[japostoles]

I'm struggling to figure out if my mind's eye "sees" anything, or if I'm just imagining the concept of the item I'm thinking about. If I'm comparing this vision to having a dream, say, it's certainly not visual.

"...there is a simple and helpful test that can give you a clue into whether you may have it: Close your eyes and try to imagine an apple, seeing it mentally in your mind's eye. If you can see anything (anything at all—even a blurry outline), you do not have aphantasia. If you see a void of complete darkness, you might have aphantasia." (https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/aphantasia-test)

When I imagine an apple, I don't see anything that could be considered visual.. I can "see" it, but it's certainly not visual as this suggests.

Anyone here seeing an actual rendering with their eyes closed?

[godshatter]

When I try to see an apple, I see absolutely nothing. I can pretend that there is an apple in front of me and that it's spinning or whatever, but all I've really done is remember what attributes I've given it and roughly what size it is.

There are some odd things I've paid attention to since I became aware I had aphantasia and that it was a thing. I know for a fact that my dreams are visual because I've had lucid dreams before and was aware of them being visual and at a higher fidelity than my eyes can normally see. I do see images when I'm almost asleep or not quite awake yet. I've seen some images after meditating for a long while, but I suspect I was just starting to fall asleep. Other than that, eerily enough, the only thing I've been able to see that doesn't involve photons hitting my retinas when completely awake is the ghost of a young woman that shyly watches me from the hallway when I'm sometimes watching TV that I've seen on a few occasions. Make of that what you will because I have no idea what to make of it.

[japostoles]

Minus the last couple sentences, I would describe things the same way you did in terms of visualizing, and have experienced all those things.

Along the same lines as the young woman you're experiencing, I used to get out of body experiences/sleep paralysis/waking dreams (pick a label) nightly when I was in my 20s, and I would see shadows and outlines of what would seem like energies. That was mostly non-visual and interpretive, which feels more like my minds-eye than a dream.

Not to go off topic, but ever try communicating with the shy woman?

[godshatter]

No, I never tried and she hasn't come around for a few months that I've noticed. I don't know if she's a ghost or whatever, but if it is something that's self-aware I didn't want to give it the impression that I was inviting it into my home.

The first time I saw her I did go search around the house in case I had a "homeless person living in a cupboard" scenario.

I've never experienced sleep paralysis, thankfully, even when working on being able to dream lucidly.

On the topic of aphantasia, I would expect sleep paralysis and any visual hallucinations to be on the dreaming/near to dreaming side of the fence since that circuitry seems to work for people with aphantasia as far as I can determine. If I try to think of specific memories involving people I am very close to I can get a flash of something that goes away before I'm even really aware of it that seems to be in the side channel people talk of. It doesn't seem to work for anything not emotionally connected, and only rarely.

The lady that has visited me was felt completely different. Thinking back, I have also been able to see auras, and just proved to myself that I still have that ability. It might be a visual abnormality or something, though. If I was actually visualizing, it was an overlay and not on a side channel.

[bafe]

I stil (occasionally) get sleep paralysis in the form of a person descending a rope from the ceiling or trying to enter from the window. Over time I learned to recognise it for what it is and control my reaction, saving a few bedside lamps in the process

[htss2013]

I think I see detailed renderings, eg, of a person's face. But if I try to focus on the face and really examine its details I can't. It's like that experience of trying to read a book in a dream but when you go to read the lines, they're blurry.

I suspect when we see what appear to be detailed renderings in our imagination, we are really seeing a compressed "essence" of the thing and our brains trick us into thinking we could focus on the details if we wanted to, when we really can't. It's basically a conservation of energy thing.

[circuit10]

Or you make up the details on the fly as you focus in

[Nevermark]

Or fill in from memory, up to the detail you do remember.

Which may be a variable skill too? It’s clear all our minds are tuned differently.

A basic understanding of our individual wirings, uncovered by tests of these internal capabilities, would be enlightening to ourselves and for communicating with each other.

[jddj]

I think I'm with you, but I'm not sure if you're putting too much emphasis on visual.

