hayley

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hayley
@hayley

musing on aphantasia

Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one's mind. [1]

did you know that most people can see pictures in their mind just by thinking about them? i didnt until about three years ago. i always thought "mental image" was a sort of metaphor, a shorthand for "thinking of things"

if you ask me to "think of a dog" and then ask me what the dog looks like, the question doesn't make any sense to me. when i tell people this they almost always press me. surely there's some hidden information there, i just don't realize it. "well what color is it?". i dont know! you may as well ask me what breed the word "dog" is. it's a pointless question

i still have an "internal monologue" and obviously i have a memory. but my memories are just facts. i can't tell you the color of the walls of a room i'm not in, unless i've intentionally gone out of my way to remember it or it was notable or relevant in some way. if pressed i could probably draw a floor plan of my apartment from memory, just because that's useful information ive internalized. but i can't tell you what my kitchen counters look like, because they're in a different room and its never mattered

i can recognize people, though maybe with more effort than normal. i'm not faceblind. but if someone is out of my field of view, i can't describe what they look like. i might get some bigger details right - hair color, skin color, height - since those exist in my factual-memory as things ive learned to remember about people. but i dont know details

artists never made sense to me. how do they do that? i cant even draw a still life! as soon as i break eye contact with the reference to look at my paper the image of the scene has disappeared

most of the time, i feel like i'm missing out. maybe the fact that i do so well at algorithmic tasks is because of the weird way my brain has decided to compensate? but there's no way to know
my memory overall is quite bad, which i think is related. i wish i had an imagination. i wish i was more creative. i wish i remembered what my girlfriend's face looks like

ok, that's my musing. feel free to ask me questions or whatever you'd like. i like talking about aphantasia in public because invariably it'll make someone else have a realization, and their life will make a little more sense

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in reply to @hayley's post:

garak
@garak

artists never made sense to me. how do they do that?

So apparently Glen Keane also has aphantasia, and he's a professional animator for Disney. Drew the main characters for Little Mermaid, Tarzan, etc. I can't reconcile that, but I'm also not an artist (and can imagine pictures). Maybe artists view their work as something more/different than visuals?

I'm sure there's a hump to get over before you get to that stage. Glen probably got a lot of help from the fact his father was is an artist (the guy who does Family Circus).

I think I dream in an aphantasiac fashion. There's just, like, facts. I know something is happening, and the relation between different events. But there's no imagery associated with it until literally the point where I try to remember the dream, and then I can perceive my brain hurrying to fill in a place where it thinks an image should be that is currently filled with Just Vibes.

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aidan
@aidan

i also think i have some sort of mild aphantasia, which makes me a pretty good designer (i hope!) but a very bad illustrator. i can figure draw like a champ but ask me to like, come up with a cool composition on the fly and i just cannot do it! brains are wild

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hayley
@hayley

that's wild! yeah i have no clue how that works, though I think I agree with your theory. Maybe it's kinda like the fact that I can still get music stuck in my head - I was exposed to the "process" of music early enough that I was able to grok it

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hayley
@hayley

as for dreams, that's really interesting. I have dreams, sometimes i wake up and they feel vivid. ive always wondered if i dream with "images" since sometimes i have very strong sensory feelings evoked when i wake up, but I have no way of knowing since my memory is aphantasic!! so even if i can "see" dreams i have no way of remembering what i "saw"

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nex3
@nex3

You can train yourself over time to remember to do things in your dreams by doing them periodically while you're awake— for example, I partly overcame my "oh god I'm in a public space without a mask" dreams by staying to carry a mask in my purse everywhere even if I was already wearing one. So you could in principle solve this by periodically thinking to yourself "am I seeing images right now?" and noting the result, then trying to remember the result rather than the images once you woke up.

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graham
@graham

I recently learned this professional animator, Ross O'Donovan (you might know him from Game Grumps), also has aphantasia, which is wild to think about given how much illustration and stuff animation requires

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graham
@graham

I think of phantasia as being kind of like synesthesia but that's more common for people to be familiar with: one thought (word) elicits another thought (image, sound, taste, feel, etc)

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orchidrabbit
@orchidrabbit

this is incredibly interesting to learn about as i thing i'm personally on the opposite side of the spectrum ranging into hyperphantasia territory. i think i have an imagination so strong that it's contributed to a paranoia psychological effect that i've only adjusted to dealing with as a mid 20s adult. i would say im an artist but my illustration work is incredibly flat comparative to doing sewing/plushie work where i am actively thinking about the planar composition of any 3d shape i am looking at. brains sure are wacky.

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invisiblewalrus
@invisiblewalrus

yeah i had the same journey where i was like "WAIT PEOPLE ACTUALLY PICTURE THINGS????" it means that when i create i usually make something out of a lot of parts in front of me, and rearrange and iterate until i come up with an idea im happy with, which can be exhausting but also very fun! also, i can't exactly picture a time/place but when im listening to song i have a very strong sense memory of the previous times ive listened, and what it felt like in those moments, which i really love but can be hard to describe to others.

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rabbitteef
@rabbitteef

i learned about this during quarantine and interogated all my friends because i had no idea there was such a spectrum. im definitely on the other end where i have photographic memory and a vivid imagination. if anything its actually explained why i feel so sensitive to upsetting imagery compared to some of my other friends, but also even why i find it extremely difficult to even have injuries described to me because my brain will just start playing it like a movie in my mind whether i want it to or not. scenes from films or photographs will just imprint itself in my mind and even if i quickly look away at something upsetting i'll see it play over and over in my mind...

but yeah i love expanding my understanding of human beings!!! the brain is a freaking mystery!!!

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hayley
@hayley

that is SO wild to me i feel like i cannot begin to explain how impossible that is for me to even begin to consider. and that makes sense, my memory is REALLY bad and fades super quickly, so even if i get upset by something if i think about it in the future im usually more upset by....the idea of knowing i was upset, i guess? or like if i see something gross ill be :/ at remembering the "facts" what happened and knowing it freaked me out but its not like im reliving it or whatever

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