[HN Gopher] What happens in the brain while daydreaming?
___________________________________________________________________
What happens in the brain while daydreaming?
Author : gmays
Score : 148 points
Date : 2023-12-15 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hms.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (hms.harvard.edu)
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| As a person with aphantasia, the only time I'm able to "see"
| pictures is while dreaming (including day dreaming), but
| daydreaming has a weird effect of completely blocking out my
| vision. My mind is still actively processing cues from my vision,
| but I am unable to see anything but the daydream.
|
| I didn't even realize that aphantasia was a thing until a couple
| of years ago when a YouTube video popped up on my feed about it.
|
| When people ask what I "see" in my mind when told to "picture"
| something, is basically auditory database of descriptions in my
| inner voice.
| robofanatic wrote:
| thats interesting. So if someone asks you to draw a picture of
| a lighthouse, are you able to draw it without looking at an
| actual lighthouse or a picture of it? if yes, then how?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| There's actually a few interesting articles out there about
| this: https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-aphantasia-how-
| mind-b...
|
| "Edinburgh: "I can remember visual details," he commented,
| "but I can't see them"."
|
| In this one, they show step by step how the artist does it:
| https://aphantasia.com/article/stories/visual-artist-with-
| ap...
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I also have it, I can draw a lighthouse because I know what
| it should look like. But if I close my eyes and try to
| visualize it, I don't have any sense that I'm seeing
| something, in the same way that I have a sense that I'm
| listening to a song when I play it back from memory.
|
| When I dream there's only a faint visual component, there's
| no color or detail.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Same.
|
| Also, when reading fiction, I never have any use for the
| long-winded descriptions of a place and a character. I
| don't picture the scene or character, but I create my own
| "space" where I can place the characters and the action,
| and I can feel beeing there. This "space" can have details,
| but usually not a lot.
|
| Recalling memories are similar. I can vividly feel the
| moment, and I can remember a lot of non-visual details, and
| often some distinct visual details. But I can't really
| picture it.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| > I never have any use for the long-winded descriptions
| of a place and a character.
|
| Same, and oh my goodness did my teachers in High School
| chastise me for not wanting to produce those same strings
| of adjectives in my own works. I fundamentally could not
| understand why someone would want to read that much
| description about the appearance of something.
| namtab00 wrote:
| now that I think of it, in my dreams colors are not
| something I recall, but I definitely can say that I don't
| dream in greyscale..
| the_af wrote:
| Would you be able to go beyond the abstract notion of a
| lighthouse (basic geometric shape, white with red stripes,
| etc) and _without a reference_ know where to paint shadows,
| how to dither them, how to achieve some "weathering
| effects", marks left by the water, etc?
|
| My guess is that kind of "untrained intuitions" about
| drawing require two preconditions:
|
| 1. Having seen lighthouses or buildings and paid attention
| to how rust/marks/decay and the interplay of light and
| shadow looks like.
|
| 2. Being able to visualize this when drawing.
|
| Otherwise, how can the drawing (without a photo reference)
| be anything but idealized and abstract?
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It's stored conceptually and I don't need to recall it
| visually to copy it to paper.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Yeah, I can draw one. I actually took a lot of art classes,
| so it is kind of hardwired into me how to draw. That said, my
| lighthouse will not have details in it that someone who can
| recall a photograph of one might. Here is kind of how my
| brain describes a lighthouse for me to draw it: cone-shaped,
| white brick, wooden door at base, a platform on top without
| walls, a small shingled roof, large rotating light.
|
| As I am drawing the lighthouse the part that I'm working on
| will have more descriptors popup in my inner voice. Like say
| I'm drawing the door, I will hear: "vertical slats, arched
| top, dark weathered wood" and as I drill into each of those,
| I will hear more words in my head.
|
| Maybe I trained myself to do that over many many years of art
| classes, but I can't remember that not being the case.
| namtab00 wrote:
| hmm that's weird, you forgot that they're usually painted
| in stripes (red/white?)
| in3d wrote:
| It probably depends on which ones they have encountered
| in real life. From a Google image search, it seems that
| less than half are.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| That's funny - I also have aphantasia and described it in
| much the same as the parent. But your comment threw me, I
| think of them as plain.
|
| Looked it up, and turns out the ones in Oregon are. https
| ://www.bing.com/images/search?q=oregon+lighthouses&form..
| .
