AIBU to think aphantasia is not rare?

[Sunninginthecorner]

I was doomscrolling insta and a video came up about aphantasia.

Rather than explain what it is badly I found this:

Aphantasia is a condition in which people do not visualize, or see, images in their minds. This rare way of processing information and recalling memories affects about four percent of people. Close your eyes and imagine a fluffy cat. What color is the cat? What is the cat doing? When asked such questions, many people will conjure up a lifelike visual image. But others do not. People with aphantasia know they are thinking of a cat. They can even describe what a cat generally looks like. But they do so without “seeing” a cat in their mind. Instead of using their ‘mind’s eye,’ someone with aphantasia may think using words, numbers or ideas.

Brain scans show that people with aphantasia respond differently to sounds than people who use mental images.

I can’t see images and my very small poll IRL hasn’t found anyone who does see images.

IABU - you can see in images and it is rare
IANBU - you can’t see images and can’t believe it’s that rare

@DreamingOfGeneHunt that's amazing! I wish I had that. I find it hard to hold images-I can visualise an apple or candle but to hold it there for any length of time would be hard. That's just my untrained mind though, am sure it would come with practice. I'd never get an actual image in front of me though 😔

she might have dealt with people with it who assumed that she wasn't being literal so they just never mentioned it.

I don't see it if I close my eyes. I see it in my head. I do have a couple of childhood memories but I don't see me in the memory, I see what saw and I remember what I felt. Actually I just tested it and its easier to see stuff in my head if I keep my eyes open.

Thank you to everyone who has commented and shared their visions or lack of it has been fascinating to read.

Outing myself but all day today everyone I’ve encountered has been asked if they can visualise images in their mind eye has resulted in no including my own parents. The only one who said yes and was shocked that I couldn’t was my dd!!

To comment on some points raised with me personally -
I am a prolific reader but like other posters I am a fast reader and although read every word will skate over it as I suppose I’m not creating an image or thinking about that when reading.

Someone asked if I could draw my friends - I cannot draw anything from scratch, I can copy either an object or a picture in front of me, but not create without that.

I am not ND so no link to that for me.

Re memory - shocking for names, location names, but great at shopping lists, telephone numbers and surprisingly (or at least I think) at that game where you have a tray of items and have to recall what is on it or what item was removed.

No it isn't a mental disability, if only you'd done the slightest bit of research you'd know that.

Like many others, I am an Aphant. I think in most of my senses. I cannot visualise, so couldn’t see a fluffy or my deceased nan in my head. With voices / music, I can recreate sounds in my head, so I could sing the words to a song in my head, or recall the words to a conversation, but I couldn’t “hear” the song or conversation again. These though I have known for years.

The one that did blow me away a few weeks ago was that I didn’t realise people could create taste and touch in their minds. So I could recall what a really nice desert tasted like. My husband says he can also recreate in his mind physical feeling such as touch. That I find really weird. Just like how do you do that? To me, once the food has been eaten / the sensation has passed, then it has gone. I remember it, but could never rexperiene it again in my mind. That totally blows my mind. Along with the idea that my husband can imagine an image, like a shape and can then flip it or rotate it in his mind. My head, just doesn’t compute this!

Hi @Sunninginthecorner - interesting thread!!

I can barely see images in my mind - like a ghost of an image.

I am also convinced I have Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory Disorder, and I do wonder if it’s linked - it makes sense to me that if you can encode your memories in your brain visually they would be more likely to ‘stick’.

I am also a very fast reader.

I do have an internal voice.

Several members of my family can see images very clearly.

Actually you know what, I think @hodgepodge21 puts it better - I think I mentally conceptualise it rather than ‘see’ it.

Reading the responses,more people ion this thread seem to have this condition than not. Yet 4%the average!
Or maybe those who do not have it,haven't posted !
PS
I visualise everything. I visualize posters on mumset!

It is rare, 1-4% of the population experience it. This has been studied and i think those studies are probably
more reliable than ‘i asked my mates’ or ‘people on mumsnet said’ as evidence.

A thread like this is more likely to attract people who are aphantasic or hyperphantasic rather than the major of people somewhere in the middle who haven't even thought about it and don't know what aphantasia is. So it's unlikely to reflect the numbers in the general population.

I think you are probably right but it depends on the structure of the studies a bit. There is a condition called Achenbach's syndrome. Basically people who have it burst blood vessels in their hands and feet for no discernable reason. It doesn't seem to be a predictor of anything nor a symptom. I believe that most doctors would call it genuinely rare or say they have never seen it or heard of it but when you do a search online you find SM chats all over the place of people who have got it. I suspect that there are many similar conditions floating around that people just don't think are odd or don't even think about. The internet and in particular social media has made it much easier for people to ask if the way they experience the world is "normal" or if the way their body works is "normal" If they don't feel ill or disadvantaged by their way of being then they won't ask for help and advice and stuff goes underreported or ignored.

