Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors?

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.