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| That is not something I have encountered (I don't think),
| or if I did, I didn't absorb that detail. The words don't
| exist in my brain.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| That seems to be the way I see objects in my mind. It
| starts as a basic formless "idea" of a lighthouse. Vague
| images come to mind: Tall, pointy, seaside, seagulls,
| looming. Then I sort of focus on one part of the lighthouse
| instantly to figure out the details. Like the walls: Brick,
| painted over with white paint, moss and lichen growing on
| them. Then the door: Wooden, one handle, thick, dark wood,
| little peep hole.
|
| Etc.
|
| I never fully visualize it instantly. It's like my mind is
| creating the details over time. A minute later if you ask
| me to visualize it again, I still don't see it instantly, I
| need to remind myself "Oh yeah the door was wooden, the
| walls were white" etc.
|
| I feel like a lot of differences in people's experience of
| this is less to do with their actual abilities of
| visualization and more to do with not being able to
| describe what is happening and observing yourself as a
| third party while you're thinking.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _my lighthouse will not have details in it that someone who
| can recall a photograph of one might._
|
| To be fair: most folks don't really remember as many
| details as you think. Definitely not photo-level. I
| generally tell folks that you'll be able to draw a bird,
| sure. Even different kinds of birds - but they will be
| fairly generic and simple. You'll know it is a duck or
| goose or little bird or owl. But unless you've studied
| birds and drawn a _lot_ of them, it won 't be a blue jay,
| an exotic duck, a snowy owl, and so on. Not without a
| reference picture, of course.
|
| Those reference photos are important enough that I had an
| art teacher that tasked us with taking reference photos
| with disposable cameras. This was mid-90s, before phones
| were everywhere and there were so many resources for such
| things.
|
| I'll also add that I keep a dialog in my head as I draw. I
| can visualize well enough, but the 'thinking voice' come
| along and narrates the things I'm drawing. "Put that line
| there and go down and across the page...." "Just add that
| little window down there and remember the handle!"
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I am 100% convinced people who self-diagnose with
| aphantasia think normal people hallucinate images in
| their mind. They are just being dense. Unless they've had
| a MRI, they are just shockingly confused.
| godshatter wrote:
| I also have aphantasia. I'm hoping that if they start running
| these tests on humans that they make sure they bring in people
| with aphantasia. Something like 1 in 20 of us have it. For
| example, when I daydream, I lose myself and come back to myself
| a short time later. It's kind of like highway hypnosis, but I
| do know what I was thinking about, it just happened "off-
| screen" so to speak and I become aware of it all at once. It
| would be interesting to know if the same regions of the brain
| are lighting up. Maybe we can figure out what aphantasia is,
| from an anatomical perspective.
| in3d wrote:
| Yes, they certainly should for the sake of their own
| research. Considering aphantasia could increase the effect
| size in their studies.
| User23 wrote:
| I can fairly easily picture "something," but it's always
| extremely protean. During meditation for example I sometimes
| picture Calvary, but the forms are just constantly shifting
| around that theme. I certainly can't just picture an apple and
| just hold it still in my mind's eye. Although I do suspect if I
| spent around 10,000 hours at it I could get considerably
| better. The point of all that is I rather suspect aphantasia is
| very much a spectrum.
|
| I'm really not a visual learner for the most part, and maybe
| that's why? On the other hand I'm quite good at shape rotation
| and other such problems. That and there are times where I find
| the visual interpretation to clarify my understanding of the
| abstract concept. The standout example of that is the marvelous
| _Visual Complex Analysis_.
| robluxus wrote:
| Are there tests for aphantasia?
|
| It's fascinating to me that (as far as I'm concerned) we mostly
| learn about it by self-reporting but then those reports vary
| pretty wildly.
|
| I myself don't have aphantasia I think but I feel like I really
| have to work on "drawing things up" when I try to picture
| something with my eyes closed. Or maybe that's just the normal
| amount of effort for the complexity and detail I'm trying to
| capture? Actually it's easier to "imagine" things with my eyes
| open which I always thought was weird before I read this
| comment about daydreaming blocking out vision. Which still
| sounds extreme to me, but maybe not more extreme than all those
| other reports that claim they can procure fully detailed houses
| / places / system architectures / electrical diagrams / etc on
| a whim.
| to1y wrote:
| When I was younger I used to draw constantly and I'd say that
| was the only period in my life when I would often picture
| images. Looking back it was more flashes of angles and line
| shapes and how it would _feel_ to draw them.
|
| This makes me wonder two things: 1. Apart
| from understanding how a mechanical object functions or
| recalling how to get somewhere what other query benefits from
| visualisation? 2. Do people with aphantasia dream
| in images?
| Sharlin wrote:
| 1. It really depends on how you think. I assume that people
| with strong visualization abilities generally tend to use
| those abilities to reason and think about many different
| things, like math or code or filesystems or even, say,
| cooking. But other people use different "internal
| modalities" to reason about the same things.
|
| As a photographer, one of the skills you develop is to have
| a concept of a photo in your mind before actually taking
| the picture. Likely this is the same for any visual form of
| art. Literally previsualizing what you want to express
| seems to be the most obvious way to think about it, but I
| assume there are also other ways that make more sense to
| less visually-oriented people.
| in3d wrote:
| > 2. Do people with aphantasia dream in images?
|
| Yes, many reports suggest that most do. But I haven't seen
| any rate comparisons with people who don't have it.
