I am the other end of the scale. I see memories like a movie. I daydream constantly, and this has probably been a detriment: it’s hard to be “present” when I can always be playing a much more interesting movie in my mind. It also means bad memories are hard to shake.
I’m curious about the music side of it. Does it mean if someone mentions a song, you can’t think how it goes? If someone asked an aphantasic to sing happy birthday, they couldn’t?
I've got this thing where I can easily picture visuals, music etc in my mind, but I have no inner voice. I can consciously summon it when composing a sentence, like I'm doing now, but in the day-to-day business of living there's no monologue happening.
I definitely have some ghost of my own voice speaking when I read. But only in the vaguest sense, and I definitely don't "hear" anything. Same thing when thinking hard about something or debating myself.
Yes I’m not sure about inner monologue. I certainly talk to myself out loud (yes I am an only child, why do you ask) but I don’t hear someone else in my head!
It’s not someone else. It’s me! In my head I mean. At least, I hope it is? Good lord.
I can watch Silence of the Lambs in my head, if I want to, because it was my best pal’s favourite movie (he said it was the best comedy ever made) and we watched it so many times. I can visualise every scene, though I would probably muddle some dialogue if there was a test.
To be honest the whole idea of someone who can’t visualise gives me the creeps. I love Katie, but is she… a zombie? My mind’s eye IS me, in a sense. The bit of me that I most value sits there. I can live out among the stars, in my mind. Even the gods seem like small, petty beings from the perspective my imagination grants.
My visualizations always feel to me if as something was blocking the view where the image should be most focused. I have all the colours, I see the periphery, but it is hard to focus on a face. Additionally the image flickers. I can only see it for the fraction of a second and then I have to try and retrieve it again.
Regarding inner monologue: It is me talking to myself in my head, but I would never confuse that with any voice coming outside. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as an auditory experience. Still oftentimes it is just me arguing with myself. Something like that
"The COO must think I'm such a cringe character, every time we interact I make a fool of myself. - I don't think he thinks to much about you. - Not much maybe, but when he does think well of me. - I think we should concentrate on clearing the backlog. - I know. It seems like the projects are never coming to an end, but at least I am perceived as doing a good job by my superior."
And actually now it is: "You're stupid for posting this. Absolute cringe - What if I add this? Makes me more relatable. - Delete it. It's even more cringe. Why are you posting it anyway? Nobody will read it, and those who will read it will just say 'What a weirdo!' - Exactly no one will read, I might as well just post it, and after all I already typed it."
The flickering reminds me of an online conversation I had about reading in dreams. Many people said it can't be done, and someone said that for them the words flicker and change. I can read in dreams. The sentences don't make sense, or at least I can't follow them, but each word is clear and present and readable and I can read them in sequence.
Other things don't quite work though, like driving a car. I do wonder if that's the brain's inability to create the scenery whizzing by on the fly.
Ha. Well I read it, so take that, David’s conscience.
Is it our conscience?
Because I have an inner monologue, but I know some people don’t and think it’s also a metaphor, like Katie did with visualisation, or they thinks it’s weird, like schizophrenic weird.
I was once talking to a friend about imagination and things like schizophrenia, and I was wondering out loud if delusions and voices happen to people who have too much of whatever it is that gives some of us inner monologues and visualisation; like the equivalent of sickle cell anaemia but for imagination. I.e. one gene gives you protection against malaria, two genes gives you sickle cell anaemia. It’s obviously adaptive to have a powerful imagination; but too much, uncontrolled? Seems like it would be easy to become untethered from reality. My friend did not get it, because he had no inner monologue and thought it was a metaphor. I had no idea that was a thing.
Also Katie - if you’re reading this - you’re an amazing communicator - a gifted speaker and writer, which is rare. You may not be able to think up images but your words certainly spark vivid thoughts in others.
I think the idea is that they could sing the song out loud, but no earworm in their head. That sometimes could be a blessing! (But generally not - usually nice to have a song in your head.)
Maybe that's only a problem for more complex music. Like, Katie says she can't draw, but she can presumably write letters and I bet she could draw basic shapes and doodles semi-intelligible enough for Pictionary without being able to visualize them, so maybe happy birthday is the musical equivalent of that.
Yes, Katie and innumerable reddit posters obviously can write (or at least type - I wonder if it feels like a distinct experience when the letters are right in front of you on a keyboard compared to producing them from your head), so I assume to sing a song would be like that. You know what comes next even if you cannot visualize it.
Different parts of the brain process this stuff, and not all of it is equally conscious to your main executive function. So yeah, part of her brain likely can picture the tune, but it’s not available to her awareness.
Take reading for example. Even if you have no conscious experience of how the words sound, studies shows it takes us longer to read words that take longer to pronounce: some part of our brain is processing the auditory information, even if it’s not conscious.
One time I woke up just as my body almost fell out of bed. For a moment, I was aware both of the dream I was having, and my awareness of where my body was in bed and why I made the error that almost led to me falling. So yeah, we actually have different parts of our brains functioning at different levels of consciousness, likely at all times.
I just am never sure what is really *meant* by this. I can for sure imagine what a lemon smells like, or an orange, or coffee. But I cannot actually smell them.
My wife says certain things she can "smell" in her head, others not.
Ya I don't have aphantasia and I don't really get the remembering smells thing. I live in Colorado so I can kind of think of what a pine forest smells like right now, but not vividly, I would need to be smelling it. If I smelled baking cookies right now, I'd obviously know what it is, but I can't vividly smell them when I'm not smelling them.
It kind of reminds me of when people get in bitter arguments about whether free will exists or not; I always come away thinking it's a question of semantics.
A lot of the more frustrating free will arguments between academics are absolutely semantic, but the general free will argument is typically between free will skeptics and free will libertarians, which are radically, fundamentally different beliefs about how the universe works. Superstition is involved as often as not.
I don't know. I'm in the "no free will" camp and it seems a pretty fundamental disagreement. But not scientific in that there's no concrete definition of what free will even is supposed to be or look like.
I've never seen an actual definition of free will that isn't recursive or is essentially "magic".
In this case, there is a very clear definition of the experience "My cognitive experience of remembering is concretely the same as the actual experience of small/sight/etc.". And we have actual ways of empirically testing and quantifying this claim....e.g. through brain imaging.
