What Even Is a Mental Image?
March 25, 2025 12:51 PM Subscribe
The best way I can express what happens subjectively when I try to project a shape onto an empty canvas is "halos of attention." I don't see anything, in any common sense of the word—there are no contours, no filling, no colors, or connected patterns in my field of view—but I know that certain parts of the canvas are more important than others at any given time, and that can feel similar to seeing. It's as if those regions of the canvas are more "active," more alive than the others. from An Aphantasic's Observations on the Imagination of Shapes [Aether Mug]
My secret theory is that this is perfectly normal and what everybody does and that people who claim to have sharp vivid mental images that hold still are actually lying about it--or, more charitably, actively misinterpreting their experience, the way people will tell you about their narratively-consistent dreams that have plots and such.
It's a shame the science doesn't agree with me.
posted by mittens at 1:34 PM on March 25 [13 favorites]
It's a shame the science doesn't agree with me.
posted by mittens at 1:34 PM on March 25 [13 favorites]
Recently someone mentioned aphantasia, and I almost demonstratively tried to visualize a cube or cup or whatever. To my surprise, a perfectly vivid one appeared. As I sat there in stunned silence, summoning whatever random trinkets I could think of, inevitably I woke up. The fact that the hardware can *be there* but refuse to work unless you're asleep annoys me to no end.
posted by you at 1:36 PM on March 25 [13 favorites]
posted by you at 1:36 PM on March 25 [13 favorites]
I’m a total aphantasic person who dreams gloriously vivid visual dreams with coherent narratives, so who knows really what the hell is going on up there. I appreciate this article for trying to really put into words what their brain is doing when “visualizing.” I’m always at a loss for how to describe how I ‘see’ what I’m thinking about, and find it equally impossible that some people can just actually call up mental images. Someone who can do it, comment here! Can you seriously do it??
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:38 PM on March 25 [9 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:38 PM on March 25 [9 favorites]
Someone who can do it, comment here! Can you seriously do it??
Yes. I'm not sure I can describe it, but I absolutely can call up mental images.
posted by cooker girl at 1:45 PM on March 25 [8 favorites]
Yes. I'm not sure I can describe it, but I absolutely can call up mental images.
posted by cooker girl at 1:45 PM on March 25 [8 favorites]
My secret theory is that this is perfectly normal and what everybody does and that people who claim to have sharp vivid mental images that hold still are actually lying about it
Isn’t this just the flip side of the “internal monologue” thing? I assume it’s actually more of a spectrum. I definitely do both but I’m definitely more of a verbal thinker.
posted by atoxyl at 1:47 PM on March 25 [6 favorites]
Isn’t this just the flip side of the “internal monologue” thing? I assume it’s actually more of a spectrum. I definitely do both but I’m definitely more of a verbal thinker.
posted by atoxyl at 1:47 PM on March 25 [6 favorites]
The experience of being aphantasic is described pretty well in the article, as close as I can imagine to my experience. But really we’re answering an unanswerable question: what we see if we can’t see anything? The author does a pretty good job answering it.
posted by Vatnesine at 1:47 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
posted by Vatnesine at 1:47 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
I think "visualizing" is probably a reductive adjective to use. I'm not sure what a better one would be, but the use of "visualization" in describing synaesthetic experiences kept me from attributing my "spelling is spatial" skill/attribute to it for decades.
posted by rhizome at 1:48 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 1:48 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
Someone who can do it, comment here! Can you seriously do it??
Yeah, pretty well I think, but I also have a visual artistic bent and work in building design. Maybe something that illustrates it a little better than "I can have 'visual' mental images" is that I remember the visuals from some dreams I've had even years or decades later and pull them up; occasionally, dreams will take place in a location that I "know" in the dream is a certain place even though it looks nothing like it. When I'm awake I can remember the specifics of what that place looked like and compare/contrast it with my visual memory of what the place actually looks like.
posted by LionIndex at 1:56 PM on March 25 [6 favorites]
Yeah, pretty well I think, but I also have a visual artistic bent and work in building design. Maybe something that illustrates it a little better than "I can have 'visual' mental images" is that I remember the visuals from some dreams I've had even years or decades later and pull them up; occasionally, dreams will take place in a location that I "know" in the dream is a certain place even though it looks nothing like it. When I'm awake I can remember the specifics of what that place looked like and compare/contrast it with my visual memory of what the place actually looks like.
posted by LionIndex at 1:56 PM on March 25 [6 favorites]
Brains are weird, y'all!
I am maybe somewhat aphantasic. If I try to visualize a red apple, I have to work really hard, and usually get an apple-ish blob of indeterminate color.
But...if I'm working in the woodshop, planning out a project, I am visualizing, rotating and manipulating complex shapes without even realizing it. Best I can describe it is a kind of schematic collage?
I also daydream easily, so...yeah. Brains are weird.
I wonder if visualization is a skill that atrophies in our screen-rich environments?
posted by chromecow at 1:57 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
I am maybe somewhat aphantasic. If I try to visualize a red apple, I have to work really hard, and usually get an apple-ish blob of indeterminate color.
But...if I'm working in the woodshop, planning out a project, I am visualizing, rotating and manipulating complex shapes without even realizing it. Best I can describe it is a kind of schematic collage?
I also daydream easily, so...yeah. Brains are weird.
I wonder if visualization is a skill that atrophies in our screen-rich environments?
posted by chromecow at 1:57 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
When thinking about a room somewhere else, I know what is there, where it is, what color it is etc., but I don’t see it, like with my eyeballs. It’s there but not in a visual sense. When I close my eyes, in a semi-darkened room, I see sort of random patterns, some colored bits, and it feels just like seeing with my eyes, in fact, the general reddish tone is because I’m looking through my eyelids at something lit up. I attribute the patterns etc as just noise in my visual circuits. Open my eyes, increased signal, it all goes away. But with cannabis, I’ve begun to see in the same eyeball way, very realistic faces that morph continuously, I see going down forested roads, and other weird entertaining things. I then tried to see colored shapes. I can see various colored triangles, circles, squares with a little bit of effort.
There appears, for me, to be non visual visual memories. And then there are visual things which can be detailed and changing, but not under any control. And there are simple shapes and colors that I can conjure up consciously.
A recent discovery is that in a fairly dark room I can open my eyes and with a little effort I can see what I see with eyes closed overlaid on top of the ceiling I’m staring at. All this stuff is really fascinating but how does it all work?
posted by njohnson23 at 2:00 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
There appears, for me, to be non visual visual memories. And then there are visual things which can be detailed and changing, but not under any control. And there are simple shapes and colors that I can conjure up consciously.
A recent discovery is that in a fairly dark room I can open my eyes and with a little effort I can see what I see with eyes closed overlaid on top of the ceiling I’m staring at. All this stuff is really fascinating but how does it all work?
posted by njohnson23 at 2:00 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
From the article, it sounds like Marco is trying to wring mental imagery out of his perception by shaping his visual attention and sort of "upping the gain" within that attentional area? That's not what I would describe as my experience of mental imagery, but damn is that interesting.
I'd be super curious to see what the fMRI shows is happening in various areas of his visual cortex when he is experiencing what he describes as the "halo/layer mask phenomenon". Is the conscious selective attention priming certain areas to react more sensitively and effect his actual perception? If so, that's amazing and we should figure out how that works. If not, where is that halo phenomenon coming from? From his subjective experiences it sounds like his data may be more relevant to attention within the visual field rather than mental imagery or aphantasia. The "low-key mind-reading" he mentions suggests that some effect is being observed.
posted by Avelwood at 2:10 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
I'd be super curious to see what the fMRI shows is happening in various areas of his visual cortex when he is experiencing what he describes as the "halo/layer mask phenomenon". Is the conscious selective attention priming certain areas to react more sensitively and effect his actual perception? If so, that's amazing and we should figure out how that works. If not, where is that halo phenomenon coming from? From his subjective experiences it sounds like his data may be more relevant to attention within the visual field rather than mental imagery or aphantasia. The "low-key mind-reading" he mentions suggests that some effect is being observed.
posted by Avelwood at 2:10 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
I would never consider myself aphantasic, but I realized at some point in my 40s that my mental "images" are not actually very visual. They feel visual. I can imagine a scene and tell you what color the things I'm "picturing" are and how they're arranged in space. If I imagine a chair, I know whether it's a wooden chair or an upholstered armchair. If you tell me to imagine something or someone sitting on the chair, I can do it. But the more I try to really examine the elements of my visual image, the less visual it seems. A lot of details turn out to be unspecified. It feels like seeing, but it really isn't seeing, it's just having a lot of the information you normally get from seeing.
It was interesting to see how the author's experience of trying to visualize was different from mine. I'm definitely able to do things he can't do. I can picture a vertical line of whatever length or width I want. I can make it a narrow vertical rectangle with black borders, an orange background and blue dots, and I can vary the shades of orange and blue if I want. But am I actually seeing any of this? No, not really. I just sort of sense it.
