[HN Gopher] Pupils Reveal 'Aphantasia' - The Absence of Visual I...
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Pupils Reveal 'Aphantasia' - The Absence of Visual Imagination
Author : sethrin
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-04-22 13:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (neurosciencenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (neurosciencenews.com)
| karmakaze wrote:
| I suspect that I would classify as one who has aphantasia, as I
| can't picture images at will.
|
| This isn't to say I have no capability of generating images as in
| my dreams, or in rare moments lucid dreaming. I'm also very
| 'visual' in thinking processes, not exactly in images but in
| relationships between parts. After thinking about a particular
| problem for a while I sometimes have a flash insight of a
| structure/shape that can solve it. The clearest example was a
| puzzle of how to balance 20 framing nails on the head of one
| nailed upright. When I woke up the next morning I had imagined
| the solution though not necessary rendering an image of it.
| [Postpone cleartext spoiler replies so folks get a chance to
| sleep on it.] In ML terms it could be like working in feature-
| space rather than image-space.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I can't picture images at all, and don't really dream at all
| either. Wonder if there are any implications, I went through
| most of my life thinking this is normal.
| mikelevins wrote:
| It's unlikely that you don't dream, but not at all unlikely
| that you dream but don't remember it.
| kmonsen wrote:
| That is probably true, but since I can't remember them I
| don't know if they are visual or not.
| gavinray wrote:
| I am the same way, I explain it as _" I think in concepts"_
|
| Relationships is a word to explain it that I hadn't thought of
| before. I think a lot of engineers are probably similar.
|
| When working on a large codebase or trying to plan out
| something like this -- you can't really go off of visual
| imagery. There's no "picture" of all the ways that various
| things in a codebase will interact, design decisions, etc.
|
| A lot of engineering/software stuff is abstract.
|
| Not sure if others are the sameway, but the downside to this is
| that I have nearly zero spatial-imagery skills. You know the
| tests where they show you a 3D shape, and ask you which
| possible rotation is still the same shape? Or the one where
| they ask you to show what shapes would look like, if folded up
| from laid out pieces of paper? My mind just goes blank:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation
|
| I also have essentially no geo-spatial awareness. I constantly
| get lost and have no sense of cardinal directions.
|
| Anyone else out there have a brain like this?
| harel wrote:
| That's how I explain it. I'm not sure it's clear to people
| but I have no other word to describe it.
| harel wrote:
| I am exactly like you describe 100% to the dot. I can get
| lost on a straight road with a gps at hand.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| "thinking in concepts" is exactly how I describe it, but mine
| is a little different. I still don't visualize anything, but
| I have a fantastic sense of direction. I can wander through a
| maze of back alleyways intuitively and end up very close to
| where I want to be. Similarly, I can fold and unfold shapes
| in my head, but not visually. If I consider the problem, I
| become aware of the answer.
| Twisol wrote:
| > When working on a large codebase or trying to plan out
| something like this -- you can't really go off of visual
| imagery. There's no "picture" of all the ways that various
| things in a codebase will interact, design decisions, etc.
|
| Oddly, while I totally get the emphasis on "relationships", I
| _definitely_ orient those relationships spatially. I used to
| play a text-only game (a MUD) where the world was laid out as
| a graph of rooms; the graph was only approximately metric. I
| initially learned to navigate by drawing my own (roughly
| Cartesian) maps as ASCII art, giving me a kind of global
| perspective in my mind 's eye, but over time I "learned" the
| topological structure directly and relied on a less graphical
| (but no less spatial) local perspective.
|
| I tend to "navigate" codebases in much the same way.
| Different parts of the codebase cluster more or less closely,
| and I perceive information flows in essentially the same way
| that I perceived paths through the MUD's world. I learn a
| codebase in much the same way, although it's much more local
| from the beginning (codebases tend to be even less Cartesian
| than the MUD's world is).
| harel wrote:
| Do you have an internal voice/monologue, or lack one? This is
| another thing I recently found out I don't have and I'm
| trying to see if the two are related.
|
| (I'm still a bit "excited" from your original comment. I
| could have written it word for word.)
| gavinray wrote:
| I don't have an internal voice/monologue either, FWIW
|
| What about you?
