Think about your breakfast this morning. Can you imagine the pattern on your coffee mug? The sheen of the jam on your half-eaten toast?
Most of us can call up such pictures in our minds. We can visualize the past and summon images of the future. But for an estimated 4% of people, this mental imagery is weak or absent. When researchers ask them to imagine something familiar, they might have a concept of what it is, and words and associations might come to mind, but they describe their mind’s eye as dark or even blank.
… the topic received a surge of attention when, a decade ago, an influential paper coined the term aphantasia to describe the experience of people with no mental imagery.
Much of the early work sought to describe the trait and assess how it affected behaviour. But over the past five years, studies have begun to explore what’s different about the brains of people with this form of inner life. The findings have led to a flurry of discussions about how mental imagery forms, what it is good for and what it might reveal about the puzzle of consciousness: researchers tend to define mental imagery as a conscious experience, and some are now excited to study aphantasia as a way to probe imagery’s potentially unconscious forms.
The article itself went into a lot of past and current research into aphantasia and is quite detailed, worth a read if you are interested (especially if you are also quite high on the aphantasia scale like OP)
Try this archive.org link if it is paywalled
Edit: some of you all should take the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVID). The article only gave an excerpt, there seem to be a few free ones floating on the internet
I went 30 years thinking “mental images” were just a turn of phrase. Had no idea people were actually visualizing stuff like that.
I had a bit of a mental breakdown once because of it. Everyone knows their partner’s eye color, right? How can I be in love with her if I can’t see them when I close my eyes?
But I’m as good at audiating sound as I am bad at visualizing imagery. I can usually play back any isolated instrument in a song and can recognize a voice I haven’t heard in 20 years. But if you leave the room and ask me what color shirt you were wearing, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.
I had this same experience. I was baffled when I discovered that when people say “picture this,” they actually see a picture.
Sophia Petrillo always said that as part of a gag so I assumed it just meant reminiscing
I wonder if one day there will be studies on multisensory aphantasia. The article mentions sound, like the inability to get a song stuck in your head, but same is true for taste, touch, smell and emotion.
One of the bigger issues is that it impacts experiential and episodic memory, which creates continuity issues. So the person is stuck having to externalize everything in order to manually integrate it. So I disagree with the article re having the same behavior as seeing people. Maybe from the outside it looks this way, but not internally.
The article says that people with that condition tend to be in technical not artistic fields, and I don’t see much of a difference. Technical fields rely on diagrams that you draw, which isn’t any different from drawing any picture. My point is that having an eye for design isn’t related to aphantasia at all.
I find it hard to visualise pictures but I am good at imagining how things relate to each other in space and how they move. For example, if I try to imagine a scene of somebody playing on a swing hanging from the branch of a tree, if I focus hard I can ‘see’ parts of it; the rough, frayed rope, the look of joy on the kid’s face, or whatever, but only one at a time. But I can easily imagine how the swing moves, how the rider leans back or forward to make it go higher. I don’t need to ‘see’ the image for this, it’s more abstract.
The issue with all these studies about people’s subjective experiences is that they rely on self reporting. Just because someone says that they have no mental imagery doesn’t mean that they actually don’t. They may simply be unaware of it. After all, how many people actually spend any significant amount of time learning to pay attention to their minds. The vast majority don’t.
It’s a bit like asking people whether they have an optic blind spot in their vision but not teach them how to look for it. Virtually everyone would say that they don’t and they’d all be wrong.
They don’t all do this, though - research seems to use imaging and other observational techniques, self reporting isn’t the only source. Brain imaging is one, and I know they’ve demonstrated variance in automatic pupil responses to back up self report. I think they have also used it as a research control in other studies after that, but I don’t know a ton about it. [EDIT: as someone else pointed out it seems like they literally do include that in this case]
This is what I remember reading, I think, and that…advocacy? awareness?..site also has a decent running collection of assorted research. Seems like it’s not very well understood or studied, which makes sense when it doesn’t really affect behavior or quality of life.
I guess? I’m aphantasic and I guess I don’t really understand what you mean by suggesting that I have mental imagery I’m unaware of. If someone was reporting they were blind and you told them they could see but they were just unaware of it, what would that even mean?
Edit: To elaborate, all I’m telling you when I tell you I’m aphantasic is that my imagination has no qualia of sight. I can still successfully answer spatial reasoning questions (albeit poorly). For me, being aphantasic is like using a headless browser — I can still imagine things, but it’s like everything is rendered off-screen, and I can only use language to broker the experience. I’m not sure how it would be different to say I’m just “unaware” — I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to render an image, and there is nothing to be had.