One of the weirdest things in the article to me was the way the experiment called for him to look at a screen and imagine the shape on that screen. Does mental imagery actually work that way for anyone - you "see" the thing as if it were in front of you, superimposed on the real world? I imagine things in my "mind's eye," which feels like it's inside my head. If I look at that blank square in the article and try to picture one of the shapes, I can tell you how my "image" fits in the square - X reaching almost all the way to the corners, or tiny x barely bigger than the dot in the center. But looking at the blank square rather than into my mental mind space just makes it all the more clear that I'm not seeing anything at all. Is there anyone who can look at the blank square and see something in it in a way that feels like seeing an actual thing?
posted by Redstart at 2:18 PM on March 25 [8 favorites]
It was interesting to see how the author's experience of trying to visualize was different from mine. I'm definitely able to do things he can't do. I can picture a vertical line of whatever length or width I want. I can make it a narrow vertical rectangle with black borders, an orange background and blue dots, and I can vary the shades of orange and blue if I want. But am I actually seeing any of this? No, not really. I just sort of sense it.
One of the weirdest things in the article to me was the way the experiment called for him to look at a screen and imagine the shape on that screen. Does mental imagery actually work that way for anyone - you "see" the thing as if it were in front of you, superimposed on the real world? I imagine things in my "mind's eye," which feels like it's inside my head. If I look at that blank square in the article and try to picture one of the shapes, I can tell you how my "image" fits in the square - X reaching almost all the way to the corners, or tiny x barely bigger than the dot in the center. But looking at the blank square rather than into my mental mind space just makes it all the more clear that I'm not seeing anything at all. Is there anyone who can look at the blank square and see something in it in a way that feels like seeing an actual thing?
posted by Redstart at 2:18 PM on March 25 [8 favorites]
For those with aphantasia:
• Are you able to "visualize" with other senses? Such as imagining you're holding a cube and you can feel its edges and sides. What about taste, smell, hearing?
• Are you able to have sexual fantasies without being able to visualize? If so, what are you fantasizing?
posted by Sock, Sock, Sock, Sock, Sock, Goose! at 2:30 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
• Are you able to "visualize" with other senses? Such as imagining you're holding a cube and you can feel its edges and sides. What about taste, smell, hearing?
• Are you able to have sexual fantasies without being able to visualize? If so, what are you fantasizing?
posted by Sock, Sock, Sock, Sock, Sock, Goose! at 2:30 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
> Can you seriously do it?
Yes, to the point that I was dozing (not asleep yet, at the "things are getting weird" stage) the other day in a dark room, thought about headlights shining on a snowbank, and the light was so bright it startled me awake.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:31 PM on March 25 [4 favorites]
Yes, to the point that I was dozing (not asleep yet, at the "things are getting weird" stage) the other day in a dark room, thought about headlights shining on a snowbank, and the light was so bright it startled me awake.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:31 PM on March 25 [4 favorites]
I've heard of this before, and it's wild that there's things people's brains do that is so difficult to explain at all, let alone enough to realize you can or can't do it.
Like, somewhere someone upthread mentioned an "apple" , and when I imagine one, I 'see' a Red Delicious, with its wider top and bumpy 'feet' on the bottom, its speckly, not-quite-ripe surface, the little stem that's a deep brown-red, in my head. I can turn it around and see it from all sides.
The thing is: I also don't see it, like, it's not something visual. It's just "there". I'm imaging it, what I actually see is Metafilter and letters appearing as I type, but the apple is kinda just...is....somewhere.
Is this something different from memory, like if you're aphantasic is it possible to remember what something looks like? Like, can you remember what a single-serving milk carton looked like when you were a kid? Can you draw pictures of things you remember, or are you just drawing what it's supposed to look like (and I'm guessing you may not understand the difference)?
Redstart: Does mental imagery actually work that way for anyone - you "see" the thing as if it were in front of you, superimposed on the real world?
I wondered about that too and thought that the test in the article, trying to picture a thing in front of you, is not the same as imagining something. But I'd say you're not aphantastic, Redstart -- in as much as I can determine what's going on inside someone else's head, you're able to imagine images of things.
But I wonder if what I'm describing, the image of an apple is there but not "seeing", versus trying to "see" something that's not there, and my questions about remembering, may not be talking about the same thing.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:32 PM on March 25 [4 favorites]
Like, somewhere someone upthread mentioned an "apple" , and when I imagine one, I 'see' a Red Delicious, with its wider top and bumpy 'feet' on the bottom, its speckly, not-quite-ripe surface, the little stem that's a deep brown-red, in my head. I can turn it around and see it from all sides.
The thing is: I also don't see it, like, it's not something visual. It's just "there". I'm imaging it, what I actually see is Metafilter and letters appearing as I type, but the apple is kinda just...is....somewhere.
Is this something different from memory, like if you're aphantasic is it possible to remember what something looks like? Like, can you remember what a single-serving milk carton looked like when you were a kid? Can you draw pictures of things you remember, or are you just drawing what it's supposed to look like (and I'm guessing you may not understand the difference)?
Redstart: Does mental imagery actually work that way for anyone - you "see" the thing as if it were in front of you, superimposed on the real world?
I wondered about that too and thought that the test in the article, trying to picture a thing in front of you, is not the same as imagining something. But I'd say you're not aphantastic, Redstart -- in as much as I can determine what's going on inside someone else's head, you're able to imagine images of things.
But I wonder if what I'm describing, the image of an apple is there but not "seeing", versus trying to "see" something that's not there, and my questions about remembering, may not be talking about the same thing.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:32 PM on March 25 [4 favorites]
One theory about aphantasia is that the brain’s system for tracking objects in space picks up some of the slack, so that aphantasiacs are able to use that system to imagine an object’s existence in a particular location, but because the visual system isn’t strongly involved, it presents as something like a shadow or echo that fills a certain space. This seems to match quite well with the experience of the author, and with my own. I can effortlessly move an object around a mental canvas, it’s just that the object and the canvas don’t look like anything.
posted by bakerybob at 2:52 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
posted by bakerybob at 2:52 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
I can do the thing, a lot. I can picture an apple on the dresser in front of me, or on my computer keyboard, etc., in full color, reflections, shadows, etc. I can turn it on 3 axes, slice it, etc.
I took one of those aptitude tests in high school where I scored 99% on visualization, and I went on to study architecture and for a while specialized in 3d modelling and programming, so I'm probably on the far right of the bell curve on this.
My offspring, on the other hand, inherited a lot of my abilities and improved on them, including my Admin’s Aura, but is completely aphantastic.
posted by signal at 2:57 PM on March 25 [5 favorites]
I took one of those aptitude tests in high school where I scored 99% on visualization, and I went on to study architecture and for a while specialized in 3d modelling and programming, so I'm probably on the far right of the bell curve on this.
My offspring, on the other hand, inherited a lot of my abilities and improved on them, including my Admin’s Aura, but is completely aphantastic.
posted by signal at 2:57 PM on March 25 [5 favorites]
I took one of those aptitude tests in high school where I scored 99% on visualization
I remember one where there was a drawing of a three dimensional shape (like a cube) with a dot on one side, and you had to select which of the options below were the "unfolded" version of that polyhedron with the correct number of sides and placement relative to each other and where the dot went. Maybe more complex with one dot on one side and two on another as the test went on, and more irregular shapes. I did pretty well at it.
posted by LionIndex at 3:02 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
I remember one where there was a drawing of a three dimensional shape (like a cube) with a dot on one side, and you had to select which of the options below were the "unfolded" version of that polyhedron with the correct number of sides and placement relative to each other and where the dot went. Maybe more complex with one dot on one side and two on another as the test went on, and more irregular shapes. I did pretty well at it.
posted by LionIndex at 3:02 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
I can picture an apple on the dresser in front of me, or on my computer keyboard, etc., in full color, reflections, shadows, etc.
I want to hear more about what this experience is like. When you say you picture an apple on the dresser in front of you, how does that differ from seeing an actual apple on your dresser? The mental image of the apple isn't like a hallucination, is it - exactly the same as seeing a real apple except that you know the apple is imaginary? Can you also still see all parts of your dresser as if no apple were there?
posted by Redstart at 3:09 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]
I want to hear more about what this experience is like. When you say you picture an apple on the dresser in front of you, how does that differ from seeing an actual apple on your dresser? The mental image of the apple isn't like a hallucination, is it - exactly the same as seeing a real apple except that you know the apple is imaginary? Can you also still see all parts of your dresser as if no apple were there?
posted by Redstart at 3:09 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]
For those with aphantasia:
• Are you able to "visualize" with other senses? Such as imagining you're holding a cube and you can feel its edges and sides. What about taste, smell, hearing?
I'd like to hear what people without aphantasia say about this, too. To me, these types of imagining are all equally vague. Well, actually taste and smell are even more vague than the others. I can vaguely imagine all these things - holding a cube and feeling its edges, seeing that some of its faces are blue and some are yellow, smelling and licking it and finding that it smells and tastes like a pickle, shaking it and hearing a little bell tinkling inside. All those imagined experiences are only vaguely like reality. There's some sense of experiencing what I would experience in real life, but it's not clear or intense. Surely no one can clearly imagine all these sense experiences with a hallucinatory level of reality, can they?
Are you able to have sexual fantasies without being able to visualize? If so, what are you fantasizing?
Why would people need to visualize to have sexual fantasies? Don't you imagine blind people have sexual fantasies? Isn't a sexual fantasy mostly about other, non-visual stuff, like who touches what and how that makes the participants feel?
posted by Redstart at 3:26 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
• Are you able to "visualize" with other senses? Such as imagining you're holding a cube and you can feel its edges and sides. What about taste, smell, hearing?
