There is a sort of confusion when people read about aphantasia, they tend to imagine (pun intended) that most people have vivid pictures when they close their eyes, coming to conclusion that they must have aphantasia, because it isn't what happens with them.
But normally, you won't actually see anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a "closed-eye visual" (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)!
Nonetheless, most people can "visualize" when they imagine objects, people's faces, places from memory — but it is totally not like AR (i.e. actually overlaying images on top of light perception). Nope, it feels more like you see it with some mysterious "mind's eye", disconnected from real eyes. It is very faint and tacit, like you're perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual "pixels". And it doesn't require having eyes closed, people often can do it as easily with their eyes open, as it doesn't interfere with the normal vision at all.
Most of my family actually see things. One or two of them would qualify as hyperphantasiac, presumably.
I see absolutely nothing. When you say “it” is “faint and tacit”, you are describing an “it” that simply does not exist for me. I see a whole lot of people who don’t have aphantasia get hung up on this. They keep describing an “it” without accepting that for some of us there is no “it”.
The way I’ve usually “tested” it among friends/family/clients is to just ask them to imagine that there is a ball, on a table, and someone pushes the ball so that it rolls off the table onto the floor.
I then ask them to answer, from memory, simple things like what color was the ball, what kind of table was it, what material was the floor, was there a sound when the ball fell to the floor, what else happened, etc.
No one I’ve known with aphantasia (including myself) has answers for any such questions when asked to recall what they just imagined, but almost all can answer such questions “while imagining”.
It is an interesting test (I tried it once I read your sentence). Turns out I can imagine a ball rolling off a table without detailing the imaginary scene to have a specific material, texture or sound (and if I wasn't specifically asked, I won't likely picture it).
My imaginary scene clearly had some "spatial sense" though — I saw (but more like "felt") the flat surface of the table, the edges of it, how it is positioned relative to myself, the roundness of the ball rolling, and how it falls off.
A fun test for me, is if you know how tall a character from a book is. Or color. Or really anything.
Outside of "notable features" for some characters, I have no concept of what they look like. And by feature, I mean Harry Potter has a scar. I couldn't tell you much about its size or orientation. Just generally lightning shaped.
This also helped solidify to me why some folks are so hung up on casting choices.
I can visualize the ball without color, so while having aphantasia implies no color, the converse is not true. It's sort of like an autostereogram, but with only the depth effect and no color at all.
> The way I’ve usually “tested” it among friends/family/clients is to just ask them to imagine that there is a ball, on a table, and someone pushes the ball so that it rolls off the table onto the floor.
Note that it's possible to visualize motion of an object without visualizing the object itself. This is me. I can't hold any imagery in my head, but I can easily imagine the movement of a kickflip or a pirouette, or I can see the bouncing of three balls without seeing the balls themselves.
I personally believe that people just answer the question “do you visualize?” differently. I used to think I had “aphantasia” but like you said, you see it without seeing it. If your eyes and brain are functioning at all, your brain is perfectly capable of creating colorful images. Just look around. Those colors you see? That’s your brain.
>But normally, you won't actually see anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a "closed-eye visual" (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)!
I can attest you, this is wrong. When I close my
eyes I do see stuff... At the very least some geometric fractals, usually some sort of boiling visual association soup, where random images emerge from fractal Eigengrau liquid. I, willfully, got little influence on the stuff coming up. It feels like watching my brain do brain things. It's rather annoying/exhausting by the way.
I think this experience is a spectrum. It's not like you have it or you don't.
Worth to mention that there is a condition called HPPD (hallucinogen-induced perception disorder), causing people to see CEVs/OEVs while not on drugs. The condition persists for a while (for some people, months or even years) after a drug use, as the name would imply, causing annoyance and anxiety.
Surely its a spectrum, but seeing closed eye visuals isn't considered "being in a normal part of the spectrum" though.
