EDIT: It also reminds me of the "inner monologue". I'm skeptical when people confidently claim they have no inner monologue, as if it's as easy to verify as being right-handed or left-handed. In the context of meditation, it's common for people to confuse "having no thoughts" with "thinking nonstop" -- it's not an easy thing to understand about yourself, let alone claim how it relates to other people's subjective experience.

The thing I never got with the "Close your eyes, can you visualize a Red Star" - is that I can "conceive" what a red-star is like but I can't even imagine what "visualizing" a red star would be - do people actually see the red star in their head in the same way that I'm hearing Hell's Bells in my head? Or are there people who can actually pick up the actual image in exactly the same way they hear a sound? (I'm presuming not)

There is zero difficulty in my mind distinguishing between the sound I hear and the sound in my "head" - but at least I have an ability to hear sounds.

On the flip side while I have absolutely no ability to view images in my head 99.9% of the time, about 0.1% of the time, usually just in the 5 or so minutes before I fall asleep - I do see thinks in my head - to the point of being fascinated by them - but in this case - I'm actually seeing things, even though I have no control over it. It's different from when I'm hearing things - because that is mentally hearing things, whereas when I'm seeing things as I fall asleep - it's not mental at all - I actually see them (albeit with my eyes closed). It's a real image - not a mental one.

You are the first person to have given me a sense of what it means to "visualize" if it means something similar to "hearing" a song in your head.

It's also different from the inner monologue, btw. That's identical to my ability to hear sounds. Clearly there. Clearly mental. Sometimes chatty to the point of being distracting - but there is no doubt whatsoever that it's a mental dialogue - nothing whatsoever like actual sounds.

I'm the same way and my impression is that, no, most people don't have an auditory imagination anywhere near that strong. I actually work hard to avoid songs that are notoriously catchy and annoying because I know I won't get the earworm out of my head if it gets in.

I basically always have a loop of music playing in my head. Which piece of song is stuck playing in a loop varies over time, but it's very rarely silence. Often, it will be a sort of jumble of a couple of different things. (Right now it's a line from some annoying meme song my daughter just sang and a bit of the bassline from Basement Jaxx's "Red Alert".)

I'll often wake up with a different song stuck in my head because there's music in my dreams too.

> about 0.1% of the time, usually just in the 5 or so minutes before I fall asleep - I do see thinks in my head - to the point of being fascinated by them - but in this case - I'm actually seeing things, even though I have no control over it.

This is called a "hypnagogic hallucination" and is pretty common for all people to experience.

I can't really see objects in my head, but music I can play perfectly like it's an iPod. Usually just gets stuck on one track all day, though.

Yes, that's a very good description of what the experience is like.

When you're auralizing(?) a song, you can choose which memory of the song you're listening to, and you can tap along with the beat, whistle along with the melody, sing along with the words, while being absolutely conscious of the fact that you're not actually hearing the song, right?

Visualizing something is the same, you can manipulate the image in your mind, rotate, choose different memories of the thing - or imagine new ways the thing could look, while being absolutely conscious of the fact that you're not actually seeing the thing in front of you.

When you said "red star", I imagined a red giant star, protuberances and sunspots and all, floating in space. Then someone else commented about a "five-pointed star", so I shifted my imaginary image to a stylized five-pointed red star icon instead. Same as you would imagine listening to one song, and then swapping to a completely different one with the same title.

If I put my hand a couple inches away from my face, in front of one eye only, I can still 'see' aspects of that hand with the uncovered eye.

Analogously, when I imagine a 'red star', it is visible in a different medium / realm (like my covered eye) than the rest of the things I see around me (with my uncovered eye). I can 'insist on' or 'overlay' the imagined image, like the red star situated in a particular spot on my desk, but I do not feel that they 'become the same visual stream', ever, such that I would think that the star could be physically present in the room.

The imagination spectrum applies to all senses, so we all have varying degrees of it. Some can visualize every sense very well, others only vague faint unclear versions, some a mix!

I can recall/imagine taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch (texture and temperature), body movement, spacial awareness, and maybe more.

I can vividly imagine doing a physical feat, all the imaginary senses and sensations. Same as hearing a song in my head or imagining a red star.

It follows that there are others who can't imagine the other senses. What super imaginary powers might someone else have that is equally beyond my own? I heard of a guy with synesthesia who imagined numbers as complex 3d shapes and he could multiply large numbers in his head by, lego style, combining the shapes. The mind is wild.

Another fun story. I did improv comedy for a few years. One of the warm up games we played was someone would start singing a song, then another person would tag you out and sing a different song. I was bad at this game. But I have a few simple things in my back pocket to "play". Somewhere over the rainbow is one of them. The last person was doing some sort of rap, and what came out from me was a rap version, until the crowd helped correct it. I just have no idea what it sounds like other than trying to memorize if it's a high pitch or a low pitch, etc.

Regarding the inner monologue, I do have one. And it feels similar to my ability to visualize. I can control it, give it emotion per say, (not sound for me), but it isn't as strong as a memory of a dream.

I can hum Jingle Bells (or 1000+ other songs, the Star Spangled Banner, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, any pop song from the last few decades, etc...). The experience of imagining the song is the same as humming it except I don't actually hum it.

It sounds like you're saying you can't hum a song or even remember one? Can't remember anyone's voice? Can't rememeber the sound of fireworks? Of cars going by?

I can’t hum songs anymore complicated than the “Happy Birthday” song (but if it plays, I’ll recognize it).

I can’t remember people’s voices in my head (but if I hear them speaking, I’ll recognize it is them).

The bang of a fireworks or a car going by is simple enough to recall. It is also generic. I might not remember the hum of the engine of a specific car, or be able to play back a specific fireworks display.

Like the idea of a firework bang, being low intense vibrations, or a car horn being a high pitched short startling sound. Still can't really imagine it like I can picture things in my head, but I have an idea of the what the experience would be like.

Explains why I had such difficulty singing my whole life. It must be way easier if you can just recall a song in your head and match its pitch!

I've recently been wondering about the fact that I am pretty sensitive to sounds and may have trouble concentrating in a very noisy environment (especially if the sounds are not constant/predictable.)

My hypothesis is that this inability to concentrate well in a noisy environment is a trait that mostly affects people who are more 'auditory'. Thoughts/experiences?

I think the initial stimulus can originate at any part of this circuit.

So I do not think there is much difference between external so-called real stimuli and internal ones.

it's all just vibrations, processing, and reverberations :)

To the rest of your comment, it's fascinating how it's all a spectrum. I can't visualize a star, can hear sounds but have no inner monologue.

(I don't mean to be dismissive; I do think this is an awesome topic to debate and talk about though, it's a great path for us to maybe understand qualia a bit deeper, if that's possible at all.)