I'd like to hear what people without aphantasia say about this, too. To me, these types of imagining are all equally vague. Well, actually taste and smell are even more vague than the others. I can vaguely imagine all these things - holding a cube and feeling its edges, seeing that some of its faces are blue and some are yellow, smelling and licking it and finding that it smells and tastes like a pickle, shaking it and hearing a little bell tinkling inside. All those imagined experiences are only vaguely like reality. There's some sense of experiencing what I would experience in real life, but it's not clear or intense. Surely no one can clearly imagine all these sense experiences with a hallucinatory level of reality, can they?
Are you able to have sexual fantasies without being able to visualize? If so, what are you fantasizing?
Why would people need to visualize to have sexual fantasies? Don't you imagine blind people have sexual fantasies? Isn't a sexual fantasy mostly about other, non-visual stuff, like who touches what and how that makes the participants feel?
posted by Redstart at 3:26 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
Redstart! Yes, you don’t see it, you feel it. I can make myself see simple shapes and colors, but only with my eyes closed. I guess I can manipulate the noise floor in my visual cortex. The faces etc. I see but I have no control. They come and go on their own. But I see them. Again eyes closed.
posted by njohnson23 at 3:41 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 3:41 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]
At the end of my class in high school geometry, my teacher brought in a standardized test from a different curriculum.
It had an hour long plane geometry section on which it turned out I scored in the 97th percentile along with a couple of other kids when it was handed back the next day.
Then we took the solid geometry section even though we hadn't had any solid geometry in our textbook or class.
I paged through the booklet and the test was full of terms id never seen or heard of before, and complex diagrams that were increasingly baffling as the questions went on.
That made me angry. I slammed my pencil down and growled, causing the teacher to visibly start at his desk, and then shot my legs out and crossed my arms, fully intending not to participate in this ridiculous charade.
Then after a minute or so of fuming, I glanced over at the open test booklet, and the two spheres in the illustration for the first set of questions literally rose off the page and hovered over it like tiny hot air balloons.
'What the hell is that?', I thought to myself, and pulled the test booklet back over in front of me. And from those hovering spheres I was able to answer the first clutch of questions. And from those the next set and so on.
At one point it struck me that this wasn't a test at all, but some kind of wonderful programmed learning exercise and I burst out laughing, startling our teacher again and making everyone else stare at me.
I don't remember visualizing any of the succeeding diagrams in the hallucinatory way I saw the first one, but at the end of the test I was in some kind of ecstatic state and my mind was swimming with visions of spheres, lines and intersecting planes.
When that test came back the next day, I had gotten all the questions right, scored in the 99+ percentile while no one else was above the 50th, and our teacher remarked to me and the class that I "must have taken solid geometry at my previous school" (I'd moved to that school during the second semester of that year), and I replied "yes, that must be it, mustn't it?". Which earned me a deep frown from him, and there was a lingering moment before he moved on.
Two weeks later I did not know a damned thing about solid geometry, and my ability to visualize geometric shapes in 3 dimensions had returned completely to its relatively paltry status quo ante — to my great and lasting frustration.
posted by jamjam at 3:54 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
It had an hour long plane geometry section on which it turned out I scored in the 97th percentile along with a couple of other kids when it was handed back the next day.
Then we took the solid geometry section even though we hadn't had any solid geometry in our textbook or class.
I paged through the booklet and the test was full of terms id never seen or heard of before, and complex diagrams that were increasingly baffling as the questions went on.
That made me angry. I slammed my pencil down and growled, causing the teacher to visibly start at his desk, and then shot my legs out and crossed my arms, fully intending not to participate in this ridiculous charade.
Then after a minute or so of fuming, I glanced over at the open test booklet, and the two spheres in the illustration for the first set of questions literally rose off the page and hovered over it like tiny hot air balloons.
'What the hell is that?', I thought to myself, and pulled the test booklet back over in front of me. And from those hovering spheres I was able to answer the first clutch of questions. And from those the next set and so on.
At one point it struck me that this wasn't a test at all, but some kind of wonderful programmed learning exercise and I burst out laughing, startling our teacher again and making everyone else stare at me.
I don't remember visualizing any of the succeeding diagrams in the hallucinatory way I saw the first one, but at the end of the test I was in some kind of ecstatic state and my mind was swimming with visions of spheres, lines and intersecting planes.
When that test came back the next day, I had gotten all the questions right, scored in the 99+ percentile while no one else was above the 50th, and our teacher remarked to me and the class that I "must have taken solid geometry at my previous school" (I'd moved to that school during the second semester of that year), and I replied "yes, that must be it, mustn't it?". Which earned me a deep frown from him, and there was a lingering moment before he moved on.
Two weeks later I did not know a damned thing about solid geometry, and my ability to visualize geometric shapes in 3 dimensions had returned completely to its relatively paltry status quo ante — to my great and lasting frustration.
posted by jamjam at 3:54 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
I suspect the spectrum idea is probably true, very few things our brains do are binary after all.
I'm definitely on the aphantasiac side, and until just a few years ago when I heard the term I'd always assumed the "visualize a whatever" stuff was pure metaphor as I've never been able to actually visualize anything in my life.
If I try I can get a sort of weird flicker of a flash of something and that may just be me fooling myself, but it never lasts more than a zillionth of a second if it happens at all.
What weirds me out is when neurotypical people ask how I remember what things look like. Do they actually have to, for example, visualize the Statue of Liberty before they remember it's green? I remember how things look by remembering how they look, I don't need to see pictures in my head for that.
I think it'd be pretty damn cool to be good at, or able to, visualize.
I don't do the internal monologue thing either, or not usually. When I really need to work something out I usually talk to myself if I'm in a place where it won't get me unnerved attention from bystanders. If not I think it through word by word, but I don't hear words I just... know them? I don't know how to say it, I think of the word there's no sound involved because words are words, they have sounds by they aren't sounds.
I don't "hear" words when I read either, I see the words, I understand the words no sound involved. I also read faster than many people, maybe that's a factor? If you have to actually listen to imagined words when you read, I'd assume that means you can't read faster than you can talk?
I don't know if the aphantasia is why I'm better than average at remembering exact dialog from a vid or text from a book, but apparently my ability there is somewhat unusual because people have expressed mild surprise that I can remember that as well a I do.
I think it'd be pretty damn nifty to be able to see, or hear, or maybe smell (? is that a thing?) stuff just by imagining or remembering it. I do wonder how neurotypical people ever get bored though, if they have what sounds like a full VR rig built into their skulls. Like, if you're bored don't you just imagine a cow and rotate it around for fun? Or whatever?
posted by sotonohito at 5:50 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
I'm definitely on the aphantasiac side, and until just a few years ago when I heard the term I'd always assumed the "visualize a whatever" stuff was pure metaphor as I've never been able to actually visualize anything in my life.
If I try I can get a sort of weird flicker of a flash of something and that may just be me fooling myself, but it never lasts more than a zillionth of a second if it happens at all.
What weirds me out is when neurotypical people ask how I remember what things look like. Do they actually have to, for example, visualize the Statue of Liberty before they remember it's green? I remember how things look by remembering how they look, I don't need to see pictures in my head for that.
I think it'd be pretty damn cool to be good at, or able to, visualize.
I don't do the internal monologue thing either, or not usually. When I really need to work something out I usually talk to myself if I'm in a place where it won't get me unnerved attention from bystanders. If not I think it through word by word, but I don't hear words I just... know them? I don't know how to say it, I think of the word there's no sound involved because words are words, they have sounds by they aren't sounds.
I don't "hear" words when I read either, I see the words, I understand the words no sound involved. I also read faster than many people, maybe that's a factor? If you have to actually listen to imagined words when you read, I'd assume that means you can't read faster than you can talk?
I don't know if the aphantasia is why I'm better than average at remembering exact dialog from a vid or text from a book, but apparently my ability there is somewhat unusual because people have expressed mild surprise that I can remember that as well a I do.
I think it'd be pretty damn nifty to be able to see, or hear, or maybe smell (? is that a thing?) stuff just by imagining or remembering it. I do wonder how neurotypical people ever get bored though, if they have what sounds like a full VR rig built into their skulls. Like, if you're bored don't you just imagine a cow and rotate it around for fun? Or whatever?
posted by sotonohito at 5:50 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
two spheres in the illustration for the first set of questions literally rose off the page and hovered over it like tiny hot air balloons.
'What the hell is that?'
[futura-sciences:] what Kepler sought to express was not the numerical mysticism of the Pythagoreans; his starting point was geometric patterns, which he saw as “logical elements”. His profound desire to devise a rational explanation for the cosmos led him to establish procedures which resembled those of modern science
posted by HearHere at 5:53 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
'What the hell is that?'
[futura-sciences:] what Kepler sought to express was not the numerical mysticism of the Pythagoreans; his starting point was geometric patterns, which he saw as “logical elements”. His profound desire to devise a rational explanation for the cosmos led him to establish procedures which resembled those of modern science
posted by HearHere at 5:53 PM on March 25 [2 favorites]
I can vaguely imagine all these things - holding a cube and feeling its edges, seeing that some of its faces are blue and some are yellow, smelling and licking it and finding that it smells and tastes like a pickle, shaking it and hearing a little bell tinkling inside. All those imagined experiences are only vaguely like reality. There's some sense of experiencing what I would experience in real life, but it's not clear or intense. Surely no one can clearly imagine all these sense experiences with a hallucinatory level of reality, can they?
