[lokimedes]

It makes good sense for humans to have this ability. If we flip the argument, and see the next frame as a hypothesis for what is expected as the outcome of the current frame, then comparing this "hypothesis" with what is sensed makes it easier to process the differences, rather than the totality of the sensory input.

As Richard Dawkins recently put it in a podcast[1], our genes are great prediction machines, as their continued survival rests on it. Being able to generate a visual prediction fits perfectly with the amount of resources we dedicate to sight.

If that is the case, what does aphantasia tell us?

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/into-the-impossible-wi...

[dbspin]

Worth noting that aphantasia doesn't necessarily extend to dreams. Anecdotally - I have pretty severe aphantasia (I can conjure milisecond glimpses of barely tangible imagery that I can't quite perceive before it's gone - but only since learning that visualisation wasn't a linguistic metaphor). I can't really simulate object rotation. I can't really 'picture' how things will look before they're drawn / built etc. However I often have highly vivid dream imagery. I also have excellent recognition of faces and places (e.g.: can't get lost in a new city). So there clearly is a lot of preconscious visualisation and image matching going on in some aphantasia cases, even where the explicit visual screen is all but absent.

[lokimedes]

I fabulate about this in another comment below:

> Many people with aphantasia reports being able to visualize in their dreams, meaning that they don't lack the ability to generate visuals. So it may be that the [aphantasia] brain has an affinity to rely on the abstract representation when "thinking", while dreaming still uses the "stable diffusion mode".

(I obviously don't know what I'm talking about, just a fellow aphant)

[dbspin]

Obviously we're all introspecting here - but my guess is that there's some kind of cross talk in aphantasic brains between the conscious narrating semantic brain and the visual module. Such that default mode visualisation is impaired. It's specifically the loss of reflexive consciousness that allows visuals to emerge. Not sure if this is related, but I have pretty severe chronic insomnia, and I often wonder if this in part relates to the inability to drift off into imagery.

[drowsspa]

Yeah. In my head it's like I'm manipulating SVG paths instead of raw pixels

[zimpenfish]

Pretty much the same for me. My aphantasia is total (no images at all) but still ludicrously vivid dreams and not too bad at recognising people and places.

[jonplackett]

What’s the aphantasia link? I’ve got aphantasia. I’m convinced though that the bit of my brain that should be making images is used for letting me ‘see’ how things are connected together very easily in my head. Also I still love games like Pictionary and can somehow draw things onto paper than I don’t really know what they look like in my head. It’s often a surprise when pen meets paper.

[lokimedes]

I agree, it is my own experience as well. Craig Venter In one of his books also credit this way of representing knowledge as abstractions as his strength in inventing new concepts.

The link may be that we actually see differences between “frames”, rather than the frames directly. That in itself would imply that a from of sub-visual representation is being processed by our brain. For aphantasia, it could be that we work directly on this representation instead of recalling imagery through the visual system.

Many people with aphantasia reports being able to visualize in their dreams, meaning that they don't lack the ability to generate visuals. So it may be that the brain has an affinity to rely on the abstract representation when "thinking", while dreaming still uses the "stable diffusion mode".

I’m no where near qualified to speak of this with certainty, but it seems plausible to me.

[quickestpoint]

As Richard Dawkins theorized, would be more accurate and less LLM like :)