I don’t really understand what you mean by suggesting that I have mental imagery I’m unaware of
I haven’t ever claimed such a thing. The point was that when you ask someone about the state of their mind, you’re then relying on their report being accurate - with no good way to verify it.
Although in this case, people pointed out they also monitored the visual region of the brain lighting up.
If someone asked me to visualize an object, I can easily do it. If they then asked whether I can literally see it, I’d say no - but also kind of yes. It’s not a photograph I’m viewing in my mind, but there’s definitely something there. Both yes and no would be truthful answers to “can I see it?”
Still, there’s always a chance that if they could peek inside my mind, they’d find out the thing I report seeing isn’t actually there - at least not when compared to someone who really does see it.
MRI studies on aphants have actually shown corresponding lack of activity in the visual cortex which is present for most non-aphants. Yes, experience is highly subjective, but the research on this is not merely that.
But what about el-aphants…?
The article’s 3rd section (“Getting a measure”) is explicitly about alternatives to self reported vividness of experience - citing use of ocular rivalry effect, measuring dilation of pupils when imagining a bright light and sweat responses to a scary scenario. I agree that it’s a difficult thing to make sure people aren’t just experiencing similar things and reporting them differently but there does seem to be effort made to design experiments around differences in how participants form descriptions.
I may have this thing and never realized. Wtf. People vividly see colors and images in their minds? 😱. One more to add to the list, oh well.
Yeah, it blew my mind.
The thing that did it for me is that I realised that if I tried to imagine an apple, then it wouldn’t have a colour before someone asked me what colour it was. Like, I was simultaneously imagining an apple that was deep red, like what the witch gave to Snow White. But I’m also imagining a green apple, like a granny smith. Or a pink and green one, like a Pink Lady.
Except that doesn’t make sense, because one apple can’t be three different colours simultaneously. I realised that I wasn’t so much visualising an apple, but more like accessing a database entry for apples. e.g.
Apples:
- Can be deep red
- Can be green
- can be pink and green
- can be other colours
- apples are on the first aisle in the big grocery store
Stuff like that.
Can you rotate the image of a cow in your mind? I mean ffs. Dat COW!!
I can process the concept and imagine it, but I didn’t know people are supposed to have true color real life rendering inside their heads while imagining things. It’s more like a description or a sequence of facts that create an ilusion of the thing. It’s not even in wireframe format. I should dig deeper into this. It’s more like thinking about thinking with a 2 level indirection.
Idk if supposed is the right word. Some can, some can’t. It won’t stop you from anything I guess.
Great now I’m imagining a cow version of the oiia cat
As a visual person, I have a hard time imagining (no pun intended) what it is to not have images in one’s mind. I will go read this, thx for sharing.
You stole my joke.
Maybe check your wallet too? I’m quite gifted ;)
Goddamnit!
I agree mine is like a mental collage sometimes organised sometimes not. It’s like the images do not stop. I relay mental on image more than any other sensory input. They help, they combine and support the images but I generally feel like I have picture and video loops playing in my brain non stop….even dreaming when I sleep.
Seeing comments like this makes me question myself. I don’t experience this at all. I can picture things vaugely in my head but they dissapear the moment I’m not thinking about it. My thoughts are more like concepts, unless I want to explicitiy imagine somethng. But even then I woulnd’t say that I can “see” it in the same detail as if I were looking at it with my own two eyes.
I think that’s normal. Like if I look at a blank wall I can actively imagine stuff on it, but it doesn’t just happen automatically all the time.
One time I was out in the woods and I found a spot where I could stand in the sun and it felt nice. So I did that for probably half an hour. No thoughts, just standing in the sun.
That sounds like it might be nice. Peaceful is the first word that comes to mind. I almost always have a lot of vivid sounds, pictures, shapes, textures, movements, even smells in my head. I can turn it off sometimes, but it’s work. I don’t think I’d give it up, but it can be a little overwhelming sometimes and often makes me feel like an odd duck.
I always assumed that this was how everyone function, until I became an adult. It was clear to me early on in my adulthood that I was very visual and spacial. Some people see a white wall and see nothing, I see texture, a frame, I can see how objects can be (mentally) situated and rearranged. Problem is it never stops. It’s like having instagram, YouTube and Netflix running in my head 24/7.