| Forricide wrote:
| Conversations around this kind of thing are so fascinating to
| me, because they seem to present this fundamental breakdown
| in human communication - how impossible it is to convey what
| 'really is going on' inside your mind.
|
| The idea (to me) that people can just see full-fledged
| lifelike photos in their mind is crazy, especially with low
| effort. I can't really draw things in my mind very well but I
| can 'pretend' I see them, blurring the line between 'knowing
| I'm seeing something' and 'actually seeing that thing'.
|
| But, is that the same thing as actually visualizing that
| object? It feels like it for most use cases, but then there's
| some task that actually would be way easier if I could
| legitimately 'see' that thing, and suddenly everything
| becomes more complicated.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of the discourse here is
| just miscommunication on what "picturing something in your
| head" means and 99% of people who think they are different
| are not.
|
| Picture a dog in your head. It's such an fuzzy, imprecise
| action that you can skew the definition of "seeing it" from
| nothing (you are mostly reasoning about what this dog looks
| like) all the way up to a visual mental concept of it that
| does everything but actually block your field of vision.
|
| Depending on what they think "seeing it" means, 100
| different people can have 100 different explanations for
| the same phenomenon.
| Forricide wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of the discourse here is
| just miscommunication on what "picturing something in
| your head" means and 99% of people who think they are
| different are not.
|
| Yeah, this is exactly the issue, and it's really just
| impossible to know. There's this popular 'apple test'
| image that gets posted a lot, where you're supposed to
| self-diagnose your level of aphantasia/visual imagery
| prowess based on which 'tier' of apple you can visualize,
| and people will always say: yeah, I can see [extremely
| vivid, realistic image of an apple] in my mind perfectly
| well. And that seems impossible to me, but then, how are
| we supposed to know what other people can actually see in
| their mind? It's in their mind, after all.
|
| The one thing for me that does make me believe there is
| some major difference is murder mysteries; I have friends
| who can visualize scenes and solve mysteries that would
| be impossible for me.
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| One interesting thing to consider is the "draw a bicycle"
| test. When presented to a population of phantastics, many
| will produce severely flawed bikes that could never exist
| in real life, yet they will claim that it matches the
| "image" they have in their head of one. However in my own
| experience despite being aphantasic I can very easily
| draw a physically accurate bike, not by rendering to
| paper the "picture" in my head, but rather by working
| from first principles about how the components of a bike
| have to interact.
| the_af wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| Many years ago, I drew the opposite conclusion: that
| people that cannot draw also cannot picture the image of
| what they want to draw. My informal quiz confirmed my
| suspicions, but it has one serious flaw that completely
| undermines it:
|
| I am a decent (if untrained) artist. I can say I draw
| well. I can also picture things in my mind very vividly.
|
| However, I cannot draw horses. I can see them in my mind
| clearly -- as I type this, a realistic brown horse popped
| in my mind -- but if I try to draw it, it will look like
| a badly drawn dog. Drawing horses requires a theoretical
| understanding of their anatomy, it would seem.
|
| I still think most people who cannot draw also cannot
| imagine the subject. With exceptions.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I would be one of the exceptions. Or an example of an
| incomplete theory. The ability to visualize may be one of
| several prerequisites to have an innate drawing ability.
| Another possible prerequisite is the ability to translate
| image to paper. An ability I lack.
|
| Sorry for the long explanation below. I'd write less but
| many people have had questions and I'm trying to answer
| some of those here.
|
| I'm able to vividly experience a virtual world including
| smells and tactile sensations. But it goes even further,
| I can simulate experiencing it through a different mind,
| sort of like a virtual machine. I can literally put
| myself "in someone else's shoes". (I've called it my
| mental holodeck.)
|
| I think part of the reason I developed this is because
| the emotional hardware in my brain is broken and I have
| has spent my entire life interpreting all human behavior
| through logic. The other part is intentional practice
| through lucid dreaming and manic episodes rewiring my
| brain to support additional channels.
|
| You think with all this I would be able to draw pretty
| well. I can't. Just like emotions, my brain isn't able to
| translate vision to motor control or spoken language. (I
| believe this is also due to broken hardware.)
| Fortunately, I am much better at translating to written
| language.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| That is very interesting! Perhaps there is some kind of
| disconnect happening between different parts of your
| brain, and physiologically you have created new pathways
| that work around that in some way.
|
| In my youth I practiced lucid dreaming and astral
| projection techniques, as well as lots of experiences
| with psychedelics. I have recently started undergoing
| Ketamine treatments for anxiety, and while under the
| effects, I experience very vivid images similar to lucid
| dreams, while also being aware of what is going on around
| me such as my guide walking down the hallway to check on
| me periodically.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I am also an untrained artist, and can picture things
| with great detail in my mind. When it comes to putting
| them down on paper or canvas, I'm unable to get physical
| aspects down, such as perspective and proper lighting.
