Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
People describe strikingly different inner experiences when asked to “picture an apple” or recall a face — from vivid, manipulable 3D scenes to complete mental blankness, a condition known as aphantasia. Commenters explore how this spectrum affects memory, dreaming, navigation, creativity, and work in fields like programming or art, noting that many with aphantasia think in concepts, words, or spatial relationships rather than images and often function well or even excel in some domains. There is recurring skepticism about whether aphantasia is “real,” countered by subjective reports, early neurological evidence (e.g., pupil and fMRI studies), and related ideas like severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM), while others highlight the lack of precise, objective diagnostic tests.
Reality and Spectrum of Mental Imagery
- Many participants strongly affirm aphantasia is real; others express doubt or suspect miscommunication about what “seeing in the mind” means.
- Experiences are clearly on a spectrum: from complete absence of imagery to extremely vivid “hyperphantasia” that can feel like AR or movie-quality scenes.
- Several note different “planes” of imagery: some can superimpose on vision, others only in a separate inner space.
How People Experience Thinking
- Aphantasic participants describe:
- No pictures when prompted (e.g., Mona Lisa, STOP sign, pink elephant).
- Access only to concepts, words, spatial or logical relations.
- “Knowing” shapes, routes, or schemas without any visual feel.
- Hyperphantasic participants describe:
- Detailed, manipulable 3D scenes, sometimes with sound and mild tactile sense.
- Strong daydreaming, intrusive imagery, difficulty reading because visuals dominate.
- Some report strong audio imagery but no visuals; others have neither images nor internal monologue, only “concepts.”
Impact on Work, Reasoning, and Daily Life
- Many with aphantasia report:
- Little impairment in technical fields; strong abstract or spatial reasoning (math, physics, programming, navigation).
- Reliance on diagrams, CAD, notes, and conceptual/graph-like models instead of mental pictures.
- Difficulty with drawing from imagination, recognizing or describing faces, and following image-based directions.
- Some hyperphantasic people find their vivid imagery distracting or emotionally intense.
Dreams and Other Senses
- Mixed reports:
- Some aphantasics dream vividly and only see images in sleep.
- Others have non-visual or “book-like” dreams, or few/no recalled dreams.
- Several can vividly imagine sounds, music, and sometimes taste/smell, even when visual imagery is absent.
Memory and SDAM
- Multiple comments mention severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM): remembering life as facts, not replayable episodes.
- People describe weak recall of mundane details (e.g., breakfast, movie scenes) and poor episodic “re-living,” sometimes linked to aphantasia and possibly to depression.
Testing, Diagnosis, and Debate
- VVIQ (imagery vividness questionnaire) and simple prompts (imagined scenes, triangles with color, “ball on a table” questions) are discussed, but many find them too subjective.
- Objective signals mentioned: pupil response to imagined brightness, fMRI differences, visual memory tasks.
- Disagreement over whether many self‑diagnoses reflect true aphantasia versus high standards or semantics.
- Some discuss training methods (e.g., “image streaming”), meditation, or post‑Covid changes, but effectiveness and mechanisms remain unclear.