|
| I can if I consciously put effort towards it, but when
| thinking or reading I don't notice any sort of voice/sound
| harel wrote:
| I got no visuals and no voice. Its dark and quiet on my
| head. I found out not all people are like that in my
| early 40s and to be honest felt like I missed out. I do
| dream visually, but rarely able to recall dreams, and I
| did experience visuals on psychedelics in my 20s.
|
| The one plus of seeing in concepts is that I can hold
| complex software systems in my head pretty easily and
| code always clicked with me very naturally. But I still
| am a bit jealous of those with special fx vision
| prometheus76 wrote:
| That's very interesting because I also have aphantasia, but I
| can flip objects and know which answer is correct. I don't
| know how to explain it, but I can do it. I also have no
| problem with cardinal directions, and I have no problems with
| right/left (although my ability to distinguish right/left was
| a later development than my peers).
| davidhunter wrote:
| I'm with you. Do you believe it gives you an edge on certain
| types of tasks?
| aendruk wrote:
| I feel like I have an advantage on tasks that are too complex
| to process all at once and must be decomposed and navigated
| systematically, because I'm well practiced at approaching
| everything that way, by necessity.
| cartoonfoxes wrote:
| I suspect this has something to do with which parts of your brain
| are wired into your short-term memory, and the ratio of
| connections to each. My conscious visual imagination can produce
| hallucinatory "front-buffer" effects - like a heads-up display in
| my central field of vision. I also have a severe deficit when it
| comes to sensing my emotional state or stress levels.
|
| Short-term memory "size" seems fairly consistent between people.
| It wouldn't surprise me if those with aphantasia have a
| concomitant awareness of some other mental process that isn't
| normally consciously accessible. Appealing to evolutionary
| biology - since aphantasia appears to be a persistent trait in
| humans which would seem to have obvious costs, it's logical to
| assume there are benefits somewhere to make up the balance.
| npunt wrote:
| I wonder if study results would be different for aphantasics on
| psychedelics. I imagine aphantasia is like most other human
| differences and exists on a spectrum, so perhaps a mild
| psychedelic like THC may affect results.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Aphantastic here. I get cool star patterns after drinking booze
| and laying down with my eyes closed. Like fast changing
| animation of different aspects of the shape changing-size,
| color, number of points, length of points, sometimes other
| types of shapes. Lasts only 20 seconds or so when I first lie
| down after 4+ drinks sometimes.
|
| Had some interesting visual imagination one time while
| meditating on LSD. Wasn't much in control of what I saw, but it
| was interesting to imagine colorful stuff for the first time
| ever.
|
| Normal LSD trip isn't very imaginative (I don't do psychedelics
| for years mind you.) mostly visual with my eyes. Same with
| shrooms.
|
| Marijuana for me never really created visual imagination (used
| to smoke a lot years ago).
| swayvil wrote:
| My "visual imagination" becomes much more intense when I practice
| Vipassana meditation. Regularly so.
|
| That would suggest that it depends on your state of
| consciousness.
|
| And state of consciousness may be more or less constant for any
| given person. But it can be altered.
| mescaline wrote:
| One may wonder why Pearson remains hellbent on finding Aphants.
|
| Evolution is a bitch.
| cercatrova wrote:
| To those asking whether people can normally "see" in their
| "mind's eye" as if one sees in reality, the answer is yes.
|
| We can see the world in our mind and conjure whatever we want,
| spatially manipulate objects (rotation, translation, scaling) and
| imagine their interactions with other objects (a ball hitting
| another in mid air and how it'd bounce off). It's like having a
| VR environment inside your own mind that you can use at any time
| and take wherever you want.
|
| I'm not sure about other people, but I can also conjure smells,
| sounds and tastes as clearly as if I'd experienced them in
| reality. This might however be more than what most people can do,
| I suspect I'm on the hyperphantasia part of the spectrum.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I have aphantasia, but I can flip objects around and pass those
| questions on tests where you have to flip an object "in your
| head". I don't know how I pass those questions, but I can. It's
| almost an intuitive sense of which one is right.