| Most of my art is very abstract and pattern based, and
| when I paint people or objects, they often come out
| similar to a Picasso painting (but unintentionally). I've
| learned to work with the way my mind works, and have
| adapted my art style to it, but it would be fascinating
| if there were some way for me to "break through" my
| difficulties and gain a grasp of 3 dimensional objects,
| in 3 dimensional space.
| mdswanson wrote:
| There are objective tests for visualization that show
| that aphantasia isn't just a miscommunication about
| internal processes. You can learn more here:
| https://aphantasia.com/guide/
| namtab00 wrote:
| while reading this, my mind started trying to imagine
| dogs...
|
| I didn't do it on purpose, it just did.
|
| They were all barking, and had a collar... That probably
| says something about me.
| the_af wrote:
| It can also vary depending on the subject to be imagined.
|
| For some people faces, especially familiar ones, I can
| see their faces in high detail (flaps of their noses,
| even pockmarks and other texture). The "picture" doesn't
| stay still and it sometimes requires effort; though some
| imagery comes unbidden and effortlessly.
|
| Other topics I have a harder time with and are more
| abstracted.
|
| The problem with discourse at this level, however, is how
| subjective it is: when I say I can picture in my head the
| beautiful outdoors scenery of my last vacation, how
| accurate is it? If you could download a hardcopy from my
| brain, would you tell me "this doesn't look like a photo
| at all"? But what if I'm actually there, watching with my
| eyes -- is the image that forms in my brain accurate?
| Maybe someone would also scoff at it if they could
| download it, "this isn't what the scenery looks at all!".
|
| I fear we will never be able to solve this riddle.
| dom96 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I spoke to my friend who professes
| to be able to visualise things very vividly. I think
| there is something to it because she was able to confirm
| that she can literally see the thing she is visualising
| as if it's there, I asked her many questions about it so
| I don't think there is much room for miscommunication.
| She confirmed that it is as if that thing is there and
| that she can hold that imaginary thing in her field of
| vision for long periods of time. She can do this with her
| eyes open.
|
| There must be some sort of spectrum of ability with this
| stuff. But I agree that it's difficult to prove and
| measure. I do think that great artists must be on the
| more "gifted" side of this spectrum.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >There must be some sort of spectrum of ability with this
| stuff.
|
| right there are spectrums applying to for every other
| human ability, so obviously also for this. The idea that
| the people on the low or high end of the spectrum are
| just miscommunicating their experience is a weird idea to
| hold, as it implies that there isn't a low or high end to
| the spectrum.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Picture Dorothy's dog Toto from the Wizard of Oz. Now
| look at her shoes. Don't look too close!
|
| If you are like me, you get incredible detail so long as
| you don't linger. Is the detail really there, or an
| illusion? And why does attention destroy the detail, like
| the waking within a dream?
| basscomm wrote:
| It's this kind of casual dismissal that makes the
| aphantasia so frustrating to talk about. The people who
| are able to visualize find it so fundamental and easy
| that they literally cannot conceive that someone else
| might be lacking this ability. They tell aphantasiacs
| that what they've experienced their whole lives isn't
| real, they just misunderstand what visualization actually
| is.
|
| No, I understand what visualization of something in your
| head is. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I can
| still see part of my dream in my mind's eye, but it fades
| quickly. I can't do it consciously. Never have been able
| to.
|
| If you tell me to visualize a dog and describe it to you,
| I can't do it. I can describe what a dog looks like in
| general, but I won't be able to tell you what the
| specific dog that I've conjured up looks like because it
| doesn't look like anything. I'm not looking at an image
| in my mind's eye of a dog.
| Moru wrote:
| It's not just aphantasia, it's about all diabilities.
| Especially but not limited to anything mind-connected.
| It's much easier to not say "Well if it's so hard to
| walk, why don't you just get out of that wheelchair?".
| That is obvious. But understanding something that is so
| fundamental to your being is not possible for someone
| else is causing so much misunderstandings and problems.
| Things like "I can do this so why don't you just try
| that?" to someone that is totally incapable to do it is
| so sad. And this even from people whos job it is to help
| handicapped people live a normal life?
| huytersd wrote:
| I mean I definitely see flashes of images of a dog. Isn't
| one of the tests to see if you can seamlessly rotate a
| yellow star in your head? I can do it in flashes but I
| know people that can pause it midway through a rotation
| and draw the exact image they are seeing.
| robluxus wrote:
| > all the way up to a visual mental concept of it that
| does everything but actually block your field of vision.
|
| That does sound like it would put an upper bound on what
| "seeing with your minds eye" means, but then what about
| this line from GP above:
|
| > daydreaming has a weird effect of completely blocking
| out my vision.
|
| This was claimed by a person who also self-reports
| aphantasia, and I (as a person that claims to NOT have
| aphantasia) just can't imagine (pun intended) how this
| would work.
| in3d wrote:
| > Are there tests for aphantasia?