Ask me about it while dreaming and it’s a full on 3D movie/VR experience.

Music too I can play that in my head no problem like my own radio (unless it has words then I can’t imagine it at all) - so I suck at karaoke. Even trying to sing with songs I can’t process it correctly unless it’s tonal sounds from the words.

For a neuroscience background we are certainly not all wired the same. You are correct though that aligning those descriptions and untangling social meanings and words from experience is tricky.

Uhhhhhhhh.......I don't think that's extreme at all. Isn't that normal?? I just asked several people today to close their eyes and imagine an apple (or anything else) and everyone just sees black.

If you could see objects with your eyes closed, I think that's called having a photographic memory? (Which is...rare?)

I can have very vivid mental imagery, I can imagine all sorts of fantastical things in detail in my mind on command. But that doesn't mean I don't see black when I close my eyes. It doesn't mean the mental imagery blocks what I can see normally with my eyes open. It is in your "mind's eye", so it is still triggering the vision parts of the brain, but almost like its on a different screen.

Similarly with imagining sound or music. I can almost perfectly recall some of my favorite music, I can compose a new piece (poorly) in my head based on music and sounds I have heard, but none of it will drown out an actual sound I hear around me.

That being said, if I am very mentally focused on some mental imagery it can still distract me from my real vision and or even sort of "replace it" without my closing my eyes. Sort of like the feeling you get when driving and zoning out thinking about something (but you are still safely driving).

But when I close my eyes I describe it best as a black-and-orange static. I'll occasionally get residual images. Ask me to describe something in detail I struggle - but I can conceptually describe a space for example.

These are very different to what I "see" when I meditate for example, which is more dream-like (and I assume similar processes kicking in)

But maybe I have aphantasia and am totally wrong!

All I'm saying is plenty of people can play back songs in their head, or replay a conversation (or practice a future one) - it's why having a song stuck in your head is a universal experience - but not be able to internally "view" or "picture" objects with anywhere near similar fidelity, and therfore being good with sounds but bad with imagery is quite common, and not indicative of a condition (which is being called "aphantasia" here.)

I have very poor ability to imagine/remember music. Though curiously I'm good at "intros" (guessing songs from the first few notes); I couldn't hum you the first few notes of anything.

My visual imagination absolutely can have a time dimension just like my audio imagination. I can remember sequences of film from movies I have seen many times with high level of detail, and then if I so choose change what happens in that sequence to whatever I want.

I think it's more that as humans our audio fidelity in general is less detailed than our visual fidelity so it is easier for us to notice limitations in our ability to imagine visuals than in our ability to imagine audio.

And so many things I read about aphantasia are spot-on aligned with my own experience, but put into a comparative context I hadn't really thought about until the word was more or less invented a decade ago, and the idea leaked out into the internet. The line about "weaker autobiographical memories" in this article really hit home for me. I take so many photos now - thank goodness for digital photography - and in the context of this topic, it's no wonder.

I've also struggled to remember dreams, all my life - and also thought the 'counting sheep' thing never made sense, at all.

I can’t imagine/see mental images the same as having a real screen in front of me.

I can imagine a triangle. I can’t “see” it, it has no color and no brightness/darkness. Can’t really even describe the size. More like feeling around in a dark room. But the triangle is gone the instant I stop thinking about it. I wouldn’t be able to imagine a game of Tic Tac Toe.

Some people call this normal, some don’t. I have no idea.

I can imagine music too — and find it takes far less effort. (But can’t remember exactly what I imagined — more like just enjoying as it happens)

It looks roughly like the detail level of picture "C" in this picture: https://history.siggraph.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2014... But with much less brightness/opacity/solidity than that, maybe 20x less (i.e., only 5% of the brightness/opacity/solidity of the tie fighter image - but same level of lack of detail)

You can improve this ability through practice. If you spend 10 minutes every day concentrating on visualizing that triangle with more detail & specificity, like an art student would, you'll gradually improve.

I have it, but could draw pretty well when younger (not practiced in decades). What I found, though, was that my style was very different depending on if I drew from a model or from memory.

People with aphantasia are absolutely crap though with drawing anything from memory, but they can draw if something is in front of them.

Mine are clearer than picture "C" though when I try to focus on something they tend to fade to black. Sometimes though I have dreams in HD where when I focus on something the details reveal themselves and everything is clear and sharp.

I often get really detailed mental imagery. Often unbidden, when daydreaming. My drawing skills are ok too.

When I partner with my brother it's almost telepathy. I can draw a single curved line and he'll correctly guess 'elephant' before any players have even put pencil to paper.

If so do you see things in these dreams?

Either way, I've experienced a range, where my normal day to day experience is no sign whatsoever of seeing anything except maybe occasionally sub-second vague flashes, and the best I've experienced was as if I was looking straight at a real scene. So my day to day experience stands out very, very starkly against both my regular dreams and that one experience.

The frustrating part about that experience is that it suggests I can see things in the right frame of mind, but I don't know how to bring it out.

I suspect the mind is just like a body in the sense that the more you engage a particular muscle the easier it gets.

When I’m struggling with something I find it helpful to reframe statements into questions to activate creativity and clear any unconscious barriers that the mind is enforcing.

I can place symbols and move them, but I can't imagine a realistic flower; if I tried hard enough I could memorize a chess boards, but the pieces wouldn't have exact shapes as such, everything would be just a representation of a thing, not comparable to a visual memory of seeing the layout. In programmer speak, I think in nodes, graphs, connections. I can imagine people moving in a room to great detail, but not at all their faces or clothing.

I'm strongly spatial but not photographic at all. You're probably strongly tactile, and you learn a poem as if it was muscle memory of a movement.

Same on my end. As far as I'm concerned, I don't see an apple, but basically just in the sense that I'm not hallucinating—with my eyes open, there is no apple before me, and with my eyes closed, there is no apple on the insides of my eyelids, and I don't think that there is. I feel like I could answer questions about the appearance of my imagined apple, but I don't literally see it. But does that mean that I have aphantasia? Since this seems to be the main diagnostic instrument for a casual Googler, and since, as you say, there's no way for me to understand whether or not other people "really" see an apple, I have no idea.

(If people think that your point about never really knowing what other people are seeing is merely academic or philosophical, I'll mention that my mother went a long time before getting her amblyopia treated because she assumed that's what things looked like for everybody. Nothing in ordinary conversation told her, or anyone else, that her vision was different, and so no-one ever thought to test her for it.)

The same cannot be said of aphantasia, which is trivial to fake and almost as trivial to mask. Combine this with some social desirability bias, and you have a perfect recipe for a complete non-condition.

