[pbhjpbhj]

You saying that has flipped me over the edge, I think perhaps I'm somewhat aphantasic too.

I can picture things to some extent, like I can imagine the Mona Lisa, but not really the full image, just more like a sense of the painting, with a myriad of elements of the painting floating like words in a word cloud. I can't see it in the setting of the Louvre really, indeed it's struck me all my mental imagery is basically black, like an edge detect effect - I can imagine a bit of white wall if I try, so perhaps I just need to practice.

I've been painting for some time, but always use imagery to paint from - so many times I've said something like "when you try to think of a rabbit you just can't remember what one looks like" and no one has ever said "can't you just picture it?"; but it strikes me that I can't.

I do have a relatively good ability to make up stories, and have always loved fiction books. My memories aren't really pictorial though; so I guess I can fantasise about being in a situation in the same way as I can recall being in one.

[albedoa]

> I can imagine the Mona Lisa, but not really the full image, just more like a sense of the painting

How do you think this compares to those who don't have aphantasia? How do they imagine the Mona Lisa?

[ikornaselur]

Honestly, it feels like everyone here has aphantasia. Learning about aphantasia some weeks ago made me think I had it, but I honestly think it's just people overestimating how you visualise things in your mind.

People make it sound like they are able to see the same with their eyes closed as they can see with their eyes open. Like, I obviously can't see things as well in my mind as with my real eyes, it's very very "hazy" and I can't really imagine any colours. If I imagine a street right now, not a real one, just try to make up one in my mind, I can kind of feel/sense the outlines of the street and that there are houses around, but I don't actually see anything.

Compared to how some people describe them imagining things in their mind it sounds like I'm severely lacking. But the more I read about this, the more I think people are overestimating what other people see in their mind based on what they write. I think most people that claim to have aphantasia don't, while of course I believe some people really do.

[pirogen]

I wasn't always aphantastic. I've already talked about it in another aphantasia thread here on HN, but when I was a child I was actually hyperphantastic: I would spend endless hours playing and directing vividly realistic (albeit silent) movies behind my closed eyelids. Sometimes (not always, but on a particularly good day), I was able to visualize things/creatures with my eyes open and have them interact with the real world.

If I wanted to see a rabbit, I didn't have to consciously recall facts about rabbit anatomy, behaviour and movement patterns like I would today (only to end up with most of them wrong); I just thought: "let there be rabbit" and with no effort at all there it was. Not a rabbit-like creature you would expect from a child's drawing, but an actual, realistic, anatomically correct rabbit hopping about the way rabbits do.

This ability started to gradually disappear around the time I went to school. I remember my frustration when I realized it was getting harder and harder to picture things and the quality of those pictures was getting lower and lower. Eventually I ended up not being able to visualize anything at all.

I've been wondering about this lost childhood superpower of mine for years, way before I even heard the term "aphantasia". When I say I'm aphantastic, I don't compare myself to some idea of how other people's minds work. I compare myself to what my own mind used to be capable of.

[Emma_Goldman]

'People make it sound like they are able to see the same with their eyes closed as they can see with their eyes open.'

It's a spectrum of vividness. At one extreme, a few per cent of people are classified as aphantasics. At the other extreme, people have a photo realistic mind's eye. Most people sit somewhere inbetween.

I don't think people are necessarily overestimating. Some people just imagine the world very clearly.

I would say that I can see objects in my mind with something close to photo realism. The only time that things become hazy is if I imagine the entire city in which I live. I fly round imagining every street and I can see familiar areas very clearly, but if I stop and examine a street I don't know so well, I can't remember which exact shop is where. But that seems to be a problem of memory, not visualisation.

[henrikschroder]

> and I can't really imagine any colours.

Think of a red circle. A green triangle? A blue square? Do those objects have colour to you?

[ikornaselur]

Yeah they do actually. So I can imagine colours, I was confusing this with memories. I can't really recall colours in memories, unless I specifically made note of it.

I have four coworkers sitting behind me, they've been working around me for the past 5 hours and I can remember roughly how they're clothed, but I can't recall any colours of their clothes.

But yes, I can imagine colour, so my bad.