|
| Sure, they are usually something like "imagine an apple on a
| table" and then some questions about it like its color. There
| are also fMRI neural signatures.
|
| Aphantasia is also often linked with SDAM (Severely Deficient
| Autobiographic Memory).
| Forricide wrote:
| > Aphantasia is also often linked with SDAM (Severely
| Deficient Autobiographic Memory).
|
| Thanks for mentioning this... did an extremely quick Google
| and I suddenly understand everything about my memory.
| mdswanson wrote:
| Also useful: https://aphantasia.com/guide/
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| Picture an apple in your mind. What colour is it?
|
| ...
|
| Most people say red or green.
|
| If you don't see a colour then you have aphantasia.
| feoren wrote:
| Wait, but, I _know_ apples are red. I mean, picture "2 + 2
| = " in your head and fill out the scene. What comes after
| the equals sign? It's 4, obviously. Nobody needs to hold
| anything in their visual field to know that.
|
| Wouldn't a better test be one of "visual reasoning"? I'm
| thinking: construct a visual scene, object A is on top of
| object B, etc., and then ask a question that would be
| obvious to someone actually seeing the scene, but very
| difficult to reason out otherwise. Obviously such a test
| would be hard to come up with, hence why we don't seem to
| be able to talk about this stuff very well.
| Forricide wrote:
| > I'm thinking: construct a visual scene, object A is on
| top of object B, etc., and then ask a question that would
| be obvious to someone actually seeing the scene, but very
| difficult to reason out otherwise. Obviously such a test
| would be hard to come up with, hence why we don't seem to
| be able to talk about this stuff very well.
|
| Yeah. I mentioned this elsewhere in this thread but the
| big thing that made me understand (some of) the gulf in
| terms of visual rendering abilities was murder mysteries.
| I read a lot of them with friends and oftentimes
| mysteries rely on an ability to construct an image of the
| scene in your head. Not being able to solve such a
| mystery doesn't mean you have aphantasia, of course, but
| there's this feeling for me in these that they're
| literally impossible, and yet other people can definitely
| solve them.
| pxc wrote:
| Without spoilers, could you just list one or two such
| murder mysteries for me to read both for enjoyment and as
| a bit of a self-test?
| Forricide wrote:
| My memory is really bad for this kind of thing, sorry. I
| think some of Keigo Higashino's recent translated works
| have this kind of physicality in their mysteries, but I'd
| have to reread them to remember ahahaha. (But on the
| enjoyment angle, I do really like Higashino's works, so I
| do recommend them if you like mysteries)
| mdswanson wrote:
| You can learn a lot more about aphantasia here:
| https://aphantasia.com/guide/
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yes there are tests, an MRI. Anyone claiming to have it is
| probably self-diagnosed and full of it. I'm tired of the
| self-diagnoses of everything trend over the last 5 or so
| years, sorry if my tone isn't the best.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| I'm tired of all the gatekeeping by the health industry
| telling us that we need to use their absurd rube goldberg
| processes, which often tell us "no", to know anything about
| ourselves.
| in3d wrote:
| Doesn't apply. Aphantasia is not recognized as a medical
| issue and there are no official diagnoses being conducted.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| For myself, I don't think I have aphantasia, unless it is
| something that can come and go. There are times where I
| daydream and experience vivid visions akin to psychedelic
| closed eye visuals (except actual visions, and not geometric
| patterns). Most of the time when I daydream, I can picture
| something in my head, but it doesn't have the depth and
| detail of what I experience when deep in thought.
|
| I'm also not very much of a visual learner. I appreciate well
| written text to a graphic or diagram when trying to
| understand something new.
|
| This was just my anecdata to backup your statement about
| self-reporting, and how any one individual can experience
| this vastly differently than the next person. I also think
| that phenomena like this is what is going to end up holding
| back artificial intelligence, as far as trying to map human
| mental processes on to computing. We have a long way towards
| understanding our own minds before we can fully conceptualize
| true artificial intelligence (although that doesn't make
| current AI not useful).
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Yes. My partner was tested for it once by a psychiatrist.
| From what I remember it's a lot of visual pattern and recall
| questions.
| detourdog wrote:
| I think it might be a literacy that can be honed. A 100 years
| ago a curriculum was devised to develop commercial art
| skills. Part of the curriculum I went through required 6
| hours of life drawing a week for 2 semesters. The likely
| result is a strong visualization skill that can be expressed
| on paper
|
| The overall goal was to really see the way the world is
| perceived.
| intrasight wrote:
| I just assumed that everyone has "aphantasia". What does it
| mean to "picture things in your mind"? How would one explain to
| another what that meant? How would one be tested to determine
| if one could do that?
| delecti wrote:
| A person without aphantasia can experience thoughts as though
| they were literally seeing the things being thought about.