And I don't confuse this state of mind with lucid dreaming: I had spontaneous lucid dreams a few times. They were not very vivid, just as my normal dreams (I dream in images, and they are maybe around 50% vivid).

So, there is definitely a way to experience variation of vividness of mental imagery, by a single observer.

It always makes me question if I’m dreaming or not - and often, it’s the last thought I remember before I actually drift off to sleep. All of this seems to happen during the span of 60 seconds max (judging from my heartbeats), but this has categorically been debunked when my wife once told me I was actually snoring for a couple of minutes.

As I drift off to sleep sometimes it's fun to shift the inner eye to observe the mind and watch images float across my "viewport".

This is the line in the article that gets confusing for me. Like, are some people actually seeing an actual image of an apple, as if they were wearing VR goggles or something?

Another fun thing is imagining things but not fully. The brain will fill in the spots but not throw you all the info at once. For example I didn't really think of the monsters nose, but now that I did, it has a huge nose piercing like a cow ring. This is great for creation because instead of creating with your foreground brain, you can create for free with your background brain. I'm pretty sure every person can do this (barring <0.01% population health issues).

I use this extensively when I code too. I can see the lines of code, to the degree I can read them, and I've not found a limit to how much code I can have in my head and visualize at a reading level. I can do this with every single line of code from an animated ray tracer I wrote in C back in '85. Any code that I personally felt proud to have created, given about 5 minutes to recall the details, I can write the code out from memory.

Beyond seeing the lines of code, I see functions and objects and data structures as geometric shapes, and their interactions vary between images of little machines, like airplanes, traveling between them to complex bridge structures like freeways with lot's of traffic.

I'm also a lucid dreamer. I can tell when I'm dreaming with a test: if I say "apple" with my hand held on front of me, palms up and an apple appears which I can then grasp and hold, then I'm dreaming. I'll often wake at that moment, but when I don't I start taking advantage and fly like Neo. Often I'll fly into something, and the jolt wakes me. I wake laughing too.

It's funny for me, because I can "visualize" something in a non-visual way. I can transform it and imagine it fitting together with another object, or whatever. However, this is entirely non-visual. I see zero of this in my visual field, it's purely a sensation of seeing it without actually seeing it.

I also have nearly zero dream recall. I know I do dream, because occasionally I will wake up in the right part of my sleep cycle to literally feel the dream dissipating. Sometimes I can remember parts of it as it dissipates, but most of the time I have no clue what I dream after the fact.

The imaginary apple doesn't seem fully comparable to a real apple unless I'm in a very focused and compelling daydream, and even then real but not real at the same time, if that makes sense. But even now if I was to conjure an image of a faint, ethereal apple in front of this computer screen, I can do it easily.

The major difference is VR goggles are fully vivid, and remain so when I'm not willing them to be, and tangible in some sense I'm sure is indefinable with people to aphantasia. The VR goggles are real in the same way things that aren't dreams are real.

I don't personally have such a vivid visual imagination, but there are moments when it can feel like that — I won't know what I was physically looking at because I was so concentrated on a visual(-ish) mental image that obscured my awareness of the real world, to a degree.

Like the guy above, you should not be allowed to drive a vehicle.

> obscured my awareness of the real world

Yes - because these are the same symptoms as someone who drives drunk and kills someone - "didn't see anybody walking there" (= unable to tell what you're looking at) "just a little buzzed" (= obscured awareness of reality) "I don't know what happened" (same)

Just to clear some things up, in case anyone cares:

(1) It is largely voluntary, what I tried to describe. Just like choosing to focus on your phone or the kids in the back seat while driving is voluntary. All of those are, of course, bad things to do. A good driver controls themselves — imagination included.

I wouldn't especially trust a driver's reaction time in "deep concentration" mode whether or not they were making pictures in their head, so I guess I don't see (ha) a big distinction.

Though actually, for me I find it harder to do mental visualization when there's a lot of real eyball visuals going on, as when driving. I have an easier time with a static background. Perhaps other people are different.

(2) I find that day-dreaming is somewhat voluntary, too. It can happen on its own, but it can also be a choice, like choosing to meditate. I don't understand your point about how someone else's ability to interrupt you makes it non-voluntary.

(3) I didn't mean to say I "see images in front of me." They are actually distinctly not in front of me — not outside my body. They live in a different space, if you will.

Isn’t it distracting? Seeing stuff in front of you when you should be looking at the road?

For example if asked to visualize a green banana, and you can only see vague, unclear, faint outlines of a banana, that's hypophantasia. If you cannot see an image at all, it's aphantasia. Some might see vivid details of the banana, like the matte skin and subtle green gradient, they fall under hyperphantasia. Others who lack the details but are still clear considered phantasia.

This also applies to all other senses, like being able to imagine a sound or smell.

It was cool. Sort of like a hazy projection over the visual field. Normally when I visualize something with my minds eye it is on a black background. When the visualization ends my visual field snaps back to reality.

You could say that aphants just may not be trying enough - there are tests for that as well. But there is hope that in many people aphantasia is something that can be overcome, because it’s just a matter of a lack of a proper skill, or some sort of childhood trauma.

So I have basis for comparison. The difference is sharp and unmistakable.

What is frustrating is that my one experience suggests it ought to be possible for me to train my ability to, but no attempts have succeeded (I've not made that many - it was an interesting experience, and I'd enjoy having it again, but it wasn't earthshattering enough to spend a lot of time on)

> indistinguishable from a real apple

This is like saying what you perceive in your head through the wall is exactly as real, vibrant and tangible as if that wall was actually replaced by a window. Most everybody can describe, or "picture," a familiar room in their head - even from long ago like walking through the house you grew up in - but it is not the same as saying it is indistinguishable from actually being in the room and your eyeballs actually looking at it.

My point is not "I can do this", but rather, "I'm close to that, and it's foolish to think the continuum ends where I am."

All the information is there, not just a visual, so I don't think it'd be a viable test at all.

I remember reading somewhere that consciousness is like a public relations manager. It makes sense that highly social creatures that will die if shunned by their tribe would have a complex system for explaining their actions in the most positive light possible.

If you can close your eyes and get your mind to produce something like a photo of an apple, you know it. If you can't even remotely obtain anything like that you know that too.

Who uses raw abstract percents? Even the meme version is much more competent than that: https://preview.redd.it/o1lktd5no9t61.jpg?width=640&crop=sma...

What color is the ball?

People who are #1 respond immediately, just as if you asked them about a real object in front of them. #4/#5 will ask “what do you mean what’s the color? I can imagine it to be a certain color” - in their head the ball is just an abstract concept labelled “ball”, it doesn’t have a color by itself.

