> Also, it is near impossible to report objectively about your inner processes in a useful way.
I agree that discussing our mental/inner processes is difficult due to a lack of a common frame of reference on which to base descriptions. (I'm reminded of McCoy and Spock's conversation in Star Trek IV... "Are you telling me I'd have to die to discuss your experience of death with you?")
I (approx. 40 years old) became aware of the concept of aphantasia about three years ago. I immediately identified with it... or rather, I immediately found it mind-boggling that other people claim to experience anything close to "seeing" something by closing their eyes and thinking about it. That's such a foreign concept to me I had always assumed people's descriptions of visualizing things in their mind, daydreaming, etc were extremely metaphorical, not describing a process that is anything like "seeing" something.
I have talked to many friends at length about how they describe their "mind's eye" after realizing I was probably different. And even how it extends, in the case of some of my friends with particularly visual mind's eyes, to the "mind's ears" and "mind's nose" in music and scent recall.
Based on my friends' descriptions to me of how they try to describe how they experience mental visualization, it's clear the capability is a spectrum... some describe it as blurry gray image of what they're thinking about, some describe it as being a picture as real as a photograph that they can literally see and smell.
I agree with you that it's hard to tell how reliable the descriptions are relative to each other, but I can tell you this: hearing all of themselves describe it, even down at the "it's just a blurry gray 'image' in my mind" end of the spectrum, none of them sounded familiar to me or like any kind of "visualization" I've ever experienced while awake (specifically: none at all). If it were simply a matter of being able to accurately report objectively on our inner processes in a useful way, I feel like there wouldn't be such a clear divide between the way a minority of people (allegedly with aphantasia) describe it and the way the majority of people describe it. Whether it's aphantasia or not, it's clear to me at this point that there is definitely a "group A" and "group B" in terms of how people describe their "mind's eye" when asked.
Related, I also have a friend who says she has no internal monologue, another phenomenon I've read about. She thinks entirely visually. Not having an inner monologue is such an incomprehensible concept to me; literally the only way I can think is with my inner monologue.
Brains are weird.
Since you asked specifically about my residence to the first stop, which is obviously the portion of driving I perform more than anything else, I would say there's something almost... "Pavlovian" about it, in that the route and actions to get from my house to the first intersection are "burned in" to my brain, but not at all in a way I'd describe as being able to "visualize" it versus "describe it verbally," which is what I have to do in my mind if asked about it.
Whether it's significant or not (related to aphantasia), I have a horrible sense of direction, get lost while driving incredibly easily, and am entirely reliant on step-by-step directions to get somewhere (now that GPS in the car is a thing it's not too terrifying to try to drive somewhere I've never driven before, but I've been driving since before GPS was a thing available in cars and getting to new places was not fun back then!)
It's less instructions and more a full understanding of the structure at play.
I have it, and I struggle to understand your skepticism. What’s the ego here? I’m proud of not being able to do something?
My assumption is that the visual processing layer is still used, I just don’t get to experience that part, so I’m interacting at the lower layer. Kind of the like the “code” in the matrix. You see the woman in the red dress, I see the code. We can still work with the substrate effectively, just in different ways.
One thing that does suck is that it seems to be associated with lack of episodic memory. I lack all episodic memory, other than facts about things that have happened. I also don’t have the ability to imagine myself in the future (this is different to not having an imagination, I imagine plenty, just not visually). It makes me a little sad sometimes to think that when I’m old, I won’t have memories like others do, and I do think the lack of episodic style imagination has made it harder to make intentional changes to my life for the better.
On the other hand, I think it’s been a great benefit for abstract reasoning. As all my reasoning is necessarily non-visual, problems that don’t naturally have a visual representation are no harder for me. I think it’s useful as a programmer, although I have learned how to draw representations as it’s of benefit for communication. Swings and roundabouts!
When I think of an abstract idea, the sense of imagination is exactly the same as if I was imagining a picture: there is an impression, but it is not one of the sense but one of mind.
The difference can be clearly seen with the use of psychedelics that do create real inner seeing: tryptamines like LSD only strengthen the internal knowing of mental imaginery (plus of course visual artifacts, warping etc. in the actual visual field), yet the combination of LSD and ketamine creates the famous "free-wheeling hallucinations" in which you enter a perfectly lucid photorealistic 3D dream which you can shape in any way you desire. Tropane alkaloids create real hallucinations which you experience instead of reality, but I have no experience with this. Classical psychedelics do not create hallucinations but only mental imaginery and visual morphing.
This is a widespread phenomenon; no shortage of examples. It has happened to me, too.
There are some people in this thread who claim they haven't experienced that, and had a hard time understanding what that would even mean. These seem like pretty different mental/visual experiences, so it seems reasonable to have a word to describe it.
I agree it's hard to measure such internal things exactly, and it's full of self-reporting problems, but the core concept doesn't seem like purely a semantics issue.
----
Aside: I once had a conversation about thinking, and my friends were surprised at the idea of thinking without using words. But that is very much my experience! It is something I semi-trained myself to do (I felt that translating into words slowed me down), but I think it was a natural tendency, too. But it can be likewise difficult to convince someone it's a real thing without resorting to brain scans (:
With "ego" I meant to refer to people boasting about their abilities to visualize everything to the greatest amount of detail in their heads, which to me seems likely untrue except for very rare cases.
