When I try to imagine a horse I get the head of my ex the neck of a giraffe the body of a cat and the legs of a young lady in a skirt. Wierd!!!
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When I do that close your eyes/imagine a horse thing, I get like a super fast slide show of various images of horses, real and ‘drawn’ etc. Like my brain is saying ‘yeah well, which horse do you mean exactly, there’s loads of them’
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So with me, I can’t hear music in my head but I can hear the lyrics (in my own inner monologue voice). That probably why I am attracted to music with clever lyrics.
Read an interesting article about the side effects
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tend to be terrible recognising peoples faces. I walk past people I know in the supermarket all the time
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Normal learning mechanisms don’t work (I was early 20s before I figured out one what worked for me). Despite now having a PhD I failed GCSE English 4 times. I hated questions like describe the imagery created by the text.
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Your most likely to live in the moment, than past or future (something I am always telling me wife to do !) I think that helps make me a happy person.
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You don’t tend to dwell on things, and not as impacted by grief… I thought I was just a cold heartless bastard.
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typically have the ability to quickly grasp abstract complex concepts not tied to experiences, objects, people, or situations. I excel in an analytical logic (Many scientists have Aphantasia) lousy at hands on problems.
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Ability to deal with stressful situations more easily (I have done some pretty fucked up jobs !)
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I basically don’t dream. The only dreams I remember are a kind of half awake status. Where I will jump out of bed at 2 am usually panicking about something (late for work, mouse in house or burglar etc) and my wife has to convince me to get back into bed (my wife has to put up with a lot
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Fascinating stuff. Always had a kind of twisted interest in stuff like this, including personality types / traits etc. I guess because I like to analyse stuff. I always want an explanation for something, where it’s come from. I like precision but can live with less provided I have the full picture.
For example, algebra never made any sense until I got to uni and the tutors there actually went through the development of formula.
I think (I say cautiously) I’m quite a visual person. I can get my head around the geometry of stuff. Dreams can be pretty vivid too. Sounds, I can hear songs/ musicin my head.
Where I do struggle though is translating these thoughts to paper, a musical instrument etc.
I don’t know where that puts me. Cue replies of “screwed up”
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I feel like this explains a lot. I’m certainly a visual/auditory type I guess, always excelled in that kind of stuff. Have very little relation to numbers. If I need to remember a number (say a phone number or a pin) I have to visually imagine/remember how it looked written down or the rhythm/melody of how that string of numbers sound. I suck at directions, get completely thrown if I go somewhere and then it gets dark and everything looks different.
On the other hand e.g.I can easily impersonate people or dialects (works in German), just comes to me naturally. Certain people always ask me ‘to do that person, do that dialect’, because they’re so fascinated by it and I never understood where the problem is. I just hear it in my head.
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I didn’t know this was a thing, honestly. According to this article, I have no issues with reproducing images in my mind but I have issues sticking with just one, i.e. I can’t hold an image long enough. I also have no issues with imagining songs - funnily enough, the article specifically mentions the saying “Do as I say, not as I do” and I immediately started playing Dyers Eve by Metallica in my head, specifically the riff that comes after Hetfield sings that exact sentence.
Smell, however, is impossible to imagine for me and I’m in utter disbelief that it’s even possible. I’ve been saying for ages that, in my case at least, nothing can kickstart some old memories of mine like sensing a specific scent that my mind associates with a particular memory. Oh, how envy people who can do this on a whim.
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Just out of interest for the people who can’t see or hear imaginary things, how is your imaginary sense of touch?
I can tell exactly what something will feel like without touching it. Is that the same for everybody else?
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Another one, can everybody look at photos they know well in their head? I can’t do it in detail sadly but can see the image, like a glance.
I find pure maths hard to follow unless I can see it applied to a real world example. For example, I did complex numbers at school and couldn’t see the point of it. It was just maths for maths sake. Then when I needed to apply it to three phrase power supply I could totally get it.
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Similar by the sounds of it. Like developing curves and the governing equations for the flow in a channel or something like that.
Proper penny drop moment.
I’m still the same now, but develop calculations for stuff when others around me prefer to take a more conservative and simplistic approach. I hate it, while my manager often questions my approach, from managing a work load perspective, I prefer to have worked through the numbers, understand my assumptions and the limits of what I’m analysing and then make a call on its strength etc.