So, I while free will seems to fall into the domain of faith, spirituality, religion etc in "things that cannot be proven as currently conceived" Aphantasia is squarely in the domain of science as a testable claim.
Same, but my wife agreed that she couldn't. We can both, like, remember what a smell smells like in some sense, but it's so much vaguer than imagining pictures or music. I wonder if this ability is less common.
I’m never sure if I can visualise mentally or not. I certainly can’t see an image like a photograph but I can hold the idea of an image. I can’t really explain it very well.
I was left thinking the same thing after reading this; I never thought of it before, but while I would say I can absolutely visualize mentally, I would not say I experience mental images as particularly vivid.
I share many of the things Katie named--I have a constant interior running monologue; can't come up with an image to draw or a story to tell that doesn't already exist; can't play an instrument or create music; never feel like I successfully design or decorate anything unless the finished product either works or doesn't. I am also terrible, embarrassingly terrible, at spacial mapping, directions, anything that has to do with that, as is my husband (which makes us both soul mates and terrible together).
I wonder if this shit is on a continuum, with Katie and Janna at the far ends.
What happens when you try to think of a scent you love? When I think about the scent of lemon zest, it's kinda like I can smell it, but it's more that I'm picturing the lemon and remembering how much I like the smell.
This whole conversation has made me realize that I have reasonably well-rounded sensory recall ability. I can't watch vivid scenes in my head, but I seem to have a moderate level of sensory imagination across the board, so if I think of "biting into an apple," that includes a re-creation of the tactile, olfactory, auditory, and gustatory elements along with the visual.
I thought that was bizarre as well. I can describe the smell of lemons with words, but I cannot conjure up a smell the way I can visualize or remember a song. Certain smells can transport me into memories more than photos or music. Woodsmoke in the October night, that weird salty fishy smell of the beach, English boxwoods clipped into topiary. Losing my sense of smell when I had COVID a few years ago (during Thanksgiving!!!) was very depressing.
I thought I understood aphantasia and knew I didn't have it—until I saw this phrase:"trying to force even the outline of an apple onto the back of my eyelids." When I close my eyes I don't see anything on my eyelids. I can imagine apples, people, etc., but I am now skeptical that I actually "see" them in my mind. Aphantasia may be a human variation that is too poorly defined for anyone to know for sure if he or she has it.
What I do know I have is a lack of binocular vision. The person sitting across from me looks no more 3D than a person in a painting. The only way I know how far I am from something is by noting its size and its relationship to other items that seem to be near it; this can result in some humorous mixups, like thinking a person has a vase of flowers on his head, and also probably some serious auto accidents.
This completely flat view of the world could explain my general lack of interest in sightseeing, action movies, most spectator sports, and life in general. Now I am wondering if the visualizations that people claim to have in their brains (or on their eyelids?) are flat or in 3D (whatever that looks like).
This might be still an aphantasia/non-aphantasia gap. No one (I don't think - articles such as this make it clear that no one really knows what goes on in anyone else's mind) sees things on the back of the eyelid. When Katie started talking about seeing white flashes, I knew it would not turn out to be visualization. You just kind of see it in the proverbial mind's eye. It is hard to describe in a coherent way. It just sort of exists on a different plain from the visual field in front of me.
I came on to say something similar. The “picture on the back of my eyelids” thing makes me think that in part it’s an issue of vocabulary. I mentioned it in the comments for the episode where it was brought up but I also don’t think anyone literally sees an imagined apple in front of them superimposed on their visual cortex. It happens in the amorphous space inside one’s head. I’d be interested to know how people with aphantasia experience memory as for me it’s the same thing. If I imagine an apple or if I remember an apple I just ate I’m picturing the same way - I just know that one was real and one wasn’t. But in neither case am I seeing them with my eyes. Katie’s trying to picture Jenna threw me though - what does it mean to “know” physical characteristics of someone without picturing them? Is it just a list of identifying words and when you see them again they click into place? If you’re not looking at someone do you still “know” what they look like, and isn’t that “knowing” what we mean by visualisation?
Yeah, I’m still not entirely convinced “aphantasia” isn’t just people taking other people’s descriptions of visualization too literally. But I woke up 30 minutes ago and skimmed the science parts of this essay. Maybe if I actually read them later that will convince me.
How did Katie write that final paragraph if she can’t visualize?
This is where I'm at too. I'm not totally convinced that we're not all capable of basically the exact same thing, but some people can just describe their visualizations better than others. Kind of like that thought experiment where people wonder about whether everyone is actually experiencing the same color when they say something is "blue" or whatever.
I used to believe this until I started hearing people use words like "vivid" and "clear as day." No one who saw the grayish, featureless apple I'm able to produce in my mind would describe it as "vivid." The only thing I've been able to imagine in full color is a firey red/orange sunrise. Everything else in my mind is washed out and gray, and most often in black and white. But I can definitely picture things and I'm a pretty good shape rotator. But I'm also a wordcel. Dunno what that means.
Aha! Yeh. That is interesting. She can tell us what she is seeing, present tense, but can’t recreate the image? Then how does she describe that image? It’s so confusing. I also would not 100% discount the possibility that Katie is fucking with us.
Ya I don't see anything if I close my eyes, but I can visualize many things. I just do it with my eyes open. I'm obviously not focusing on the things that I'm looking at when I do it.
Came here to say the same- the eyelid think made me realize she either totally misunderstands how the rest of us visualize or she just really cant fathom it. To me it’s more like a memory of a photo I never took. Always from the perspective of my actual eyes but not using my actual eyes. I can visualize just as easy with my eyes open as closed.
I can't just close my eyes and do it, but if I lay down and relax I can get to a spot where it's as if the back of my eye lids are a projection screen and I can "see" the images.
The best way I can describe it is if you are in a non-bright room, looking out a window in daylight (so strong light coming in) and you close your eyes, there's a residual image left. It's full color, it's 3d.....it's exactly what you were just looking at..but it fades out.
What I can imagine is like that same image, but maybe a second or two of fading.
I think non-visualizers imagine that we're seeing things with our eyes because they have no experience of what it's really like. Then again I also suspect some people who *can* visualize (if maybe relatively weakly) end up thinking they can't because of descriptions that make it sound more literally visual than it actually is.
Like, the Mona Lisa. I get people say they can't *visualize* it, but they *remember* what it looks like, right? I don't have the background but I can remember her face. (Couldn't draw it for the life of me, though.) If I said she had a wide open mouth, people with aphantasia would know that's wrong... would they?
