[HN Gopher] Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
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Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
Author : franze
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-06-22 10:03 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| ClosedPistachio wrote:
| A popular topic here:
|
| Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from
| priors? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951990] 105
| points|negativelambda|3 months ago|114 comments
|
| Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness
| extremes [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39887661] 86
| points|bookofjoe|3 months ago|89 comments
|
| More:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| constantcrying wrote:
| I still have a hard time believing this is actually real. I also
| don't see how you actually could do many jobs with this
| condition. At least I couldn't imagine doing any job I ever head
| without the ability to manipulate visual information in my head.
| wingerlang wrote:
| On the other hand I have a hard time believing people actually
| fully see visual information in their head.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Imagine thinking in concepts instead of images. I can't
| visualize a hammer or a face, but I don't have trouble with a
| multidimensional array or a graph.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >I don't have trouble with a multidimensional array or a
| graph.
|
| So you can visualize a graph, as if it were drawn out on a
| sheet of paper?
| FeistySkink wrote:
| I can't visualize anything. If I close my eyes, I just see
| some vague light coming through my eyelids. I can "imagine"
| for a lack of a better word, the graph and all the nodes
| and edges "existing", and can reason about its properties
| based on that.
| floitsch wrote:
| I have aphantasia, and I don't feel handicapped at all. The
| only thing where I really notice differences is when trying to
| describe people. Since I can't visualize them in my head, I can
| only describe "known facts", like "they have brown hair". I
| would make a lousy crime witness...
| FeistySkink wrote:
| This was my biggest puzzle as a child: how do all those
| people in crime shows describe suspects? And was it just made
| up?
| floitsch wrote:
| The other ones for me:
|
| - "go to your happy place", or "imagine you are on an
| island..."
|
| - counting sheep to fall asleep. I just couldn't visualize
| them.
| e38383 wrote:
| I still counted them, it just didn't make sense. It was
| more a spreadsheet - spreadsheep? - than visualizing real
| sheep.
|
| And it didn't help me fall asleep at all.
| codesuki wrote:
| I had to laugh so much because of spreadsheep. Thank you.
| perrygeo wrote:
| Same here. The scene where the witness describes the
| criminal's face in detail while the sketch artist can
| render a perfect drawing - I assumed that was pure
| Hollywood fantasy. Then I met people who could effortlessly
| recall/draw to that level and realized that wow it's real,
| but not for me.
| constantcrying wrote:
| If I think of basically anything technical I get an image in
| my head. Any algorithm I write first exists in my head as a
| visualization of what I want to do. If I can't visualize what
| is going on I can't understand it and am in a state of
| confusion.
| uclibc wrote:
| I might not have complete aphantasia, when trying to
| imagine an apple I struggle to imagine it beyond a circular
| form with a rod pertruding from an indent at the top. No
| color, no texture. As soon as I try to add more detail the
| previously imagined details dissapear and I have to circle
| back and reimagine them. Like having a very limited amount
| of draw calls every frame.
|
| But I don't feel like I am impacted in imagining simple
| algorithms. I also construct them of very simple forms and
| rearrange them in my mind. I also feel like it is a lot
| easier for me to imagine things ,,automatically" due to it
| being memories or being a byproduct of thinking about
| something. But my mind struggles constructing these images
| at will.
|
| Also taking a pen and drawing these things up can replace
| some of the missing imaginary power :)
| sanarothe wrote:
| I draw pictures. Had some difficulty dreaming up a part to
| create in engineering school but 3D cad programs made my own
| shortcomings irrelevant.
|
| We had a 'intro engineering' class that taught orthographic
| drawing (by hand, about a decade ago, so thankful for it) which
| included puzzles on what the various 2D views should be given a
| 3d object, and the opposite direction. Holy crap those were so
| hard for me, but picked it up with practice.
|
| I have visio open constantly at work. Lots of mind maps, flow
| diagrams. Take lots of pictures on vacation because the visual
| memories are basically gone as soon as my body is.
|
| The 'language is a tool for communication' thread from today
| has some discussion on different types of thinking. For example
| it was inconceivable to me that someone would visualize words
| in their head, but I guess that's a thing for some people.
|
| I do have to ask people to draw me a picture occasionally when
| they're trying to describe something. Don't need a lot of
| detail, just a rough sketch and I can figure out the idea.
