[vgel]

This is a great point.

Agreed with your comparison to your wife as being better at visualization: I think in general "aphantasia" is on a spectrum, with some people being completely unable to visualize things, and others hearing about people who can visualize incredibly well and thinking "If I don't have that, then I must have aphantasia!"

It's also a skill: I used to think I had aphantasia. Over the last ~3 years I've been practicing visualization -- nothing fancy, just trying to close my eyes and visualize things every so often for a few minutes. With that low-level practice, my ability to visualize things has improved a lot: before I had nothing, now I can get black-and-white shaky images, and manipulate them, rotate them, etc.

Still can't do faces though, I can imagine the rest of a person but their face is just missing. Still working on that :)