So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head?

For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're relatively easy to see. I figured everyone was able to do that to some extent.

If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining.

My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos.

I am jealous.

My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes.

On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it's just black and blank and boring when I close my eyes at bed time. :)

This is so incredible for me to, well, imagine (no pun intended).

I’m super curious now and hope you don’t mind.

If you are currently not outside your house, and I ask you to tell me how many windows your house has – and I also ask you to not step outside your house and not go from room to room, literally counting the windows – how would you do this?

When I do this, I can‘t help to go from room to room in my mind, visualizing each room in my mind, and, well, basically count the windows from the images in my mind.

I can’t imagine how else one could do this! And I assume you are nevertheless able to tell me from memory the number of windows in your house, even without physically visiting each room and also assuming that you don’t just happen to know the number by heart (I don’t for my house, and it‘s a small house – yet I have to „visit“ each room mentally and visually).

Or are you? As said, really curious!

I mean, if you don’t happen to know the number by heart, and you also aren’t allow to count them in person, but you ALSO only see a blank space when closing your eyes – in a way, you shouldn’t be able to answer that question…? Or am I missing something?

What an interesting mental exercise.

I have an inventory of concepts, data, and other random thoughts in my head. If you ask me how many windows are in each room, I can recall this information (probably even relatively accurately!). I cannot picture the room or the windows, however.

So, I can tally up the windows and be reasonably certain, only because I know how many there are (in this house, I know how many are in each room, so I can add them up; in past houses I have counted them before and can simply recall that information). If I had not at some point paid attention to the number of windows in a room, and then left that room, I am not sure I could accurately tell you how many windows were there, because I cannot recreate it in my mind in a visual way. I think I would have to make a mental note first. However, I think I do actually do this unconsciously throughout the waking day. I can certainly remember things from during the day.

I think that I can know the number of windows in each room even though I cannot picture them in the same way that I can recognize anything that I have encoded in memory before. The information is there for both of us, encoded in synapses like usual.

When you are "visiting" each room in your house, I think you are walking through a recalled simulation that is created in your working memory, e.g. a visuo-spatial sketchpad, using the same type of information that is stored in my brain. The difference is that I cannot recall into a visual simulation that encoded information in the way that you can. So, I think the information is there for both of us. You can just do something with it that I cannot. Maybe. Anyway, memory encoding is not where my research is, so don't quote me. :)

One of the informal tests I found interesting was to play some of those "spot the differences in two pictures" games. First do one where the pictures are side by side to get your brain used to recognizing differences and hopefully reduce the variable of "how do I even do this". Then do a game where one picture shows up and waits for you to look at it and memorize it, then shows the slightly different picture and let you identify the areas of difference. Finally, have a picture which clearly identifies the differences (by circling them or something), waits for you to intentionally proceed, then shows you a slightly different picture where you select a difference but then have a multiple choice question about what is different (eg "the mailbox color in the first picture was blue/green/red/white") for each.

I haven't seen one of these online yet, and I took it as part of a battery of mental health/intelligence tests nearly 20 years ago, but I wonder how hard it would be to make one and conduct studies from it today.

> When you are "visiting" each room in your house, I think you are walking through a recalled simulation that is created in your working memory, e.g. a visuo-spatial sketchpad, using the same type of information that is stored in my brain.

It's an interesting idea. But I don't think most people remember faces for example like that.

I could swear I have read that there is a special place in our brain for remembering faces.

You probably did read it somewhere. Facial recognition is proposed as being in the fusiform gyrus based on fMRI scans.

E.g., https://brainblogger.com/2015/10/17/how-the-brain-recognizes... (with a few journal references)

>My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos.

Nah, it's not like that. When we imagine something it's not like we actually see those things like real visual stimuli. The experience is more abstract than that. There is a vague visual aspect to it, but it's not hi-def like real vision, just fragments appearing then disappearing in your mind.

So it's not at all like dreaming.

* at least for me.

I have no first-hand experience with what it's like, so I cannot comment on the veracity of what people have told me or I have read about it since learning about aphantasia. However, my wife assures me that it is in fact like a real, hi-def movie playing in her mind, and I have since read a number of accounts of artists who literally just draw or paint exactly what they see with their minds' eye(s), and talked with plenty of people who have varying degrees of inner vision.

I take you at your word for your experience. I likewise have no reason to think my wife, for example, is exaggerating to me. My wife has a photographic memory, and she can literally recreate stuff down to almost absurd details. I think it is possible you may be underestimating what other people see in their minds. :)

I've asked a few people and everyone said that their imagination is not as hi-def as their vision. I.e. when they imagine something it's not like an image was cut & pasted onto their visual field.

So I'm pretty sure your friends were exaggerating, or meant hi-def in a different sense.

I'm not so sure.

"Our discovery, or rediscovery, that around 2-3% of the population, with aphantasia, lack a mind’s eye, and that a somewhat larger percentage, with hyperphantasia, have imagery that is ‘as vivid as real seeing’ has captured huge public interest, and led to a sustained surge of citizen science. We have been astonished – and delighted – to receive over 14,000 contacts from members of the public with extreme imagery since coining the terms in 2015."[1]

> ‘as vivid as real seeing’

I can only take others' word for it, but why would I disbelieve this? Especially when I myself have the other extreme of nothingness? Why would so many people lie or exaggerate about seeing mental imagery "as vivid as real seeing"?

[1] https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/eyesmind/2020/05/04/an-update-on-...

>So wait, if you close your eyes

Is this just figurative phrase or some people need to close their eyes to visualize images? I can imagine things, but they are not real visual stimuli that I see, they are more abstract going directly to the mind. Thus it doesn't matter whether my eyes are closed or what I'm looking at, it is independent from real sight.