| wubbalerfa wrote:
| It's definitely real - I just need to draw/map out things on
| tos like drawio all the time when things get too complex to
| hold in my head as just memorised words and relationships
| iand wrote:
| It's real and I have it. I was astonished when I discovered
| other people see pictures in their head. It doesn't restrict my
| creative thinking but I am a spatial thinker.
|
| When I solve an imaginary logic problem such as advancing the
| hands on a clock I can't see the before and after states but I
| can infer their positions by the directions they must point and
| then read the new time from that.
| shafyy wrote:
| It is real. My partner has it. Interestingly, she is really
| good it visualizing 3D concepts in her mind, but not images.
| For example, when she walks through an apartment she can
| instantly draw a blueprint. Or when we move in multi-story
| building, she knows exactly where we are conceptually (I always
| get lost). So, these two things don't seem to be connected.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Interestingly, she is really good it visualizing 3D concepts
| in her mind, but not images.
|
| I don't understand what that is supposed to mean. How can you
| understand the blueprint of a building without seeing a
| representation of that building in your head?
| cgio wrote:
| As per OP, you "visualise" concepts rather than images. A
| representation can be conceptual rather than visual. I
| don't know if I have the condition, but I can draw a shape
| without seeing that shape in my mind, I can see it when
| it's drawn though.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| You can have a conceptual model of how things relate in
| space. Something like a class diagram or a DB schema. It
| doesn't need to be visual.
| constantcrying wrote:
| This seems totally contradictory to me.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| How so? A DB schema is not visual: it's something that
| lives inside a DBMS. Boxes with arrows is a way to
| represent it. Text is another one.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >A DB schema is not visual
|
| How is it not visual?
|
| >Boxes with arrows is a way to represent it. Text is
| another one.
|
| Boxes with arrows are clearly visual. The text, at least,
| for me just is a representation of those arrows and
| boxes.
| shafyy wrote:
| > How is it not visual?
|
| _(not the person you 're responding to)_ It's not an
| image. It's a concept. I don't know how to explain the
| difference because I also only know it from the
| explanations of my partner. For example, she says that if
| she imagines a house it looks like a schematic drawing of
| a house (almost like if a child would draw a house), not
| like a realistic photograph of a house.
| cstrahan wrote:
| > How is it not visual?
|
| Perhaps it is. But then you should be able to answer:
| where is that visualization on disk? And I don't mean the
| encoding thereof, I mean the actual 2D picture you could
| glance at and immediately recognize. Not rendered with
| some image viewing program, but literally looking at the
| disk/SSD (perhaps under a microscope, if necessary) --
| that should be doable, because you're claiming that
| schemas are inherently visual, and certainly that schema
| exists on disk somewhere, which in turn implies that
| those boxes and arrows should be visible on the storage
| medium.
|
| > Boxes with arrows are clearly visual.
|
| You've changed the topic -- no one is saying that boxes
| and arrows are not clearly visual. Where are those boxes
| and arrows sketched into an SSD or in memory? Or, would
| you assert that a database is schema-less until someone
| draws up a diagram?
|
| The boxes and arrows image representation of a schema is
| not the schema itself. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
| Izkata wrote:
| I think this is where I go by default, and I've described
| it before as a low-resolution wireframe. Only the
| particular part I'm paying attention to is there but I
| know what's around it and can shift focus as needed.
|
| Almost like rendering a 3D image, but stopping early. I
| can also go full color with effort but it's generally
| unnecessary.
| dorena wrote:
| this!
|
| I think it's also the reason why I was good at maths,
| very used to conceptualize stuff
| e38383 wrote:
| I just ,,visualize" a map or blueprint, not as an image,
| but as concept. Think of it as an image of text and lines.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Interesting. My wife swears she has no visual mind, but she
| has remarkable spatial awareness when it comes to "this
| object will fit in that space, and must go through this
| sequence of manoeuvres to reach it" - she'd have Dirk
| Gently's sofa up the stairs in a whistle.
|
| She does get lost in car parks and shops, however, so it
| appears that either there's a separate system for
| navigational reasoning, or she just doesn't apply it to some
| contexts.
| shafyy wrote:
| That's interesting! It's very similar with my partner
| e38383 wrote:
| Yep, that's how it works for me too. Maps of all kinds are
| really easy, following someone saying ,,and on the red wall
| left" is impossible.
