Aphantasia, can you see mental images?

Danonino.

1. I see no mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117786302#Comment_117786302

Visual and with audio (someone asked me was there Sonics in my dreams and it stumped me but there is). I lucid dream a lot, like I’ll know I’m dreaming, but full visuals yeah.

Same with ahem… hallucinogenic drugs. It’s been a while but yeah.

10-10-20

4. I only see black & white mental pictures

Fascinating thread.

I can visualise well, but I think that I visualise in black and white and I then add the colours afterwards, if that makes sense.

I can't remember what people wear, ever. I can't remember names. I can't describe a face other than to say "long / fat / hair / no-hair.".

I have a relative who "lost" his inner voice. He literately could not "converse" within his head and had other symptoms. Diagnosed as a mild stroke at 28. His inner voice came back to him after a few months, but it's amazing how the mind works.

Wibbs

5. I see colour mental pictures

Another of the ones who can see mental images, in full colour with it. Never really thought about it much as I don't live in someone else's head. 😁 It can depend on what I'm thinking about. If it's something like a spatial problem like those puzzles you see with four shapes and you have to match one to a fifth I can manipulate the images in my head, though more often the answer is obvious so I can bypass that step. Memories can come with audio and other sensory imagery like touch and scent and emotion of course. I would dream pretty much every night and recall much of it on awakening. Dreams, or at least my ones tend to be random snippets of recent memories, no great narrative going on for the most part.

One aspect I've noticed in my dreaming and waking mental images; they're edited like a film, in that "boring bits" are cut. Physical travel between places is almost entirely absent and is very hard for me to visualise. So if I were to dream of or try to visualise traveling to Paris; I leave and then arrive as it were. I can only hold onto the travel on a plane, train or ship for a second.

On the colour front if I try to visualise individual colours there are subtle differences. Reds are by far the easiest and most vivid, the green/blue end of the spectrum less so.

Utter disaster at maths, to the point where someone I knew who was a specialist in such things reckoned I had dyscalculia, though don't have any of the other features of that. Always remember and can describe faces, good luck with names.

I do art, I can't imagine my craft would work if I couldn't visualise in my mind's eye.

o1s1n

This is a really amazing thread. I do have to wonder what people mean when they say to see a picture in their mind though.

I close my eyes and see black. I'd imagine everyone does, your eyes are closed.

However, similar to staring at a magic eye, I can unfocus from the black, 'see through it' and imagine anything I want. Whole films, any situation I can remember being in, smells, songs, concerts...it's not so much just seeing a photograph as it is absolutely everything about the situation.

I also have incredibly vivid dreams sometimes verging on lucid that I don't want to wake from.

Would love to hear if people with this condition dream, how they dream and how their drawing abilities are too actually.

o1s1n

Couple more things that blew my mind about just being a human and thinking everyone else experienced it.

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. The feeling that you are tiny in a giant room or giant in a tiny room..kids get it a lot but sometimes it persists to adulthood.

Best way of describing it, sometimes when I'm sitting with a computer monitor in front of me, the montior will feel really far away from me at the end of a corridor. My arms will sometimes feel really long and stretched down the corridor. Sometimes when this happens, sounds will feel strange, really loud rushing noises or at the end of a corridor. Someone described this on Reddit down to an absolute tee a few years ago on Reddit and loads of people had that 'holy **** you get that too??!' moment.

Another one is that I can 'click' inside my ears. I had no idea what this was for years until a similar Reddit thread came up. Turns out some people can control and pressurise their inner ear. I can equalise pressure on a plane for example by doing this click in my ear. It's like popping your ears without having to touch your nose.

Just to prove I'm not mental (!) Alice in Wonderland syndrome Reddit discussion

https://amp.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9f3w1/i_have_alice_in_wonderland_syndrome_aiws_ama/

Ear clicking/rumbling

https://www.reddit.com/r/EustachianTubeClick/

donspeekinglesh

1. I see no mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803353#Comment_117803353

I dream, and I think there's images, but I'm not sure as I never remember much detail when I wake. As far as I can remember I've never had a nightmare.

While there are plenty of people with Aphantasia who are artists and have artistic talent, I'm not one of them. A primary school student would be embarrassed by my drawing.

My wife is a visualiser and can do the ear clicking thing. I can't.

buried

5. I see colour mental pictures

I had those 'Alice in Wonderland' type dreams when I was a really young kid, but always when I was ill with fever. It was absolutely horrifying. My old room was clearly my room, I could see it, I was aware where I was, but it felt like the place was 400 feet tall and wide, with huge loud roaring noises pounding straight into my ears, and there was no escape.

I remember only a few memorable nice times from my early childhood, but those f**king Alice in Wonderland fever jobs, I've never forgotten them. Can remember them as if they only happened last night.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803584#Comment_117803584

The roaring sound this is definitely associated with it alright, can make it quite scary for kids. There's also another similar one with the roaring sound and the sense of a huge object in the space too, a lot of people imagine it as a giant rolling loud sphere.

Such a strange thing that so many people experience it in a similar way, I used to get it a lot when I had a fever too as a kid but can just have a stationary screen bring it on now.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803584#Comment_117803584

Here's a freaky one with the ear clicking, if you put your ear up right against hers and she clicks her ear, you can hear it too :eek:

5. I see colour mental pictures

I don’t see the difference between colour mental pictures and vivid. I choose colour but could have chosen either, but colour is more objective.

Aphantasia is interesting. I’ve only heard of it recently and nearly every character in books and movies is shown to dream or day dream, or to visualise the past or an idea. Where have you all been hiding?

5. I see colour mental pictures

There are also people who don’t have an inner voice. All internal dialogue is silenced. I’d like some of that. I read a blog where the writer said he assumed that the prevalence of internal dialogue, the voice over, in movies and tv shows was merely just a device to explain things, but wasn’t something he assumed real. He was amazed to find that other people have their own voiceovers.

wench

1. I see no mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803876#Comment_117803876

Hang on, you feckers hear voices, but we're the weird ones?? 🤪

Randle P. McMurphy

1. I see no mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803876#Comment_117803876

It's bad enough to just find out other people can actually see vivid images in their mind, but now you're telling me they can also hear voices in their head when they think about something? And what's this **** about being able to hear songs in your head? I always knew I was different in many respects to the average person, but now I feel like a **** alien!

donspeekinglesh

1. I see no mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117809022#Comment_117809022

I have an inner monologue, but it's my voice only. Never any other voices/music etc.

I didn't understand memes like this for such a long time:

seamus

5. I see colour mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803584#Comment_117803584

Yeah, I recall as a kid having really, really lucid hallucinations when I had a fever. A lot of it was to do with perception; the size and spacing of things, the feeling of them. Though I can also remember once believing that there was a war taking place upstairs in our house :D

I used to relatively frequently experience the "Alice in Wonderland" thing mentioned when I wasn't sick. Where it would feel like everything around me was shrinking or moving away from me. Don't really get it at all any more as an adult, but sometimes high-stress situations like an interview or having to perform in front of people can bring it on.

One eyed Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117810360#Comment_117810360

Mine is less of an inner monologue, and more often full blown conversations and even arguments with different characters 😁

Like when I’m trying to think of something and it’s there, I know it’s there in my head, but I can’t access it, I’m saying to myself “Think! Think!”, and getting something like HAL in response 😂

https://youtu.be/97b6FfQbibM

Sleeper12

1. I see no mental pictures

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117803848#Comment_117803848

I thought people would be able to vote on more than one answer. I assume some would be vivid colour & some vivid but only black and white.