In my head the effort makes sense, it’s complete and robust. Half jobs really frustrate me, and I do mean frustrate. I’ve done jobs where I’m not satisfied with the outcome because of a time constraint usually, and it honestly bugs me like crazy. I will dwell on them constantly. I often struggle to move on from things.
Me and relationships are another “funny” area.
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Yeah, I have that too
Good news, bad news - most of us have an effect like that, one of the signs of an aging brain. Turns out we are biologically designed to hate the music our kids are listening to (he writes as he grinds his teeth listening to a son’s choice of music to do kitchen chores by…)
I do wonder if that has an effect - as we age it becomes physically more difficult to hear new music. With me, I can’t hear lyrics which means I’m not that bothered what language music is in but it does render things like rap rather opaque.
It’s fascinating also for me, but on the other hand, everyone functions in slightly different ways, and thus, the capacity to imagine things in our head will be different from one person to the next. However,I know for sure that this capacity can be improved. There is a useful exercice for that, if anyone is interested.
Sit comfortably on a chair, close your eyes, relax yourself during a fair moment, take two or three deep breathes, and then visualize a scene you like. It can be anything, a landscape, a face of someone you love, Anfield seen from the main stand, whatever. Try to imagine it as detailed as you can, and without letting the mind comment on it (that’s the hardest part). Just look at it and take it in, without any further thought. Then, take two or three deep breathes again. Inspire with the nose, expire with the mouth.
After that, do the same with a sound (a bird singing, a music, a waterfall, Kloppo’s voice, whatever). Imagine that sound as vividly as you can, and try to turn off any mental comment. If you notice that your mind starts commenting, gently shut it off, and go back to the sensation of the sound again. Then take two or three deep breathers again.
Go through the same process with a taste, then with a smell, and finally with a physical feeling (ie. feel the warmth of the sunshine on your naked skin, plunge yourself in cold water, feel the wind passing through your hair, whatever).
At the end, take the time to thank your body, and to feel grateful that you have been given these five senses, as they are what allows you to actually experience life. You thank also yourself for having taken the time to practice that exercice. Then you open your eyes again.
Anyone who starts with that experience will quickly notice that it’s hard to experience these scenes without the mind ‘taking over’ and going on with comments, comparisons, or just going wildly off topic. When you notice this, just go back to the sensations you are trying to experience. With time, you’ll learn to calm down your mind, if only for moments. You’ll notice that the more calmer it becomes, the more the sensations will become vivid.
The whole exercice shouldn’t take more than ten to fifteen minutes. If done repeatedly, for instance once a day, it will reap rewards. I can only recommend it.
Edit: I’d be interested to know from those who are affected by this type of complete incapacity of picturing internal images: does this systematically apply to the other senses as well? Sounds , tastes, smells, corporal feelings?
Re-edit: I realize that the above exercice will probably be meaningless to those who have aphantasia. By my experience, if you are, say image 4 (the apples), you’ll be able to improve towards image 2 or 1 by exercise. Not sure with those who are image 5 though. I’d be interested to know what hinders them to picture anything. @ISMF1, is there any theory for that ?
I’ve tried lots of those exercises and no changes. The only way I can see an “image” is if I stare at an object and then close my eyes, and even in that case it’s without colour and basically just a rough contour, so I think that has more to do with light. The image will disappear very quickly and I won’t be able to recall the image without staring at the object again.
I can’t do smell, sounds or taste.
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Thanks mate. I’m curious, what appears in front of you when you close your eyes, and the remaining light of something you looked at has disappeared? Nothing at all?
Completely black, or if I’m in a brighter environment then “reddish” black (I think that’s todo with light passing through my eyelids). If I close my eyes tightly, then pure black.
anyone else get “My Lovely Horse” stuck in their head after reading that article? fucking hell.
I get a lot of memory association when it comes to this type of stuff. But my dreams are so vivid I swear I will wake up and smell/taste what was happening in my dream. Fortunately I don’t get a lot of night terrors anymore like I did when I was a boy.
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I see that picture every time I hear “unexpected item in the bagging area” at one of those self-checkouts.
To keep this going with inane facts.
The first CD made in the USA was Born in the USA 
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