| e38383 wrote:
| I can confirm that this is real. It also isn't much of a
| problem job-wise. I can't do creative work like drawing a
| picture, but I can (and do) think up algorithms and write code.
| I would describe it as: I can't do creative visual work,
| everything else is fine.
| quantum2022 wrote:
| I wonder if this could be induced in people who suffer from
| hallucinations to reduce or eliminate their symptoms? Maybe their
| system is rigged into overdrive the other way. It says on
| wikipedia that there are 'cases reported of acquired aphantasia'.
| MoSattler wrote:
| I am curious: do people with aphantasia dream?
| consf wrote:
| I think they do dream. But their dreams are quite different
| from those who can visualize normally
| tambre wrote:
| For me: yes. Dreaming is the only experience that kinda matches
| the descriptions of others' mind's eye. Day to day? Just
| blackness, only the light that comes through the skin of the
| eyelids.
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| I think that sounds normal. The mind's eye is more like
| evoking the sense of seeing something without actually seeing
| it.
| SamPatt wrote:
| This seems like a major point of confusion on the subject.
|
| I agree with your interpretation, but there are those
| charts which show varying degrees of clarity of mental
| images (using an apple), I don't understand how to square
| that with just invoking the sense instead of actually
| seeing it.
| uclibc wrote:
| Yes, from what I've heard other people with aphantasia often
| dream normally. I certainly do vividly, while struggling a lot
| to visualize even simple things in my minds eye.
| majiy wrote:
| I have a very limited visual imagination. I don't know if I
| would describe it as complete aphantasia, but I think it's
| close. Dreams are the only time I can see pictures in my mind.
| e38383 wrote:
| I do dream, but most of the time not with a visual
| representation. It's more like reading a book.
|
| There are very few occasions when I wake up and really have the
| memory of an image. But this fades so fast that I'm not able to
| really describe the image. I retain the memory of having a
| picture in my head. And it's boring most of the time, because
| it happens in the middle of a dream and it's basically just the
| last frame paused.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| > It's more like reading a book.
|
| This analogy may be less communicative than you think, as for
| me, reading a book is like watching a movie - I don't see the
| words on the page, I see what's happening in the book.
| e38383 wrote:
| Haha, I never thought of visualizing the images described
| in a book. To rephrase: it's like knowing the words from a
| book, but not how the described image looks like.
| neongreen wrote:
| When I was a kid, I was asked "how do you read so fast?"
| often and I would always proudly report than I can scan
| paragraphs and filter out the useless ones without reading
| them.
|
| For example, I was reading some Pratchett and noticed that
| I had no idea how the protagonist ended up on a cliff (?).
| And then realized that I had automatically skipped the
| paragraph that talked about the cliff ascent, because it
| was "just a scenery description" and therefore useless.
|
| I also remember having a long argument with my ex-
| girlfriend about the style of journalism where articles
| start like "I entered a small, dimly-lit room and Mr Brown,
| age 53, stood up from his massive oak desk and [blah blah
| blah]". Like, this is all just fluff, I want to know what
| Mr Brown says and thinks and that's all. I didn't realize
| people might actually imagine the scene and enjoy it.
|
| Going back to books -- I think I care about how the book
| _sounds_ more than I care about the plot or the vibe. I
| loved Lolita solely because the narrator was constantly
| playing with words, for example.
| rbetts wrote:
| I have aphantasia. I don't see / imagine imagery either awake
| or asleep. So I don't know that my dreaming experience is
| particularly different from my waking experience in this way.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Just another data point, but yes. I can dream quite vividly,
| exactly the way people describe visualizing things day to day.
| e38383 wrote:
| Every time I'm reading about Aphantasia, I'm confused again that
| people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same
| as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything,
| AMA.
|
| I'm also trying to respond to a few questions which are already
| asked.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| When you read a word relating to something you've seen or
| regularly experienced, how is that processed by your mind?
|
| For example if you were asked to draw and color a basketball,
| how would you approach the task without 'seeing' something in
| your mind?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Same way I remember somebody's name.
|
| Do you picture name tags on people? It just comes out of
| nothing in my head.
| e38383 wrote:
| For me it's an analytical process: I start by a round object
| ("ball") and try to figure out how the lines should be so
| that it can fit together. I remember (barely in my case, but
| that's because I'm not that into sport) that there is a
| difference between a football and a basketball, the football
| has pentagons and hexagons and the basketball has bigger
| shapes. I also remember the color, but not as picture, but as
| word, say "brown".