I am the same way, it is a constant slideshow of vivid images, videos loops, complex shapes and colors projected into my vision. Whatever I am thinking about has these associations, like my brain works on complex hieroglyphs and not words. Which seems to be backed up by science as neurological studies into language processing show that metaphorical image/sensory association happens before language processing within our brains. Language is a translation layer after all the sensory input.
I thought everyone was like this until my preteens when I would reference some aspect of it to others and get weird looks back.
Yeh thats pretty understandable, to others its hard to explain how not only is it all running but your brain is also processing all the associations with these images and video, along with mental leaps to other images/and sensors for no logical reason. The closest i can describe it to is 6 movies all on, running at triple speed. Some are logical and in sequence, some are surreal and some are stopping and freezing. They all in different visual effects. And intermingled like you say is everything from words, symbols and colours/shapes.
It is absolutely at a half functioning and half subconscious level and and for me is my primary language. I have to work hard to stop it sometimes.
Brown noise helps me stop random intrusions and provides calm and focus. I use the Star Trek TNG Enterprise D engine noise piped into my earbuds, headphones or home speakers.
I go into a meditative state when it gets really bad, like pushing everything to the side and focus past it all.
I’m 47, I don’t know how old you are but I’ve struggled with this throughout my life along with the other sensory stuff I have (emotion > color, Concept > shape, perceived emotion > color, mirror touch, texture > color/shape and a few other types of synesthesia). I have found that practicing to calm my mind, mute my senses and practice holistic balance in my life has greatly improved my quality of life.
I do not know how debilitating this is for you but it greatly affected my life. Realizing that I cannot stop my mind or isolate myself and live a fulfilling life. I learned to acknowledge these things and live with them as a benefit. The best analogy is that I surf the waves of my thoughts and no longer let the waves crash over me. Or like emotional/mental aikido. Learn to turn it to your advantage and empower you instead of letting it overwhelm you. Figure out triggers, isolate them and understand them.
Anyway, if you struggle with this you are not alone. There aren’t a ton of us out there but there are others. Don’t fight against it but learn to live in balance with it. When I did my life greatly improved. I have skills that no one else has and while people do not know what it comes from they can tell that my insightfulness, pattern recognition, logical decision making, memory and creativity are very different from the usual sort.
Apologies if this comes off as preachy, you may have your thing on lock already but 7 out of 10 times the person who I am discussing this stuff with who has something similar doesn’t. I will always be learning new tricks or hidden features and I am always looking for tips from others I interact with in the wild.
DM me whenever.
I don’t know much about the topic, but I know my brain goes through cycles(?) maybe. Sometimes I can visualize everything, close my eyes and just picture and create what I want. Lucid dreams whatever. Other times I’ll weeks/ months without being able to make a singular image
Ever thought about reaching out to the researchers studying this? You might have something unique.
This is crazy. Do you know how you turn it off/on?
No, I used to drag out lucid dreams for long times on purpose, but the times when I can’t see anything, like say struggle to picture what a spoon looks like in my head outside of just wrote memory, no idea. Or id definitely turn that off as much as possible. The gaps where I can’t see much I find I am definitely unhappier.
Edit: those are times when I find myself just closing my eyes struggling to sleep just looking at almost static, trying to picture someone’s face I can get to about a half circle that will seem obscured by black without even being able to picture their likeness.
I have a fairly vivid mental imaging system. The only thing that’s of note is that it’s not bright. It’s like seeing the reflection off of tinted glass as night. The image I imagine is transparent and the background is black. Even if I am imagining a backdrop, that backdrop is transparent with black behind it.
And maybe the fact I see words very clearly labeling those images. Like you say “apple,” I see an apple and the text “Apple” near it.
Sounds like it could be a form of ticker tape synesthesia with a less vivid variation of hyperphantasia.
We also know there are people with no inner monologue. What if someone had neither?
I can think about ideas without either visualisations or inner monologue. My inner monologue is mainly for mapping ideas to a “transmittable” state. I also have to force visualisations.
The best description I can give is multiple interacting “data streams”. E.g. a cat won’t be an image of a cat, it would be a mapping vaguely akin to how a computer game tracks things, a collection of data on pose, limb length, join angles etc. It doesn’t use actual numbers. It’s akin to how you know the angle of your elbow, without knowing the angle in degrees.
My inner monologue’s main use mapping from this internal data blob into something that I can explain to others.
👉 Doomscrolling 👈
This was a phenomenon before social media existed.
u wot