I literally don't believe that aphantasia meaningfully "exists" given what we've learned about brains. I'm reminded of the great article I saw about how "Your mind is not a computer?" No one remembers "images" in the way a computer does, we (re)construct them via association.

So I think our brains "remember" enough to do what it needs to do and no more, and so called aphantasia people are perhaps doing what subjectively feels like less reconstruction based on what they read.

What it practically means? I have no idea. I’m absolutely worse at remembering things like clothes someone left the house in but that could also just be me paying less attention to things like that.

I also have mental images while dreaming, but not so clear, that persist for short periods as I'm aware I'm waking up.

The three experiences are nothing remotely alike.

I suspect it probably could be if they practiced, maybe picked up an artistic hobby or two, but if they're insist they're not visualizing presently then I'll believe them.

The key here is to remember that what makes us capable of sharing a world view and understanding each other is not just speaking the same language, there is also a degree of required shared cultural background—and it is not shared by all humans or even just speakers of a language.

In order to make sure a question about inner experience yields a useful answer at all from person on Earth who has a sufficiently different life from yours, you may first need to establish a common world view basis of sorts (unlikely to happen in, for example, a mass survey, but perhaps possible in a long-form discussion on an online forum).

Of course, even after all that, any comparison will still necessarily be very low fidelity.

If you have an example of some existing means of lossless communication between two humans, bring it forth. If you believe it is a technical possibility, then be my guest—however, I do not see such a way (that would also maintain humans as a set of diverse individual conscious agents, so homogenizing society to reduce everyone to a shared baseline does not count).

When you think of linguistics, and commonly misunderstood terms even though we have an objective way to convey the meaning (dictionaries, words) eg 'emigrate', how many more misunderstandings are possible when there is no objective access?

Also, I think people who say they have no inner monologue think an inner monologue is like JD on Scrubs thinking to himself.

As for mental images, I have them all the time while dreaming, but I've only experienced them once in my life while fully awake, and profoundly clearer than any dream. I can remember what some of the images in a few dreams looked like, but once I start waking up, the visuals fade within 30 seconds or so of being aware.

God this is a tired argument. Your visual cortex is not special. Your red isn't any more different from my red than my "circular" is different from your "circular".

We literally can't know, and never will. The fact that you assert that assert otherwise (as far as I can tell) with such staunch confidence seems to be exactly the kind of thing OP is calling into question.

From the article: "but somehow they cannot integrate this information in a subjective experience".

Consider a conversation with a blind person. Claiming they aren't having a subjective experience because they can't visually perceive you would be fundamentally biased. Clearly, one doesn't need visual input to engage in meaningful interaction or to have rich internal experiences.

Over time, it's become clear that people have a wide range of internal experiences. While individuals often try to compare their experiences to some imagined baseline, this baseline itself is subjective and variable. Many mistakenly assume that their own subjective experience is universal or "correct," failing to recognize the vast diversity of internal processes across different people.

Recognizing this diversity is crucial. It helps us understand that subjective experiences can vary greatly between individuals, yet all are equally valid. This broader understanding moves us away from judging others' internal experiences based on our own limited perspective, and towards appreciating the rich tapestry of human cognition and perception.

You are skeptical when people say they have an internal monologue. Those without internal monologue would be skeptical when you say you do have an internal monologue. Your confidence is also based on nothing more than your personal experience + bias.

PS I firmly doubt those "swapped colour experience" ideas make any sense at all. Probably the thing that is assumed to be flipped is just that part of the experience that only seems to exist as an absolute, yet is actually not defined at all beyond its relations to other experiences.

On internal monologue, I said the opposite. I'm skeptical when people say things like "I also don't have an internal monologue. I don't passively think thoughts. I have to actively think everything."[1] I have a reason for this beyond personal experience and bias: that it's easy to be shockingly wrong in this direction. For example, many people will think they can count 60 breaths without being distracted by thoughts, only to find it impossible when they try and pay close attention.

Maybe the swapped color was a bad example. I just mean any direct comparison of qualia in different minds which is impossible to do, and therefore pointless to talk about.

[1] The first Reddit post I found searching for "no inner monologue"

Psychologists and neuroscientists can tease these things apart.. in the article they talk about it. But aphantasia is only recently being understood so methods to quantify the degree will improve.

We could suppose that someone could see the entire spectrum inverted, but that causes other problems that we could test for. There are more hues between red and blue than there are between green and yellow. Instead of seeing brown (really dark yellow), they'd see dark blue.

And the even more interesting thing is that this nuance of reality extends to everything. The world as we perceive is only after extensive processing and filtering by our brain, driven by millennia of evolution. And it's very safe to say that our perception of the world has changed over those millennia and will continue to change in the future. So it seems essentially illogical to then assume that everybody at the current time shares the exact same 'experience' of perception.

Consider an enum type: we agree on labels (colour names) for different stimuli; as those stimuli combine they correspond to some other enum variant, and we interpret them as the same label. But we don't know, and I agree with the top-level comment that we can't know, whether our perception of the stimuli with that label is the same.

This is distinct from colourblindness, which is inability to distinguish stimuli for some of the enum variants, and so the labels get merged/boundaries between labels move. (Ok fine we also need a hashmap from stimuli to the enum..)

We agree to call the rose pink, and it's the same pink we see when we look at a colour card and agree it's the colour of the rose, but we don't know that what our brains reconstruct from the light when we look at 'pink'-labelled things is the same.

I can visualise things in my head exactly the same as someone with their eyeballs removed can see real things.

I think that's relatively objective.

And I say this with confidence.

"where did I leave my keys", "what would it look like if I moved that couch", and "how big is the room I can only see one wall of", are decent examples.

> However, such tests rely on introspection and self-reported experience, which made some neuroscientists doubt that aphantasia was real. Could reported differences in visual imagery be a language disconnect, given the ambiguity in how we describe our inner worlds? “It could be the case that we’re all actually experiencing the exact same apple, we’re just describing it differently,” said Rebecca Keogh, a research fellow in cognitive neuroscience...

The following ~8 paragraphs discuss the evidence for it beyond subjective reports.

So these are be relative to what i see with my open eyes and hear with my ears. I think this is the only way you can measure.

(What i see vividly with eyes shut is more like something random a kalidescope.)

It would be unfathomable for me to have this experience and not acknowledge that my mind is simulating sound

"Behind her eyes, it was completely black” "They reported actually seeing an apple, some vividly and some faintly"

This seems weird, but both of these describe my subjective experience of imagining an apple equally well.

Since then, I've noticed a few interesting things:

1) I remember things by association. I'm great with maps, physics, economics, and topics where things are inter-related, but terrible at memorization and obviously can't visualize anything.

2) I'm relatively unburdened by trauma. A lot of my friends will have a visual memory of things that have happened to them, but for me, if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. It's sort of sad to not remember all the good times, though.