Yeah it’s not seeing on the back of your eyelids, it’s not even like actual dreaming (which I experience as much more like “actually seeing”). But it’s definitely “visualizing”.
Like, right now, I remember visually what my garage looks like when I walked out the door this morning. I remember the color of my cars in a way that’s much more precise and distinctive than merely their name in words. I can “interrogate” my visual memory of my garage by focusing on one area or another, as if I were moving around in it, not merely listing its contents.
This is not a perfect photograph! And it’s not literal seeing the way I see my hands holding my phone right now. There are bits missing, detail that either doesn’t exist or would be wrong because my mind’s eye is filling in a blank.
But I can think of know way other than “visualizing” to explain the way in which I experience this memory of my garage.
Clicked through to the comments to say exactly this. I can IMAGINE things but I don't actually literally see those things in any useful way. I can conjure up visual memories of specific things, but it's difficult, and I wouldn't say that I'm actually SEEING those things.
I wonder if we all have basically the same ability of imagination but are simply describing it differently.
It wouldn't surprise me if scientists were more literal and skeptical about their ability to literally "see" things in their mind's eye.
I also have monocular vision, like horses! Did a lot of exercises as a child, also had to wear an eyepatch which was flesh colored and despised by me! I did have issues judging distance but see normally now except cannot see through 3D movie glasses or magic pictures
A member of my tribe! I wore an eye patch too; it was so annoying that I eventually put it in the toaster (I'll never forget that smell!). The first time I got a driver's license I had a note from the eye doctor explaining why I couldn't pass the binocular vision test. Now I just cheat and look with first one eye, then the other. Yeah, you do adapt to it, but I feel like I'm really missing out on the full experience of reality.
I also only see out of one eye at a time! And had a patch as a child and can’t see those magic pictures. My brother, who has the same thing, once found an article about a woman who had it too but had some kind of corrective surgery that wasn’t available when we were growing up and she said the world looked so beautiful compared to what she had seen previously. I think about that a lot
OTOH the one time my husband took me to shoot a rifle at a target I was much better at it than him which I put down to always focusing out of only one eye so swings and roundabouts I guess…
I had surgery on my eye muscles when I was about 30, but it was purely cosmetic: I was tired of people thinking I wasn't looking at them. It didn't last though. Pretty soon the right eye was drifting outward again. Then about 25 years later I tried doing eye exercises, which didn't give me 3d vision but did (I think) give me occasional double vision.
Argh feel you there on the people thinking you’re not looking at them! I had 5 ops when I was a kid to correct it and it’s def better than it was but I still have times where people ask me if there’s something wrong with their hair 😬 I worry about all the people who don’t say anything and just quietly think I’m judgy and rude!
LSD makes me see things on the back of my eyelids, but this is distinct from imagination because I have no control over the things I'm seeing. Generally if I'm imagining something its somewhere above my eyes, I look up.
Do NOT get electroconvulsive therapy if your goal is to have memories! I wrote an essay of my own about my experience with ECT and the memory loss that ensued. Entire years of my life are blank or mostly blank. Nothing else was changed (least of all the condition it was meant to treat).
Your observation about memories based on photos rather than actual events is so close to something I wrote that for a split second I thought I was reading my own words.
Needless to say, I’d be honored if you read my essay:
When I was five, an art teacher asked us to visualize balloons before drawing them. I literally saw them. Having never happened before, this shocked me, and I thought, “You’re not supposed to see what you think!” They vanished.
It’s weird how lots of kids have imaginary friends that they seem to experience as if they were literal visual hallucinations, but these usually go away, and we all just sort of accept this as normal.
Katie, when you talked about aphantasia on the show recently, I thought, yes, that's me. I did the apple thing but saw nothing. I think when I "picture" things, I'm picturing something abstract, conceptual. I, too have very few real memories of growing up. I don't remember the names of teachers (except Miss Gunn, my year 12 Lit teacher who was terrific). I also struggle to listen to audiobooks because I can't visualise them, but I can read physical books. And when someone asks me to visualise, I want to stab them in their mind's eye.
Take out a piece of paper and a pen. From memory, draw a circle that is the same size as a quarter. How do you decide how big to draw the circle?
For me, I would imagine a quarter resting on the paper, and compare the size of the imagined quarter to the literal circle.
I would not actually be “seeing” this quarter as if it were a literal physical object. But I would still be comparing my circle to a quarter “visually”.
Can someone with aphantasia do this? Would I be more accurate with my circle sizing than someone with aphantasia (but less accurate than someone with hyperphantasia?
My initial instinct would be to reference something, like my thumb. I'm not sure you would be more accurate in that case, as imagined visuals are shortcuts not necessarily grounded in reality. One of the more popular drawing exercises for beginners is turning a portrait upside down and trying to draw that- for most beginners it will be much better than the inverse, because instead of drawing what they "think" they see, they are being more intentional about it and not making visual shortcuts (e.g. a common shortcut is to the think you should draw an eye in an almond shape, but that's just a very simple approximation and not helpful for drawing something realistic).
Well the intent was to force you to do it without an external reference - I could probably be more accurate if I was allowed to hold my index finger and thumb apart and imagine holding the quarter.
Reading through the comments, it seems as though most incredulous people are somewhere in the middle of visualisation ability. It's certainly _reasonable_ to assume people navigate the world in the same way you do- I certainly did before I knew that it existed. I always assumed people were speaking metaphorically when asked to visualise, and that I was simply bad at quickly imagining descriptors for an imaginary scene. I was always incredibly confused when people complained that the movie version of a character they read in the book was nothing like they imagined, but I didn't really interrogate it.
To demonstrate what I mean to people, I often ask people to imagine a triangle. Then I ask what colour the triangle is, or what type of triangle it is. Most of the time, they're very quick to produce an answer- personally, when I think triangle, I just think of the concept of a triangle. Colour isn't needed for that so there's no need to conjure one. But if you think visually, you might fill in the blanks.
I can't imagine other senses either. I don't get songs stuck in my head- I might get lyrics stuck in my head, and I have an ever running monologue which is my voice. If I just listened to a song, I could maybe reproduce it with my inner monologue- but it would literally be my voice impersonating e.g. a guitar riff.
