Can you see actual images in your head?

[pontipinemum]

Sorry not really an AIBU but I wanted the voting buttons.

I was watching a reel earlier and they were joking that their dad cannot see images in his head.

I can't see images in my head. When I close my eyes it's black (or red if it's bright!) DH said the same.

I know what things look like, and when I am asked to visualise a beautiful beach, I can remember places I have been but I don't 'see' them in my head. I can get a good 'sense' of what it is like in a book but I don't see the characters.

I'm not sure I am explaining this right at all.

YABU - I can actually see the things I am visualising in my head
YANBU - I see black

I am hyperphantasic so I have a really vivid mind's eye.

I've just read up on this and I think I might be too @EBearhug My dreams are so vivid, and detailed and active and colourful, I actually wake up feeling more tired sometimes. But man, sometimes are they amazing!

I remember the emotions. And so the name of a place conjours up very specific emotions for me which I recall very clearly. Abns I get a colour wash when I remember places - like an abstract painting of a very out of focus picture. The details aren't there, but the colours are and the associated feelings.

I'm surprised aphantasia seems common in autistic people!

I'm autistic and have an overdeveloped sense of mental imagery. If I'm going to sleep without an audiobook to keep my mind occupied I run the risk of exposing myself to some very detailed gruesome images. Think Zombies and monsters etc. Purposefully recalling a scene/object in great detail is easy if I'm very familiar with it, but it's slightly hazy if not.

I can visualise things but not very well. I usually have to really focus. I never really picture characters from a book, for example, but I might randomly get a glimpse of a room they’re in or something.

I think if you were totally aphantasic, you wouldn't even have a blurry colourwash.

Indeed. As someone above said. It's a spectrum. I can still visualize that horse's blaze. Just no horse attached to it!

So I close my eyes and yes it's black but in my head I can see photographic images or movies...

years ago when i used to take recreational drugs and was coming down from them, i would close my eyes and my mind would create images - really clearly - it was like watching a film, lots of clear, moving pictures, I used to thouraly enjoy seeing what my mind would come up with!

I don't do drugs anymore, but I do meditate - what I find now, is that while I'm trying to meditate, my mind will create scenes - sometimes peoples faces, sometimes landscapes, city scenes - all sorts - again very clearly and in colour.

I don't. DH despairs of me because I have zero memory of holidays, days out, events.

I can't picture things we've done or places we've been. He tries to jog my memory by describing specific buildings/streets/restaurants/food/activities and it sometimes comes back to me (after a LOT of cajoling, think Father Ted trying to jog Dougal's memory about meeting Sister Assumpta) but quite often it's as if I was never there. I recently found out I've been to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC - who knew?? Apparently I enjoyed it, so that's something.

It can be upsetting and embarrassing to admit that I don't recall something I did with someone who clearly considers it a fond, shared memory. Sometimes I wonder why I bother leaving my house at all because I've spent thousands on holidays that vanished from my mind the second I got home.

I can see photorealistic images, but in my mind not with my eyes.

How do people not have an inner voice? Surely they have to, that's just your thoughts. That’s what the visual images are, too. Your thoughts. Superimposed on what you are seeing, just as your inner dialogue is superimposed on what you’re hearing.

I’ve got quite good visualisation. For example, if I’m looking for something I’ve mislaid but I think I’ve seen it around the house, I can call up the likely places and see if it’s there in the picture. But the inner dialogue is far louder and more intrusive. I can’t listen to a lecture unless I’m doodling or doing something with my hands to pin my mind down and stop the inner voice.

YABU - I can actually see the things I am visualising in my head
YANBU - I see black

The poll options aren't mutually exclusive. Naturally I 'see black' in my head. The visualisations are only metaphorically 'in the head'. Visualisations aren't literally located, any more than (say) anger or love or memories are.
I wonder whether the sharp differences between people whenever this issue comes up are as much to do with different understandings of approximations such as 'in the head', 'mind's eye', etc as they are to do with fundamentally differing experiences.

I looked at the horse picture, and without referring back to it (which would be pointless) I can visualise it again. It's a bay with a wide white blaze, standing head on. The grass is chest high so you can't see its legs. Its black mane is blowing to the left. High hills behind so no sky visible. I can see it as clearly as the image labelled 6.

When I read your poster name I got an immediate mental picture of Mr and Mrs Pontipine and all the little Pontipine children. My DS is 15 so it's been many years since I even thought about In The Night Garden, but I pictured them so clearly. The episode of Mr Pontipine's moustache came to mind and so I "saw" his moustache blowing away and sticking to the Ninky Nonk.