People who have aphantasia know right away something must be off for them when others enjoy things they don’t, such overly descriptive prose and so on. It is indeed very difficult to compare one’s internal experience with others’ and that’s one reason aphantasia flies under the radar.
IME with ayahuasca (but probably other psychedelics too), there are different types of visions you might have. I've clearly experienced the typical CEVs but also have stark images coming through my mind's eye (much more akin to normal life visualizing). My tolerance is pretty high, it takes me an absurd amount to have the full-on technicolor visions, but I do seem to get a lot of color through my mind's eye still (usually related to the master plant diets and their spirits). There is another type of vision I've experienced that is somewhere in between that I have a lot of trouble describing, it pops out in a different way on top of normal vision.
I actually experience CEVs easily without any drugs at all, something that’s happened all my life. I can even influence it to some extent. IE if I close my eyes and focus I can create more and more intense closed eye visuals without falling asleep. When I was a child I used to do this for fun when I was bored.
So yeah, it’s definitely not a hard and fast rule about CEVs.
I've had the audio equivalent of that at least once, and I think (can't prove it) a few other times. But it was scary so I never tried again.
I suspect I had the visual once, thanks to one time as a teenager I tried a magic spell and the explanation of "I'm capable of self-hypnosis" is much more plausible than the spell having had even the slightest effect.
I can easily create intense overrides for sensory experience whenever I like for my sense of which way down is, and mild overrides for the various kinds of touch.
I’m so curious about this. It’s only ever happened to me when I woke up in the middle of a vivid dream, and lasted 10 or 15 seconds. It also happened when I was on oxycodone after a surgery. Do you feel like you are in a dreamlike state or slightly high all the time? Have you ever experienced depression?
Wait... You mean images of concrete things or just shapes or something? I can do what you describe (always have and can influence it) but it's just moving shapes with colors. Kind of similar to those you get when you watch bright lights and then go to a dark room. Isn't that common?
Is that just hypnagogia? Many people experience that before falling asleep, I could also do this while awake but with eyes closed, it is usually colors and shapes but not anything concrete.
That is pretty surprising to me. I’ve only experienced that when waking up in the middle of a very vivid dream, and sometimes will see geometric shapes with my eyes closed for 10 or 20 seconds. Then it goes away. I chalked it up to the brain being flooded with weird chemicals during sleep. I’ve also seen this while on oxycodone after a surgery. Personally, I kinda envy you, you must live in a very exciting world if your brain is loaded with those chemicals all the time! Serotonin, maybe?
I slowly realized I have aphantasia by reading an HN comment about it last December. That day I started asking my daughter questions about visualizing things and daydreams and she ended up giving me a perfect description of aphantasia with minimal prompting. It's very interesting to have gone through life not realizing I have this difference. A few people I asked the same questions of who do not seem to have aphantasia thought the topic was a little crazy, as if it's weird to perceive this way.
I tend to process a lot of things through sound, and go around the world recognizing people by voice or unwillingly trying to place people's accents when they talk. I think it might be related somehow.
I remember reading once somewhere on the Internet someone baffled to learn that people weren't in control when dreaming. It's amusing how inner-experiences can unknowingly be so wildly different from person to person.
I was pretty intrigued by Aphantasia a while ago, as I can’t picture anything at all with my eyes closed. Then I asked all my friends and none of them could either, apparently. So I’m wondering what “picturing” means in the definition of aphantasia?
With my eyes closed all I see is pitch black, but I can “imagine” myself seeing a red apple even with my eyes open, I don’t actually see anything though.
Consider another sense, like hearing. Many people experience "earworms" where a song gets stuck in their head and plays repeatedly. They know it's not actually playing since there's no "external" sound but they can hear it "internally".
"Picturing" something in your head is the same, just with the sense of vision instead of the sense of hearing.
Actually seeing with your eyes would (I think) be a form of synesthesia. Being able to imagine a red apple is "normal". Not being able to imagine a red apple is aphantasia ("imagine" in the sense of a "visual" imagination, not in the sense of being able to conjecture the existence of an apple with particular qualities).