It certainly doesn't seem to come from the same place as regular vision does, but they do say "mind's eye". I can imagine an apple, and even slice it up, spin it around, pour water on it. It has a colour, and can have any colour.

I always wondered how memories seemed (TFA touches on this but not in detail) to people who claimed to be minds-eye-blind. Can you not put yourself back on that beach when you were in your mid twenties? Can you not remember his/her eyes/hair/smile/etc at all? Isn't it kind of an image?

As an aside, the apple thing is actually slightly easier if I dedicate only part of my attention to it, like casually rotating it while writing this text, than if I close my eyes and focus. But I've been working all day so clear focus in general is hard to attain right now.

[lll-o-lll]

> I always wondered how memories seemed (TFA touches on this but not in detail) to people who claimed to be minds-eye-blind. Can you not put yourself back on that beach when you were in your mid twenties? Can you not remember his/her eyes/hair/smile/etc at all? Isn't it kind of an image?

The short answer is no. No to all of that.

The longer answer is that the condition tends to be correlated with severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). So, yeah, can’t remember things like I was there, or with any emotion attached. Which is sad I guess, but comes with the upside that I can’t remember bad things that happened in that way either.

Also can’t really imagine the future in a daydream kind of way, which I suspect is a downside for goal motivation.

[japostoles]

When I think of a black and white apple in the context you described, vs. a red or green one, there's a difference. The way you've explained it makes me feel like we're similar, and I'm definitely putting too much emphasis on visual.

My sister, though, said when she thinks of something in her mind it's "blurry like [she doesn't] have glasses on", which sounds highly visual.

I'm wondering if it's more about semantics and a tomato/tomato like thing -- technically anything we visualize is calling up a memory, or at made up of various components from memory.

[LiquidPhD]

I've talked extensively to friends about this because I see nothing. I can picture nothing. It's just a void. Interestingly, it hasn't always been this way for me. I remember when I was in elementary and middle school, I could take exams and see the page the answer was on in the textbook in my mind. I'm not sure when or how I lost it, but it's gone. I do sometimes dream in video, though.

For me, most of what happens in my mind is sound. I always "hear" music in my head, though my inner monologue doesn't have a voice. It's more like I just "know" what I'm thinking. I don't hear anything in my head when I read, which allows me to read pretty quickly. I'm not saying that I don't subvocalize or whatever, but if I do it it isn't producing any sounds in my brain.

Some people can apparently picture the scenes they read in books. See the beach, see the characters, etc. I have talked extensively with friends about this stuff and some of them say it's ultra vivid, like watching a movie in their mind. I find that wild. There is an anecdote about Richard Feynman and another scientist or mathematician and how they kept time differently. If I remember, one saw the clock in their mind and the other relied on counting aloud mentally. I'm not sure where I read it, sorry.

[silisili]

I'm pretty much the same.

However, one thing that throws me off is that when I see my parents or other people I don't see often, they look markedly different than I remember (aging). But I can't picture them in my head. So why is said disconnect occurring?

[InSteady]

The Feynman anecdote was pretty cool. Feynman counted 'verbally' in his mind, so he was able to keep a steady and consistent count while reading and writing, but not while speaking or listening. His friend kept count by visualizing the numbers in sequence (like a clock, kind of) so he could keep steady and accurate count while holding conversations but not at all while reading.

[theragra]

I also was able to see stuff in middle school, like in a movie. Now I can't see anything, like you. And I also have a lot of music in my head

[karmakaze]

I took the https://aphantasia.com/vviq test which said that I'm a Hypophantasic:

> A thinking style that relies less on visualization and more on other sense modalities or other imaginative processes to perceive and understand the world.

I agree with this assessment. I had no idea that I was near one end of this scale. I can only focus on characteristics of the imagined thing rather than its image--like conceptual fragments. I can focus on a specific thing, like a specific facial proportion and can conjure up an estimate but it's not much more than a couple blobs with relative size/spacing.