I think the idea of scents or tastes is a weaker sense in most people, and easier to understand a lack of imagination. The idea of remembering a scent or taste is completely absurd to me, but some people are somewhat capable of this. For most, it's inaccessible- but you still could probably produce some words that describe the taste of a cake. Some people have zero monologue- which is absolutely alien to me, but perfectly valid nonetheless.
Personally, I have always enjoyed visual arts, and my vocabulary reflects that. But I don't have that for music- learning music by doing seems to be a reasonable strategy for many, but I've found that it's largely useless without the accompanying vocabulary, because I can't really reflect on something or really "think" about music without words. So whilst I don't visualise things, I can generally "describe" visual things- especially if I've consciously thought about something whilst looking at it.
The taking photos much more resonated with me- before I knew, I always thought "I'm not going to take photos, I'm just going to live in the moment". Sadly, I remember very little of the times I lived in the moment. Since learning about it, I try to take as many photos as I can. I generally try and externalise everything I can (external brain style).
Personally, I dream very rarely, and when I do it's usually completely banal- e.g. I'm checking my work emails. I've found there are a few fellow aphantasiacs that have a similar experience, and not something non-aphantasiacs have ever described to me, but then there are many aphantasiacs who say they have very vivid dreams.
So glad you decided to post this! Sad no other outlet picked it up.
2 more things:
1. You dream and you remembered your dream! So at least your subconscious can create visualizations. I wonder if it does have something to do with recall, as you mentioned.
2. Anyone else concerned Janna just invents detailed memories? What else has she conceived without telling anyone?
I am hyperphantasic, I walk down the street seeing a conversation, it's not only I'm imagining it, I'm fully emotionally invested to the point I'll start gesticulating, until I notice people looking weird at me and remember where I am.
Or, one time I was on the bus and imagined what would it be like if we had an accident - I saw myself dying, my parents at my funeral... Made myself cry. Then I "woke up", and realised we've only just crossed a junction. It's like I lived weeks of life in just few seconds, fully awake, but not really.
I also have a constant yapping monologue going on, which I assume is just normal part of my ADHD (diagnosed).
There's some research suggesting that emotions play a strong role in memory forming. ADHD often affects emotional regulation, so perhaps there's some sort of connection between having strong emotional response and having vivid imagination. Who knows?
Otherwise, fantastically written essay Katie; even if you couldn't picture the scenes you described, I could - in detail, including the smell of the old house you bought. All thanks to your skill as a writer. Thanks.
LOL I have the same problem with unconsciously physically reacting to what I'm imagining. It's one of those things that makes me comfortable living alone lol
The upside of having a poor autobiographical memory is that you probably can't be haunted by good or bad images of past events or imagined events that could have happened. A side effect of "imagination" I really can't recommend.
I recall reading a study that found that PTSD is a lot rarer / not as big a deal for aphantasiacs. I think there's something in that- I've never worried about not being able to sleep after a scary movie, for instance. I'd say I generally don't ruminate on the past- good things or bad things.
I realized I was aphantasic years ago, and was in a period of thinking about what it all meant; around the same time I was taking up hang gliding. I had a conversation with a colleague who wondered how I could be so brave, and she said something to the effect that she'd love to, but she just couldn't get over her mental image of herself, injured and broken, after an accident. Not having to deal with that seemed like an advantage (if you want to go hang gliding).
I read an account of an individual on reddit who claimed to have intentionally developed the ability to visualize. After a while he wrote something to the effect that suddenly he gets why advertising works. Up until that moment he (like me) would see ads and they would seem to have no effect. But suddenly now that he can visualize, when he hears something like "beer" his mind will just SPONTANEOUSLY INSTANTIATE an image of a Budweiser that he has to expend energy to shake off - in spite of the fact he doesn't care for Budweiser at all.
I'm with Katie; I'd love the ability to see with my mind's eye, and somewhat regret not having it. But I do think it has its advantages at times.
This is a fascinating subject and told through your perspective it is even better.
I can picture things but my memory is not great.
I can remember and picture very specific memories but so much is lost in the mists.
But then the memory of my husband’s feet, ( before we married and divorced) in socks, on a train from Warsaw to Kraków just came into my mind all these years later.
2. Do the people without internal monologues talk more than people without them? I know someone who doesn’t have an internal monologue, and she talks about things she happens to notice more than other people.
3. Some biological males claim they “feel like” a woman. I’ve always dismissed this as confused; I don’t “feel like” a man. I know I’m a man, because people tell me I’m one and I can observe my own penis, which I do several times a day. But how do you “just know” the past if you have no images, sounds, smells, etc.?
That’s a lovely piece of writing. I may be a hyperphantasiac but I wouldn’t say the images are located anywhere. I don’t have to close my eyes to “see” them and I’m wondering if it could be an issue of expectation. When I imagine an apple, it’s not like augmented reality, where an apple pops into my visual field. Rather, it’s as if I’m recalling a set of properties and somewhere they’re assembled but it’s definitely nowhere in my visual field. Maybe if you lower your expectations it might happen? Thought experiment - Janna or Moose go missing… and you’re required to describe them to a police sketch artist - could you get the artist to produce a realistic sketch? If so, can you really have no visual memory?
That was both charming and thought-provoking.
Katie unfortunately publishes so little these days you forget she's an excellent writer.
I basically only know her through the podcast, and given her podcaster persona, I'm always a bit surprised how good she is at writing.
The last paragraph charmed me off the couch.
To go find your own Janna and Moose?
I am the other end of the scale. I see memories like a movie. I daydream constantly, and this has probably been a detriment: it’s hard to be “present” when I can always be playing a much more interesting movie in my mind. It also means bad memories are hard to shake.
I’m curious about the music side of it. Does it mean if someone mentions a song, you can’t think how it goes? If someone asked an aphantasic to sing happy birthday, they couldn’t?
I've got this thing where I can easily picture visuals, music etc in my mind, but I have no inner voice. I can consciously summon it when composing a sentence, like I'm doing now, but in the day-to-day business of living there's no monologue happening.
I definitely have some ghost of my own voice speaking when I read. But only in the vaguest sense, and I definitely don't "hear" anything. Same thing when thinking hard about something or debating myself.
Yes I’m not sure about inner monologue. I certainly talk to myself out loud (yes I am an only child, why do you ask) but I don’t hear someone else in my head!
It’s not someone else. It’s me! In my head I mean. At least, I hope it is? Good lord.
