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.
In: 55
Its more like a parallel process for me. Like i can imagine an apple pretty easily keeping my vision.
But if you ask me to imagine an entire apple store with the seller i would need to focus for that and my current environment would remove from my focus.
How ever, i can overlap the environment like use the currenr environment and draw things on top of it or do something else.
Like tv in front of me is not pn, i can imagine something is playing on it along with sounds. Pretty weird.
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.
I’d compare it to the sound of your own voice in your head. Not tangible, but definitely perceptible, and a little ephemeral
Can you imagine what music sounds like? Can you bring to mind the voice of a friend?
It’s that but with pictures.
I have a photographic memory. For me, it’s like looking at a picture or movie. It definitely doesn’t take over main vision though. Mental vision and actual vision are totally separate for me.
When I read books, for example, I ‘see’ a movie behind my eyes but can always also see things in front of me. I’m happy to elaborate if you want me to.
You have *memories*, right? Like— you remember what someone said, or what you read, don’t you? (please tell me if you don’t).
All right, so: if you can remember what someone said… imagination is like memory plus. Those of us with imaginative ability can call up extremely detailed memories from any one of our senses… and direct them, change them.
Right now, I can call up the sense memory of biting into a cracker with peanut butter on it, while petting my late cat’s ear, and hearing Bach playing on the stereo, as I look at a Smiths “Louder than Bombs” poster. And now I will direct my mind to add basil to the peanut butter, and my fingers will move from my cat’s ear to his head to feel the longer, harsher coat there, and there will be sunglasses on the girl in the poster, and the Bach will change to bluegrass music. All of this is as atrongly real and experiential as real memories. When I write a song or story, or draw, or decide to add an ingredient to what I’m cooking, I consult these “inner senses” and they seem about 80% real to me.
However, there are things I know my mind doesn’t do. I have no immediate grasp of calculations or numbers. To do any kind of arithmetic I have to literally and laboriously sense-imagine amounts of stuff and divide, multiply, add and aubtraxt from the stockpiles of stuff. I can absolutely lose count of it, as if it were real. I also am shit at imagining games, strategies, physical movements I’m not familiar with mking etc. (you will notice that artists often make the facial expression they’re drawing)
The problem with these kinds of questions is nobody knows what someone else is experiencing. When I ask myself “what do I experience compared to what this person reports?” My honest answer is I really don’t know.
Often when I have heard people report they have no inner monologue I think this is a terminology thing because to me this is synonymous with saying “I have no thoughts”
For me it is a bit like Adobe illustrator or MS Word, most visual elements are kind of separate and only “rendered” in a vague sense when I think about it, but I can still compose quite a large detailed image in my mind but only focus on small parts of it or a very rough approximation.
It is really more the concept of the image than a large “jpeg” that I store.
And i work as a visual artist. Experience helps, I kind of know often what kind of elements work better with each other, but I still need to sketch it out on paper/Digitally to try it for real.
Look to the ground and listen to something, it’s basically like that.
I can still see but I’m more “absent” in my vision, also the image created in my mind lacks color and the color almost flickers. The image in my mind is not perfect and lacks many details unless I focus on them
When I visualize, I don’t see it with my eyes, nor does it seem to be seen thru my eyes; I generally see the objects I’m thinking of in a more conceptual, schematic way rather than a vivid movie with all the details, unless I try hard to increase the detail level.
When I visualize things that require any significant effort, I notice my actual visual field much less, altho I’m still able to react to basic stimuli; if someone threw a pillow at me, I’d react, tho I’d be slower and might miss it.
When I was younger, my imagination was incredibly strong, and I could get lost in it and not notice almost anything that was happening around me, so deep was the fantasy. I think my visualizations were more detailed back then, tho it’s hard to recall so many decades ago.
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