Aphantasia - the inability to visualise things in your mind

Please do my very scientific facebook poll: https://www.facebook.com/njsouthall/posts/10101282620831604?notif_id=1554802724292934¬if_t=visual_poll_vote_feedback

Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull says 'my mind's eye is blind'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256

(I see it's the same researcher as in your article, so that's good publicity, though no mention of the conference or the exhibition.)

I don't have a Facebook account or I would do your very scientific Facebook poll!

Which is crazy, cos he spoke at the conference!

ed's great, did you meet him?
I don't think I have aphantasia but I've always been crap at being able to put together mental images eg when reading books as a kid I could only 'imagine' versions of things/ places I'd actually seen. so more like visual memories which I kind of patch together

I thought that trying to picture actual faces was notoriously hard... like I can sort of do it but if I try and focus on a particular feature it's often to difficult

https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/life-with-aphantasia-not-being-able-to-see-things-in-your-mind/

Didn’t meet him sadly, or go to the conference. Wish I had!

great post. I think I'm similar re reading fiction.
am I missing it or is the quiz not on the first link in this thread any more?

Looks like it’s gone.

I got to thinking the quantified scale for aphantasia is likely bogus, because most people are awful at drawing bikes:
https://www.wired.com/2016/04/can-draw-bikes-memory-definitely-cant/

I ride a bike all the time -- you wouldn't know it! This was my third(!) attempt:
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/3yrgcb6dkm4.jpeg
It looks nothing like my bike. or any bike.

You'd expect super-visualizers or even moderate visualizers to be able to reproduce a bike -- it'd be like tracing over a picture of one, right?

That's actually a good drawing.

I can barely picture things in my mind but I am decent enough at drawing that I could sketch a bike easily.

Thanks! How would you remember to draw a bike if not from visual memory? Would it be more like muscle memory from drawing bikes before?

way to bury the lede, that bike project is awesome.

to me it makes more sense that there would be some kind of lag or non-communicability between the mind's eye and one's hands. i don't think criticizing the drawings bears much on the mind's visualization. the visualization is the visualization, the drawing you make from it is a whole different mechanism.

For sure how you transcribe from your head to your hands would vary quite a bit in finesse and skill, but even if it's a crude translation, my inclination is that "visualizers" ought to be able to preserve basic things (like a seat post that actually extends down to meet the pedals, which I'd forgotten and was completely unable to conjure up in my head visually).

This guy does seem like a rare example of someone who truly has a vivid visual inner experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrgbDXtt4UQ

Compare that to this artist who has obviously put in a ton of training:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGbvhyTZXfs

Been talking about this this week (there was a conversation taking place on Bluesky) and considered how I can visualise nothing at all (if not half-asleep or on certain drugs) but can play whole albums in my head. This may be more of a metaphor than something tangible, but I feel like there are a number of ways I experience the world, I could rank them like this:

1. Music / sounds
2. Spaces / buildings / rooms
3. Concepts / ideas
4. Smells

And so on. I can't see colours (well, I can a little bit) so suspect that's one reason visuals rank so low.
Is this the same thing, or a different thing, or is this me just overthinking the tedious and I think discredited "learning styles" bollocks we had to do at school?
Yeah I dunno.

I'd bet way more people are more auditory than visually inclined than even they themselves think, just based on how most people can hum a song as a means of recall (compared to drawing a plausible bike!) -- and often people's humming recall of a song is in the correct key, despite not having absolute pitch.

How would you remember to draw a bike if not from visual memory?

Sorry, missed your question before. When drawing I tend to think on paper, putting lines together until they look right somehow based on having seen countless bikes. Muscle memory is also a factor as I naturally have decent eye-to-hand coordination.

That kind of visual recognition seems almost universal e.g. most everyone can tell this is not what the painting should look like, even though all the abstract features are in the right place:

https://external-preview.redd.it/mZCQ0F88md36qFaP5F8FcFblS0YJCGrLhzdTx15TXsY.jpg?auto=webp&s=9d348f9e790ca20d66ae738d74eecb8262acff42

and the idea of orientation (e.g. spaces / buildings / rooms) being somewhat distinct from visual thinking gets me wondering if a good portion of people who claim to be visual thinkers are conflating these visual-adjacent aspects with being able to conjure bona fide fully-formed pixel-perfect images in their heads.

Following my post just above:

Article on aphantasia at the Guardian today

For instance, visualizers might imagine their work before they begin. “Aphantasics, myself included, tend to have a general ‘sense’ or idea of what they want to create,” Ebeyer said. Ebeyer begins working, then edits and refines until he is satisfied. He often hears from other artists with aphantasia when they’re in the process of making art: I know it when I see it. This teaches us that imagination extends beyond mental imagery.

Zeman has written that people with aphantasia may have more of an interest in the visual arts, because their minds are devoid of it.

A new BBC News article on aphantasia and hyperphantasia

Aphantasia sounds like a bad ‘00s R&B album title

aphantasia, hyperphantasia, elephantasia