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by lokimedes 655 days ago
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)

2 comments

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