Yeah, I'm quite envious of the people whose mind's eyes see 3D Technicolor movies! Like you, I think, I do have a visual imagination but nowhere near that strong. If I think of a cat (as per this thread 🐈) I can add to the very basic cat-like image by thinking of it as fluffy, ginger, walking, fighting, etc. But I'm constructing a picture, it doesn't 'appear' the way some describe.

I write stories and worried for ages that I just sort of sketch people and places out. I sometimes have to draw myself little maps to see whether there really could be a hill where I've said someone's climbing or were they, for instance, on an open plain a few minutes ago? Then I remembered that some of the most evocative authors leave it to the reader's imagination. If you have super-phantasia, my landscape will be much more detailed to you than it was to me ... and if you don't, you won't care 😂

Apparently the most common is to have blurry or soft images.

It’s also rare to have photo-like, clear images I think.

I’ve started doing the same when writing stories. I might draw a very rough floor plan of a house so that the characters don’t create botches in continuity every time they walk around it. Or a plan of a town so that journeys don’t resemble a Hollywood film car chase through London (e.g. the actors passing London Bridge and Buckingham Palace within seconds of each other).

I cannot visualize at all.Neither can my middle son. We only realised recently when he mentioned it to friends, then asked me and we looked it up.
We both have a narrative that tells us what we are supposed to see.

I'm 54, he's 28, we both thought it was normal

Yep same-I thought that was true for everyone who could visualise. There's just black behind my eyes. But I can vividly recall all sorts of images and scenes, I just don't see them the same as I would with my actual eyes.

To actually see the object/scene you're imagining I feel like you'd need to be in an altered state/on drugs/dreaming...But someone on here said they can actually see everything they visualise so I dunno!

I use visualisation for practically everything. I map out car journeys to make sure I know where I'm going or play a doctors appointment over in my head and what I'm going to say. I've got OCD so it comes from a need to know what to expect but I assumed everyone did this to some extent-maybe not!

Oh goodness, you've reminded me! I was a teenager in the 90s and took a lot of recreational drugs, I particularly enjoyed psychedelics.

I remember once falling asleep at home after a night raving, and I could see a little fishing village inside a marble in my mind's eye, with little boats moving around the coastline. It was incredibly detailed and beautiful. But the very fact of seeing something in my mind's eye AT ALL was amazing to me. I had no idea at that point that other people did as a daily thing! This was a rare experience for me and I cherished it, hence remembering it 30 years later!

(Psychedelic drugs usually induced amazing patterns I could see when I closed my eyes, or altered the way the real world looked, but didn't usually make me see real things in my minds eye).

Goodness what on earth are psychedelics like if you have inner images?! The mind boggles!!

I wonder if inner images can be chemically induced in people with aphantasia, then?

There's a whole world of research out there to be done!

I never really know where I am on this spectrum.

I have a really vivid imagination, I can make up whole stories in my head, I love reading and can "see" characters/places as I am reading and I dream in full colour movies.

If someone asked me to imagine my happy place, I could describe to you what it is and I can stare (eyes open) at a point on the wall and bring up the image but if you ask me to close my eyes and imagine that same image, I can't. It's all black. If you ask me to close my eyes and then get me to picture "being on a beach", there's nothing there. It's just black.

Earlier in the thread, someone mentioned Brad Pitt and as I was reading, an image of him flashed up, but then I tried to conjure up that image with my eyes closed and nothing happens.

I'm good at recognising faces but if I see that person out of context, it takes me ages to place them.

Brains are fascinating things.

As a teacher l have noticed child0ren who are not visualising a passage as they read along find it difficult to answer comprehension questions as they have to go back and really search for an answer rather than run the video in their head.
On another note l have the opposite where l have practically total recall on faces which is sometimes useful but often embarrassing as l never forget a person but have to pretend l have as people are freaked out by it. My children all have this too.

That's interesting, @junebirthdaygirl. Long ago, a colleague asked me to teach her to read. She was functionally illiterate, had been written off at school, but she was bright. She liked watching the soaps. There was a genre of graphic novels back then, which were classic romance dramas. I bought some. I read two of them with her, and the dawning of literacy was an absolute wonder - she just got it! By the end of the second book, she was ready to read by herself and took the rest from me.

Perhaps she'd had the same issue as your aphantasic pupils? There was no research on learning styles or neurodivergence in ye olden days - yet it could've been so easy!

Exactly what I was going to say.

I can see images, including experiencing reading as like a film but neither DP or DD can. From speaking to them there seems to be degrees with DD being able to see a bit of imagery, whereas DP can’t see anything. It did make me wonder if it is hereditary

The way I know I am aphantic is if I compare “seeing” to “hearing” in my mind. So with a song, I can replay it - I know I’m not literally listening with my ears but I can play back a song in my minds ear 😂 with visuals I cannot do that at all. If I try and picture an apple an image is not produced even in my imagination. So I know something is missing, and I assume those who can mentally visualise will “see” an imagine in their minds eye like I can “hear” the song.

I've got it! My finger blood vessels burst whenever they feel like it.