Does it follow that people with aphantasia (edit: "aphantasics", per the article) would be unable to draw a realistic-looking apple from scratch? If not, then how do scientists show someone has aphantasia? Is it falsifiable?
It's definitely not a black and white thing but a (flexible) scale: a noticeable variation of intensity can be felt when practicing an activity demanding an intense visual focus on a specific object (e.g. painting): an stronger-than-usual visual image can be recalled effortlessly, at least during a few days.
I don't think it has anything to do with your eyes being open/closed, or even to do with your eyes at all, unless it's describing something different to what I assume. It's about mental images and visualization, not your field of vision itself.
The problem is asking people to close their eyes. Most visualizers don't need to close their eyes to visualize, and many state that they can visualize even better with them open. Everyone sees some form of black/Eigengrau when they close their eyes.
ask this questionnaire to a range of people, including some visual artists / designers:
close your eyes, think of a family member, who is it, where are they, what are they wearing, can you see details about the clothing, can you see details in the background, is there motion, if you open your eyes can you still see it
there will be some very strong yeses in there if you sample people in visual professions
Then you don't have Aphantasia. Very few people are claiming they literally see things, they can just conjure up a mental model of something by thinking about it. The weirdness is that some people (those with Aphantasia) are claiming that they can't even do that...
I also have no visual at all, no inner monologue and I don't have ability to hear sounds or music or bring up tastes or smells. I've accepted that about me, but there are two dishes my grandmothers used to make that I'm desperately trying to hang on to a memory of their taste profile,but I only remember it as an abstract description of the taste or as my reaction to eating it. I know I'll recognize it if eaten again but I can't bring that taste back otherwise.
It seems that Aphantasia does not globally bin into two groups, since I don't fit in either.
By my rough count of Figure 2 tests, where Derek is at 0 to Loren at 6 (ignoring F), I have about 3.5 atypical responses.
My experience with Figure 2:
A) I can flip between cone and weird triangle, saw the cone first
B) I see it as if someone placed identical cat stickers on the drawing. I can intellectually understand the perspective, how the upper-right one is supposed to be bigger, but don't experience it that way.
C) I see that there is an implicit rectangle (to me it looks slightly wider than tall). But the color doesn't "spread" to the middle, it's just like 2A -- a boundary in the surrounding shapes implicitly extends into the empty space to form a rectangle shape.
D) It takes minimal, but non-zero effort to see the vase
E) It's trivial to flip between the two orientations of the cube
F) skipped
G) I don't understand what I'm looking for here. I see clouds, sky, and a silhouette with a tree. Is there a face in it somewhere? I can see the smiley face on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Fascinating. Thanks for the clue. It's the most complete blank for me of all the tests. I looked up the reference image, but still cannot see it in figure 2G. I can't even guess at where the eyes/nose/mouth are in the clouds.
yeah, I think some of their example stimuli aren't the greatest in that figure. There are definitely some better perspective illusions online. I'm not sure if I really see the Neon Spreading Illusion in C either; maybe it's spreading a bit, haha.
Some months, maybe a couple of years ago I realised that I have no "mind's eye". For example I know I have grandchildren but I cannot visualise them. I cannot visualise a neighbour, or food, or a location. That this happens is odd but I can live with it.
More recently I was thinking about gaming, and more specifically Prison Architect, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, City Skylines (all of which I own but get nowhere with) and other games where you play, you fail, you plan, you repeat. Even Minecraft.
Someone else - I presume - plays, fails, learns, repeats and so gain a step toward mastery of the game. (I accept from reading that mastery of DF isn't happening soon). I presume that players visualise mistakes and visualise workrounds. I cannot do that, I do not know how.
I have thousands of hours in gaming but I cannot recall them visually, so I respond in-game to what is happening in-game. That may not make sense. There will be some learning but in a non-visual way.