| mjfl wrote:
| Aphants - I'm wondering how much you enjoy reading fiction? Seems
| like a visual imagination would help you enjoy it a bit more. I
| have seen a youtuber describe her aphantasia and how she doesn't
| enjoy reading, perhaps for this reason.
| sdefresne wrote:
| I enjoy reading a lots, but I prefer dialogs over long
| descriptions. I don't visualize how the characters / places can
| looks from descriptions. Unless the writing is really clear, I
| may struggle if the layout of the scene is important (say a
| crime scene with a description of the room, its exits, ...).
|
| I sometimes skip description of the characters physique because
| I know that I won't remember it a few page later, and it
| usually do not matter in the story anyway (and if it matters,
| it is usually reminded to the reader because aphantasia is not
| the only reason a reader may not remember how a character is
| dressed or looks like).
| hemreldop wrote:
| saberdancer wrote:
| I enjoy reading a lot. However I do not really have complicated
| imagery in my mind when I do.
|
| Since learning of aphantasia I've had several moments when I am
| at the edge of falling asleep where I can see clear visual
| images. I do not have control over the images and they usually
| relate to something that happened during the day. It's
| fascinating to see as I usually can't visualize almost anything
| - the way I would describe it is that I can "talk" about what I
| see in my mind, kind of like I have a text-based game in my
| mind and when I am visualizing, I am describing what I want to
| see, not what I am seeing. There are no details that I notice
| without consciously bringing in.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I have read literally thousands of science fiction and fantasy
| books. Something I enjoy is watching the film or TV show
| versions of a book I had read before -- I get to enjoy the same
| story twice in two different ways. I've heard many people
| complain about such adaptations because it didn't match what
| they were visualising while reading the novel. For me this is
| not a problem so I get more enjoyment out of adaptations.
|
| Even while reading, for me the joy is not about picturing any
| specific image or scene. It's about the feeling of immersion in
| a world. I love stories where I can a idea of what living in
| that context would feel like. This is an abstract notion
| without any specific visualisation.
|
| Not everyone can do this, and I think they're missing out. I
| can "step into" the shoes of someone and look at the world
| through their eyes, see their perspective, and feel what they
| feel. My partner can't, for example. She just stares blankly at
| the news about the war in Ukraine. It means nothing to her past
| the visuals. Burnt out cars, damaged buildings, etc...
|
| I instead "see" the terror, the sleepless nights, the unmaking
| of everything you have built and the destruction of your
| children's future. I imagine hiding in a dark tunnel clutching
| a heavy gun cold from the winter air, listening to your own
| breathing -- too loud -- and hoping you'll hear the Russians'
| footsteps before they hear you. But there's too many of them,
| and there's just you and this antique weapon defending you
| neighbours.
| snorremd wrote:
| I can find some enjoyment in books that do not overly rely on
| visual imagery. I quite enjoyed the Martian because it focused
| so much on the character's thoughts and the state of the
| character's mind. I enjoyed the first three the Expanse books
| because of the political world building and character
| development. Though watching the TV adaptation added a new
| layer to the story as it could fill out the visual gaps, so to
| speak, of my reading experience.
|
| But I find myself being drawn in to movies and TV shows as they
| can render entirely new visual worlds that are unlike anything
| I can experience on my own. I guess this is also why I don't
| mind movie and TV adaptations so much.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| i'm sure perception is cool when reading, but arguably it's
| cool mostly because the imagery leads you to _feel_ certain
| ways? when an author describes a moonlit scene with the
| protagonist alone at the edge of a lake watching the patterns
| of ripples on the water... that instills some meaningful
| emotion in me. perhaps a feeling of solitude, or that of a calm
| evening where i feel in-touch with the world. so... to what
| extent does limited imagery decrease the emotional potency of a
| scene?
|
| a few people have told me "yes, i still feel something when i
| read that scene. it's more that i can't imagine any of the
| character's faces". i haven't met anyone who says they feel
| literally no emotions when reading any scene, but that doesn't
| mean they don't exist, nor does it mean the emotional response
| isn't attenuated.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I finally realized that I probably experience fiction at a much
| shittier quality than other people, and have basically given up
| on it. I mean, most fiction is lame IMHO anyway, but I get
| nothing out of visual descriptions. The characters play out
| their scenes basically in voids, or in the barest of sets (a
| room, a house, the bottom of a mountain).
