Aphantasia

[Newrumpus]

Recently, I discovered that I am aphantasic. I had never heard of this until recently and after hearing about it I have become interested in the experiences of others.

To save anyone googling, aphantasia is mind blindness or lack of visual imagery. When someone says ‘Imagine an elephant’ I think of an elephant but I don’t see one in my mind.

Does anyone else have experience of this and how did you discover it?

I don’t experience this with individual numbers but I do with decades - lines at various angles - and the months of the year are located around an oval sort of shape, with extra space given to the months that have more importance due to family birthdays etc.

I’m not totally aphantastic but I can’t hold an image in my head for more than a tenth of a second or something. It is there but it is fleeting to do anything with. I always wondered if I could train my brain to hold onto images for longer.

I am terrible at drawing. Is this something common to aphantasia or a poor mind’s eye? Ask me to draw an elephant and I know facts about it - trunk, 4 legs, big ears - but I can’t really imagine the whole thing to be able to draw it.

OH has a number cube in his 'mind's eye' and uses it to do multiplication. He can multiply 3 figure numbers almost instantaneously. We understand it is a variant of synesthesia.

Out of curiosity, do you also struggle to learn new languages?

I was early with the English language, but can’t grasp any other languages. Although interestingly as a baby I did pick up equal amounts of the local language where I lived (non English speaking country) and English. I lost all this as we moved away. I also used to be obsessed with watching the Gaelic tv shows when I was younger and I’d tell my parents what the news report was about, although I couldn’t actually speak any Gaelic.

I think I’m maybe quite a rigid thinker when it comes to language and the reason I struggle with foreign languages are because they don’t fall into my rigid (English centric) rules of language. I think this made learning English easy but others hard.

the number line and particularly the cube sounds awesome, I’d like one but sadly don’t have anything like that. I wonder if it’s why I can’t do mental arithmetic.

I think I sort of feel it like shapes, the shapes of 37 and 63 fit together to make a 100 e.g. or if you were trying to work out 8x8 I'd know it was 4 lots of 4x4. But I wouldn't see a picture really I'm currently trying to figure out if I have it too.

I have aphantasia (also ASD). It was a revelation a few years ago when I discovered other people could actually see things in their mind. I'd always put it down to a figure of speech.

It did explain all the times people asked me whether people/places in TV/film adaptations matched how I'd imagined them. Because I never did imagine them and was confused by the question.

It also explained the problems I'd had in hypnotherapy when I was told to visualise something. I just mentally told myself what I was supposed to be imagining but didn't see it.

I also don't smell or hear things in my mind either. I get songs in my head, but I don't hear them. It was only a few days ago that I discovered that some people do.

Interestingly DD also has aphantasia, so I guess there could be a genetic element.

What do you mean, you get songs in your head but you don't hear them?

That cube sounds awesome!

@WhisperingAutistic I mean, I am singing it in my head on loop but I'm not hearing anything in my head - I know I'm just thinking the words.

That's what everyone does surely?
I sing in my head on loop all the time.

Agree with @WhisperingAutistic

I don’t think most people, when they refer to hearing a song in their head, mean they’re literally hearing it the same way they would hear an external sound. Just thinking it or imagining it
is the norm.

No doubt some people recall music in much more detail and with more of an innate sense of musicality than others, and maybe those people are more likely to say they really do hear it in their heads. But if there isn’t any actual music to hear then that’s just a form of words — a way of conveying what the experience is like.

So do you just say the words in your head, or do you sing them? Because singing them is essentially hearing the melody in your head and I'm assuming is what most people do (rather than hearing a fully realised version of the song with layers of harmony, etc).

What I find very difficult, despite being a decent musician, is singing something out loud that I can 'hear' perfectly inside my head. If someone plays something I can sing that back, but I don't seem to be able to translate music from inside my head to music outside my head (not through singing anyway - I could probably play it on the piano).

When you read, do you hear the words?

I don't think anyone actually hears music in their head unless they are experiencing some form of auditory hallucination. I have a friend with bipolar who can hear music that is not there when she is tipping into mania.

I definitely hear the music when I hear songs in my head, full versions as if the radio is playing in my mind. I also 'hear' words when I'm reading as if it's being read to me. I don't hear the words in my own voice (thankfully!). My brain is never quiet, it baffles me when my husband says he is thinking of absolutely nothing. No song lyrics, no conversations- nothing.

I don't know what's its like to have a quiet mind. I've never been diagnosed with anything although my youngest dc is autistic.

Yeah...that's normal..

I kind of feel like the majority of people who think they have this actually don't.

Like, you can't imagine a family members face? Or what your pet looks like?

You don't even need to have your eyes closed expecting an imagine to appear behind your eyelids ..that's just not what is meant by "seeing images." It's too literal. You can imagine things with your eyes open.

That is what I wonder too.
If I close my eyes, I see black. If I try to picture an image, I see black too. I can't magic up an image in my eyes (closed or not).
I sometimes hallucinate.. and shutting my eyes does not make the images go away. The vision centre in my brain is fucking up, and I can see something whatever I do. That is terrifying.. but it is not normal.

Imagining an image is just that. It is not a literal image in your eyeballs.

This is fascinating. My DC is dyslexic and I briefly asked her if she sees pictures in her mind and she said no. She's only 8 so not sure if this is quite accurate or not... I'll come back to this thread and read it all the way through so I can understand it better in case she is. I can see, hear and manipulate images and whole scenarios my head, I had always assumed everyone could.

as far as I know, no one who can see things in their mind’s eye “has to” visualise anything to make the comparison either. They just know it as information to be recalled too. The visualisation might flash up in their mind as they are asked/answer but it would be automatic and involuntary, not “draining”, and most people just know which animal has a longer tail as a fact without needing to go through some laborious mental “let me first picture a squirrel” process.

I can't picture my son's face, or my husband's face, my cat or dog.

It does seem that people within the medical and psychological professions who have studied this think that it is real.

It is interesting how many people feel sure that it doesn't exist though. Maybe it's really hard to get their head around someone's brain working differently to theirs.

Yes, it seems a bit arrogant to disbelieve people when they tell you their experience, because it’s different from your own.

I have no mental images.

Especially when the research into this is suggesting that there is a definite difference of experience.

Actually, now I think about it, although I usually have a strong mind's eye and vivid imagination... there is one ex boyfriend whose face I can never picture. I recognise him easily in photos and on the rare occasions when I see him, but I can never pull an image of his face in my mind. Even though I can picture faces I've not seen since I was a teenager.

Selective aphantasia?

I find this fascinating, and it is really something I need to research a little more. My sons (both autistic) are extremely 'visual thinkers' (if such a concept exists). Often, their problems lie around the fact that they cannot get some images out of their minds.

I used to think I was less visual and more 'literal' (pertaining to letters). That is to say, if someone said the word 'elephant', my sons would 'see' an image of an elephant , but I would be more likely to 'see' the word 'elephant' and have a vague image of an elephant. Now, I believe, if we are familiar with words (I read and write a lot for work) we visualise the words, and if our worlds are more pictorial (You Tube, Instagram etc) we tend to think more in pictures. I do realise that some people may have a predisposition towards more pictorial thinking.

I didn't say it wasnt real, did I?
I said I think it's unrealistic so many mumsnetters think they have aphantasia.