I would say, when I'm imagining the same cube you describe, I can see, taste, hear all of those things quite vividly, and intensely. Two things make it less realistic than reality though:
(1) It doesn't feel hallucinatory to me because there is no sense that the imagined thing is occupying the same 3D environment I currently find myself in. I don't see it there in front of me, blocking my view of the laptop. I wouldn't even locate it inside my head; at best I could say it's perhaps vaguely in front and above my head, in a sort of 'other' space'. (I can certainly intentionally place the imagined cube in the space around me, like if I was trying to decide where to put it in my living room. But that's not where my imagined things live by default).
(2) I'll admit that the traits of the imagined cube do have a certain ephemerality. While I can feel all the senses quite vividly when perceiving this cube, they are strongest when I just focus on one or two – shape, color, texture, sound, taste, smell. When I'm focusing just on shape and color, the ringing bell sound sort of fades away, the texture is less apparent. Though I can summon the strength of those traits back quickly. I find this vivid but slightly shifting perception to be in contrast to perception in reality, where an identical cube would assault all of your available senses at once equally. Your brain taking it all in simultaneously while trying desperately to filter, filter, filter, and focus only on that sense which is of most interest or use to you in that moment.
posted by Kabanos at 5:54 PM on March 25 [7 favorites]
I would say, when I'm imagining the same cube you describe, I can see, taste, hear all of those things quite vividly, and intensely. Two things make it less realistic than reality though:
(1) It doesn't feel hallucinatory to me because there is no sense that the imagined thing is occupying the same 3D environment I currently find myself in. I don't see it there in front of me, blocking my view of the laptop. I wouldn't even locate it inside my head; at best I could say it's perhaps vaguely in front and above my head, in a sort of 'other' space'. (I can certainly intentionally place the imagined cube in the space around me, like if I was trying to decide where to put it in my living room. But that's not where my imagined things live by default).
(2) I'll admit that the traits of the imagined cube do have a certain ephemerality. While I can feel all the senses quite vividly when perceiving this cube, they are strongest when I just focus on one or two – shape, color, texture, sound, taste, smell. When I'm focusing just on shape and color, the ringing bell sound sort of fades away, the texture is less apparent. Though I can summon the strength of those traits back quickly. I find this vivid but slightly shifting perception to be in contrast to perception in reality, where an identical cube would assault all of your available senses at once equally. Your brain taking it all in simultaneously while trying desperately to filter, filter, filter, and focus only on that sense which is of most interest or use to you in that moment.
posted by Kabanos at 5:54 PM on March 25 [7 favorites]
If not I think it through word by word, but I don't hear words I just... know them?
This is interesting. As another person without an internal monologue, I don't experience thinking in words at all. It's not just that the words are soundless and I don't have an 'inner voice,' it's that there are no words at all until I decide that there should be - like right now, as I'm composing this comment. Like you, I also read very fast.
This is also how I experience mental imagery. I know what an apple looks like. I can describe an apple. I can draw an apple. I can imagine that this apple has a blemish on one side, I can imagine it's a variety with blushed skin, that the texture of its skin is coarser than a red delicious and not as shiny. I understand how these different textures affect highlights and shadows as they fall on the apple, and I can imagine different sorts of lighting. I can imagine this apple with a lot of specificity. But this is not the same as 'seeing' it in my mind. It's just that I have the knowledge that these are traits apples can have.
Or to put it another way, you could show me a photo of an apple with the same traits as those I'd imagined and I would be all, "sure, yeah, that could be the apple" even though there are many different ways such an apple could look.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:55 PM on March 25 [5 favorites]
This is interesting. As another person without an internal monologue, I don't experience thinking in words at all. It's not just that the words are soundless and I don't have an 'inner voice,' it's that there are no words at all until I decide that there should be - like right now, as I'm composing this comment. Like you, I also read very fast.
This is also how I experience mental imagery. I know what an apple looks like. I can describe an apple. I can draw an apple. I can imagine that this apple has a blemish on one side, I can imagine it's a variety with blushed skin, that the texture of its skin is coarser than a red delicious and not as shiny. I understand how these different textures affect highlights and shadows as they fall on the apple, and I can imagine different sorts of lighting. I can imagine this apple with a lot of specificity. But this is not the same as 'seeing' it in my mind. It's just that I have the knowledge that these are traits apples can have.
Or to put it another way, you could show me a photo of an apple with the same traits as those I'd imagined and I would be all, "sure, yeah, that could be the apple" even though there are many different ways such an apple could look.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:55 PM on March 25 [5 favorites]
I’m an extreme visualizer but this article very nearly describes my experience of the “inner ear” when it comes to music. I am barely able to summon more than the occasional scrap of music to mind, though I have concepts of the “shape” of it even if I can’t “hear” it. I can’t hear more than a few notes here or there of even my most favorite songs. Mostly I can hear a few snatches of lyrics but it doesn’t usually have any of the backing instruments. It’s worse of course with instrumental only music. Blue Danube, for example, I can recognize instantly and can “visualize” what it sounds like, but I can’t actually hear any of the notes unless I’ve listened to it very recently. But I do have an idea of what it sounds like, I’m just… not experiencing it as sound at all.
I remember a lot of songs by album cover or video clips which is terribly frustrating to search, let me tell you.
I also have little internal monologue, but I can remember and summon people’s voices fairly well.
posted by brook horse at 6:58 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
I remember a lot of songs by album cover or video clips which is terribly frustrating to search, let me tell you.
I also have little internal monologue, but I can remember and summon people’s voices fairly well.
posted by brook horse at 6:58 PM on March 25 [3 favorites]
I think it's bizarre that the experimenters were trying to get people to project their visualizations on a "blank" white space. If I'm looking at the blank white space, that's what I'm seeing, complete with the white color and focus dot. I might see visual artifacts caused by that, but they are more like the kind of hallucinations that certain optical illusions can cause. Meanwhile, the actual visualizations take place in my mind, and are nothing like hallucinations. They are more like memories, though they don't necessarily have to be something I remember.
posted by surlyben at 7:39 PM on March 25 [4 favorites]
posted by surlyben at 7:39 PM on March 25 [4 favorites]
Yeah, the idea that the expectation was for the image to be projected onto the blank white space seemed weird to me too. I'm thinking now that that was probably not the actual expectation, just what the author imagined would happen if someone without aphantasia was being tested. He was trying to see something on the white space using his eyes and assuming there were people who could actually achieve that.
The experimenters probably just presented the white space as a way of constraining and standardizing what was imagined. If you're looking directly at a square of a specific size and told to picture an X that fills most of that space, your imagined X is going to be pretty much the same as anyone else's given those same instructions. If you're just told to close your eyes and picture an X, it could vary a lot in size or in how close or far away it seems to be.
I think the author just has a misconception about what it's like to experience mental imagery. I don't think there are people who would really see a shape projected onto the white space in a way that felt like seeing with their eyes. Are there?
posted by Redstart at 10:07 PM on March 25 [5 favorites]
The experimenters probably just presented the white space as a way of constraining and standardizing what was imagined. If you're looking directly at a square of a specific size and told to picture an X that fills most of that space, your imagined X is going to be pretty much the same as anyone else's given those same instructions. If you're just told to close your eyes and picture an X, it could vary a lot in size or in how close or far away it seems to be.
I think the author just has a misconception about what it's like to experience mental imagery. I don't think there are people who would really see a shape projected onto the white space in a way that felt like seeing with their eyes. Are there?
posted by Redstart at 10:07 PM on March 25 [5 favorites]
Someone who can do it, comment here! Can you seriously do it??
With perfect clarity, at all times, and vividly, 4K crisp. It's not superimposed on my vision or anything... it's more like there is a higher-order virtual camera behind my eyes, and I sort of turn that camera away from my eyes-as-portals so that the focus is now on the nondescript room inside my head with the perfect apple hanging there, floating at the center.
And my eyes are still seeing, and if I force it I can kind of divide my attention between the two with difficulty - both seeing through my eyes and maintaining the apple at lower fidelity - but it's pretty clear that my visual cortex doesn't enjoy being evenly split between optic nerve processing and visual imagination.
Also
The details of this perfect, 4K apple are perpetually swimming, like an apple-themed kaleidoscope (unlike that link - which has generated images from a civit.ai workflow - the form remains constant but the details on its surface continue to perpetually shift). They just... don't hold still, and in my opinion this is why after thousands of hours of attempting to learn how to draw I simply cannot - it's like trying to pop that last air bubble under your phone's screen protector. The details are just always sliding out from under me. It's beyond frustrating - almost torturous - to be able to visualize with such intense perfection and yet never get it out.
And I think this is why, in part, I tend to be a bit defensive about diffusion models (generative imaging "AI") in machine learning threads: that's exactly how my visual imagination works. Infinite, slightly deviating permutations on a rigidly fixed theme. It's also why I readily admit that when I want to make art for myself I'm splitting my time 50/50 between Flux-Dev and Photoshop (about 30 hours of each for a "finished" image): I use Flux-Dev to accrue a large variety of "close enoughs", refined by img2img (using a source image as a starting point to produce a very, very similar image), and then take the final set of "very close" into Photoshop and work them into what's been in my mind's eye the whole time: generative imaging allows me to get a "fixed" rendering to work with - close enough to bridge the gap with a lot of sweat and good old fashioned image manipulation - and without it I'm completely helpless to make what's in my head because what's in my head is forever sliding out from under my fingers.
posted by Ryvar at 11:03 PM on March 25 [10 favorites]
With perfect clarity, at all times, and vividly, 4K crisp. It's not superimposed on my vision or anything... it's more like there is a higher-order virtual camera behind my eyes, and I sort of turn that camera away from my eyes-as-portals so that the focus is now on the nondescript room inside my head with the perfect apple hanging there, floating at the center.