Is this aphantasia? I have no idea and I'm not about to be diagnosed.
I do have vivid and lucid dreaming but ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple and nope, doesn't happen.
One way that scientists test is to use modality agnostic language. For example something like "imagine going to a store to shop for a new sofa. You find one and imagine where it would go in your room."
Then you change or introduce things "make the sofa 50% smaller" then a bit more "change the colour of it to deep yellow" etc
Or imagine getting on a bus and their is only one seat left.
Using Prison Architect as an example, when playing can you 'remember' the dimensions of the different rooms you've built? Or would you have to zoom out to plan an extension of your prison? It definitely sounds like aphantasia.
Not exactly the same but recently I realised that I can visualize the face of most of the people I know, my parents, my family, my friends, however I'm unable to visualize my own face
I'm aphantasic but I've drawn my whole life. In Pictionary I show off and draw exactly the thing being described, meanwhile others struggle with their stick figures. It's hilarious.
So on the one hand I can draw an excellent random generic man or a generic face. If you pose for me I'll do an uncanny portrait. But I can't draw my wife of 30 years -- I can't even see her in my mind. I can't draw an actor I've seen 200 times unless I were to sit with photographs and ingrain their face by deliberate practice
> ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple and nope, doesn't happen.
That's definitely aphantasia as I understand (and suffer from) it.
I've never really considered the "visual learning from failure" aspect of it. I know that in, e.g., Minecraft, I have tremendous trouble with building things because I can't visualise them beforehand and thus things get hodgepodged into these hideous homunculi of buildings or redstone contraptions.
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But normally, you won't actually see anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a "closed-eye visual" (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)!
Nonetheless, most people can "visualize" when they imagine objects, people's faces, places from memory — but it is totally not like AR (i.e. actually overlaying images on top of light perception). Nope, it feels more like you see it with some mysterious "mind's eye", disconnected from real eyes. It is very faint and tacit, like you're perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual "pixels". And it doesn't require having eyes closed, people often can do it as easily with their eyes open, as it doesn't interfere with the normal vision at all.
I see absolutely nothing. When you say “it” is “faint and tacit”, you are describing an “it” that simply does not exist for me. I see a whole lot of people who don’t have aphantasia get hung up on this. They keep describing an “it” without accepting that for some of us there is no “it”.
The way I’ve usually “tested” it among friends/family/clients is to just ask them to imagine that there is a ball, on a table, and someone pushes the ball so that it rolls off the table onto the floor.
I then ask them to answer, from memory, simple things like what color was the ball, what kind of table was it, what material was the floor, was there a sound when the ball fell to the floor, what else happened, etc.
No one I’ve known with aphantasia (including myself) has answers for any such questions when asked to recall what they just imagined, but almost all can answer such questions “while imagining”.
My imaginary scene clearly had some "spatial sense" though — I saw (but more like "felt") the flat surface of the table, the edges of it, how it is positioned relative to myself, the roundness of the ball rolling, and how it falls off.
Outside of "notable features" for some characters, I have no concept of what they look like. And by feature, I mean Harry Potter has a scar. I couldn't tell you much about its size or orientation. Just generally lightning shaped.
This also helped solidify to me why some folks are so hung up on casting choices.
Note that it's possible to visualize motion of an object without visualizing the object itself. This is me. I can't hold any imagery in my head, but I can easily imagine the movement of a kickflip or a pirouette, or I can see the bouncing of three balls without seeing the balls themselves.
I can attest you, this is wrong. When I close my eyes I do see stuff... At the very least some geometric fractals, usually some sort of boiling visual association soup, where random images emerge from fractal Eigengrau liquid. I, willfully, got little influence on the stuff coming up. It feels like watching my brain do brain things. It's rather annoying/exhausting by the way.
I think this experience is a spectrum. It's not like you have it or you don't.
