Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors?
Aphantasia — the inability to form voluntary mental images — prompts people to compare how they think, remember, and learn, especially in visual domains like gaming, drawing, and software design. Commenters describe a wide spectrum of inner experience, from total absence of a “mind’s eye” or inner monologue to vivid, controllable imagery and closed-eye visuals, and debate how to define, measure, and test these differences scientifically. The conversation also touches on correlations with STEM fields, potential confusion with related phenomena (like synesthesia, face blindness, or hypnagogic imagery), and the social impact of realizing one’s inner experience is atypical.
What aphantasia feels like (varied first‑person reports)
- Many describe complete absence of a “mind’s eye”: they know facts (e.g., relatives’ faces, favorite games) but can’t summon visual images.
- Others can visualize generically (e.g., a “generic face” or “random man”) but not specific people, even close family.
- Some cannot visualize themselves or recall tastes, sounds, or smells either; memories exist only as abstract facts or emotional tags.
- Several note vivid dreams and lucid dreaming despite waking aphantasia.
Impact on tasks, creativity, and learning
- In games and design tasks, some report difficulty planning or “seeing” solutions ahead of time, relying instead on trial‑and‑error or zooming out to view layouts.
- Others with aphantasia can draw well from direct observation or references, including realistic portraits, but struggle to draw from memory.
- Some programmers and STEM workers say visualization is critical to their work; others in similar fields function comfortably without imagery, using logical or spatial reasoning instead.
What “picturing” means and how it’s tested
- Confusion arises around “seeing” vs “imagining”: many people don’t see movie‑like images but still have a faint or abstract visual sense.
- Informal tests discussed:
- Guided imagery tasks (apple, sofa, ball on a table) then probing for details and ability to modify attributes.
- Pareidolia and visual illusions from the linked paper’s figure; mixed experiences reported.
- Some reference emerging objective tests from researchers, but details are not deeply discussed.
Spectrum vs binary condition
- Many emphasize aphantasia/hyperphantasia as a spectrum: differences in vividness, color, motion, detail, faces, and creativity.
- People distinguish between “seeing” pixels vs just having spatial or conceptual understanding (“mesh, not map”; “uninitialized variable”).
Skepticism, overdiagnosis, and prevalence
- Some are skeptical, comparing the current attention to past RSI “crazes” and worrying about self‑diagnosis and weak evidence.
- Others point to recurring patterns across many accounts and possible over‑representation in STEM, while acknowledging sample bias.
Related phenomena: inner monologue and closed‑eye visuals
- Reports range from strong inner monologue to almost none.
- Several describe vivid closed‑eye visuals or hypnagogic imagery without drugs; others insist these are rare or pathological, leading to disagreement.