I can watch Silence of the Lambs in my head, if I want to, because it was my best pal’s favourite movie (he said it was the best comedy ever made) and we watched it so many times. I can visualise every scene, though I would probably muddle some dialogue if there was a test.
To be honest the whole idea of someone who can’t visualise gives me the creeps. I love Katie, but is she… a zombie? My mind’s eye IS me, in a sense. The bit of me that I most value sits there. I can live out among the stars, in my mind. Even the gods seem like small, petty beings from the perspective my imagination grants.
I think all of this is very interesting.
My visualizations always feel to me if as something was blocking the view where the image should be most focused. I have all the colours, I see the periphery, but it is hard to focus on a face. Additionally the image flickers. I can only see it for the fraction of a second and then I have to try and retrieve it again.
Regarding inner monologue: It is me talking to myself in my head, but I would never confuse that with any voice coming outside. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as an auditory experience. Still oftentimes it is just me arguing with myself. Something like that
"The COO must think I'm such a cringe character, every time we interact I make a fool of myself. - I don't think he thinks to much about you. - Not much maybe, but when he does think well of me. - I think we should concentrate on clearing the backlog. - I know. It seems like the projects are never coming to an end, but at least I am perceived as doing a good job by my superior."
And actually now it is: "You're stupid for posting this. Absolute cringe - What if I add this? Makes me more relatable. - Delete it. It's even more cringe. Why are you posting it anyway? Nobody will read it, and those who will read it will just say 'What a weirdo!' - Exactly no one will read, I might as well just post it, and after all I already typed it."
The flickering reminds me of an online conversation I had about reading in dreams. Many people said it can't be done, and someone said that for them the words flicker and change. I can read in dreams. The sentences don't make sense, or at least I can't follow them, but each word is clear and present and readable and I can read them in sequence.
Other things don't quite work though, like driving a car. I do wonder if that's the brain's inability to create the scenery whizzing by on the fly.
Ha. Well I read it, so take that, David’s conscience.
Is it our conscience?
Because I have an inner monologue, but I know some people don’t and think it’s also a metaphor, like Katie did with visualisation, or they thinks it’s weird, like schizophrenic weird.
I was once talking to a friend about imagination and things like schizophrenia, and I was wondering out loud if delusions and voices happen to people who have too much of whatever it is that gives some of us inner monologues and visualisation; like the equivalent of sickle cell anaemia but for imagination. I.e. one gene gives you protection against malaria, two genes gives you sickle cell anaemia. It’s obviously adaptive to have a powerful imagination; but too much, uncontrolled? Seems like it would be easy to become untethered from reality. My friend did not get it, because he had no inner monologue and thought it was a metaphor. I had no idea that was a thing.
Me too. I don’t know what my mind would be thinking otherwise… (also wondering how many queer prom equivalents I’ve made up.)
Also Katie - if you’re reading this - you’re an amazing communicator - a gifted speaker and writer, which is rare. You may not be able to think up images but your words certainly spark vivid thoughts in others.
I think the idea is that they could sing the song out loud, but no earworm in their head. That sometimes could be a blessing! (But generally not - usually nice to have a song in your head.)
But how would they remember how the song goes without having the tune in their head?
Maybe that's only a problem for more complex music. Like, Katie says she can't draw, but she can presumably write letters and I bet she could draw basic shapes and doodles semi-intelligible enough for Pictionary without being able to visualize them, so maybe happy birthday is the musical equivalent of that.
Yes, Katie and innumerable reddit posters obviously can write (or at least type - I wonder if it feels like a distinct experience when the letters are right in front of you on a keyboard compared to producing them from your head), so I assume to sing a song would be like that. You know what comes next even if you cannot visualize it.
Different parts of the brain process this stuff, and not all of it is equally conscious to your main executive function. So yeah, part of her brain likely can picture the tune, but it’s not available to her awareness.
Take reading for example. Even if you have no conscious experience of how the words sound, studies shows it takes us longer to read words that take longer to pronounce: some part of our brain is processing the auditory information, even if it’s not conscious.
One time I woke up just as my body almost fell out of bed. For a moment, I was aware both of the dream I was having, and my awareness of where my body was in bed and why I made the error that almost led to me falling. So yeah, we actually have different parts of our brains functioning at different levels of consciousness, likely at all times.
I’m the same, with many of the same ailments. On the plus side I can watch movies I made up when I’m bored.
Maybe the people who clearly visualize shit at the outliers! (Caveat, I haven’t read the whole article yet)
I have known I’ve had aphantasia for a while but I was startled when I read: “They (we) can’t, for instance, evoke the smell of lemons at will.”
I considered that Katie was fucking with me but I checked with my wife and this was something she could do. I guess I have asmelltasia as well.
I just am never sure what is really *meant* by this. I can for sure imagine what a lemon smells like, or an orange, or coffee. But I cannot actually smell them.
My wife says certain things she can "smell" in her head, others not.
Ya I don't have aphantasia and I don't really get the remembering smells thing. I live in Colorado so I can kind of think of what a pine forest smells like right now, but not vividly, I would need to be smelling it. If I smelled baking cookies right now, I'd obviously know what it is, but I can't vividly smell them when I'm not smelling them.
It kind of reminds me of when people get in bitter arguments about whether free will exists or not; I always come away thinking it's a question of semantics.
A lot of the more frustrating free will arguments between academics are absolutely semantic, but the general free will argument is typically between free will skeptics and free will libertarians, which are radically, fundamentally different beliefs about how the universe works. Superstition is involved as often as not.
I don't know. I'm in the "no free will" camp and it seems a pretty fundamental disagreement. But not scientific in that there's no concrete definition of what free will even is supposed to be or look like.
I've never seen an actual definition of free will that isn't recursive or is essentially "magic".
In this case, there is a very clear definition of the experience "My cognitive experience of remembering is concretely the same as the actual experience of small/sight/etc.". And we have actual ways of empirically testing and quantifying this claim....e.g. through brain imaging.
So, I while free will seems to fall into the domain of faith, spirituality, religion etc in "things that cannot be proven as currently conceived" Aphantasia is squarely in the domain of science as a testable claim.
Hub, interesting, I can visualize super well but I don’t think I can picture smells… weird.
Apparently it’s actual smell!
Same, but my wife agreed that she couldn't. We can both, like, remember what a smell smells like in some sense, but it's so much vaguer than imagining pictures or music. I wonder if this ability is less common.