Surely its a spectrum, but seeing closed eye visuals isn't considered "being in a normal part of the spectrum" though.
Yes, a thousand times yes.
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Some people see details, some see colors, some see black and white, some see a misty fog, some see nothing.
It sounds to me like you're somewhere towards the aphantasic end of the spectrum, but I couldn't give you the exact percentile.
So yeah, it’s definitely not a hard and fast rule about CEVs.
I suspect I had the visual once, thanks to one time as a teenager I tried a magic spell and the explanation of "I'm capable of self-hypnosis" is much more plausible than the spell having had even the slightest effect.
I can easily create intense overrides for sensory experience whenever I like for my sense of which way down is, and mild overrides for the various kinds of touch.
I tend to process a lot of things through sound, and go around the world recognizing people by voice or unwillingly trying to place people's accents when they talk. I think it might be related somehow.
"Picturing" something in your head is the same, just with the sense of vision instead of the sense of hearing.
I don't think it's meant to be in that dark space / visual eye space.
close your eyes, think of a family member, who is it, where are they, what are they wearing, can you see details about the clothing, can you see details in the background, is there motion, if you open your eyes can you still see it
there will be some very strong yeses in there if you sample people in visual professions
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By my rough count of Figure 2 tests, where Derek is at 0 to Loren at 6 (ignoring F), I have about 3.5 atypical responses.
My experience with Figure 2:
A) I can flip between cone and weird triangle, saw the cone first
B) I see it as if someone placed identical cat stickers on the drawing. I can intellectually understand the perspective, how the upper-right one is supposed to be bigger, but don't experience it that way.
C) I see that there is an implicit rectangle (to me it looks slightly wider than tall). But the color doesn't "spread" to the middle, it's just like 2A -- a boundary in the surrounding shapes implicitly extends into the empty space to form a rectangle shape.
D) It takes minimal, but non-zero effort to see the vase
E) It's trivial to flip between the two orientations of the cube
F) skipped
G) I don't understand what I'm looking for here. I see clouds, sky, and a silhouette with a tree. Is there a face in it somewhere? I can see the smiley face on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
I believe you’re correct, since I commonly see it presented as a spectrum. https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/
Basically a face staring at the tree from above.
More recently I was thinking about gaming, and more specifically Prison Architect, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, City Skylines (all of which I own but get nowhere with) and other games where you play, you fail, you plan, you repeat. Even Minecraft.
Someone else - I presume - plays, fails, learns, repeats and so gain a step toward mastery of the game. (I accept from reading that mastery of DF isn't happening soon). I presume that players visualise mistakes and visualise workrounds. I cannot do that, I do not know how.
I have thousands of hours in gaming but I cannot recall them visually, so I respond in-game to what is happening in-game. That may not make sense. There will be some learning but in a non-visual way.
Is this aphantasia? I have no idea and I'm not about to be diagnosed.
I do have vivid and lucid dreaming but ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple and nope, doesn't happen.
Then you change or introduce things "make the sofa 50% smaller" then a bit more "change the colour of it to deep yellow" etc
Or imagine getting on a bus and their is only one seat left.
So on the one hand I can draw an excellent random generic man or a generic face. If you pose for me I'll do an uncanny portrait. But I can't draw my wife of 30 years -- I can't even see her in my mind. I can't draw an actor I've seen 200 times unless I were to sit with photographs and ingrain their face by deliberate practice
To sort of expand: I'm old enough that a diagnosis makes zero difference. But it does explain so much.
When misophonia became a thing it explained so much of my reactions to certain noises, that I was not alone.
Just knowing that others are experiencing the same removes some of that aloneness.
That's definitely aphantasia as I understand (and suffer from) it.
I've never really considered the "visual learning from failure" aspect of it. I know that in, e.g., Minecraft, I have tremendous trouble with building things because I can't visualise them beforehand and thus things get hodgepodged into these hideous homunculi of buildings or redstone contraptions.