|
| All this together and a bunch of more subconscious processing
| will result in a very bad picture of a basketball which
| wouldn't win a prize and probably would fail us another round
| of "guessing the picture".
|
| OTOH, tell me about the structure of a house and how long
| something is, I can probably wind up a good 3d picture and
| even tell you how to walk around in the house. Maybe best
| described as "blueprint recognition".
| lambdaba wrote:
| Have you ever taken a hallucinogen?
| e38383 wrote:
| No
| BigParm wrote:
| Do you dream? Dreams are generally heavy on mental imagery.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Not op, but sleeping and shortly after waking (like seconds
| not minutes) are it for images.
|
| I dunno how often you guys dream but a standard night for me
| is it's dark out and then it's light out without a dream in
| between.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Ever had a lucid dream?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Yeah, I can also wake myself from those dreams by raising
| my heartrate and it won't be throbbing when I actually
| wake up.
| e38383 wrote:
| Yes, it's still the same memory as everything else. It's
| more like a book or description.
|
| It's still not the norm. I have normal dreams without
| being wake in them or waking up from them. According to
| my "research" (asking friends and family) I dream a
| little bit less often than other people - maybe one dream
| per week or two.
| e38383 wrote:
| Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40758231
|
| I do dream, but most of the time not with a visual
| representation. It's more like reading a book. There are very
| few occasions when I wake up and really have the memory of an
| image. But this fades so fast that I'm not able to really
| describe the image. I retain the memory of having a picture
| in my head. And it's boring most of the time, because it
| happens in the middle of a dream and it's basically just the
| last frame paused.
|
| And about the book: Haha, I never thought of visualizing the
| images described in a book. To rephrase: it's like knowing
| the words from a book, but not how the described image looks
| like.
| boricj wrote:
| Can you hear or imagine sounds in your head?
| uclibc wrote:
| Not the GP, but I can. I can play back songs in my head quite
| vividly or remember and replay how different people sound
| like, when it's coupled with a memory.
| boricj wrote:
| Now I'm wondering about other senses. I can readily imagine
| sounds and pictures, but it took my brain some time before
| it figured out how to imagine smells and tactile sensations
| when I asked it, like a muscle that is rarely exercised.
|
| Since my imagination layers on top of my existing senses, I
| wonder if aphantasia is really about the (in)ability to
| induce sensory hallucinations at will (and to what extent).
| That's about the only way I can make sense of it
| personally, given my own subjective experience.
| e38383 wrote:
| No, like images it's just the concept of the sound. As I can
| identify images (also people or faces), I can identify
| sounds, but I can't imagine them.
|
| Instead of a picture of a forest and some cracking of wood, I
| just have these words in my head and not the real
| picture/sound.
|
| Same for every other sense.
| jart wrote:
| How fast do you read? I can visualize just about anything
| I've ever seen. I can dream of new visual experiences I've
| never had. I can even rotate shapes in my head. But I
| dislike words and I read very slowly (only for English
| though, with programming I'm a speed reader of code). If
| you're the opposite of me, then I bet you're able to absorb
| intelligent high-quality information independent of
| experience very very quickly. I've heard that people like
| you make great scholars for that reason.
| gnz11 wrote:
| I am also the same as the person in the article. Pure
| speculation on my part, but I am convinced that it's the people
| who can fully visualize things that are the outliers and not
| the other way around.
| clwg wrote:
| I learned about Aphantasia about eight months ago, and it
| really sent me for a trip. I have no problems visualizing in
| my mind and sometimes can get lost in it, to me that's what
| daydreaming is.
|
| I discussed it with some of my friends, and it seems to exist
| on a spectrum. The most different from me was one friend who
| had to really focus to visualize in his mind, and even then
| he could only do so in black and white.
|
| I find it absolutely fascinating that the human experience
| can vary so greatly at such a fundamental level, yet it
| doesn't manifest in ways that are obvious to others, and
| everyone thinks that their form of thinking is a common
| shared experience so they don't even bother to talk about it.
| e38383 wrote:
| We have these common concepts which are actually very
| personal everywhere. Even with good eyes the color
| perception differs a lot between different people. For most
| it's obvious that this is red and this is blue, but in
| between the colors it gets very fuzzy. The same goes for
| sounds and smell and touch, so for every sense.