3) It's not really related to taste (I think my taste visually is better than most of my friends and they ask me for fashion advice), but I have to see something to know how it will look and make a decision. Basically near impossible to be an artist or designer.

Best self-described mental model for how my brains feels internally is as objects (in the programming sense) with properties and relations. As I "imagine" something, I'm recalling the object "living room couch", and then enumerating properties of that object "leather, brown, L shape."

If I think of something on the couch e.g. "cushion", then it starts off being just a relationship "cushion is on the couch" without any location component. If I then inspect the "location" property of the cushion, then I think "the cushion sitting upright in the L-shaped bend of the couch."

I'm pretty damn good at spatial reasoning in my head, e.g. I can "design" a component in my head, and then sit with Fusion 360 and create it as a 3D CAD model... but I'm not actually seeing anything in my head at all. It still remains in that abstract object <> properties <> relations head-space.

In some ways, when I'm imagining a 3D object in my head, I'm actually thinking "this sketch" with "this shape" extruded by 10mm. So the actual constructive process by which an object is realized in my mind IS the actual process by which I'd design it.

Yes. Most people do.

> That seems insane.

Think of a song you like. Play it in your head. Can you hear it? Can you tap the beat? Can you whistle along with the melody? Can you join in and sing the chorus when it comes? But you know you're not actually hearing the song, right?

Visualization is just like that, but for your vision, not your hearing. In the same way you can replay a sound you've heard in your head, most people can replay a thing they saw in their heads.

I can't see anything in my mind yet I can construct the full geometry of my living room very detailed just from memory or can easily trace a route between locations I know, even if I didn't visit them a lot. It's like being a 3D printing nozzle and being able to trace whatever I need in my head without seeing.

That's probably the reason why I really like digital/web design and CAD because the length and geometry is very well defined based on basic shapes. It's like the visualization of what I would do in my brain?

When I became aware of the concept of aphantasia, it gave context to how I work in the visual arts. I was never really great at coming up with an idea and creating it - I always preferred to work off something pre-existing, whether that was painting from a photograph, or doing collage work. This transferred especially well into working in Photoshop, although I never latched on to Illustrator.

Sketchup was a revelation to me, once I got the hang of it. I was thinking about repainting my study, and ended up modeling my whole goddamn house. Sketchup's 3D warehouse is full of Ikea furniture, and I could rearrange my room virtually, try different colors, it was so great.

In trying to imagine what my 18th century home looked like when it was built, I again struggled because of the absence of photography, but ended up building the surrounding blocks in Sketchup and Twinmotion.

So, I think there's a path to the visual arts, to graphic design... it's just a different path, and one that, for me, means I have to lay my own foundations before I start getting 'creative'

With the remember by association I realised I think I can recall the layout of any building I’ve ever been in. I don’t get lost once I’ve explored once.

I did a thought exercise and it’s not validated - but I could “imagine” walking through my pre primary school. But in darkness. So when I have a memory from long ago I now try walk the area I was in when it happened.

It brings up other surprising memories I had forgotten about that were like geo specially tied to the location.

I would say trauma is an issue with me because my brain likes replaying awful/painful accidents in my mind, especially one particular bicycle accident. Funny thing is the playback is in 3rd person.

Visualization comes naturally, if some one describes something I start building it in my head. However I think you could be an artist or designer in some fields but drawing might be really hard for you.

Do you day dream?

Do you have dreams, sometimes lucid?

How does your memory work, are you able to replay a scene in your head?

When you read a fiction book does your brain not try to construct the scene in your head?

Like when you seen a movie/show based on a book you've read and are surprised at how differently the show runners imagined everything compared to you?

1) But how do you navigate when you're not looking at the map? I'm placing myself mentally "in it" as a dot and can then know that I need to go two streets more etc. Or any game I've ever played I can recount now in my head, for instance I could explain to you how to get to a star in Super Mario 64. Can you do that without "visualizing"? What if I ask what level is to the immediate right when entering the castle? I can see it, but I wouldn't have memorized it any other way I think?

Also 1), when I do maths I also visualize it. Like I can mentally integrate a formula, and then I see it in my head as if it was on a piece of paper. How do you keep track if you can't see it? Or programming, it's like things that align in my vision when I design some piece of code, I can see the different parts and how they will fit together, how is that for you?

As for maths: I actually have a physics PhD and am now a C++ dev. I couldn't mentally integrate anything complex. Never needed to, someone invented paper at some point ;) I'm a decent programmer I'd say, it seems to be common among aphants to be good at abstract reasoning, which I think really helps with coming up with good programming solutions to concrete problems.

It used to be really annoying prior to smartphones - but now I just love that first time in a new place that I move to - everything is completely and absolutely a mystery for a few days - but I realize after a week or so I’ll be able to find my way back down the block without a smartphone.

It’s important to note you’ve captured something different than poor spatial perception (which I have as well - I am unable to navigate with a map.) - There isn’t a lot of spatial perception involved in walking one block down a street and then finding your way back a couple 100’ based on obvious landmarks. Though - presumably if you had good spatial perception (but no visual memory) - you could do it simply by remembering precisely what your spatial relationship to your origin was, without reference to anything visual - it’s the lack of either which results in me getting lost instantly.

I have no trouble drawing a map of a place I know. But I’m not drawing it from an imagined map. There must be some spatial representation in there somewhere, but it’s not an image that I can see before I draw it.

Navigation - I'm doing the same thing, but without "seeing" it. I know Georgetown is N-NE of Austin, Liberty Hill is due W from Georgetown, IH-35 runs N-S but actually slightly NE-SW through Austin for example. I can draw pretty good maps on command (if not to scale), but I don't "see" that until I put it on paper. I think I actually have a much better recall of spatial relations than my wife, who has a vivid mind's eye.

Regarding math: again a similar process, but I don't "see"the equations. Coding is interesting because when I'm really in the zone I feel like I can sit, think, and come up with a holistic design for some problem. Then as I start to write the code I can "feel" the congruence or discongruence between the code I've written and the design I conceptualized. But it's not, for example, a visualized graph in my head. It's more of a physical graph, like holding a carved statue and feeling the curves, edges, and features. Except it's not the same physical sensation as touch, but a mental analog.

Edit: another commentator called it "imaginary proprioception" which I find very apt.

I am a visual aphant, but I can imagine objects in virtual 3d space - kind of like a blind person navigating through touch. It’s just that objects are points/lines and I remember what label a given point is.

Also, I can map things to a feelings - a feeling of going left/right etc.