And my eyes are still seeing, and if I force it I can kind of divide my attention between the two with difficulty - both seeing through my eyes and maintaining the apple at lower fidelity - but it's pretty clear that my visual cortex doesn't enjoy being evenly split between optic nerve processing and visual imagination.
Also
The details of this perfect, 4K apple are perpetually swimming, like an apple-themed kaleidoscope (unlike that link - which has generated images from a civit.ai workflow - the form remains constant but the details on its surface continue to perpetually shift). They just... don't hold still, and in my opinion this is why after thousands of hours of attempting to learn how to draw I simply cannot - it's like trying to pop that last air bubble under your phone's screen protector. The details are just always sliding out from under me. It's beyond frustrating - almost torturous - to be able to visualize with such intense perfection and yet never get it out.
And I think this is why, in part, I tend to be a bit defensive about diffusion models (generative imaging "AI") in machine learning threads: that's exactly how my visual imagination works. Infinite, slightly deviating permutations on a rigidly fixed theme. It's also why I readily admit that when I want to make art for myself I'm splitting my time 50/50 between Flux-Dev and Photoshop (about 30 hours of each for a "finished" image): I use Flux-Dev to accrue a large variety of "close enoughs", refined by img2img (using a source image as a starting point to produce a very, very similar image), and then take the final set of "very close" into Photoshop and work them into what's been in my mind's eye the whole time: generative imaging allows me to get a "fixed" rendering to work with - close enough to bridge the gap with a lot of sweat and good old fashioned image manipulation - and without it I'm completely helpless to make what's in my head because what's in my head is forever sliding out from under my fingers.
posted by Ryvar at 11:03 PM on March 25 [10 favorites]
Oh: and inner monologue = yes. Relatedly, I don't have to hear a voice in my head when I read - it's sort of the equivalent of reading out loud, something I (unfairly) associate with being a beginning reader. So I flip it on when I'm reading slowly for pleasure, and off when I'm reading quickly and intently for a specific purpose (eg long work emails, or editing overlong Metafilter comments).
posted by Ryvar at 11:23 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]
posted by Ryvar at 11:23 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]
Thank you for sharing brook house. I am the opposite: basically no imagery, but extensive of the sound version, or as I like to call it, the brain radio. Notably, it goes on passively (as well as being actively called up) the same way I imagine a visualizing person would passively daydream in a visual way. In the same way a person who visualizes can probably use that capacity creatively or to remember things, I could use the audio hearing version to remember and write out a song I knew well a long time ago, for example. I kind of wish I had more of the visual side, though. I also have a lot of imagined conversations with self and others.
This also resonates: the brain’s system for tracking objects in space picks up some of the slack. I know where things are supposed to be. If I want to draw a shape, I don't picture it, but I know where each part should be. If I imagine rotating a shape, I don't see it, but I know where it and all of its parts are, and could then draw it.
posted by lookoutbelow at 12:04 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
This also resonates: the brain’s system for tracking objects in space picks up some of the slack. I know where things are supposed to be. If I want to draw a shape, I don't picture it, but I know where each part should be. If I imagine rotating a shape, I don't see it, but I know where it and all of its parts are, and could then draw it.
posted by lookoutbelow at 12:04 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
My 'visualisation' isn't as vivid or clear as Ryvar's - it's tenuous, often flickery - but the description of the 'virtual camera' is exactly the sensation I was struggling to put into words.
As for audio, I can imagine (audialise?) sound with life-like fidelity, create novel sounds, and have an inner monologue that, though it's not constant, can distract me from things I'm trying to do outside of my head. The sounds seem like they're inside my head, but they don't have the same sense of directionality that real sounds have (even the 'voice in the head' quality of headphones)
Strangely, I only really thought about other senses - the mind's nose, or... skin? - and I can't seem to summon phantasmal impressions of those senses at all.
posted by entity447b at 1:06 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
As for audio, I can imagine (audialise?) sound with life-like fidelity, create novel sounds, and have an inner monologue that, though it's not constant, can distract me from things I'm trying to do outside of my head. The sounds seem like they're inside my head, but they don't have the same sense of directionality that real sounds have (even the 'voice in the head' quality of headphones)
Strangely, I only really thought about other senses - the mind's nose, or... skin? - and I can't seem to summon phantasmal impressions of those senses at all.
posted by entity447b at 1:06 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
So interesting: I learned in the last year that my 30-some daughter is fantastic aphantasic, whereas I am full metal imagineer. It's led to some interesting talk. otoh I don't think I have an inner monologue = self-talk. Are these two variants independent of each other or is there disproportionate overlap?
I ask because years ago we used to run taste-test 'experiments' as something to engage summer interns. It turned out that there were [tiny sample!] fuzzy but statist. significant associations: kids who could/not taste PTC were more likely to detect/not thiourea or cilantro-aldehydes. I forget the details.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:36 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I ask because years ago we used to run taste-test 'experiments' as something to engage summer interns. It turned out that there were [tiny sample!] fuzzy but statist. significant associations: kids who could/not taste PTC were more likely to detect/not thiourea or cilantro-aldehydes. I forget the details.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:36 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I still don't know 100% if I'm aphantasic, because I don't know if the way I "see" things in my mind (a jumble of characteristics, like a Picasso painting) is the way that other people "see" things in their mind. I think that I "see" things pretty vividly, but I don't experience it as a coherent picture that I could "print out" from inside my head.
I suspect that I may be somewhere on the spectrum, based on other people's descriptions of their own experiences here -- and also because I first learned about aphantasia from Yoon Ha Lee, a science fiction writer who is aphantasic, and writes the only space battle scenes that I enjoy, because they don't rely on an understanding of the spatial layout of the combatants (the context in which he has discussed his own aphantasia).
I don't in general have any trouble with geometry or spatial reasoning or imagining what real things are going to look like, but I have always hated being given relative directions and have relied on maps all my life (OTOH I started driving, and therefore stopped treating a car journey as a magical teleportation device, only in my 30s, so I can't swear that this is intrinsic brain chemistry and not lack of practice).
(Oh, and FWIW I talk to myself all the time when I'm alone.)
posted by confluency at 3:05 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I suspect that I may be somewhere on the spectrum, based on other people's descriptions of their own experiences here -- and also because I first learned about aphantasia from Yoon Ha Lee, a science fiction writer who is aphantasic, and writes the only space battle scenes that I enjoy, because they don't rely on an understanding of the spatial layout of the combatants (the context in which he has discussed his own aphantasia).
I don't in general have any trouble with geometry or spatial reasoning or imagining what real things are going to look like, but I have always hated being given relative directions and have relied on maps all my life (OTOH I started driving, and therefore stopped treating a car journey as a magical teleportation device, only in my 30s, so I can't swear that this is intrinsic brain chemistry and not lack of practice).
(Oh, and FWIW I talk to myself all the time when I'm alone.)
posted by confluency at 3:05 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
It's very interesting to read all your experiences!
Since people were noting it as strange, the purpose of staring at the white visual field with the focus dot on it is to try and keep your eyeballs still. If you're moving your eyes about, that's just going to result in more fMRI noise that makes it harder to train the mind reader-- uh, neural network.
I have vivid mental images (betimes I have talked to therapists about intrusive ones) but found it hard to project the simple shapes onto that white background. However, I suspect that like the author experienced, after practicing it a bit, you could reliably do it the same way every time. Would it be the same as what happens when you're just randomly visualizing and apple because someone described one? Probably not, but that's science for you. When you're trying to do something impossible like know what someone else's internal experience actually is, you probably have to just make do.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 4:35 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]
Since people were noting it as strange, the purpose of staring at the white visual field with the focus dot on it is to try and keep your eyeballs still. If you're moving your eyes about, that's just going to result in more fMRI noise that makes it harder to train the mind reader-- uh, neural network.
I have vivid mental images (betimes I have talked to therapists about intrusive ones) but found it hard to project the simple shapes onto that white background. However, I suspect that like the author experienced, after practicing it a bit, you could reliably do it the same way every time. Would it be the same as what happens when you're just randomly visualizing and apple because someone described one? Probably not, but that's science for you. When you're trying to do something impossible like know what someone else's internal experience actually is, you probably have to just make do.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 4:35 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]
What weirds me out is when neurotypical people ask how I remember what things look like. Do they actually have to, for example, visualize the Statue of Liberty before they remember it's green? I remember how things look by remembering how they look, I don't need to see pictures in my head for that.
I (intermittently able to visualize things, extremely vivid dreams with narrative) don't have to visualize the Statue of Liberty to realize that it's green - it's that when someone says "what color is the statue of liberty", the concept of green and a vague picture of the statue arise in my mind at the same time. The more rushed I am, the vaguer the image, but the image and the word "green" arise at the same time.
In fact, I think most answers to questions have a visual component - if someone says "what's 2 + 2?" my brain visualizes the numbers on a sheet (a worksheet from when I was a little kid, FTR). It's not that I don't know the answer - I'm not calculating - it's just that there is an image. And indeed, if you asked me "What's 423 + 123", I would calculate, and it would be by picturing the numbers in my head and adding them.