| clwg wrote:
| Totally, the gold/blue dress picture is a perfect example
| of that[0].
|
| I think with aphantasia, what makes it so interesting to
| me is just how much I consider visualizing in my mind to
| be core to how I think and understand things as well.
| It's not as subtle or isolated as a reaction to external
| stimuli but more fundamental to who I am along sitting
| along side my inner monologue.
|
| [0] https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/heres-why-
| people-saw-th...
| bemmu wrote:
| I personally find it hard to believe that people would really
| experience things so differently. Seems simpler to attribute it
| to differences in how people describe their internal
| representations in words.
|
| Even for myself it's a little bit unclear and changing how I'm
| really representing things. One day I might say oh I don't see
| anything, it's all just concepts (oh no it's aphantasia). On
| another it would be like ok maybe if I focus these concepts can
| have some form to them, so yeah I'm actually totally seeing
| things (wow he has mental imagery).
|
| So if you made 100 clones of me take a questionnaire, you might
| see 50% reporting aphantasia and 50% saying they have mental
| images, even though they're actually the same.
| tjpnz wrote:
| How do you know if you have it?
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Close your eyes. Do you see anything?
| e38383 wrote:
| If you close your eyes and only see the dim light coming
| through your eyelids, that's it. If you can visualize anything,
| then no.
| menotyou wrote:
| Quick test: Try to imagine the following and then answer the
| questions beneath.
|
| Imagine a table with a ball on it. A person is approaching the
| table, pushes the ball gently, and the balls starts to roll.
|
| Questions:
|
| (1) What color has the ball?
|
| (2) Is the person male or female?
|
| (3) What material is the table made of?
|
| (4) When you answered questions (1)-(3), did you know the
| answer beforehand, or did you think about when you were reading
| the questions?
|
| Depending on your answer to question (4) you can assume if you
| have it or not.
| memkit wrote:
| I've found this to be the most reliable test.
| majiy wrote:
| If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To
| your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain".
|
| The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an
| arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the
| right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path".
| Maybe, _maybe_ the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and
| the path is a winding line ~~~ but that is already pushing it.
|
| These kind of "mind-travels" are sometimes done at end of yoga
| classes. For me, they are complete pointless, and I usually fall
| asleep.
|
| I have also great problems identifying faces, don't know if there
| is a connection.
|
| On the other hand, I can vividly imagine sounds, including voices
| and music.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I find it easier to believe that this is a failure of
| communication.
| perrygeo wrote:
| There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia
| in tech folks, at least as self-reported.
|
| Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence
| of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I
| have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession
| with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night)
| somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively
| reprogramming our visual hardware to form abstract concepts in
| the minds eye rather than visualizing concrete objects.
| xnickb wrote:
| For me it's the other way around.
|
| I was always good at abstract sciences, like math and
| theoretical physics. Partially because I could operate in my
| mind with my very own abstractions.
|
| But I'm for example very bad at chess and tetris, because I
| can't visualize.
|
| This has been true for me at least since I was 5.
| anon22981 wrote:
| Since we are going with anecdotes and gut feelings, I'd say
| these things aren't related at all. I can imagine pictures,
| sounds and also have always been good at abstract thinking.
| Also chess and tetris are a matter of practice mostly, imo.
| devbent wrote:
| I can own at Tetris but I am miserable at chess. The types of
| visualization are completely different IMHO.
| xnickb wrote:
| Well I'm bad compared to top 10% who play at crazy speed. I
| can't plan top far ahead though which makes me slower. And
| I'm too old I guess
| dorena wrote:
| I'm also a self diagnosed aphant. I was so relived when I found
| out, school was very frustrating since there are so many learning
| methods that are built for people with a mind that's able to
| picture stuff also hard to remember faces, I usually only know
| some facts about people, like they have red hair, brown eyes...
| even family members
|
| but I can at least hear sounds in my mind :) I read that this is
| a similar spectrum thing where some people hear nothing and
| others can replay everything
| neongreen wrote:
| Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might
| also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient
| autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with
| aphantasia.
|
| SDAM is when you know _facts_ about your life, but can't walk
| through any or almost any _episodes_.
|
| Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their
| past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don't know what I had
| for breakfast today tth_tth
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