It's easier for me when I close my eyes because I don't have to consciously ignore what I actually see. But I can totally get in the zone with opened eyes, generally when I let my mind wander (on a train or bus trip or on a walk for instance).

I don't, closing your eyes is completely unnecessary for any of this stuff. I assume it's just a phrase.

> So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head?

I can picture the concept of Mount Everest. But it's more of an abstract idea. Like I don't actually see a mountain in color as if it were in front of me. But there's this "mental concept" sitting in front of me.

Are you able to actually "see" a picture? Are most people able to do that?

I've never noticed a limitation in myself - I can easily visualize how things will look if arranged, but I don't see a picture like a painting, rather I see the concept of the object. So I figured I was typical.

Not sure about others but I can see what my brain thinks is a picture of Mount Everest. It's not a photorealistic image because I've never actually seen it IRL, but it's just a composite idea of Everest from movies, YouTube videos, images, etc. Now it's not quite the same as seeing something like you would through your eyes - you still see darkness when you close your eyes - but it's a vision that you can see in your "mind's eye" which is in color, vivid, you can hear it, smell it, feel it.

What was the last movie you saw? Do you remember any specific color from this movie, like, idk, the color of the car the hero drove or something like that? If you didn‘t make a mental note of that color while watching the movie, then how would you re-call that information now, without visualizing it in your mind? Can you give us an idea?

For example, what is the color of the laser beam of the death star? Do you „see“ the colored beam in your mind? I do, and it‘s the only mental mechanism I have to answer that question. Without that, I would have to look it up via Google Image Search or whatever, make a mental note of the specific answer, and would have to recall the answer instead of recalling the image, I guess…?

It is called aphantasia and I have it too. I am totally unable to picture anything in my head despite trying for years.

How about abstract concepts? If I ask you to imagine something mathematical, like a circle in a square, do you 'see' anything?

Personally I see nothing no matter what I try to imagine. There are various degrees of it, some can "see" various amounts it seems.

This [1] is a decent place for more info.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/

That. is amazing!

I cannot see anything personally without a visual reference right before closing my eyes. I can begin to use words to reason my way around the block, but even then despite seeing them so often, I cannot picture them.

I'm the exact same way. No mind's eye, no constant internal monologue (or dialogue), mostly just calm and silence. I think I can sort of visualize voices and music, but clearly not as well as other seem to be able to.

I always thought people who hear entirely understandable voices were the mentally ill people you hear about in the news and in fiction, not for that to be the norm. I do wonder about the statistics on the "internal monologue". I think I saw some stats on aphantasia (not being able to picture things) but that didn't include the internal monologue.

All in all, while I think the capacity to actually visualize things would definitely be welcome, I think I'd go crazy with a constant internal monologue droning on in the background.

Guess the difference is that normal(?) people like me “create” or recall the voices in our heads, while for the mentally ill, the voices “come” to them like from the “outside”? Eww, I realize it’s really hard to conceptualize this stuff and put it into words…

Question for you, and those like you:

If you don't see images in your mind, do you see images when you dream?

If you don't have an "inner voice", do you hear sound when you dream?

I have no point I'm trying to make here. I just wonder if there's a correlation with dreams.

I do not see anything while dreaming. It is a constant source of slight anxiety as I can be quite conscious and the blindness is puzzling. In daily life I can project myself in some mental space (ie my kitchen) and perceive where the boundaries of things would be, but none of this process has anything to do with vision of sight. It's more like extend proprioception.

If you place your hand on a wall, then close your eyes, then remove your hand, I suspect you'll still feel where the wall is. Even if you picture something completely different in your head, the wall is still there I suppose? My guess is that my extend proprioception (or whatever the right name for this would be) is more fine tuned and apt than someone with a mind eye, but I can't really know. :|

I also do not hear sounds while dreaming, but then again I don't really have an inner monologue anymore, that went away at the same time I learned programming and I don't think it's a coincidence. I do verbalize in my head when reading conversation-like stuff (HN, slack, etc.), but you won't catch me with any internal monologue while reading ingredients, jira tickets, etc.

While dreaming, I can have conversations but there's no gradual arrival of content, it's instantaneous, it was not yet "said" or it was.

This is wild! When I dream it feels nearly indistinguishable from conscious life. Full color, sounds, pain, fear, people - weirdest of all is when people in my dreams solve problems that I can't solve, like math problems. Really trips you out because it's all in your brain, and "you" were the one that also solved the problem. I chalk it up to the solution also being incorrect but feeling correct in the dream, otherwise it would be quite terrifying.

I’ve definitely done math in a dream, checked the answer immediately upon waking, and it checked out. My brother reports the same. He also claims to exclusively dream lucidly.

I have Aphantasia. I cannot recall any sensoric input, be it visual, audio, taste, smell, touch. I have an inner monologue. I rarly remember my dreams, but when I do I now I saw something. As for hearing I cannot really answer it. Currently I do not think that I hear sounds while dreaming. I can talk with people, but I believe everybody sounds like my inner voice. Again, it is really hard to tell, since I cannot recall it.

I do see images and hear sound when I dream, and when I daydream! That is interesting, isn't it? I have always thought so. So, maybe it's like that unconscious memory crystallization subsystem works, but the conscious recall subsystem doesn't work quite right. I suspect that these are two quite different things, though I don't really know.

If you do not have any discursive thought, I am curious how meditation is for you. Must be incredibly simple and easy.

And pointless. Meditating isn't any different from not meditating.

What happens (or what would happen) if you sit still in silence and darkness and try to observe these "feeling symbols" as they come and go?

You could be better equipped for deep meditation and deep thinking than most of us, but maybe you just need to do some practice.