Just people talking more about it. It's just really hard to recognize and compare such a subjective experience. If you can visualize, it's "obvious" to you and you think everyone does it. If you can't, you don't know that others do or what it's like.

If you check the aphantasia subreddit, every second post is "Do I have it?"

From Wikipedia:

> The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but has since remained largely unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter.

I think it goes both ways. I don't really understand what people mean when they say they "picture" something. What's the sensation like, compared to not picturing something?

Some people, like my wife, can recall both sound and imagery from a movie they've seen. Not all movies, not all scenes, but yeah, video and audio feeds from historic memories...i.e. echoic memory and iconic memory recall to the point one is conscious of seeing something from the mind, in the mind's eye.

As far as I can tell, this ability to visualize and hear things in the mind is entirely dependent on the individual's own thinking process and therefore highly varied. Many can see family members in the mind, but a few can see many images for a single family members (thousands I was told from one person of images of his wife in mind). Those who pray don't see as many images, or enjoy strong consistent imagery when they do. Those who create see their creations in mind and can change them. This creative process is typically called "visualization" but seeing one's parents in mind uses the same process.

The Pineal gland appears to be somewhat responsible for these images, but there isn't much info about the Pineal being the mind's eye as a hard proven scientific fact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland. It's more a belief of many cultures, if anything.

Many, even aphants, report seeing imagery while falling asleep (when the visual consciousness is shutting down): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

I do experience hypnagogia sometimes. I dream very rarely though (a couple times a year, maybe).

If I really stretch the definition of "imagery" I can sort of invoke the feeling that I'm seeing something, but your description of visualization is way too vivid to match that. I literally can't imagine it :P I can't really hear things either unless it's a very recent experience, and even then it's more like the "feeling" of hearing something rather than anything really auditory.

The note about prayer is interesting, but I've been non-religious my entire life and I've never uttered a prayer with any sincerity.

If you asked me to describe my family to you, I probably couldn't do so with any sort of accuracy. I could probably tell you their most recent hair colour and maybe some very generic features, but I can't recall for example anyone's eye colour besides my own.

I gave a shot at trying to learn to draw at some point, and made some progress towards being able to replicate what I see, but drawing always seemed to be a process of trial and error, since I'd have no idea what my marks would end up looking like before I put them on paper. I did enjoy it when I really got into the drawing process, but the good parts weren't really good enough to outweigh the massive stress and frustration it usually caused.

It's a hard thing to describe without being circular. The sensation for me is similar to actually physically seeing something, but more... ephemeral, I suppose? I can't see all the details of something as if I were actually looking at it; it's more like I'm looking at an incomplete mental representation of it.