Huh. I will occasionally have a flash of a scent or flavor memory that will then gnaw at me until I place it, and it can be quite vivid.
Same. Often makes me go look up some food I haven't had in ten years and have it again.
Can people really do this? I can’t. And I love smells so much this makes me sad.
I’m never sure if I can visualise mentally or not. I certainly can’t see an image like a photograph but I can hold the idea of an image. I can’t really explain it very well.
I was left thinking the same thing after reading this; I never thought of it before, but while I would say I can absolutely visualize mentally, I would not say I experience mental images as particularly vivid.
I share many of the things Katie named--I have a constant interior running monologue; can't come up with an image to draw or a story to tell that doesn't already exist; can't play an instrument or create music; never feel like I successfully design or decorate anything unless the finished product either works or doesn't. I am also terrible, embarrassingly terrible, at spacial mapping, directions, anything that has to do with that, as is my husband (which makes us both soul mates and terrible together).
I wonder if this shit is on a continuum, with Katie and Janna at the far ends.
What happens when you try to think of a scent you love? When I think about the scent of lemon zest, it's kinda like I can smell it, but it's more that I'm picturing the lemon and remembering how much I like the smell.
It seems like they can! My mind was blown.
This whole conversation has made me realize that I have reasonably well-rounded sensory recall ability. I can't watch vivid scenes in my head, but I seem to have a moderate level of sensory imagination across the board, so if I think of "biting into an apple," that includes a re-creation of the tactile, olfactory, auditory, and gustatory elements along with the visual.
I thought that was bizarre as well. I can describe the smell of lemons with words, but I cannot conjure up a smell the way I can visualize or remember a song. Certain smells can transport me into memories more than photos or music. Woodsmoke in the October night, that weird salty fishy smell of the beach, English boxwoods clipped into topiary. Losing my sense of smell when I had COVID a few years ago (during Thanksgiving!!!) was very depressing.
A lovely essay Katie. Thank you--I learned something new today.
I thought I understood aphantasia and knew I didn't have it—until I saw this phrase:"trying to force even the outline of an apple onto the back of my eyelids." When I close my eyes I don't see anything on my eyelids. I can imagine apples, people, etc., but I am now skeptical that I actually "see" them in my mind. Aphantasia may be a human variation that is too poorly defined for anyone to know for sure if he or she has it.
What I do know I have is a lack of binocular vision. The person sitting across from me looks no more 3D than a person in a painting. The only way I know how far I am from something is by noting its size and its relationship to other items that seem to be near it; this can result in some humorous mixups, like thinking a person has a vase of flowers on his head, and also probably some serious auto accidents.
This completely flat view of the world could explain my general lack of interest in sightseeing, action movies, most spectator sports, and life in general. Now I am wondering if the visualizations that people claim to have in their brains (or on their eyelids?) are flat or in 3D (whatever that looks like).
This might be still an aphantasia/non-aphantasia gap. No one (I don't think - articles such as this make it clear that no one really knows what goes on in anyone else's mind) sees things on the back of the eyelid. When Katie started talking about seeing white flashes, I knew it would not turn out to be visualization. You just kind of see it in the proverbial mind's eye. It is hard to describe in a coherent way. It just sort of exists on a different plain from the visual field in front of me.
I came on to say something similar. The “picture on the back of my eyelids” thing makes me think that in part it’s an issue of vocabulary. I mentioned it in the comments for the episode where it was brought up but I also don’t think anyone literally sees an imagined apple in front of them superimposed on their visual cortex. It happens in the amorphous space inside one’s head. I’d be interested to know how people with aphantasia experience memory as for me it’s the same thing. If I imagine an apple or if I remember an apple I just ate I’m picturing the same way - I just know that one was real and one wasn’t. But in neither case am I seeing them with my eyes. Katie’s trying to picture Jenna threw me though - what does it mean to “know” physical characteristics of someone without picturing them? Is it just a list of identifying words and when you see them again they click into place? If you’re not looking at someone do you still “know” what they look like, and isn’t that “knowing” what we mean by visualisation?
Yeah, I’m still not entirely convinced “aphantasia” isn’t just people taking other people’s descriptions of visualization too literally. But I woke up 30 minutes ago and skimmed the science parts of this essay. Maybe if I actually read them later that will convince me.
How did Katie write that final paragraph if she can’t visualize?
This is where I'm at too. I'm not totally convinced that we're not all capable of basically the exact same thing, but some people can just describe their visualizations better than others. Kind of like that thought experiment where people wonder about whether everyone is actually experiencing the same color when they say something is "blue" or whatever.
I used to believe this until I started hearing people use words like "vivid" and "clear as day." No one who saw the grayish, featureless apple I'm able to produce in my mind would describe it as "vivid." The only thing I've been able to imagine in full color is a firey red/orange sunrise. Everything else in my mind is washed out and gray, and most often in black and white. But I can definitely picture things and I'm a pretty good shape rotator. But I'm also a wordcel. Dunno what that means.
Aha! Yeh. That is interesting. She can tell us what she is seeing, present tense, but can’t recreate the image? Then how does she describe that image? It’s so confusing. I also would not 100% discount the possibility that Katie is fucking with us.
Exactly. I got hyperphantasiac on the quiz but I also just see darkness when I close my eyes. The images are in my mind 100%.
Ya I don't see anything if I close my eyes, but I can visualize many things. I just do it with my eyes open. I'm obviously not focusing on the things that I'm looking at when I do it.
Came here to say the same- the eyelid think made me realize she either totally misunderstands how the rest of us visualize or she just really cant fathom it. To me it’s more like a memory of a photo I never took. Always from the perspective of my actual eyes but not using my actual eyes. I can visualize just as easy with my eyes open as closed.
I can't just close my eyes and do it, but if I lay down and relax I can get to a spot where it's as if the back of my eye lids are a projection screen and I can "see" the images.
The best way I can describe it is if you are in a non-bright room, looking out a window in daylight (so strong light coming in) and you close your eyes, there's a residual image left. It's full color, it's 3d.....it's exactly what you were just looking at..but it fades out.
What I can imagine is like that same image, but maybe a second or two of fading.
I think non-visualizers imagine that we're seeing things with our eyes because they have no experience of what it's really like. Then again I also suspect some people who *can* visualize (if maybe relatively weakly) end up thinking they can't because of descriptions that make it sound more literally visual than it actually is.