What's the capitol of France? I visualize a map with Paris as a dot, somehow with a faint overlay of the Eiffel Towe and some grey 18th century architecture and the Seine. If it's a place I have almost no mental images for, I mostly just get a vague image of a map - the less I know exactly where a place is, the vaguer the map.
posted by Frowner at 6:40 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]
I (intermittently able to visualize things, extremely vivid dreams with narrative) don't have to visualize the Statue of Liberty to realize that it's green - it's that when someone says "what color is the statue of liberty", the concept of green and a vague picture of the statue arise in my mind at the same time. The more rushed I am, the vaguer the image, but the image and the word "green" arise at the same time.
In fact, I think most answers to questions have a visual component - if someone says "what's 2 + 2?" my brain visualizes the numbers on a sheet (a worksheet from when I was a little kid, FTR). It's not that I don't know the answer - I'm not calculating - it's just that there is an image. And indeed, if you asked me "What's 423 + 123", I would calculate, and it would be by picturing the numbers in my head and adding them.
What's the capitol of France? I visualize a map with Paris as a dot, somehow with a faint overlay of the Eiffel Towe and some grey 18th century architecture and the Seine. If it's a place I have almost no mental images for, I mostly just get a vague image of a map - the less I know exactly where a place is, the vaguer the map.
posted by Frowner at 6:40 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]
One theory about aphantasia is that the brain’s system for tracking objects in space picks up some of the slack, so that aphantasiacs are able to use that system to imagine an object’s existence in a particular location, but because the visual system isn’t strongly involved, it presents as something like a shadow or echo that fills a certain space. This seems to match quite well with the experience of the author, and with my own. I can effortlessly move an object around a mental canvas, it’s just that the object and the canvas don’t look like anything.To make explicit something this comment touches on, visual processing in the brain starts out with textural details in the occipital lobe; those signals go on to the temporal lobe for identifying objects (the "what" stream) and- separately- the parietal lobe for locating them in space (the "where" stream).
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 7:05 AM on March 26
Since this conversation is on my mind, I just came to a realization at work: like, if I look at a number and need to switch tabs to transcribe it some other place -- I remember it much better if I don't try to remember the number itself. If instead I imagine what it looked like on the screen, I remember it better.
The Statue of Liberty thing: if you ask me what color it is, the word "green" is retrieved from a space where I'm not remembering that it looks green, but that it's the characteristic that applies, more like I'm reading a list of words. (Actually, my brain comes up with " the color 'verdigris' due to natural oxidation of copper".) Like, if I try to remember how tall it is my brain retrieves the words "300 feet or something", visualizing the statue doesn't help there.
If you asked me which arm was upraised and holding the torch, I'm remembering what statue looks like and mentally turning it around to face the same direction as me to come up with her right hand as the torch-holder.
If you asked me whether she is barefoot or has sandals, my memory is imaging the feet and coming up with "sandals" -- I don't know if that's right, that's just what my mental image of the statue is showing me, I see mottled verdigris toes with toenails but with a slab under them and a strap over them, sticking out from underneath the toga.
(Edit: I looked up the feet and they don't match what was in my head but it was close)
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:31 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
The Statue of Liberty thing: if you ask me what color it is, the word "green" is retrieved from a space where I'm not remembering that it looks green, but that it's the characteristic that applies, more like I'm reading a list of words. (Actually, my brain comes up with " the color 'verdigris' due to natural oxidation of copper".) Like, if I try to remember how tall it is my brain retrieves the words "300 feet or something", visualizing the statue doesn't help there.
If you asked me which arm was upraised and holding the torch, I'm remembering what statue looks like and mentally turning it around to face the same direction as me to come up with her right hand as the torch-holder.
If you asked me whether she is barefoot or has sandals, my memory is imaging the feet and coming up with "sandals" -- I don't know if that's right, that's just what my mental image of the statue is showing me, I see mottled verdigris toes with toenails but with a slab under them and a strap over them, sticking out from underneath the toga.
(Edit: I looked up the feet and they don't match what was in my head but it was close)
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:31 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
if I look at a number and need to switch tabs to transcribe it some other place -- I remember it much better if I don't try to remember the number itself. If instead I imagine what it looked like on the screen, I remember it better.
I say it out loud before switching, then remember what it sounded like.
posted by signal at 8:17 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
I say it out loud before switching, then remember what it sounded like.
posted by signal at 8:17 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
I always have a song in my head. Always. Literally always. I don't have an inner monologue but I do hear words as I read/type them, and I read really really really fast. I can also put an accent to words I read but the default is my own accent. If I do try to match the accent to the words (say I'm reading a book about an Irish person), my reading speed slows down.
Right this moment I have the song "Moon River" in my head, for reasons I do not know. I can change the song if I want to, at will. I regularly play "Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik" in my mind when I'm having trouble falling asleep. And now "Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik" is in my head.
posted by cooker girl at 8:32 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]
Right this moment I have the song "Moon River" in my head, for reasons I do not know. I can change the song if I want to, at will. I regularly play "Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik" in my mind when I'm having trouble falling asleep. And now "Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik" is in my head.
posted by cooker girl at 8:32 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]
My secret theory is that this is perfectly normal and what everybody does and that people who claim to have sharp vivid mental images that hold still are actually lying about it--or, more charitably, actively misinterpreting their experience, the way people will tell you about their narratively-consistent dreams that have plots and such.
Obviously you (deliberately) link to an article that shows the exact opposite, but here's how I know that my visual images are a "real thing".
I can hear fairly well in my head. I have a good inner eye. But I can't smell or taste and would never claim to. If I imagine eating a steak, I can see it (it's good. It's a T-bone on a plate, steaming very slightly), but I can't taste it.
That's what makes me think my inner eye is "real", because I very obviously lack other senses.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 8:44 AM on March 26
Obviously you (deliberately) link to an article that shows the exact opposite, but here's how I know that my visual images are a "real thing".
I can hear fairly well in my head. I have a good inner eye. But I can't smell or taste and would never claim to. If I imagine eating a steak, I can see it (it's good. It's a T-bone on a plate, steaming very slightly), but I can't taste it.
That's what makes me think my inner eye is "real", because I very obviously lack other senses.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 8:44 AM on March 26
Some of you can do mathematical calculations in your heads by using your visual systems???! Woah.
Anything to do with numbers, I have to chant them in my head or they get 'lost'. Like those dual-authentication codes? They drive me mad. I think I rely a lot on auditory memory. Or is that speech memory? I can only remember the colour of someone's eyes - even my closest friends - if I've stated to myself "Mary's eyes are blue". It doesn't have to be a full sentence like that, but it has to be 'logged' as speech.
posted by kitcat at 8:49 AM on March 26
Anything to do with numbers, I have to chant them in my head or they get 'lost'. Like those dual-authentication codes? They drive me mad. I think I rely a lot on auditory memory. Or is that speech memory? I can only remember the colour of someone's eyes - even my closest friends - if I've stated to myself "Mary's eyes are blue". It doesn't have to be a full sentence like that, but it has to be 'logged' as speech.
posted by kitcat at 8:49 AM on March 26
Since I first learned about aphantasia about 3 years ago, I've been practicing. I want to know if seeing images in your mind is a skill you can learn. So far the answer is - to an extremely small extent. The thing I can visualize the most easily is the piano keys from C to G even though I haven't played the piano hardly at all since I was 12 (but we do have a piano and I help my kids with their lessons). Picturing a written word is also easier, but not easy. I'm working on picturing my garden so I can enjoy it in the winter.
I do sense that having a visual memory makes life significantly easier. If you can hold an image in your mind while thinking at the same time...I imagine executive functioning is easier?
Anyhow I love this topic. It's astonishing to me that we walk around believing that we are having the same experiences as other people when we're not, and the words we use to describe our experiences aren't sufficient or else we wouldn't just be learning about these differences now. In some ways, we've just been talking past one another.
posted by kitcat at 9:16 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I do sense that having a visual memory makes life significantly easier. If you can hold an image in your mind while thinking at the same time...I imagine executive functioning is easier?
Anyhow I love this topic. It's astonishing to me that we walk around believing that we are having the same experiences as other people when we're not, and the words we use to describe our experiences aren't sufficient or else we wouldn't just be learning about these differences now. In some ways, we've just been talking past one another.
posted by kitcat at 9:16 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
@brook horse I’m an extreme visualizer but this article very nearly describes my experience of the “inner ear” when it comes to music.
Yes me too. It's so extreme in both directions that I've always wondered if my ability to remember and/or imagine sound was sacrificed to boost my visual imagination/memory.
posted by Rhedyn at 9:42 AM on March 26
Yes me too. It's so extreme in both directions that I've always wondered if my ability to remember and/or imagine sound was sacrificed to boost my visual imagination/memory.
posted by Rhedyn at 9:42 AM on March 26
I have the form of aphantasia presented in the original article. It’s nice to have found it written down. Working theory is that my visual system is a hallucination-resistant variant. My dreams are as vivid as when I’m awake in mental state and “I’m perceiving this” terms but soundless (which makes sense since my hearing snaps me out of sleep for threat noises). I recognize the ghostly attention pools the author describes and currently operate from the position that visualizing has three components:
1) Brain decides to ‘expect’ to see something, and so it overlays the ‘expectation’ pattern onto the retina signals
2) Visual cortex sees expectation pattern with ghostly-visualization tags and performs the usual memory lookup with the ghost pattern verbatim/unprocessed
3) Memory lookup returns object that produces that pattern and melds it into continuous visual field processing
My brain instead just presents the ghostly attention artifacts as-is and doesn’t loop them through recall-enhancement at step 2. I’m also hyperaware of visual subliminal messaging and can see single frame inserts at 120Hz (haven’t tested higher due to limited technology).