| There are varying degrees to it, and this, or something like
| it, makes the rounds on social media from time to time:
| https://i.imgur.com/gpN7EcP.jpeg
|
| I'm about a 2-3 when I'm just idly thinking about things, and
| can get to about a 1-2 if I really concentrate on an image.
| Subjectively, the images I'm experiencing in my mind aren't
| exactly the same as actually seeing things, but they're
| pretty similar.
| krunck wrote:
| I'm 3.5. It's crazy to me that people can see vivid imagery
| or rotate 3d objects in their minds eye.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| My wife doesn't have it, so when we discovered I had it, she
| was gobsmacked by the fact that I don't see a green apple
| when told to picture it. I always though when someone would
| say "picture it" it was just describe it in as much detail as
| possible, like reading about it in a book.
| speedylight wrote:
| Some people like it to call it the "Mind's eye" - Basically
| you can create images in your mind by just thinking about
| them. Like if I wanted to "see" a golden retriever, I can
| just imagine one because I've seen them before, so my mind
| knows what to do. You can also manipulate those images; so
| for example instead of the golden retriever being gold, I can
| imagine it in a purple or green color, etc.
|
| A good analogy is that the human mind can have it's own
| internal stable diffusion or Midjourney, complete with the
| ability to give it a "prompt" i.e. thinking about what you
| want to imagine.
|
| I was surprised to learn a while ago that not everyone can
| visualize things in their mind. As far testing for it, I
| don't really know how that would work. I don't think you
| really need to test for it, I assume most people who can
| visualize things in their mind know that they can.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| What I imagine it's like is if you can "replay" a song in
| your head, you don't literally hear it, but it's a very
| similar feeling as actually listening to the song.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Damn, I can't even daydream with aphantasia :/
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| What about night dream?
| tiborsaas wrote:
| That's the only case when I can see visual images eyes
| closed.
| _ink_ wrote:
| When I close my eyes, I see my eye lids.
| jve wrote:
| I can night dream. But up until now I didn't even know a
| daydream existed and this is the first time I hear such a
| term (well, I'm not native English anyway)
| _ink_ wrote:
| I rarely remember them. But they are visual and often of
| places I have been together with persons I know. So the
| information is in my head. I just cannot access it while
| being awake. Which sucks.
| _ink_ wrote:
| Yeah, I can't do it, as well.
| iamthepieman wrote:
| I don't have aphantasia, quite the opposite, I see things
| constantly in my head and have to work hard on my environment
| and myself to be able to focus on the present moment or what's
| in front of me. I also learned about it from some random
| internet content (possibly here) and have a hard time imagining
| what it would be like to NOT picture things in my head. Much
| like you probably have a hard time imagining the reverse.
|
| I can pull up an image of any place real or "imaginary" at a
| moments notice, see myself walking around in first or third
| person view and imagine any number of people or entities in the
| space. If I'm working on a physical object like a home project
| or building a piece of furniture or wiring a circuit, I usually
| start by visualizing it much like 3D modelling software,
| spinning it around in my mind, looking at it from all angles
| and modifying as needed before putting my ideas down on paper.
| Interestingly, this makes using actual 3D modeling software
| incredibly frustrating because I'm very much a novice and the
| speed and fidelity of the software in my hands is so much
| slower than my imagination.
| hskalin wrote:
| I think I am pretty similar to you. When I was younger I used
| to build all sorts of things with paper and cardboard and
| used to imagine the whole thing in 3D and design its cutout
| template all in my head. I learned about aphantasia a few
| years back and it sounds very inconvenient to me.
|
| I also have a habit of playing around with imaginary worlds
| and stories in my head and I pretty much visualize whole
| scenes and sequences in as much detail as possible. I
| wouldn't be able to do that with aphantasia.
| Filligree wrote:
| You're right; it's very inconvenient. Especially
| frustrating because I'm in the same boat as OP: I can
| absolutely hallucinate, but only if I'm on the edge of
| dreaming, or actually asleep.
|
| I really wish I could change that. The machinery is clearly
| there.
| mromanuk wrote:
| Nikola Tesla was that way
| LoganDark wrote:
| I wish I could block out my vision. Whenever I try to imagine
| something, even if my eyes are closed and I'm in pitch
| darkness, I still _see_ the darkness. It 's distracting. _How
| is darkness distracting?_ How is it that the color black, no
| light at all, is still so _obnoxious_?
|
| It's always _in the way_ of what I 'm trying to imagine, and
| it's so hard to "see past" the darkness. The only way for me to
| really imagine something is to actually have my eyes _open_ and
| stare at _words describing what it is that I 'm imagining_. I
| can vividly imagine stories that I'm reading, or writing. Or
| roleplay. But if I want to _daydream_ , it's just not
| happening.
| akomtu wrote:
| It looks like your GPU memory is barely enough to fit video
| stream from your eyes.
| intelVISA wrote:
| my buffer runneth over :(
| anoncow wrote:
| That sounds like a superpower.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I feel like we are only scratching the surface of what
| "aphantasia" means.
