[throwaway019254]

> In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head, it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that allows me to ad-hoc compose music.

This is interesting. I can remember and hear sounds in my head, but can't visualize any images.

I wonder how common it is.

[jraph]

I didn't know about the not remembering or forming sounds in one's own head thing. For the image part:

> A 2022 study estimated the prevalence of aphantasia among the general population by screening undergraduate students and people from an online crowdsourcing marketplace through the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. They found that 0.8% of the population was unable to form visual mental images, and 3.9% of the population was either unable to form mental images or had dim or vague mental imagery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

[xlii]

I discussed this with doctors and I was told that visual and audible aphantasia exist, but visual one is much more known. It seems I have both, which explains why I never could learn in classical way through repetition, hearing etc.

However I need to also say that after this year I sometimes can humm in my mind simple tunes like "Old McDonald", "Twinkle Twinkle" or that Looney Tunes piano melody that was always portrayed during rigging the piano, so it might not be hopeless.

[adastra22]

You could be describing me. Some very ingrained jingles I can (often involuntarily) reproduce in my mind, but that’s it. I suspect that this is the result of some other learned skill that is repurposing other neural wiring to store these audible memories, since I seem utterly incapable of forming or recalling melodies otherwise.

[xlii]

Seems that the researchers didn't popularize this part good enough. I have some suspicions why this might happen, but it's already into complex consideration area. I'm thinking about something that's called "limited working memory".

It also impacts on mappers vs packers phenomenon and might by linked with alexithymia (which sounds rare but is quite common - especially for men).

[AlecSchueler]

I can visualise arbitrary things in my mind, same with sounds, I can build up quite a decent level of polyphonic music and have it play in my head.

Certain things I visualise as a matter of course, I give them colours and shapes etc., and in those things I do well at reasoning. But then I hear other people talk about how they visualise things like arithmetic and I notice they're much faster than me, I think because I'm not just "seeing" it, I have to actively "calculate" it.