Would be interested to know if, for the people with visualization ability, if trying to visualize an apple or whatever between you and a large display is easier/harder/unchanged when the display is showing something non-static at 24Hz/60Hz/120Hz/240Hz.
posted by Callisto Prime at 9:46 AM on March 26
1) Brain decides to ‘expect’ to see something, and so it overlays the ‘expectation’ pattern onto the retina signals
2) Visual cortex sees expectation pattern with ghostly-visualization tags and performs the usual memory lookup with the ghost pattern verbatim/unprocessed
3) Memory lookup returns object that produces that pattern and melds it into continuous visual field processing
My brain instead just presents the ghostly attention artifacts as-is and doesn’t loop them through recall-enhancement at step 2. I’m also hyperaware of visual subliminal messaging and can see single frame inserts at 120Hz (haven’t tested higher due to limited technology).
Would be interested to know if, for the people with visualization ability, if trying to visualize an apple or whatever between you and a large display is easier/harder/unchanged when the display is showing something non-static at 24Hz/60Hz/120Hz/240Hz.
posted by Callisto Prime at 9:46 AM on March 26
I have some visualization ability and am currently making dinner, so the closest thing to visual static I had available was a sizzling pan. I found that it did make visualizing more difficult, possibly due to the gleam rapidly shifting from bubble to bubble as they pop.
posted by demi-octopus at 10:20 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
posted by demi-octopus at 10:20 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
Some of you can do mathematical calculations in your heads by using your visual systems???! Woah.
A very dense mixture of calculation by visualization, hardcoded lookup tables (I was ruthlessly drilled on flashcards for integer math for a half hour daily from ages 4-6 and any operation from 0 to 12 requires zero thought: the answer is there literally simultaneous with seeing the operands), and a slew of heuristics over the years along the lines of “halve and add a zero for 5x multiplies” / “drop the three to multiply by sixty then add it back at the end” shortcuts.
Ironically I dropped out of college shortly after barely passing Calc 2, but I work with complex 3 dimensional and sometimes 4 dimensional spatial transforms and matrix math nearly every day. Because it’s runtime rendering for games nearly all my math is intensely visually-correlated in any case. Usually there’s an object in the Unreal material editor I can see the math operating upon as I work, so a tight feedback loop of values|operation -> impact on mesh/material is continually reinforced and a sort of “applied visual math” language emerges. Technical artists / graphics programmers working in teams for extended periods usually develop a sort of pidgin of their cumulative internal language <> English mappings.
posted by Ryvar at 11:04 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
A very dense mixture of calculation by visualization, hardcoded lookup tables (I was ruthlessly drilled on flashcards for integer math for a half hour daily from ages 4-6 and any operation from 0 to 12 requires zero thought: the answer is there literally simultaneous with seeing the operands), and a slew of heuristics over the years along the lines of “halve and add a zero for 5x multiplies” / “drop the three to multiply by sixty then add it back at the end” shortcuts.
Ironically I dropped out of college shortly after barely passing Calc 2, but I work with complex 3 dimensional and sometimes 4 dimensional spatial transforms and matrix math nearly every day. Because it’s runtime rendering for games nearly all my math is intensely visually-correlated in any case. Usually there’s an object in the Unreal material editor I can see the math operating upon as I work, so a tight feedback loop of values|operation -> impact on mesh/material is continually reinforced and a sort of “applied visual math” language emerges. Technical artists / graphics programmers working in teams for extended periods usually develop a sort of pidgin of their cumulative internal language <> English mappings.
posted by Ryvar at 11:04 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]
Oh I meant “dynamic not static” but honestly that’s a great test. Thank you!
posted by Callisto Prime at 11:22 AM on March 26
posted by Callisto Prime at 11:22 AM on March 26
Also confirming that having that ipivmorph gif (my first link in my first comment) onscreen at 144Hz while visualizing “An apple” doesn’t lower the glorious glossy-marketing-brochure fidelity of the apple, but it… chugs? Not exactly flickers more like lag or framerate hitching in a videogame. It gets worse the less I fixate on the internal room with apple. Separately, the number of tiny details I parse in the morph gif drops drastically when I begin visualizing, rebounds slightly and levels out at a much lower value than if I wasn’t visualizing the apple. Parsing dropouts seem to be weighted by feature significance as you’d expect (the tiny humans briefly in the house being the exception: primate cognitive bias is definitely present).
posted by Ryvar at 11:32 AM on March 26
posted by Ryvar at 11:32 AM on March 26
I do wonder how neurotypical people ever get bored though, if they have what sounds like a full VR rig built into their skulls. Like, if you're bored don't you just imagine a cow and rotate it around for fun? Or whatever?
Literally yes? I can just sit doing nothing in a room for hours visualizing how I would change out the paint, the furniture, what I might add or rearrange, or more likely what I would do with a better room in a better apartment lol. The only time I'm actually bored is when I have to do my job, because 1. it's very boring and 2. it nonetheless requires too much attention for me to think other thoughts.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:33 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
Literally yes? I can just sit doing nothing in a room for hours visualizing how I would change out the paint, the furniture, what I might add or rearrange, or more likely what I would do with a better room in a better apartment lol. The only time I'm actually bored is when I have to do my job, because 1. it's very boring and 2. it nonetheless requires too much attention for me to think other thoughts.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:33 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
Someone who can do it, comment here! Can you seriously do it??
It's how I learn names. When I meet someone I construct a 3D model of their face and rotate it up and down, left and right, while repeating their name. If I meet you and seem distracted it might be beause I'm rotating you.
I always have a song in my head
I never wear headphones while jogging. Steep uphill? MORTAL COMBAT!
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:51 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
It's how I learn names. When I meet someone I construct a 3D model of their face and rotate it up and down, left and right, while repeating their name. If I meet you and seem distracted it might be beause I'm rotating you.
I always have a song in my head
I never wear headphones while jogging. Steep uphill? MORTAL COMBAT!
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:51 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]
If I meet you and seem distracted it might be beause I'm rotating you.
Obligatory
posted by Ryvar at 11:59 AM on March 26
Obligatory
posted by Ryvar at 11:59 AM on March 26
I'm terrible at learning names. I don't know if there's a term for it, but back when I was a professor, it took me 2 or 3 semesters to learn the name of my own TA, that's how bad it is.
posted by signal at 12:00 PM on March 26
posted by signal at 12:00 PM on March 26
I have Aphantasia, so when I try to visualize stuff I see nothing. My brain doesn't work in visuals. If you ask me to visualize a square and are expecting me to do it, it's no different than asking me to dunk a basketball. it's not going to happen.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:02 PM on March 26
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:02 PM on March 26
I draw animation storyboards for a living and my visualization process is not much different than described in the article. I’m trying to depict series of events from an imagined point of view. A “pictured” image would hinge on too many weighted decisions that have yet to be fleshed out. I have to get into the skin of the characters, imagining their gestures, their locations in a room, sometimes the focal length of the virtual camera and the physics of the activity, maybe wind or a rocking deck….and make it funny. These things are too complicated to reason out all at once, so I start with a very blobby idea of where things might sit within each frame and whittle away at things from there, deleting, adding and refining as I work back and forth through the timeline.
I’m excited about (and terrified of) this sort of research. I’ve always thought that someday there’ll be a breakthrough on par with the development of telescope astronomy - shattering old ideas and opening new frontiers in our understanding of the universe/ourselves.
posted by brachiopod at 12:35 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I’m excited about (and terrified of) this sort of research. I’ve always thought that someday there’ll be a breakthrough on par with the development of telescope astronomy - shattering old ideas and opening new frontiers in our understanding of the universe/ourselves.
posted by brachiopod at 12:35 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I'm terrible at learning names. I don't know if there's a term for it
From reading the dyslexia subreddit a lot lately (my child was just diagnosed), this seems to be common amongst dyslexic folks. Maybe connected to struggles with rote memorization. It's some sort of neurodivergence, in any case.
posted by kitcat at 12:49 PM on March 26
From reading the dyslexia subreddit a lot lately (my child was just diagnosed), this seems to be common amongst dyslexic folks. Maybe connected to struggles with rote memorization. It's some sort of neurodivergence, in any case.
posted by kitcat at 12:49 PM on March 26
I found these comments really interesting:
What happens if someone asks you how the colors of iceberg lettuce, spinach, cilantro, green bell peppers and limes (outsides and insides) all compare to each other? Are you able to do more than just say, "They're all green?" Can you bring to mind the specific shades of green? I can easily picture all those different shades of green. Color is one of the easiest things for me to imagine. I'm not sure I can say I'm actually mentally seeing the color, but I have a strong sense of what it is. I guess you could call it "the concept of spinach green" or "the concept of lime green," but it's not a language-based concept, it's an experience that feels like the experience of seeing the color.
posted by Redstart at 12:53 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]
when someone says "what color is the statue of liberty", the concept of green and a vague picture of the statue arise in my mind at the same timeThe first one could be describing what happens in my mind or something very different, depending on what "the concept of green" means, but the second one sounds completely different from my experience.
if you ask me what color it is, the word "green" is retrieved from a space where I'm not remembering that it looks green, but that it's the characteristic that applies
What happens if someone asks you how the colors of iceberg lettuce, spinach, cilantro, green bell peppers and limes (outsides and insides) all compare to each other? Are you able to do more than just say, "They're all green?" Can you bring to mind the specific shades of green? I can easily picture all those different shades of green. Color is one of the easiest things for me to imagine. I'm not sure I can say I'm actually mentally seeing the color, but I have a strong sense of what it is. I guess you could call it "the concept of spinach green" or "the concept of lime green," but it's not a language-based concept, it's an experience that feels like the experience of seeing the color.
posted by Redstart at 12:53 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]
If I want to remember a number, saying it to myself is definitely the best way to do that. The only way, really. I don't think it would be possible for me to think of a number and try to picture it visually without saying it to myself. When I say it, I automatically also picture it (in the vague way I picture things, more of a sense of it than an actual image.) But the spoken words stick in my head better than the image.