Navigation is a non issue to me, whereas I have friends who have perfect visual imagination but they cannot connect it to spacial/physical imagination. E.g. a friend of mine can imagine various plants, but she couldn’t buy a container for them because she cannot imagine their volumes. I can imagine volumes, but cannot imagine visualy.

I'd love to see more research on this. Because it seems like this is something that can be modified. And it really feels like I'm missing out on something special about the human experience - which makes me kind of sad.

When I smoke weed, or take shrooms, my minds eye becomes way more vivid. ONLY then, can I close my eyes and actually SEE an apple or a rotating cube, or whatever I want to imagine. Reading fiction books actually becomes captivating.

It would be SO cool if there was a drug that gave me this ability but didn't make me "high" or confused in the way weed or shrooms do.

> It would be SO cool if there was a drug that gave me this ability but didn't make me "high" or confused in the way weed or shrooms do.

I experienced exactly this! It turned out that, for me, the root cause was multiple B vitamin deficiencies; correcting them caused my internal vision to become INCREDIBLY vivid. B vitamins are involved in neurotransmitter production (ex. [0]) -- particularly serotonin, which is known to interact with vision[1] -- and it's been amazing realising what I've been missing out on. Psychedelics[2] and cannabis[3] "improving" the condition makes sense since both have serotonergic activity (5HT2A specifically).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate#Neurological_disorders "[...] the bioactive folate, methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF), a direct target of methyl donors such as S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe), recycles the inactive dihydrobiopterin (BH2) into tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), the necessary cofactor in various steps of monoamine synthesis, including that of dopamine and serotonin."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT2A_receptor#Effects

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT2A_receptor#Ligands

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3552103/

I take a Vitamin B Complex every day from Nootropics Depot

Still a bit weird, health-wise, but a lot more in your control than drugs.

I could picture myself on a beach or walking through a forest, something I’ve always felt frustrated I could never create in my mind. I’ll admit it was a slightly scary experience…

By contrast I have a friend with a wonderfully vivid imagination. He’s a photographer by trade and spontaneously captures moments / scenes on his phone while we’re walking along. We’re always asking questions about the other’s brain :)

It wasn’t until much later (after I stopped tripping) that I learned about aphantasia as a name for my daily experience and I’ve always assumed that it was why my experience on hallucinogens varied so much from more common descriptions. It’s interesting to hear that they might “unlock” the experience of imagination for others.

Just as you can learn to wiggle your toes independently, or play the piano, or learn a new language, which require wiring new pathways, it's possible to learn to wire new pathways to non-motor areas of your brain. But it likely requires the same amount of effort.

I believe that developing the ability to mentally visualize more vividly is the explicit goal of some certain kinds of meditation. If you're interested you might look into "fire kasina".

If that’s the case, you can probably improve it simply by repeatedly using what you have. I say that because my ability to think visually improved greatly when I started drawing. Also I’m still not very good at conjuring well proportioned and shaded objects from nothing but I can pull them out of my memories.

My hypothesis is that you would get some ability to visualise at some point. That’s an experience which would be cool to carry actually.

> It would be SO cool if there was a drug that gave me this ability but didn't make me "high" or confused in the way weed or shrooms do.

On one hand, with enough practice and skill in doing drugs the "confusion" and maybe even "high" will go away, and become just more ordinary sensations

On the other hand, the drugs are certainly helpful for developing faith that it is possible to "get there", but they're not so great at "how to get there from here" (unless you're already well practiced at looking). Kind of like sleeping in the taxi to the top of a mountain versus walking up it.

Under the "travel" metaphor, I guess training in doing drugs would be training "how to get back here from there", while training Concentration alone would be training "how to get there from here". The latter is certainly more effort up front. Some people find the former to be more effort later on, unfortunately. The latter is also attractive for other reasons which should be obvious (it's free)

It was interesting! Didn't sleep all night, how do you phantasts do that? :-)

I did get pretty strong visual experiences from Ketamine therapy, but it's completely different from mental images. I felt transported to a different "head space" where there was abstract visual imagery that felt "real" but completely disembodied and not related to day-to-day experience.

I really can't comprehend what it's like to have normal visual imagery or be a hyper-visualizer.

It felt like I 'let go' of some subtle assumptions around how I would visualize things normally and had an expanded ability, but it also seemed more intrusive and without the same 'distance' between 'me' and the imagining.

There is some research into visuals that seems elucidating.[0]

[0] https://zugzology.com/blogs/myceliums-gambit/exploring-psych...

When most people who play chess need to look a few ply ahead they do so by visualizing the board and pieces and them moving those visualized pieces around on that visualized board. They pretty much do with the visualized board what they would do if they had access to a physical or computer analysis board that they could actually move pieces around on.

I once wondered if top players do it that way too, or if maybe the see the position in some more abstract way like a graph with pieces as vertices and colored directed edges encoding relationships such as "The rook is attacking that night" and "that knight is defended by that bishop" and moves are then operations that shift edges.

I asked GM Nakamura about it on an AMA he did on Reddit, and he said he sees the board just like nearly everybody else does.

Pretty much everyone at my level (2000 USCF) can play blindfold. I always assumed that I was completely unable to because of my aphantasia, but when I heard about Pruess's story, I decided to work on it, and I now can, although with difficulty and very slowly.

Basically I still keep around all the information about where all the pieces are; it's just not on a virtual board that I "look" at, it's stored more abstractly. I keep track of clusters of pieces and relations between them. The fact that I have an excellent sense of the board itself (I know how all the squares relate instinctively) helps. But I still have to stop all the time and confirm where all the pieces are (or, conversely, what's on every square).

And in my experience visualization was 100% a trained/learned skill. Like all players when I was weaker I had no board visualization, and would have difficulty visualizing even simple variations. And then at some point I began to be able to see the board easily. The counter-intuitive thing is that there was no progress, it was like a stair-step. At some point in my 'career' I couldn't see the board at all, then suddenly I could. I think it has something to do with trained pattern recognition, because now when doing things like tactics problems I can generally look at the position for a few seconds and then close my eyes and get to solving it in my head. But I can't do this in weird positions where there's a bunch of pieces in random locations. So my visualization is clearly impacted by some association with familiar patterns.

I also think my experience is the rule based on coaching I've done with players of all ages and skill levels. I suspect most strong players aren't familiar with this, because they started playing as children. Nakamura, for instance, hit national master level at 10 years old. I don't trust his recollection of introspective astract/perceptual detail, as a 6 year old, to be particularly accurate. And if visualization is a trained skill with exponential step style progress, then it's completely unsurprising that people would report radically different abilities to visualize things.

As an aphant I always wondered how can people play chess by just mentioning moves and not get lost - it makes sense if they have a stable picture of their board in their head!

