Aphantasia - the inability to visualise things in your mind

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