Eli5 – How does the “inner eye” work?

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I have aphantasia, a mental disorder where I lack all internal visualization. I cannot “picture” things in my mind, I think in words and numbers and such. With this, I am very curious how the mental imagery works for the rest of you. Do you see it separate from your main vision? Does it get interposed? Is it like picture in picture? I’m baffled!

TIA.

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34 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s basically just imagination, it happens in a different “space”, in which you are aware that this isn’t real and it’s in your head. Can you imagine a sound, like a tune playing in your head? Or a fictional conversation between you and another person? You’d be “hearing” sounds and words without actually using your ears. It’s like that but with images: you’re “seeing” things without using your eyes.

Basically the senses connect to various brain areas, and these areas can be stimulated by the senses. For example, if you see a bird, the area for “bird” gets triggered. Now, you can trigger that area even without seeing a bird, though it will be a slightly different experience, because the trigger isn’t visual, it’s imaginary. So maybe you can think of a bird and come up with various things about birds, except the visual aspect is not one of them, and for you that aspect can only be triggered by actually seeing the bird.

The good thing with imagination is that it allows you to test things without taking any risks. So you can imagine a conversation and figure out what not to say before actually saying it. Visually, it can be useful to imagine things like the layout of streets to help you navigate or to give someone directions.

But just because people can think visually doesn’t mean they’re always good at it, it has various levels of precision. For example, most people can’t precisely imagine faces, so if you ask them to describe a person, they will just list a number of thinks they know about how they look, without actually picturing their face in their head. But most people can easily visualize a car, a cat, or a triangle. Some people can visualize mechanical machines and draw conclusions about how to build the machine for it to work properly. But it isn’t something that is absolutely necessary for everyday life.

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