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 have this too, but if I try really, really hard, I can see a very vague/cloudy image.

I can't picture my DS's face in my mind, which makes me really sad, but instantly recognise him in photos/real life.

I also have a shit sense of direction and a pretty poor memory.

I'm not autistic, so it's interesting to see that many are.

Me too. I didn’t realise there was a name for it or it was actually a thing.

I have no idea how these things are connected and I wish a neurologist would do AMA on here as it fascinates me.

I can see things in my mind but I struggle with remembering people.
I have constant chatter and multiple strings of thought going through my brain all the time.
I have a lot of visual dreams.

I'm a teacher and I wish we knew more about all of this. I'm convinced that we could be better at teaching if we understood more about how the brain works.

Lots of the SEN children I teach have reported poor visual imagery. I teach them
in a much more visual way. We know that visual strategies are useful for pupils with poor literacy skills but I now try to compensate for the inability to visualise internally too by having the visualisation external.

@Newrumpus I cannot picture things in my mind and visual learning is exceptionally helpful to me.

I struggled with science initially at school along with some maths concepts but after watching tv programmes or class demos I found I could grasp concepts swiftly.

I have a degree and a PhD in Geology and Geoohysics but I noticed that again I grasped concepts much more quickly in the field or when things were demonstrated to me than from a more static or word based lesson.

This was pre internet or YouTube. I guess maybe visual learning resources are easier to find these days?

As I write this the Penny is dropping for me. My son will be doing his GCSEs soon. We both have adhd and cannot visualise images in our mind. I wonder whether there are any good revision resources which might help him?

Maybe he would benefit from watching the plays and books he is studying as films? Plus we could look on YouTube for history and science visual resources. The main issue is that google and YouTube are so very full of stuff that it's hard to know where to start!

Have you used graphic organisers?

I use graphic vocabulary to teach new words/concepts and visual word maps. Definitely watch the play/film, make visual multicoloured mind maps.

Yes, I live in fear of being called to the witness stand. I am sure no one would believe I had even witnessed the crime. I was relieved not to have to give details of the accident I was in as a teen. I was in court, but the driver pleaded guilty and they didn't ask me to identify him.

My bicycle was hit by a car. I was cycling on the main road. I remember that the driver slowed down at the side road, glanced at me, failed to stop, and ran into me at very slow speed. (I think he simply didn't register my presence, because few people cycled in that area.) But I couldn't have told you what colour the car was, nor could I have described the driver. I knew it was a car and not a truck or van, and I knew the driver was male.

I suppose I only bother to remember the things I think are important. When I am having a conversation with someone I expect to see again, I desperately try to memorise distinctive features which I think will help me. Thin eyebrows, uneven hairline, pale blue eyes. Paul Newman is one of the few actors I can recognise - those eyes! If people change their hairstyle or grow a beard I am often foxed.

This is really fascinating! Whoever made the point about PSTD earlier - makes so much sense.

Thank you for your advice. I've never even heard of a graphic organiser!!! Off to google thank you.

Yes this! I've witnessed and been part of some really difficult things which have caused ongoing difficulties but I've not had ptsd or had to deal with reliving the moment visually which is a blessing.

Years ago I sadly found an elderly lady on my paper round who had died whilst wandering around in the night. I can remember the details, especially what she was wearing but I can't (and never could) picture her face, or what I saw afterwards.

Describing the scene to police afterwards was also tricky. They didn't push it which was probably because I was 14.

I'm not convinced that this is a thing. What I think is happening, is that people who think they can’t imagine what others can, are presuming that the rest of us actually see that thing in front of us with our eyes.....

So using the Elephant example, when I imagine one, I see it on my mind! Not in front of me. I'm happy to be told I'm wrong but that's my theory until told otherwise.

Also, to those who claim not to be able to imagine anything, how do you describe something/someone? For example if you were asked to describe somebody you knew, how would you recall the fact that, say, your brother has 'short but floppy brown hair, dark blue eyes, about 6ft tall & quite well built' Surely you must be able to 'see' his hair, eyes & stature in your mind??

Omg the teeth incident 😳 I'm genuinely not trying to be a dick but that's really concerning :(
How are her teeth now? Or don't you know?

If you cannot see images in your head then you do not have a photographic memory! 😂 That's literally what it is

@Saracen that has reminded me that when I was 18 I had a car accident. It wasn't my fault, someone turned out of a side road into my path because they took the turn too wide.