| srcreigh wrote:
| Not much for exactly this reason.
|
| Some fiction is more poetic and dialogue-y or emotional so it's
| fine. I loved Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
|
| I never understood the descriptions of environment or anything.
| I'm just reading the words aloud to myself in my head and not
| seeing it so it's kinda a waste.
| fortysixdegrees wrote:
| The only fiction I get any pleasure from is comedy.
| orinatic wrote:
| I have aphantasia.
|
| I love reading fiction, but books that rely on extensive visual
| imagery tend to fall flat for me (most recently The Night
| Circus, but there have been others).
| colordrops wrote:
| As a regular meditator I'm curious if those with aphantasia are
| generally more present and in the current moment than those
| without it. A typical meditation practice involves working with
| mind wandering, and I'm guessing that visualization makes it
| easier to get lost in thought.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Nope. I still have trains of thought. It's just auditory,
| conceptual, emotional etc not visual.
|
| I do get distracted with thoughts (even ignoring other people
| sometimes) most likely same as you or anyone.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Aphantasia (and how not to do math in your head)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30573004 - March 2022 (2
| comments)
|
| _Aphantasia_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365277 -
| Nov 2021 (276 comments)
|
| _Not spooked by Halloween ghost stories? You may have
| aphantasia_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29049356 - Oct
| 2021 (10 comments)
|
| _Picture This? Some Just Can't (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28997320 - Oct 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27588905 - June 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _Seeing things a different way; simple test for aphantasia_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532946 - Sept 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Picture This? Some Just Can't (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22800815 - April 2020 (103
| comments)
|
| _Aphantasia_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20267445 -
| June 2019 (72 comments)
|
| _Aphantasia: 'My mind's eye is blind'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618927 - April 2019 (422
| comments)
|
| _Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull says 'my mind's eye is
| blind'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19612122 - April
| 2019 (2 comments)
|
| _The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18799550 - Jan 2019 (100
| comments)
|
| _What it's like to be unable to visualize anything_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11730505 - May 2016 (11
| comments)
|
| _Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 - April 2016 (202
| comments)
|
| _Aphantasia: A life without mental images_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792 - Aug 2015 (73
| comments)
|
| _Aphantasia: A Life Without Mental Images_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10121678 - Aug 2015 (2
| comments)
| cercatrova wrote:
| I've read about and seen articles submitted on aphantasia more
| on HN than anywhere else on the internet. I wonder if it's just
| more prevalent among the HN population than others.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Anecdotally I've only ever heard it discussed in the company
| of software developers
| version_five wrote:
| I've heard of it and still have no idea if I have it or not,
| if what I picture (basically nothing, but I'd still be able
| to remember the layout of a room for example) is the same as
| what most people do, but we describe it differently, if there
| is some condition where one can picture even less than me, if
| people can actually close their eyes and "see" a scene as if
| their eyes are open (this I find dubious), etc.
|
| I think the confusing nd somewhat ambiguous description of
| aphantasia, and the highly literal nature of many HN folks
| makes it more common for people to either think they may have
| it, or so question how others see stuff, so are more curious
| about it.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| can you imagine the faces of your loved one's? like, if one
| of them went missing, would you be able to help the
| investigators draw up a sketch of their face?
|
| as far as i can tell, most people say "yes". for me, when i
| imagine my dad's face, i get a brief flash of a grin, where
| the wrinkles are (but certainly not how many, or in any
| definition), and the rough cut of his hair. there's no eye
| color in the imagery, for example. stronger than any visual
| experience when i imagine his face is something of an
| emotional/empathetic experience -- what it feels like to be
| in his presence.
|
| from what i gather, for people like me (and maybe you) who
| experience "some" visual imagery but not "lots", it's just
| a skill like any other and there are exercises you can do
| if you care enough about it to strengthen it.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I'm like you, I feel I have it but it is so hard to
| communicate what happens in the brain. Talking to my wife I
| think people can really see images when they close their
| eyes. For me it is all black.
|
| I can still remember things like layout of a room,
| complicated directions etc, but it comes with no visual
| imagery. I also like to close my eyes when I am trying to
| think what some complicated code is doing, still nothing
| visual though.