An interesting thing is that your eyes tend to move while navigating this board - an interesting sort of connection between the physical and mental even when it's entirely mental. I noticed when Magnus did his blindfold sim in Vienna [1] he'd often tilt his head in a certain direction for each board, so I imagine it was the same thing for him with him having them all kind of setup in his mind, and simply moving his head to look at each board in turn.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqmzadHNSLs

The basic hypothesis is, I guess, that people with aphantansia develop scaffolding to help them memorize so they're better at some of the details that other folks that rely too heavily on their mental imagery.

I don't know of any studies on chess in particular (though I haven't looked) but I would imagine that something similar could be at play here, where it might not be obvious that people with aphantasia are worse for these types of games.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856239/

Honestly, I think that aphantasia is a bit overhyped; I can do virtually all the things that people with normal mental imagery can do, except I suppose actually visualize the thing in my mind. The way that it works feels akin to a blind man groping in a dark room. If I try to visualize a chess board, of course I only "see" blackness (or nothing), but if you ask me what square is at e2, I can kind of mentally "feel" in that area and know that there's a king pawn there. And I can kind of "feel" below it that there's a king, and a queen, etc.

Normal people see things in their visual imagery by directing their attention at a spot in their mind, seeing it, and then registering what they saw. I just skip the middle step.

Similarly, the top chess players can remember a lot of the matches they played, and others they studied. This is not something my brain is able to do, period. Similar to how I have less personal memories than a lot of other people.

Long term positional planning isn't a problem as I can feel my way around a position pretty well and can imagine positions I want to reach, but detail heavy calculation is much harder.

Doing a lot of deep puzzles is the best antidote I've found.(And blind chess, but that's really hard)

When imagining an object, do people literally see it as if they were physically looking at it with their eyes (as if a physical image appeared on the inside of their eyelids)? When I imagine something, there's nothing visual/optical involved. It's like a dim picture that originates in my brain--I can kind of put something together, but it lacks any detail or clarity. My actual vision stays completely black.

This is a story - this is not literally true, but is a roughly similar shape of things.

My experience is that I am a little thing piloting a giant thing (my body) - I sit in a seat and watch a screen. That screen shows me what my eyes see, and to the edges and beyond are empty. In front of me - between the screen and me - is an empty space. In that space I can draw lines, color things, move things, rotate things.

If I concentrate hard enough I can overlay (by seeing the space while I have my eyes open) an imagined thing in real space (The imagined item is still originating from that space - not the screen - but the screen and that space...mix). The screen from my eyes is an order of magnitude brighter - so I have to focus in order to do that. I can imagine things with my eyes open... but when I do, I am not facing the 'eye-screen' inside my head, I'm looking down and away from it and only at that space of imagination.

I recently starting drawing: It seems to solidify this space/ability more than any other mental exercise I've tried. I have noticed a distinct improvement when I started deconstructing what I was seeing in real live down to basic shapes (In that imagined space and overlaying it on what I was seeing).

Mine seems similar. Instead of piloting a body I just am my body, and I don't perceive any screen. Instead of an "area between me and the screen" I just have a completely separate workspace of sorts where I can visualize things. But - and this is where I differ from you the most I think - in my mind that workspace is quite separate from my field of real vision. If I concentrate I can kind of overlay them, but it feels very artificial.

On a possibly related note, when I was very young there was a moment I distinctly remember 'pulling away' from this sense-surface-of-self, and a bone deep certainty that if I did so I would be lost and/or have done something unrecoverable. Spooked me thoroughly at the time, but now I wonder if doing so would have formed that intermediary-type viewpoint.

Another good comparison might be that my eyes are 4k but my imagination is like 480p.

I've adopted the "tiny pilot controlling a meat mech" perspective before, but the "screen" is wrap-around and very close, there's no space outside or between me and it.

Now consider that the idea that there is a "me" perceiving the screen is only an un-investigated assumption, and that this "me" is actually only implied by whatever object appears on the screen.

Can any such separate entity actually be found?

Or is the thinker implied by the thought, the listener implied by the sound, the feeler implied by the feeling, etc.

Mind's eye/visualisation/phantasia is not seen through one's physical eyes. From how I've heard people explain it, it's:

* (1) Seeing inside your head. * (2) Feels like seeing behind you or/and somewhere else. * (3) Seeing through another set of eyes (mind's eyes) * (4) As if I just saw something, but not with my own eyes.

People can have no mental imagery or visual perception in one's thoughts, aphantasia, to very low/unclear/fuzzy/uncertain mental imagery (hypophantasia), to regular phantasia, which is not as real as looking through one's eyes, and hyperphantasia, where it's almost as good or as good as seeing through one's eyes (the fidelity, resolution, etc.)

Then there's also "prophantasia", or the ability to project visuals in one's visual physical scene, or what one might describe as being able to visually hallucinate. These are the visuals one can see through one's eyes. Prophantasia also is on this low (being able to voluntarily project unclear shapes in the visual noise in one's eye lids in the dark), to high (being able to project "holograms" in one's visual scene).

When people talk about it online they seem to not disambiguate between these visualization modes.

There are potentially other modes of visualization out there that I don't know of.

EDIT: your imagination can also happen in other sense modalities, including sound, olfaction, taste, bodily sensation, etc.

Also, my experience is that I can imagine very detailed objects and scenes, but the happen in a second mental space, not the current visual field. To imagine something, I have to stop paying attention to the sensory input of the world around me and mentally turn aside to the second space where imagination happens.

I struggle to impose imagined objects on the visual field. I end up imagining what it would look like if I could, but this happens in the second space, in an imagined copy of the visual field.

At some point I figured out this "test" to explain aphantasia to people: ask someone to imagine a car. After that, ask them about visual details of the car: what color is it? what type of car is it? (Other objects might work better than a car; In my experience color is the attribute that will be the most surprising, vwry clear for some completely absent for others.)

Most people are going to answer with whatever they "saw". For me these follow-up questions don't make sense.

Your vision can feed your visualization, but it doesn't go the other way, which would be a hallucination.

I imagine the platonic idea of an apple and not a specific apple.

Asking “what color was the apple” is a category error for me!

Just wild how everyone is living such different internal lives.

By default I'm like you, roughly a 4 or 5 - a platonic ideal, no actual form, because I don't need to go further for being told that. But if I have any reason to go further, I have no trouble with being around a 1 or 2, depending on the object.

A lot of these simple tests don't seem to take into account "default" vs "capable of".

    > No image at all, you only “know” that you are thinking of the object
    > Dim and vague; flat
    > Moderately clear and lively
    > Clear and lively
    > Perfectly clear and lively as real seeing

I’m of the mind to think that people are unreliable narrators of their internal world and are not to be trusted on either side of the spectrum.

notice how a person daydreaming looks spaced out. they’re not looking through their eyes then. no, people do not augment their reality, unless hallucinating.