|
| I am _nearly always_ a lucid dreamer. The only difference
| between daydreaming and night-dreaming for me is focus. I play
| along with my dreams, and laugh at how absurd and illogical
| they are.
|
| There was _one time_ that I was dreaming so deeply that I could
| actually see. It was incredible. I decided to fly, and nearly
| woke myself up from the imagined (but realistically
| experienced) change of balance.
|
| Outside of that one experience, my inner eye is nearly blind.
| Consider the experience of walking down the street: you can see
| what is in front of you, and you can remember what is behind
| you. My dreams are much more like an invented memory than
| something seen.
|
| But what about audio? If I could pull the data of my inner
| (metaphorical) ear, and plug it into a speaker, I could play
| you a reasonably high-fidelity copy of Metallica's black album
| (good luck suing _this_ nap-ster) from front to back. Honestly,
| it 's a bit frustrating that I _can 't_. Playing a musical
| instrument requires a lot of patience: I can hear any sound I
| want to at a moment's notice, but making _you_ hear it takes
| hard work and years of practice.
|
| I have been nearsighted since I was a child. I wonder if living
| that way - without corrective lenses - played a part in my
| development.
| huytersd wrote:
| I see flashes of images. I'm so jealous of people that can
| perfectly replicate 3D images in their head. What a superpower
| that would be.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| When were you diagnosed by a professional?
|
| Edit: I'll bet my next paycheck they are self-diagnosed.
| grammers wrote:
| It's fascinating how different minds can process information. I
| myself have a photographic memory - only one of my kids has it
| as well. The two of us are constantly being asked where this
| and that is lying around, and we can always tell while the
| others in the family wouldn't be able to guess even if they
| just saw whatever they were looking for. It's simply amazing.
| ConnorMooneyhan wrote:
| As someone with a terrible memory who grew up with these constant
| distractions around me, be it a phone or an MP3 player or what
| have you, I often wonder how much that contributes to my lack of
| substantial memory about my childhood. While it's not mentioned
| here, I wonder if the inverse of this finding is true;
| specifically, if one doesn't have time of "quiet wakefulness",
| are they likely to experience a larger-than-usual absence of
| memory?
| yamrzou wrote:
| Attention (and the absence thereof, i.e. distraction) is
| definitely related to memory. See:
|
| * Attention and working memory: Two sides of the same neural
| coin? -- https://research.princeton.edu/news/attention-and-
| working-me...
|
| * Professor Wayne Wu (CMU) on 'Intending as practical
| remembering' -- https://youtu.be/okk-fpwcdbY
|
| However, this is about _Working Memory_. Autobiographical
| memory is also related to the experience of _emotions_ :
|
| _"Much evidence indicates that emotional arousal enhances the
| storage of memories, thus serving to create, selectively,
| lasting memories of our most important experiences."_. From:
| Making lasting memories: Remembering the significant [pdf] --
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1301209110
| siva7 wrote:
| Would be interesting to further study the relationship between
| maladaptive daydreaming and brain plasticity
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| I would be interested in the behaviors that would be included in
| "daydreaming". For example, Jeff Bezos recently detailed to Lex
| Fridman the importance of his daily "wanderings". [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/DcWqzZ3I2cY?si=6wR1HMnjxqxOqHAP&t=1300
| bagpuss wrote:
| there are some people who can return to the same place in a
| daydream, this person says she had daydreamed (daydreamt?) 79
| years of an imaginary world
|
| https://theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/28/i-just-go-into-m...
| vasco wrote:
| I don't return always to the same one (that sounds boring) but
| certainly have a "portfolio" of daydreams and scenarios that I
| go back to. It started as a kid where I'd want to be a cowboy
| or a longbowman or whatever and just started playing those
| "movies" in my head. It's odd for me to accept that others
| don't do this. I would think that everyone can do it, but most
| people choose not to, the same way everyone can draw and learn
| how to draw and use that to day dream but most people don't.
| snowram wrote:
| Same thing happens to me. I swear that I have been in the
| same imaginary train station at least a dozen of times and in
| various scenarios. I wish it would have been a cooler place
| but I often take the train in my life, so there am I. It got
| even sillier when I got a short phase of lucid dreaming just
| because I learned over time that this place is in my dreams.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I remember reading some years ago on BBC: "Children should be
| allowed to get bored, expert says"
| (https://www.bbc.com/news/education-21895704)
|
| It has changed my perception on children's "time management"
|
| _Children should be allowed to get bored so they can develop
| their innate ability to be creative, an education expert says._
|
| EDIT: just noticed that article is from 2013 - damn I am old - so
| are some of my bookmarks.