I think reported phantasia (as opposed to aphantasia, and if there is such a word) is in a way similar to clairvoyancy or having a sixth sense. Some people report having such a gift, but it is very hard to test if that really exists, and up to what level. The end result may be that a lot of people consider themselves aphantasic, because they lack an internal Unity engine.
As a simple proof that visual phantasy has its limits, consider artists who paint fantasy with oil paint and put in lighting and shadows. This is typically either very bad, or based on photographic reference images. Artists who are, by exception, fairly good at this, require insane amounts of training. There are always strange exceptions, but these seem to be one in a million. (Stephen Wiltshire and Kim Jung Gi come to mind, but even they do not perform accurate shading).
Obviously all misunderstanding is probably based on me not knowing a clear definition for aphantasia, and I should read more about it. Does it mean that a person is unable, even with a lot of training, to form any visual images in their heads? This would seem either unlikely, or related to memory problems, such as you describe. In the latter case, is aphantasia simply a symptom or result of the memory problem, or is it a phenomenon by itself?
Again, I am skeptical, I am not denying that it exists (but perhaps not as much as self-reported on HN and Reddit). And I most certainly would not want to hurt anyone's feelings if they suffer from it! My apologies if that is the case, and please point out if I'm continuing to do so.
(For reference: I am a trained visual artist and mathematician -- I can visualize and draw pretty decent images, and read and write code. I know there's a difference in working with these, but I doubt it's as big as some people make me want to believe.)
I realised my brain worked differently when I was about 21 and went to see a psychologist. He asked me to close my eyes and picture my mothers face. I couldn’t do it, and he then asked me to picture some other things and I couldn’t do any of it. There was no name for this condition back then, and both he and I were surprised. I was surprised he was asking me to do things that were obviously impossible, and he was surprised I couldn’t do something that everyone can obviously do. Since then I’ve talked to many people about the “minds eye” and how they perceive things. I’ve never met another like me, but there seems to be a large degree of variance in how detailed or vivid this mental imagery is for individuals.
I married very young (25), and my wife is the other extreme. It turned out that she has ASD, and thinks mostly in pictures. She always had auditory processing delay, and part of the reason for that is that words all create images in her head. The delay is partly because there is an automatic translation between words to images going on. She can see images in her head with incredible vividness and detail, and can dial up the detail as needed. She also can’t do algebra to save her life; if she can’t picture it she can’t think about it. We watched a talk from Temple Grandin a few years ago (an autistic PHD), and she described a very similar experience. I really do think there is wide variance in how brains work.
The lack of auto-biographical memory is something that seems to be commonly associated with my condition, and this part is clearly mostly downside. I still have semantic memory, so I can remember all the facts about things that have happened. They just don’t have visual or emotional content. But semantic memory needs to be consciously created, by which I mean that I have to be trying to remember as I go if anything is to be committed to long term memory. So most of what has happened in my life is irretrievably lost to me. I’m fortunate that I married young, because my wife remembers everything in vivid detail, and I love to hear the stories about things we’ve done together. Answering some of your questions:
> Does it mean that a person is unable, even with a lot of training, to form any visual images in their heads?
I have tried the training designed to help with forming mental imagery. This involves doing things like looking at something bright and then closing your eyes so that you have the “after image” and then trying to keep it around. So far I haven’t had any luck, but I do hope that I might still have success one day. I’ve read of other people with my condition being able to learn mental imagery this way, so it must work for some people at least.
> This would seem either unlikely, or related to memory problems, such as you describe.
I’m not sure why you think this is unlikely, to me this is obviously as normal as can be. As I said before, there is a clear association with the lack of auto-biographical memory based on what I read online. It could be some form of brain-damage I experience, but I don’t think this is the case. I think there is just a huge amount of variation in how peoples minds work!
I read that most people with aphantasia do have visual dreams [1], which I found interesting.
In some period of my life I used to have nightmares about my grandmother (who had died many years before), and I remember seeing here face very vividly, as if the entire dream was real. Based on those experiences, I tried to draw her portrait, but try as I might, I failed miserably. I could just not access that imagery while awake.
> I’m not sure why you think this is unlikely
Now you got me doubting that as well :)
I think that most of the misunderstanding stems from an unclear definition of what "forming visual images in ones head" means. I guess it means different things to different persons. For me, as referred to in the dream example, I cannot keep a sharp visual image in my head at will. But there is some vague access to certain visual memories and visual planning, so I would not call my self aphantasic.
I agree that there is a great variation in how peoples minds work, that's what makes life so very interesting!
As an example, many people believed for some time that dreams were in black and white, which is obviously not true for everyone. However, this does not imply that dreams are in color. It seems more likely that dreams and their visual response are separate processes.
It may well be that some people actually have some form of aphantasia, but all the self reporting of amazing visual powers or the lack thereof seems more indicative of peoples' egos than the actual differences in what they are capable of.
Happy to learn that I am wrong here!