You don't have aphantasia. In people with aphantasia, there is no "it" to describe.

It's like having a second visual sense, but it's not strictly the same as standard vision. It often does lack clarity, but as with any other sense, you can sharpen specific details by focusing on it. Your real vision can feed into this secondary vision, but not the other way around, which would be a hallucination.

I can also draw outlines with my eyes closed - e.g. I can point my finger out and trace the positions of my desk, table, windows, etc.

But when explaining the concept of aphantasia, my go to explanation is to look directly at a person, close my eyes, and say "I have no idea what you look like." I can still sense where they are - height, weight, - and I can state facts about their beard or hair colour, but I'm not seeing it in any way I'd normally use the word 'see'.

But with all that, I feel like it could be close enough that that might be how others sense things and we just lack the terminology to express it, so I tend not to say I'm aphantasic as a definite term.

Is that aphantasia? Not sure. I feel that the confusion lies in inability to properly describe what it is, when you recall something. People's descriptions don't match, just because it is hard to describe... not necessarily because someone has less or more imagination than others.

>Most of her colleagues reacted differently. They reported actually seeing an apple, some vividly and some faintly, floating like a hologram in front of them.

Somehow I just won’t learn though. “It won’t fit”, “sure it will… Oh…”.

I don't know about hyperphantasia, but aphantasia absolutely is a disorder. I have a whole stack of things to hang on my office wall, and I can't even begin to do it because I can't lay them out mentally. They've been sitting in a pile for years because I have nowhere to even begin. I can't just start hanging things because I'm going to end up unhappy about where everything is placed. Decorating things in general is very difficult. Or any sort of arranging or laying out where I don't have a representation I can physically (or digitally) manipulate to explore ideas.

I also have really poor dreaming. For most of my life I'd say I didn't even have dreams. When I do have dreams, the visual quality is shockingly bad and largely abstract and indistinct.

I also have very little autobiographical memory, which I previously didn't think was connected to aphantasia until reading this article. I do know that looking at photos of the past helps with recall, very frequently when my wife tries to describe something to me I'll have no memory of it until I can see a photo.

The funny thing is I'm actually fairly visual-driven otherwise. I learn better when I can see things. Although maybe that's actually a consequence as well, maybe other people construct mental images when listening or reading?

You don't have to lay them out mentally to organize them. Just lay them out on the ground and rearrange until it's satisfactory. If aphantasia is linked to other issues, they're minor enough to have straightforward workarounds like this, and no worse than being mildly forgetful or something. That's below "disorder" threshold I'd say, which is why aphantasia has basically gone undetected for so long.

My mind works on rules, not imagery. If I am asked to "not think of an elephant in a room", I (of course) immediately think of an elephant in a room, but it's not a visual picture - it's relationships between room and elephant (does it touch the walls, the space around it, does it press the light-switch on, can the door open if it opens inwards, ...) It's the concept of an elephant in a room. There's no visual.

Similarly, I don't know my right from my left - instead I have a rule in my head that I run through virtually instantaneously "I write with my right". That then distinguishes for me which is which. If someone gives me directions "first right, second left, right by the pub and next right" I run through that rule for the first instance, and then I have the concept of "not-right" for the "second left" bit. It gets "cached" for a while, and then drops out.

So where's the advantage ? I can consciously build these rules up into complicated (well, more complicated than people expect) structures of relationships and "work them". It's not like running an orrery backwards and forwards, but it's the best analogy I can give. I can see boundary conditions and faults well before others do - and often several complex states away from the starting conditions. I'm often called into meetings just to "run this by you" because I can see issues further down the line than most. I'm still subject to garbage-in-garbage-out, but it's still something of a super-power.

I'm told I sort of gaze into the middle distance, and then I blink, come back, and say something like "the fromble will interact with the gizmo if the grabbet conflicts with the womble during second-stage init when the moon is waning". Someone goes off and writes a test and almost all the time (hey, I'm human) I'm correct.

Mental modelling is what I gain from a lack of visualisation. I think of it as literally building castles in the sky, except the sky isn't spatial, it's relational.

The downside of this is all this modeling of relationships is a lot to keep in my brain at once, so there is a limit to how far I can push this.

That said, I've yet to encounter a situation where this is actually any better than what my wife can do, who does have a mind's eye (and is frighteningly good at tetris / packing). The part you describe about seeing "boundary conditions" sounds to me like what I do with seeing edge cases and potential unwanted interactions in programming, which is completely non-visual.

From is a strong word. It sounds more likely you gain that from having a very high IQ. But in a poetical sense yeah, necessity begets use which begets development, and it's fascinating and inspiring that you were able to build your life around that.

If I could choose I wouldn't get mental imagery, I'd rather like to be non-aphant for taste. I do have "sound imaging" btw. It's great to see more research into this, it can e.g. lead to teaching/learning techniques that are more tailored to how ones brain works.

For mathematicians that aren’t aphantasic I wonder what goes on in your mind when you imagine a “compact set.”

To me I have a distinct object that presents “compactness” in the mathematical sense in my brain. It’s not associated with any other sense (words, hearing) it just “is” the concept of compactness. It’s not even related to the formal definition of a compact set. It’s more like a “feeling” of convergence in the limit (if that makes sense).

For folks heavily reliant on visual imagery would they have instead a visual representation of “compactness” that’s constructed in the visual sense rather than an abstract idea.

One interesting thing that I've found is that my approach to physics and math problems is often extremely geometric. Even if I don't visually look at things, I'm constantly constructing objects in my head (e.g., graphs of functions) and playing with them, although it's in more of a tactile way. I'll immediately start thinking "what does this function look like?" when my peers are more likely to start by pushing symbols around.

I'd love to see research into if self-reported aphantasia correlates to depression or anxiety.

The thing is; SAMD is often a symptom of depression also, so this is a little chicken and egg. For my own experience, there is definitely a pro in that negative past experiences may as well have never happened; I just don’t care (although I do think there can still be a visceral learning; aversions that don’t come with emotional memory). However, the big con is that a bad time feels like life has always been that way. Again, this is a depression symptom anyway, so chicken and egg. I’m old enough to ride out this roller-coaster of life with my intellectual memories. I know things can change, and what to do when current life experiences suck (sometimes just wait it out, sometime act), so that’s my way to get through the tough times without memories of better times.

As an aphantasic, I tend to escape to entirely fantastical settings and situations when asked to go to my happy place. I don't see them, but I kind of tell myself stories, with elaborate descriptions of landscapes and situations.

My imagination is maybe all symbolic, but it hasn't felt like a disorder, more like a super power: imagining things, I'm not constrained so directly by my life experiences.