|
| EDIT2: I like one of the comments made: _Our children (generally)
| are drowning in communication media and internet trivia. Reading,
| such a nutrient for the imagination because you have to build
| mental worlds, is a minority pursuit in teenagers. I 'm a teacher
| and trying to get kids to read is like pulling teeth._ Yes, an
| image = 1000 words. So give the kids the words and let them do
| the mental exercise to build the images, or find the time to read
| TO your kids if they are too young to read (so they can ask
| questions - "mum/dad what is XYZ?")
| speedylight wrote:
| As someone who has a very vivid imagination - daydreaming is
| second nature to me. It's very useful to me because I can use it
| to learn stuff by doing my best to simulate how they work step by
| step, usually all I need is a good description and some
| background info.
| akomtu wrote:
| How much of that imagination is real? For example, can you
| intersect two dodecahedrons at some random angle and see the
| outline of the polygon where they intersect?
| datameta wrote:
| Perhaps you meant to use "accurate" instead of "real"?
| akomtu wrote:
| "Fake" would be a better word. It's easy to convince
| yourself that you can imagine a tree, but try to inspect
| it, count leafs on each branch, and you quickly realise
| that all those leafs are generated on the fly, and what
| you're really imagining is a very poor sketch of a tree.
| a_subsystem wrote:
| It is the excrement of thought produced by not 'being aware' as
| the Buddhists put it. It is the waste of not pouring one's
| attention into being in the body. When delusion/sleep/loss of
| 'consciousness' takes hold, this waste will flood into the brain
| without cessation.
| ConnorMooneyhan wrote:
| But it actually seems to serve a useful purpose, namely memory
| consolidation and differentiation between objects/experiences.
| feoren wrote:
| Chill out. Do you not see the arrogance in telling people that
| what _they_ spend their quiet attention on is childish, stupid,
| and "excrement", but what _you_ spend your quiet attention on
| -- your breathing, your heartbeat, the sound of your liver
| producing bile, whatever -- is _enlightened_? You don 't sound
| very enlightened to me, you sound like someone who dips their
| toe into a cherry-picked version of Buddhism so you can feel
| better than other people.
| FailMore wrote:
| I wrote a paper on the relationship between the regions of the
| brain responsible for day dreaming (or the default mode network)
| and the dramatically reduced norepinephrine levels that occur
| (80% below waking) during REM sleep and the contents of dreams.
| It's called Dreaming Is the Inverse of Anxious Mind-Wandering. If
| it's something that interests you, you can read it here:
|
| https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/k6trz
|
| It was discussed on hacker news here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590
| yamrzou wrote:
| Interesting. How is the absence of dreams interpreted from this
| point of view?
| FailMore wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm afraid. The best understanding I have is
| that even though we may not remember our dreams we still do
| have them (i.e. if you were woken in REM sleep you would
| likely recall a dream). We remember dreams using the
| neurotransmitter Acetylcholine. This is responsible for
| working memory. In the same way that it is difficult to
| recall a series of random numbers, a dream can quickly slip
| from memory because of the short term nature of the memory
| generated by this neurotransmitter. (In my view this supports
| the view that we act in obviously maladaptive ways dreams in
| order to highlight this behaviour. If our long term memory
| was storing these dreams automatically (I think you analyse a
| dream you do store it in long term memory, but in an
| intellectual way), we would be reinforcing our maladaptive
| patterns. By storing the dream in working memory, the brain
| can highlight the behaviour without reinforcing it.
| astrange wrote:
| I can say that taking Strattera hasn't changed the content of
| my dreams - they can be pretty vivid but they're never
| nightmares. Maybe some negative things happen but it doesn't
| feel like it at the time.
|
| > It is interesting that those who do a lot of mediation have
| been seen to be less reactive to norepinephrine (a
| neurotransmitter associated to stress).
|
| But from your older comment, that applies to me.
| FailMore wrote:
| I am not familiar with Strattera. What does it do?
| mdswanson wrote:
| I'm also a person with total aphantasia (no voluntary mental
| imagery). For anyone that's curious:
| https://aphantasia.com/guide/
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Has anyone with aphantastia tried MDMA?
|
| The drifting off to sleep on the comedown phase of MDMA made me
| have incredible minds eye pictures each morphing into the next in
| a kind of word association.
|
| I am capable of minds eye pictures when sober too but this was
| next level.
|
| I've always wanted to try legit LSD but never has it found me. I
| wonder if people with aphantasia respond differently to
| empathogenic and hallucinogenic drugs.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| I wonder what the mice daydream of? Endless mazes filled with
| cheese? Miniature adventures exploring cozy nests? Maybe a world
| where cats are mere figments of their imagination?
| avazhi wrote:
| Surely link to the actual paper instead of this quasi pop science
| junk blog.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06810-1
| realprimoh wrote:
| This is an unnecessarily rude comment.
|
| The blog post is much easier to comprehend both in format and
| in writing style than the actual paper, which also is, in fact,
| paywalled.
|
| I'm absolutely certain that the blog post is the better link
| here for both understanding and for a better Hacker News
| discussion here.
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