We exchanged details. A few days later I had to fill in a form by hand and couldn't describe the driver or the car other than it's colour.

Then weeks later there turned out to be a complication as witnesses said a woman was driving with a male passenger, but the other party insisted that the man was driving with the woman as a passenger.

Someone related to the insurance company interviewed me in person and I was absolutely no use what so ever. It was very awkward. I never found out what happened but their insurance did pay for my repairs.

There is scientific research to show that this is a thing. Nobody is claiming not to be able to imagine something but to have no internal visual imagery.

I know how hard it is to process when your experience is so different.

I would describe people using words and my memory of their appearance is formed using words.

Is there anything that you might recall without visualising it? Maybe a poem, or a list, or a vague memory? If so that's is sort of similar- as you're describing it without seeing it if that makes any sense.

This is crazy that people can't see images in their head. When I read a book and I'm really into it it's more like
Watching a movie cos im watching the characters (my imagined version of them) and the scenes playing out

@SchoolTripDrama wrt a photographic memory you make an extremely good point.

I have adhd and my the workings of my memory are a constant puzzle to me.

I do feel that I have an excellent memory wrt things that I hyper-focus on (or have hyper focused on in the past). Examples include dog breeds, dog facts, geology, some types of plumbing, plant biology. All v random!

I might use the term 'photographic' memory to describe my memory of these things but to be fair there is no imagery involved at all. I just recall the facts.

Ask me to picture a elephant and I can see an Attenborough type clip of an elephant in the wild

This fries my brain. I can imagine in detail what a real or cartoon elephant looks like but can't actually SEE it. Can some people actually see one in front of their eyes?

But saying that I can't recognise people from their photos or describe someone I've just met

I can't see it in front of my eyes. It's not in the room or in the same eye line as anything else. But it's just, in my head?! I don't know, it's like I can look at photos and watch videos in my brain? I suppose I'm staring into space as I do it though, like I have to look to the side at a blank area to focus on looking at the thing in my head rather than what's in front of me. Can't do both at once

Also, to those who claim not to be able to imagine anything, how do you describe something/someone?

Badly! I can give bland descriptions but I just recall lists of things others feel are relevant. I know that for family members. I couldn't tell you what colour eyes even close friends have, could probably have a guess based on what I think their hair colour might be. I do get worried before say meeting someone in a cafe that I won't recognise them. If I see them every few weeks I generally will recgnise them. Someone I see once or twice a year I might not recognise.

I have a fully photographic memory and can see images of words written down, I can even recall things in such detail that I can tell you what everyone was wearing, where we were & where I was sat but it's not by choice. My mind takes lots of snap shots.

My earliest memory is sitting up in my navy blue Silver Cross coach pram, being pushed by my Grandma in her red dress with white polka dots & bright red lipstick! I can even see which path we were on and the water tower behind us. I was about 6 months old.

Sadly most of my snapshots from my childhood are of me being beaten up or worse. Perhaps that's why they're so vivid?
I can also play episodes of my fave to shows that I've watched so many times that I can recall it all, such as Only Fools & Horses and Frasier.

However... As above, the downside to this ability, is some of my vivid memories replay back in my mind involuntarily if my memory is 'triggered' by something (perhaps that's where that term originates?) I can be doing the washing up or even having a conversation and BANG there it is. Just like on tv when they depict someone daydreaming or having flashbacks.

To give a slightly different example, my YouTube is set to auto play and after a video ended yesterday, a very random & graphic documentary came on about engineers in the USA who climb masts and how many have fallen to their deaths in recent years.
Well, ever since, I've been having these 2/3 sec long visions of me falling from one. I can 'see' everything vividly, the ground moving towards me at speed, I can feel the weightlessness & pure terror. Then I snap back before I hit the ground.
So yeah, I just thought I'd point out that it's not necessarily a good ability to have!

I don’t “see” an elephant in my mind’s eye as if it’s in front of my eyes. It’s more like it’s a flash of a pseudo-image in the back of my mind somewhere, if that makes sense. Not as visual as if I was asked to close my eyes and imagine something in the front of my mind/eyelids. I can do both but for me the “mind’s eye” is like an involuntary flash of visuality somewhere behind, I can’t look directly at it in any way iykwim.

I had a photographic memory when young, but that was more a sense of “snapshots” too, iirc. I have mild synaesthesia and also mild face blindness, weirdly, but I think that isn’t actually connected with my visual memory as it seems to be something different. Can’t explain how!