I find when I'm reading a good (ie well-written) book, I don't see the black words on the paper, I "see" what they're describing. It's like watching a film. I asked DS (who learned to read when he was two) how he found it and he couldn't remember it being any different, when he sees the words he sees what they say, so "a red train" and he pictures a red locomotive. Any spelling error immediately pings us out of the book's world and we become aware again that we're reading rather than watching a film. It's very fascinating, I can't imagine it any other way...

I take a lot of photos

I can remember lets say backpacking in S.E Asia. I remember what it was like. I know what it looked like. I can describe it to myself but I can't see an image in my head. But the description I am giving myself is enough to remind me what it looked like, I just don't get a picture in my head. This is a whole new thing for me I didn't know people had pictures in their head.

I completely have an inner monolog though, I can't believe others don't how do you know what you have to do next if you don't tell yourself.

Really interested to see into all your minds.

A few of ye have mentioned ADHD/ Autism. As far as I am aware I don't have either of those, I am dyslexic though.

I can still visualise what things looked like from holidays or school days from when I was 5 or 6, my dreams are also really visually vivid and there are some I have remembered since childhood too.

I also struggle with how memory works without an image. The only way I know to describe an event is to recall it to mind visually. I would t be able to describe a house without picturing it and walking through it. I still can see the wallpaper I had when I was 7, the door-handles at my mum's house, the photo of me she had in the living room.

I also have an internal monologue going at the same time.

But, even with white abstract ideas I still have accompanying "images". Say, April, I always see the word April in my head, and rain, and the colours grey and blue...

Yes. I can picture places, people and things. I can recreate smell in memory too and voices, so I can 'hear' accents in my imagination.
I write books, so I turned it into an earning stream!

Seeing in your mind's eye is not the same as imagining.
I'm an artist but can't 'visualize' in my head.
I work from imagination or from photos/life. I like to begin with a vague idea or be inspired by an image, shape or the lighting.

Picasso once said, if he already knew ahead of time what he was going to draw or paint , why bother doing it?

I think learning to draw is easier for people with 'aphantasia' because it requires you to really look and not depend on your memory.

There are though plenty of artists out there who do have excellent mind's eyes.

Humans have the fantastic ability to make do with what we have.

seeing in your mind's eye is not the same as imagining.

You can imagine without visualised images, but you can also imagine with them, I think? Is that what you mean? So, someone with aphantasia could imagine am animal with duck feet, the body of a tiger, the tail of a pig, head of a horse, and the wings of an eagle but it will be just words? Concepts? In their mind. Whereas someone without aphantasia will put that image together in their head as they imagine it, I suppose and visualise it., they will "see" that imagined animal.

@pontipinemum see this is the part I need some help with ….. how do you know what it was like if you can’t recall it visually? Are there words in your head saying “the grass was green, the sky was blue, the building was orange “ etc? That baffles me totally.

I can describe a Lapland sunset pastel sky to you because I can conjure the image in my head from the memory. I’ve no idea how to do that without being able to see it….

@SkySecret I’ve been trying to explain this to my boys recently - it’s really hard to explain but I’ll try with your sunset.

So I’ve seen the sunset with my actual eyes and created a memory of it in my brain but that memory isn’t an image so to describe it to you I would remember it and be able to describe it to you but I wouldn’t see it in my head. I wouldn’t see words either I just see nothing. But I would be able to say oh it was beautiful, orange melding into pink and down to blue or whatever because I have seen it. I just don’t see it again.

With the horse - I can’t see him at all but again I could describe him to you because I have seen him, I could also describe a generic horse to you because I’ve seen plenty but I don’t see them again.

Going back to your sunset I could also, if we’d both been to Lapland and you showed me a photograph of your sunset, tell you if and how it was different to my sunset but I still wouldn’t see it if I closed my eyes.

Interesting to hear a lot of people struggle with memories - I don’t at all, have really good memories of lots of things I’ve done and can describe them all well.

Seeing in your mind's eye is not the same as imagining.

It is for some of us. Just not all of us.

I suppose the only thing that can come close to being similar is those of you that need to close your eyes to visualise things.

If you think of an old family photograph and then DON’T close your eyes to remember it, so you just have to describe it from the last time you saw it rather than conjure it up again - what does that feel like? Because I guess that’s what I have to do…

I've had this discussion recently with someone who can't see their memories or picture them at all.

They said something interesting which is that they could recall smells. I have absolutely no smell memory or imagination whatsoever.

I don't have to close my eyes to do thst. I could describe it while still looking out of the train window. I don't have the same focus on the outside as if I were really looking at it, but I'm seeing the trees and fields we're passing as much as seeing the 1920s dress and hairstyle.

Yes so I don’t think you and I will ever understand how the other thinks/sees/remembers 😂

But there are people upthread who say they have to close their eyes and really try to remember so I wondered how they would do if they couldn’t.