Sometimes I wondered if this is just definition.
Like, the Mona Lisa. I get people say they can't *visualize* it, but they *remember* what it looks like, right? I don't have the background but I can remember her face. (Couldn't draw it for the life of me, though.) If I said she had a wide open mouth, people with aphantasia would know that's wrong... would they?
Yeah it’s not seeing on the back of your eyelids, it’s not even like actual dreaming (which I experience as much more like “actually seeing”). But it’s definitely “visualizing”.
Like, right now, I remember visually what my garage looks like when I walked out the door this morning. I remember the color of my cars in a way that’s much more precise and distinctive than merely their name in words. I can “interrogate” my visual memory of my garage by focusing on one area or another, as if I were moving around in it, not merely listing its contents.
This is not a perfect photograph! And it’s not literal seeing the way I see my hands holding my phone right now. There are bits missing, detail that either doesn’t exist or would be wrong because my mind’s eye is filling in a blank.
But I can think of know way other than “visualizing” to explain the way in which I experience this memory of my garage.
Clicked through to the comments to say exactly this. I can IMAGINE things but I don't actually literally see those things in any useful way. I can conjure up visual memories of specific things, but it's difficult, and I wouldn't say that I'm actually SEEING those things.
I wonder if we all have basically the same ability of imagination but are simply describing it differently.
It wouldn't surprise me if scientists were more literal and skeptical about their ability to literally "see" things in their mind's eye.
I also have monocular vision, like horses! Did a lot of exercises as a child, also had to wear an eyepatch which was flesh colored and despised by me! I did have issues judging distance but see normally now except cannot see through 3D movie glasses or magic pictures
A member of my tribe! I wore an eye patch too; it was so annoying that I eventually put it in the toaster (I'll never forget that smell!). The first time I got a driver's license I had a note from the eye doctor explaining why I couldn't pass the binocular vision test. Now I just cheat and look with first one eye, then the other. Yeah, you do adapt to it, but I feel like I'm really missing out on the full experience of reality.
I also only see out of one eye at a time! And had a patch as a child and can’t see those magic pictures. My brother, who has the same thing, once found an article about a woman who had it too but had some kind of corrective surgery that wasn’t available when we were growing up and she said the world looked so beautiful compared to what she had seen previously. I think about that a lot
OTOH the one time my husband took me to shoot a rifle at a target I was much better at it than him which I put down to always focusing out of only one eye so swings and roundabouts I guess…
Ooh, thanks for teaching me a new idiom!
I had surgery on my eye muscles when I was about 30, but it was purely cosmetic: I was tired of people thinking I wasn't looking at them. It didn't last though. Pretty soon the right eye was drifting outward again. Then about 25 years later I tried doing eye exercises, which didn't give me 3d vision but did (I think) give me occasional double vision.
Argh feel you there on the people thinking you’re not looking at them! I had 5 ops when I was a kid to correct it and it’s def better than it was but I still have times where people ask me if there’s something wrong with their hair 😬 I worry about all the people who don’t say anything and just quietly think I’m judgy and rude!
I have a theory that if you are blinded with a bright light, you can switch eyes and see normally!
If you watch a 3D movie it just looks like a regular movie?
I'm not sure I've ever tried, but since I see through only one eye at a time I don't see how that would work.
LSD makes me see things on the back of my eyelids, but this is distinct from imagination because I have no control over the things I'm seeing. Generally if I'm imagining something its somewhere above my eyes, I look up.
Katie.
KATIE!
Do NOT get electroconvulsive therapy if your goal is to have memories! I wrote an essay of my own about my experience with ECT and the memory loss that ensued. Entire years of my life are blank or mostly blank. Nothing else was changed (least of all the condition it was meant to treat).
Your observation about memories based on photos rather than actual events is so close to something I wrote that for a split second I thought I was reading my own words.
Needless to say, I’d be honored if you read my essay:
https://open.substack.com/pub/schajowicz/p/the-desistance-of-memory?r=y4an&utm_medium=ios
When I was five, an art teacher asked us to visualize balloons before drawing them. I literally saw them. Having never happened before, this shocked me, and I thought, “You’re not supposed to see what you think!” They vanished.
It’s never happened since.
It’s weird how lots of kids have imaginary friends that they seem to experience as if they were literal visual hallucinations, but these usually go away, and we all just sort of accept this as normal.
Acid premonition?
“When I was five…”
Katie, when you talked about aphantasia on the show recently, I thought, yes, that's me. I did the apple thing but saw nothing. I think when I "picture" things, I'm picturing something abstract, conceptual. I, too have very few real memories of growing up. I don't remember the names of teachers (except Miss Gunn, my year 12 Lit teacher who was terrific). I also struggle to listen to audiobooks because I can't visualise them, but I can read physical books. And when someone asks me to visualise, I want to stab them in their mind's eye.
Can you get 3 coins to touch on a single point? How did you know that? That's what most people do
Take out a piece of paper and a pen. From memory, draw a circle that is the same size as a quarter. How do you decide how big to draw the circle?
For me, I would imagine a quarter resting on the paper, and compare the size of the imagined quarter to the literal circle.
I would not actually be “seeing” this quarter as if it were a literal physical object. But I would still be comparing my circle to a quarter “visually”.
Can someone with aphantasia do this? Would I be more accurate with my circle sizing than someone with aphantasia (but less accurate than someone with hyperphantasia?
My initial instinct would be to reference something, like my thumb. I'm not sure you would be more accurate in that case, as imagined visuals are shortcuts not necessarily grounded in reality. One of the more popular drawing exercises for beginners is turning a portrait upside down and trying to draw that- for most beginners it will be much better than the inverse, because instead of drawing what they "think" they see, they are being more intentional about it and not making visual shortcuts (e.g. a common shortcut is to the think you should draw an eye in an almond shape, but that's just a very simple approximation and not helpful for drawing something realistic).
Well the intent was to force you to do it without an external reference - I could probably be more accurate if I was allowed to hold my index finger and thumb apart and imagine holding the quarter.
I'm trying to say, it's not exactly seeing pictures on your head
I found out I had aphantasia in 2016, after reading an article about someone who had just discovered they themselves had it (https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A2862324277332876%7D&path=%2Fnotes%2Fnote%2F - that short period of time when people wrote on Facebook).