| codesuki wrote:
| Just my personal anecdote, but like 2 years ago I saw this
| picture on Twitter 'how people imagine an apple'. It was the
| first time I realized that people really see something when they
| imagine it. As many said in the comments already for me it's more
| like thinking in concepts or relations. I've started to ask all
| my friends how they imagine things and the overwhelming majority
| says they clearly see an apple in front of them, etc. For me it
| was quite valuable to know this, because if someone tells me to
| draw a cow or something, I can't. Now I know that other people
| actually see a cow in their mind and copy it. At least that's how
| some people told it to me. There is this story about the artist
| that drew Disney's Ariel. Since he didn't see it he just sketched
| and erased until it looked good to him.
|
| Relatedly, it seems this extends not only to visualizing, but
| also to sounds, taste and smell. I can hear a song a 100 times
| and still not be able to hear it in my head, although there are
| rare times where the melody comes to me, but it's lossy and not
| repeatable.
|
| Similarly a friend told me 'I can smell that food already, it
| makes me hungry' and he was really serious about being able to
| imagine the smell.
|
| I don't know if this has any benefits/drawbacks. For me it has at
| least the drawback that I cannot imagine my family which
| sometimes weirds me out.
| efferifick wrote:
| This reminds me a little of the Voight-Kampff test.
| tmitchel2 wrote:
| That was my first thought.
| tmitchel2 wrote:
| My second thought is that this whole thing could be down to a
| two way road between the neo cortex and the visual cortex.
| Its all the rage in machine learning / neural net to paint
| images using just concepts / words so perhaps some of us can
| so the same thing. Personally I think mine is less a two way
| road and more a one way cul-de-sac.
| CyborgCabbage wrote:
| Hoping they do a larger study. The methodology is a bit weird
| though; they change the colour of the screen right when they tell
| people to imagine stuff. Surely that would only make the effect
| of imagining harder to pick out? The aphantasia and control
| graphs also look very similar to my eye, and they didn't show
| them side by side or anything (though I might have missed it as I
| only skimmed).
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Who else here learned today from this link that they too have
| Aphantasia
| codenesium wrote:
| The way I have described it is in the movie The Dark Knight they
| build the machine that uses phones to build something like sonar
| to see in environments. The way that is depicted in the movie is
| how I visualize things. I can navigate rooms or areas but I only
| see this vague representation of objects similar to how it's
| depicted in the movie. I have no problem with abstract concepts
| as a software engineer. But I can't visualize a face for example.
| It's a vague representation in my mind.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Hello, fellow aphantasic.
|
| Can you "see" motion? I can. I can easily visualize a ballerina
| doing a pirouette and a plie and gracefully moving her arms...
| but I'm seeing actual imagery. It's more like I see the
| gradient of an image. Frankly, it's like "seeing" pure motion
| itself, devoid of the image itself of the thing moving. This
| was quite a surprising realization when I first noticed this
| ability. I think, by the way, for dancers and sports and others
| involved in motion activities, this ability is probably natural
| for them and they don't think about it.
| supertofu wrote:
| Do people with aphantasia daydream? How does it work? What
| about drawing?
|
| When I was a kid I would spend hours constructing elaborate
| daydream worlds and plot lines. They were so vivid that I
| could have drawn them if asked.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Hello. For me it's monologue (inner dialogue) or
| vague/shadowy fleeting images. Or singing songs to myself.
| I can rarely keep an image in mind for more than a moment,
| and it's always mostly colorless, not detailed.
| doliveira wrote:
| Yes! I described it once like the sense from Daredevil or Toph
| from Avatar.
|
| I can kind of feel shapes and directions in my mind. When it
| comes to colours, though, I have to "paint" "manually" over
| this mental sonar image.
| codenesium wrote:
| Also, my memory is terrible. Poor recall from my childhood and
| even today. However, I'm good at improvising as an engineer and
| also as a musician.
| grenoire wrote:
| I think of two different types of minds in this case,
| 'functional' and 'stateful.' Functional (like functional
| programming) minds do not use recall much, but instead build
| tools to react to situations. Stateful (with reactions in
| storage already) minds are good at recall and can react to
| known scenarios with greater precision.