An interesting thing that I had noticed earlier in life is that I can often recognize things instantly from such a fragment, like the gait of a person off in the distance, or even the make/model of cars by the shape of headlamps at dusk.

An opposing/complementary thing is that I have on occasion experienced lucid dreaming where I had loose control of the scene.

[tymscar]

I think I am very much like that myself. I notice it most when I think about a certain logo in my head for example and while I have the characteristics of it,i.e. that its heart shape and I can somewhat visualise that, when I check out the real logo I notice that the heart was lopsided. And from there on I always “see” it lopsided. So while it sure feels like I can see something, in practice maybe I don’t?

[bassrattle]

Yes, I see it in the mind but not with my eyes. In a way, all vision is in the mind, but the origin of the image is like a different channel of information. I'm aware of the blackness behind my closed eyelids, but it's easy to let that go, switch focus to a different channel of information. There is a perfect image of an apple in a white space.

[InSteady]

Yeah, I think there are two distinct types of visual spaces in the mind. When I'm tired, meditating long (rare), or otherwise in an unusual state I can sometimes access the one that feels much more eyeball derived. Very rarely I have been able to access it just by trying in a quiet place with the right kind of mindset.

This kind of visual feels like it is coming from my eyes, as opposed to the more common and controllable (but less compelling) kind of visualization. This 'channel' is in the grainy blackness space of closed eyes, in front of the face, like where you see color blotches when you press on your eyes or look from very bright conditions to darkness with eyes closed. Except that it can become no longer very dark at all and even sometimes have rich, vivid colors when I get a good session going.

I can't lucid dream btw, and this state is exclusively around the boundary between sleep and wake, and it's distinct from a dream IMO because every dream I have ever remembered I am a subject experiencing the dream, whereas this is pure visual like watching a scene TV (except I can sometimes decide what happens, though it's much easier to morph what comes on automatically than shift to an entirely new scene without breaking the spell).

But usually I just visualize things in the channel well behind my eyeballs, in brain-space. I can do this second kind with eyes open (though with better clarity with eyes closed). The first kind is only eyes closed. For me the background can be dark, white, or complex scenes(abstract or real-world). I have very fine control over detail in the objects if I want, but they feel much less real especially in the sense that they disappear the instant I stop focusing entirely on them, unlike the first channel which persists since I am in some sense in an unfocussed state already.

[japostoles]

This is a very interesting way of describing it, and worded this way I think I'm the same way.

It does feel like paying attention to a different input stream -- just like that -- although it's still not a visual that replaces the darkness, but I'm getting, what I would say, the effects of seeing the apple.

[sdiupIGPWEfh]

> Anyone here seeing an actual rendering with their eyes closed?

At times. Outside dreams, it's most vivid during hypnagogic states, where anything I try to picture manifests with full clarity.

During regular waking hours, it's much less intense, usually somewhere right in the middle of the various aphantasia tests I've come across. Colors are sometimes there. But I can rotate and examine 3d objects in my mind quite well, and when I'm painting, it's always better when I can paint a subject in my head first. I can also see words and visualize numbers.

[afpx]

I see a rendering of a vague apple in front of me, slightly up and to the right of my center vision toward my peripheral. The alpha is almost 0, but if I focus on it, the alpha turns up to maybe 0.02 and I can see low-resolution details. I can change it's color, scale it, rotate it, slice it in half with an imaginary knife, etc.

[k9unit]

When I visualize something, most often I cannot literally see it, but it's as if my brain is processing the information like Im looking at it. It also applies to feel and touch. If I try to see a dice I can "see" it, zoom in, and even feel the indent for each black dot. But I don't literally see a dice.

When it comes to doing math, it is a similar story. When working with matrices I can see the array and transformations in my mind, and when working with 3d trig and calc I can visualize each vector and how they interact with the world.

I can visualize two colored planes perpendicular to each other, but I can't render it.

I think when I take cannabis edibles, it improves these abilities slightly but noticably. I don't usually take big doses of THC, but a lower dose of THC with a higher dose of CBD.

[bafe]

No, I somehow get the impression that outside of dreams my internal life consists mostly of words