I experimented with trying to do math visually in my head, and it's sort of possible, but slower than the alternative. If I want to add 34 + 76, I just let the concept of those two numbers float in my head in a semi-visual but mostly just conceptual way, while saying "34" and "76" to myself, and it takes only a second to recognize that 30 + 70 = 100 and 4 + 6 = 10, so it's 110. If I wanted to do it visually, I'd have to construct an image of an addition problem by saying the numbers and making myself picture the 34 lined up above the 76 with a line under them. But it's not like that whole image just remains stable there in my head for me to refer to like a poster. I have to constantly reconstruct it as I contemplate the different parts of it. I first focus on the ones column, reminding myself that it's a 4 over a 6 and revisualizing those numbers. That's 10, so I imagine myself writing a zero under the horizontal line beneath the two numbers and carrying the one. While doing that, I've lost all sense of the tens column, so now I need to reconstruct that by saying the numbers to myself again and making myself picture the 3 over the 7, with the 1 I carried. That adds up to 11, so I imagine writing 11 and then have to remember the 0 from the ones column and picture that next to the 11, so it's 110. Not a speedy process.
posted by Redstart at 1:17 PM on March 26
I experimented with trying to do math visually in my head, and it's sort of possible, but slower than the alternative. If I want to add 34 + 76, I just let the concept of those two numbers float in my head in a semi-visual but mostly just conceptual way, while saying "34" and "76" to myself, and it takes only a second to recognize that 30 + 70 = 100 and 4 + 6 = 10, so it's 110. If I wanted to do it visually, I'd have to construct an image of an addition problem by saying the numbers and making myself picture the 34 lined up above the 76 with a line under them. But it's not like that whole image just remains stable there in my head for me to refer to like a poster. I have to constantly reconstruct it as I contemplate the different parts of it. I first focus on the ones column, reminding myself that it's a 4 over a 6 and revisualizing those numbers. That's 10, so I imagine myself writing a zero under the horizontal line beneath the two numbers and carrying the one. While doing that, I've lost all sense of the tens column, so now I need to reconstruct that by saying the numbers to myself again and making myself picture the 3 over the 7, with the 1 I carried. That adds up to 11, so I imagine writing 11 and then have to remember the 0 from the ones column and picture that next to the 11, so it's 110. Not a speedy process.
posted by Redstart at 1:17 PM on March 26
(This is hardly important, but by 'visual static' I meant 'static, that is, visual noise'. I was reading too fast and misinterpreted Callisto Prime's question of 'what if there's a screen in the background while you're trying to visualize' as 'what if there's a tv displaying static / "snow"'.)
(And I never realized "static" was such an ambiguous word - I kind of love that.)
posted by demi-octopus at 2:04 PM on March 26
(And I never realized "static" was such an ambiguous word - I kind of love that.)
posted by demi-octopus at 2:04 PM on March 26
I do wonder how neurotypical people ever get bored though, if they have what sounds like a full VR rig built into their skulls. Like, if you're bored don't you just imagine a cow and rotate it around for fun? Or whatever?
High visualizing ability is much more common in autistic folks than neurotypical (so is aphantasia—both extremes). Most neurotypical don’t have this level of visualizing ability.
As someone who is an extreme visualizer, I have never in my life been bored except when being forced to focus on something else other than what I want to. Left to my own devices I do simply visualize things. I’ve never understood the concept of “having nothing to do” though. I spend a lot of time daydreaming and visualizing full video stories in my head.
posted by brook horse at 2:29 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]
High visualizing ability is much more common in autistic folks than neurotypical (so is aphantasia—both extremes). Most neurotypical don’t have this level of visualizing ability.
As someone who is an extreme visualizer, I have never in my life been bored except when being forced to focus on something else other than what I want to. Left to my own devices I do simply visualize things. I’ve never understood the concept of “having nothing to do” though. I spend a lot of time daydreaming and visualizing full video stories in my head.
posted by brook horse at 2:29 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]
I always have a song in my head. Always. Literally always.
I share this torture with you. What's worse, sometimes it's songs that only exist in my head. Sometimes, at a super low "volume" so I can't quite make it out.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 2:30 PM on March 26
I share this torture with you. What's worse, sometimes it's songs that only exist in my head. Sometimes, at a super low "volume" so I can't quite make it out.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 2:30 PM on March 26
I'm reminded of an acquaintance of mine who said "I just learned I have Aphantasia. When I close my eyes, I see darkness. But apparently some people see actual objects and worlds as if they're really there in front of them, as if they'd put on a virtual reality headset." Echoing a few other commenters in this thread, this seems to be the understanding that both the author and the experimenter have of what it means to "visualize".
I think this has been a really interesting thread where people are teasing out the subtle nuances of "what do YOU mean by 'seeing' in your mind?" It's a difficult thing to have a meaningful conversation about.
Back to my acquaintance, I think his self-diagnosis was based on assuming that when people say "I see an apple in my mind's eye", that they really are seeing a physical object projected in 3D space in front of them and that they might even try to pick it up if they didn't know any better -- and if they did try to pick it up, their hand would just pass miraculously through it. A person like this would, presumably, also have had a terrible time learning that everything in their visual field wasn't actually there. I'm not sure that's most or even many people (though I'm sure they exist).
All this to say that I think the way this conversation is unfolding in popular culture is creating so much confusion that this topic starts to become like a geeky form of "The Dress" -- we're all confused because we're all making on-the-fly assumptions about what some words that refer to sensory experience mean to the other person
posted by treepour at 5:54 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]
I think this has been a really interesting thread where people are teasing out the subtle nuances of "what do YOU mean by 'seeing' in your mind?" It's a difficult thing to have a meaningful conversation about.
Back to my acquaintance, I think his self-diagnosis was based on assuming that when people say "I see an apple in my mind's eye", that they really are seeing a physical object projected in 3D space in front of them and that they might even try to pick it up if they didn't know any better -- and if they did try to pick it up, their hand would just pass miraculously through it. A person like this would, presumably, also have had a terrible time learning that everything in their visual field wasn't actually there. I'm not sure that's most or even many people (though I'm sure they exist).
All this to say that I think the way this conversation is unfolding in popular culture is creating so much confusion that this topic starts to become like a geeky form of "The Dress" -- we're all confused because we're all making on-the-fly assumptions about what some words that refer to sensory experience mean to the other person
posted by treepour at 5:54 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]
I am also autistic and incapable of visualizing, yet I seem to have spatial, design, and building skills others do not have.
I've been trying to explain it via that absolutely fake Michelangelo anecdote about "the angel is already in the marble, I'm just letting it out." Some of those quotes add "I can see the angel already...", but I found it's the opposite. Looking at the stone's shape determines the plan, chipping and looking at the result is how I get the visualization out. It's with my body and my senses, not in my mind first.
You know, metaphorically. I actually do woodworking and organizing, usually based on mathematical constraints. Can't visualize, but I can metaphor all day.
posted by Snijglau at 7:40 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
I've been trying to explain it via that absolutely fake Michelangelo anecdote about "the angel is already in the marble, I'm just letting it out." Some of those quotes add "I can see the angel already...", but I found it's the opposite. Looking at the stone's shape determines the plan, chipping and looking at the result is how I get the visualization out. It's with my body and my senses, not in my mind first.
You know, metaphorically. I actually do woodworking and organizing, usually based on mathematical constraints. Can't visualize, but I can metaphor all day.
posted by Snijglau at 7:40 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]
When I was in university and coming to terms with the fact that I was (sort of?) aphantasic and that other people (apparently?) were not I spent some time interviewing people about their visualization skills and characteristics and one of the twenty or so who I interviewed confessed (eventually, with a great deal of hesitation) to me that she could visualize in-place, vividly enough to block her view of real objects that were behind what she was visualizing. I don't remember a lot else about her (she was a friend of a friend who'd heard I was interested in hearing about how people visualized) other than that she seemed very bright and was an excellent conversationalist. She did say that her ability sometimes caused her problems because she couldn't always keep track of what she'd really seen.
In any case, none of the people I interviewed had exactly the same understanding of what visualization is or how it worked for them. It really is a continuum.
posted by lastobelus at 3:42 PM on March 27 [1 favorite]
In any case, none of the people I interviewed had exactly the same understanding of what visualization is or how it worked for them. It really is a continuum.
posted by lastobelus at 3:42 PM on March 27 [1 favorite]
In my case, I know I'm using some sort of visualization to do a lot of what I can do but I just can't actually SEE the images (though sometimes, especially when I'm really tired, I see dim, blurry split-second flashes).
posted by lastobelus at 3:49 PM on March 27
posted by lastobelus at 3:49 PM on March 27
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