|
| I feel like you describe a functional one.
| bsedlm wrote:
| this is a really cool "dichotomy".
|
| I was just discussing this in terms of "sages" which know
| things, they recall and store "stateful data"
|
| and "seers" (like in the verb to see); them who don't know
| things but perceive them and observe them.
| aendruk wrote:
| I've had this thought as well, though always regarded the
| "functional" skills to be more of a coping mechanism for
| the lack of high-throughput state. It's not that I'm
| naturally good at systematic thinking, but that I've been
| forced to be, and I envy the person who can operate
| wholistically.
| xvector wrote:
| Would aphants be better served with an academic pipeline that
| minimizes reliance on visualizing, especially when it comes to
| classes like geometry or trignometry?
|
| Perhaps a mechanism like this could identify aphantasia in early
| childhood and use this to provide a more optimized academic
| pipeline.
| hnbad wrote:
| I don't think those are good examples. I'm almost certain I
| have aphantasia but I think spatially. I don't "see" things
| around me in my "mind's eye", it's more like how you're aware
| of a nearby hot stove because you feel its heat, or an
| electrical device that gives off a low hum.
|
| When programming, I have the code "mapped out" around me but
| likewise not optically but more "intuitively". I might be able
| to tell you in which direction a given piece of logic exists
| relative to me but it's more like how you can gauge what
| direction a sound comes from than having an image in my head
| that would allow me to tell you a specific place or distance.
| Note that I use sound to describe this but I don't have
| particularly exceptional hearing as far as I'm aware (e.g. no
| musical skills whatsoever).
|
| I suppose I should also add that I don't have an "inner
| monologue". In fact I always thought references to the "voice
| in your head" were entirely metaphorical. This often makes it
| hard for me to explain my thoughts as I first need to try to
| find the right words to put them in language.
| doliveira wrote:
| I don't think aphants have problems with these classes, at
| least not from what I read. I think I'd qualify as aphant, but
| I had no problems at all in Engineering or Physics (at least,
| not coming from aphantasia)
| wallacoloo wrote:
| yeah but classes like geometry? i remember our section on
| conical slices. like, cool, you can make an ellipse by
| intersecting a plane with a cone, but (for someone with
| limited mental imagery: ) isn't that just a really tortured
| way to go about the task?
| doliveira wrote:
| I can't see it as if it were a hologram in front of me, but
| I never had trouble conceptualizing. It's like I feel the
| shape as a sonar sense
| khazhoux wrote:
| Aphantasic here. Math concepts are not difficult to visualize,
| because they exist at the edge of abstraction.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| It's not an issue at least for me, the only problem I've had as
| an aphant is descriptive writing of scenery.
| srcreigh wrote:
| Triangles are super easy to draw (ie see) and the math is
| usually very simple. If there's an associated formula, working
| with formula is also very possible without visual skills.
|
| Trickier problems involving several shapes like a puzzle might
| be harder, though that's not usually curriculum.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Eh, I'm not so sure about what they believe the pupillary
| response was a proxy for.
|
| Your eyes dilate when you concentrate.
|
| Stare at your eyes in the mirror and start doing simple
| arithmetic in your head. Adding numbers, multiplication of multi
| digit numbers. Your eyes will dilate noticeably.
| yes_man wrote:
| Anecdotally I just tried recording a video of my eyes and
| started doing calculations in my head, but no dilation in my
| eyes when watching the recording. Could be my concentration
| just sucks.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Or it the calculations were easy for you.
| lalopalota wrote:
| Cool. Just like they mentioned in the article!
| Twisol wrote:
| This is discussed in the article, where they used this fact to
| affirm that aphantastic individuals are indeed attempting to
| visualize (and failing), vs. simply not attempting. Moreover,
| they explain that in those who can visualize, pupils both
| dilated _and_ contracted appropriate to the visualization.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Oh, thanks. I guess I judged too quickly.
| gamerDude wrote:
| I have this for hearing. And after I realized it, I asked a lot
| of friends about their memories and experienced and found people
| who like me also have trouble imagining one of the senses. From
| remembering taste, they never had cravings and ate super healthy,
| lucky, to not be able to recreate visuals, touch and me missing
| auditory imagination.
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