Post by suddenlybananas »

perrygeo wrote: post #55
card_zero wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's that, then? I'm digging around in the Wikipedia article on "burden of proof", quick, head me off at the pass before I quote it. Heh, it mentions "burden tennis". It all devolves to who's got the status quo on their side and who's making the extraordinary claim, or not. I can see why fistfights are a popular way to resolve disagreements.

Google scholar has 5000+ hits on the term, I'd suggest starting there. Once you've completely your meta-analysis proving that it's all "bullshit", let us know. That's how science works. You think your 10 minutes scrolling wikipedia substitutes for decades of research? Surely, since you and your gut feel so strongly about it, the evidence should speak for itself.

It's not decades of research, the term was coined in 2015. There's a vague reference to something similar earlier but it doesn't constitute pre-existing research. It's an extremely recent phenomenon to research it.

Re: Aphantasia and Psychedelics

#70

Post by i4i »

My understanding is that most aphantasics (like myself) can still see images while dreaming—suggesting that dreaming uses a different network for visualization. I have vivid dreams most nights.

Shane Williams (an aphant) hosts a podcast where he interviews people using a set of questions designed to probe their inner sensory world. From it I’ve learned, for example, that some people can taste food when reading a menu, or have a conversation with a deceased loved one and actually hear their voice. One of his prompts is whether guests can place themselves inside a photo of a carnival (which he provides); many say they can smell the cotton candy or hear the chatter of the crowd.

It’s striking how little we really know about the variety of inner sensory experiences: Discovering Your Mind – Aphantasia and Beyond https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discovering-your-mind-...

A favorite research paper compares brain activity in identical twin sisters, only one of whom is aphantasic: The Neural Underpinnings of Aphantasia: A Case Study of Identical Twins https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.23.614521v2

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