Reading through the comments, it seems as though most incredulous people are somewhere in the middle of visualisation ability. It's certainly _reasonable_ to assume people navigate the world in the same way you do- I certainly did before I knew that it existed. I always assumed people were speaking metaphorically when asked to visualise, and that I was simply bad at quickly imagining descriptors for an imaginary scene. I was always incredibly confused when people complained that the movie version of a character they read in the book was nothing like they imagined, but I didn't really interrogate it.
To demonstrate what I mean to people, I often ask people to imagine a triangle. Then I ask what colour the triangle is, or what type of triangle it is. Most of the time, they're very quick to produce an answer- personally, when I think triangle, I just think of the concept of a triangle. Colour isn't needed for that so there's no need to conjure one. But if you think visually, you might fill in the blanks.
I can't imagine other senses either. I don't get songs stuck in my head- I might get lyrics stuck in my head, and I have an ever running monologue which is my voice. If I just listened to a song, I could maybe reproduce it with my inner monologue- but it would literally be my voice impersonating e.g. a guitar riff.
I think the idea of scents or tastes is a weaker sense in most people, and easier to understand a lack of imagination. The idea of remembering a scent or taste is completely absurd to me, but some people are somewhat capable of this. For most, it's inaccessible- but you still could probably produce some words that describe the taste of a cake. Some people have zero monologue- which is absolutely alien to me, but perfectly valid nonetheless.
Personally, I have always enjoyed visual arts, and my vocabulary reflects that. But I don't have that for music- learning music by doing seems to be a reasonable strategy for many, but I've found that it's largely useless without the accompanying vocabulary, because I can't really reflect on something or really "think" about music without words. So whilst I don't visualise things, I can generally "describe" visual things- especially if I've consciously thought about something whilst looking at it.
The taking photos much more resonated with me- before I knew, I always thought "I'm not going to take photos, I'm just going to live in the moment". Sadly, I remember very little of the times I lived in the moment. Since learning about it, I try to take as many photos as I can. I generally try and externalise everything I can (external brain style).
Personally, I dream very rarely, and when I do it's usually completely banal- e.g. I'm checking my work emails. I've found there are a few fellow aphantasiacs that have a similar experience, and not something non-aphantasiacs have ever described to me, but then there are many aphantasiacs who say they have very vivid dreams.
All a bit of ramble. Thanks for sharing!
So glad you decided to post this! Sad no other outlet picked it up.
2 more things:
1. You dream and you remembered your dream! So at least your subconscious can create visualizations. I wonder if it does have something to do with recall, as you mentioned.
2. Anyone else concerned Janna just invents detailed memories? What else has she conceived without telling anyone?
I am hyperphantasic, I walk down the street seeing a conversation, it's not only I'm imagining it, I'm fully emotionally invested to the point I'll start gesticulating, until I notice people looking weird at me and remember where I am.
Or, one time I was on the bus and imagined what would it be like if we had an accident - I saw myself dying, my parents at my funeral... Made myself cry. Then I "woke up", and realised we've only just crossed a junction. It's like I lived weeks of life in just few seconds, fully awake, but not really.
I also have a constant yapping monologue going on, which I assume is just normal part of my ADHD (diagnosed).
There's some research suggesting that emotions play a strong role in memory forming. ADHD often affects emotional regulation, so perhaps there's some sort of connection between having strong emotional response and having vivid imagination. Who knows?
Otherwise, fantastically written essay Katie; even if you couldn't picture the scenes you described, I could - in detail, including the smell of the old house you bought. All thanks to your skill as a writer. Thanks.
LOL I have the same problem with unconsciously physically reacting to what I'm imagining. It's one of those things that makes me comfortable living alone lol
The upside of having a poor autobiographical memory is that you probably can't be haunted by good or bad images of past events or imagined events that could have happened. A side effect of "imagination" I really can't recommend.
I recall reading a study that found that PTSD is a lot rarer / not as big a deal for aphantasiacs. I think there's something in that- I've never worried about not being able to sleep after a scary movie, for instance. I'd say I generally don't ruminate on the past- good things or bad things.
I realized I was aphantasic years ago, and was in a period of thinking about what it all meant; around the same time I was taking up hang gliding. I had a conversation with a colleague who wondered how I could be so brave, and she said something to the effect that she'd love to, but she just couldn't get over her mental image of herself, injured and broken, after an accident. Not having to deal with that seemed like an advantage (if you want to go hang gliding).
I read an account of an individual on reddit who claimed to have intentionally developed the ability to visualize. After a while he wrote something to the effect that suddenly he gets why advertising works. Up until that moment he (like me) would see ads and they would seem to have no effect. But suddenly now that he can visualize, when he hears something like "beer" his mind will just SPONTANEOUSLY INSTANTIATE an image of a Budweiser that he has to expend energy to shake off - in spite of the fact he doesn't care for Budweiser at all.
I'm with Katie; I'd love the ability to see with my mind's eye, and somewhat regret not having it. But I do think it has its advantages at times.
You are so good.
This is a fascinating subject and told through your perspective it is even better.
I can picture things but my memory is not great.
I can remember and picture very specific memories but so much is lost in the mists.
But then the memory of my husband’s feet, ( before we married and divorced) in socks, on a train from Warsaw to Kraków just came into my mind all these years later.
What a thing.
Memory.
Life.
Getting older.
Thank you Katie Herzog.
Three things:
1. Great essay; I may assign it to my students.
2. Do the people without internal monologues talk more than people without them? I know someone who doesn’t have an internal monologue, and she talks about things she happens to notice more than other people.
3. Some biological males claim they “feel like” a woman. I’ve always dismissed this as confused; I don’t “feel like” a man. I know I’m a man, because people tell me I’m one and I can observe my own penis, which I do several times a day. But how do you “just know” the past if you have no images, sounds, smells, etc.?
That’s a lovely piece of writing. I may be a hyperphantasiac but I wouldn’t say the images are located anywhere. I don’t have to close my eyes to “see” them and I’m wondering if it could be an issue of expectation. When I imagine an apple, it’s not like augmented reality, where an apple pops into my visual field. Rather, it’s as if I’m recalling a set of properties and somewhere they’re assembled but it’s definitely nowhere in my visual field. Maybe if you lower your expectations it might happen? Thought experiment - Janna or Moose go missing… and you’re required to describe them to a police sketch artist - could you get the artist to produce a realistic sketch? If so, can you really have no visual memory?