[fellowniusmonk]

I also lost the ability to think in images after a series of surgeries at 13. I went from being a very imaginative kid with dream like states while awake to purely lexical. I stopped enjoying playing pretend with my sister basically overnight, I just couldn't see it any more.

I still do have visual dreams though they are rare, I can no longer conjure any sense of an object while awake. I have a couple images from before this (my mother's face before she died) that I can kind of almost see, idk, or I have the feeling like I'm seeing them.

Call it whatever you like, maybe there is a natural distribution, I always thought of it as the cost I paid to stay alive, my own personal brain damage even though my surgeries were all cardiovascular.

[card_zero]

I respect you, fellowniusmonk, but all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression. People want me to be nice about this and acknowledge that the thing exists because they all say it does. The best I can offer is acknowledgement that you all say it does.

On the other hand, you have a special claim to plausibility because of the surgery. Oh wait cardiovascular surgery? So, are we saying anaesthetic side effects? Or brain damage from reduced blood flow maybe.

I'll note that a lot of people's impressions and feelings about ... what it's like to be alive, generally ... undergo a radical transformation at about age 13, because hormones.

[haswell]

As someone with aphantasia, all I ever get from people who can visualize is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment, etc.

By definition, this will always be the case until we have a deep enough understanding of the brain to diagnostically assess this.

What I can assure you is that I cannot see/imagine with my mind, and that many other aspects of my life make sense given this limitation, e.g. when people describe their experience of reading books and mental world building, it’s entirely foreign to me. Or when my brother describes his ability to create mind palaces, manipulate visual concepts mentally as if he were using CAD software, etc. it seems preposterous.

But I have to take his word that it’s something he can actually do. Such is the nature of this subject.

Until I discovered the concept of aphantasia in my early 30s, I genuinely thought that people’s descriptions of “visualization” were just a figure of speech. It was mind blowing to learn that people actually see anything more than nothing at all, and a lifetime of experiences and confusion about what other people described about theirs suddenly made sense.

[saltcured]

Well said.

I have similar feelings about those who claim to have an internal monologue or voice etc. It's all so alien to me. Outside of dreams or hynagogia, my "self" and internal experience is non-verbal, non-visual, and mostly lacking any other sensory qualia.

If "me" is rooted in any perceptual qualia, I think and experience a vague mixture of a spatial awareness, proprioception, topology, and emotion. I can barely summon sound memories like music, and this could include lyrics. This recall is very faintly rooted in auditory qualia. Like the ghost of an echo down a distance corridor. Moreso, I can "feel" such music memory as a hint of proprioception, i.e. the after-thump of bass in my body or the after-tingle of a cymbal in my ear. But it utterly lacks the presence and richness of real listening.

I can think about words and phrases I've either heard or read, or try to arrange some words to write or speak later. But they're fleeting concepts, neither visual nor auditory in quality. They're not like the sound or music memory above. They're also not visuals of typography. In fact, I've more than once had words in my lexicon that I could neither pronounce nor reliably spell. I could readily match them to parsed words when reading, but would be unable to express them.

Finally, I have a relative with schizophrenia. I've witnessed how she behaves when hallucinating and/or having delusions. She often seems to experience her thoughts as if being talked to over her shoulder, or can manifest a fear into seeing dangerous threats. Her experience seems a kind of polar opposite to mine.

I wonder how it is to be somewhere in the middle of this range. It must be different from hers, to be useful but not schizoid. And it also seems like it must be a lot more vivid and accessible than my usual experience.

[fellowniusmonk]

If your core issue is with trying to quantify and observe others Qualia I think you're going to have a hard time.

I still have people tell me I must be faking my colorblindness, or just treat me like I'm blind. Normally teenagers, theory of mind is tough at that age.

I'm not sure nice or just a smidge of humility/uncertainty in expressing doubt.

Propagation of information pre-internet was so low people just couldn't easily triangulation on some of these things.

Fwiw I generally agree with you, my wife brought this up to me just in the last few years and I was like, oh I just thought this happened to everyone around 13 like a reverse Hook (the movie) thing.

But I can't paint or draw worth a damn sense then and she can freehand paint hyper realistic pictures. I don't see how she could do that without the imagination version of a stencil.

After I found out it wasn't a normal part of puberty I just figured it was brain damage acquired during the surgeries.

Also, from what I understand fMRI shows enough of a difference I'm inclined to believe the other people who say they were born that way.

[card_zero]

Well, I'm an artist, but I don't insist that I can visualise things vividly, whatever that really means.

I'm looking at the brain scans in the article now. It's good that it's got 'em. Do they really mean what they're presented as meaning? It shows that some people, when told to imagine things, activate a bunch of brain regions. Some of those are also involved in actual looking, though not with clear purposes. Then there's also areas to do with memory and salience. I'll say that the people in this group are having a more emotional experience when they imagine. They give more of a shit, they pay more attention. I'm not sure that this qualifies as a skill, or an ability, or "seeing". But heck, what's seeing anyway?

[vidarh]

Ed Catmull surveyed people at Pixar, and there wasn't a particularly strong correlation in their staff between ability to draw and aphantasia or not - they had artists with aphantasia such as Glen Keane, who created Ariel[1]

For my part, while I'm not a great artist by any means, there was absolutely a time where I was well above average at drawing, despite aphantasia.

People struggle to draw things that are right in front of them - being able to see what you draw is not inherently a huge asset.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256

[fellowniusmonk]

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

Obviously because each person is different a/b tests are somewhat impossible for qualia issues. All I have is access to my pre/post expierence. It seems aphantasia can be intrinsic or emergent and since mine developed potentially through damage or re-wiring during surgery I wouldn't be suprised in the slightest that the pathways and compensations are different or non-existent for my case but not for others.

[graeme]

>all we ever get about aphantasia is self-report, anecdote, self-assessment questionnaire, subjective impression.

Is there any other way to get information on what people see internally?

The idea that great artists, for example, don't have dramatically different visualization than people who report not seeing sharp images or images at all seems like the theory in need of proof.

You can't just say the evidence is subjective so you're right. The evidence only ever could be subjective.

[card_zero]

Did I say I'm right? I assume we're all wrong in ways yet to be discovered, that's my default position on everything. And I've modified my viewpoint slightly just now: I accept that there are loose groups of people who experience imagination differently. So I'm being decently open-minded here, what do you want, blood?

[vidarh]

The only basis we have for assuming you're a self-aware sentient being is also your self report.

For my part, I have experienced both aphantasia - for my entire life - and seeing images clearly. Once, during meditation. No drugs involved. No health issues. Not during puberty.

The two are not remotely alike.

I also see images regularly while dreaming. That is different from both experiences.