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Aphantasia: 'Mind Blindness' & Lack Of Mental Imagery

Yithian

Yithian

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Imagine realising that you’ve spent your whole life unable to visualise anything in your mind. Helen Thomson speaks to a 42-year-old man whose internal world is pictureless.

By Helen Thomson
25 May 2016

Close your eyes and visualise the face of the person you love the most. The colour of their eyes, the texture of their hair, the detail of their skin. Can you imagine it? Philip can’t.

Although Philip, a 42-year old photographer from Toronto, is happily married, he can’t conjure up his wife’s face because he has no images of any kind in his mind’s eye. When he thinks about a face, it comes to him as an idea, as an intellectual concept, rather than a mental picture.

This newly described condition is called aphantasia and has prompted scientists to reexamine an experience that we so often take for granted – our imagination. What’s more, studying it is offering new insights into how we all might boost our visual imagery to improve our memory, increase our empathy and even gain new treatments for conditions like addiction and anxiety.

Aphantasia was first discovered in 1880, but has recently attracted much more attention thanks to a 2015 study by Adam Zeman at the University of Exeter and colleagues, who investigated the claims of 21 people who were unable to summon images to their mind’s eye.

Continued at length:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160524-this-man-had-no-idea-his-mind-is-blind-until-last-week
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It's also fascinating that for the vast majority of his life he believed that all talk of imagination - all - was figurative!

Incredible.
 
Also interesting that it seems to have a few advantages - the article quotes someone saying that they tend to live in the present, rather than replaying things over from the past in their minds, so they don't get hung up on traumatic things that have happened.
 
I believe this condition may be much more common than is suggested. And that in our deepest, most-honest selves, we do know who (or the sort of person) that suffers from this curse/boon.

And, of course, the person so empowered/disenfranchised would indeed be oblivious to their differentiation. Like a colour-blind person working in a fast-food resturaunt....they will never need, and never know.
 
So, it turns out that I've been 'suffering' from this condition - the inability to visualize - all my life! I never really thought much of it to be honest. I'm not sure I actually thought too much about what people meant when they asked you to visualize something. I would just basically think of adjectives that would describe the thing they were asking me to 'see' I suppose because I certainly wasn't getting anyimages! I know it sounds silly, but I honestly never really thought about it until I stumbled across this and did a little more research recently and I found it pretty interesting.

Does anyone else have any experiences with it?
 
Aphantasia was mentioned in passing within this recent FTMB thread:

vEAR: Visually-Evoked Auditory Response
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/vear-visually-evoked-auditory-response.63335/

Otherwise, it doesn't seem to have been mentioned on FTMB before.

There had been occasional references to lack of, or differences relating to, imagination ('mental imagery') for a long time. It's only been within the last 10 - 15 years that this state or condition has been given a name and subjected to serious study.
 
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This brings to mind something I noticed in my first real job as a draftsman back in the 1970's. I was repeatedly tasked to train new personnel on drafting for large and often complex pieces of metal fabrication (tanks, hoppers, etc.).

It turned out that some folks, regardless of prior training or drawing skills, simply didn't seem to be able to imagine / visualize how a 3D object would or should appear. This was the most common problem motivating me to recommend transfer or dismissal of a new draftsman.

For this and other reasons I discussed this issue with senior drafting / design folks, some of whom had been doing the job for decades. We all agreed such imaginative capability was the key skill a design draftsman needed, and that people seemed to vary widely in their ability to do this.

I don't recall our ever wondering whether some folks simply had no (visual) imagination at all. I suppose it simply never occurred to us this might be the case.
 
EnolaGaia said:
This brings to mind something I noticed in my first real job as a draftsman back in the 1970's. I was repeatedly tasked to train new personnel on drafting for large and often complex pieces of metal fabrication (tanks, hoppers, etc.).

It turned out that some folks, regardless of prior training or drawing skills, simply didn't seem to be able to imagine / visualize how a 3D object would or should appear. This was the most common problem motivating me to recommend transfer or dismissal of a new draftsman.

For this and other reasons I discussed this issue with senior drafting / design folks, some of whom had been doing the job for decades. We all agreed such imaginative capability was the key skill a design draftsman needed, and that people seemed to vary widely in their ability to do this.

I don't recall our ever wondering whether some folks simply had no (visual) imagination at all. I suppose it simply never occurred to us this might be the case.
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It's funny you should mention that because I'm not a draftsman or anything but I have always loved to draw. The thing is, although I'm pretty good at it, I can only really draw things I can see. Ask me to draw something original or from memory and whatever ability I have vanished on the spot. I suppose it's not surprising since I can't vizualize!

It's also not at all surprising you wouldn't consider it to be the source of the problem in your example - I don't think most people do and I never thought to mention it to anyone either, nor has anyone else ever mentioned it to me.

Oh, thanks for the other thread link too - very interesting!
 
Spudrick beat me to the question ... I, too, wonder if you have visual experience in your dreaming ...
 
Spudrick68 said:
If you don't mind me asking, do you dream?
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I do dream, but actually, my dreams aren't really visual either - they're more emotion-based and instead of seeing what's going on I would 'hear' descriptions. It's kind of like being blind, but having the audio description turned on when you're watching a film is the best way I can describe it, but with an emotional aspect too. Sorry, I don't really know how to put it into words!
 
Enid Coleslaw said:
I do dream, but actually, my dreams aren't really visual either - they're more emotion-based and instead of seeing what's going on I would 'hear' descriptions. It's kind of like being blind, but having the audio description turned on when you're watching a film is the best way I can describe it, but with an emotional aspect too. Sorry, I don't really know how to put it into words!
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Would it be fair to say it's analogous to listening to a radio play as opposed to watching a TV drama?
 
Yes that would be fairly accurate, but like I said they also have an emotional quality. You know when you can feel the tension in a room after someone's had an argument? Well I get those kind of vibes in my dreams too although maybe everyone does? I'm not sure.
 
Enid Coleslaw said:
So, it turns out that I've been 'suffering' from this condition - the inability to visualize - all my life! I never really thought much of it to be honest. I'm not sure I actually thought too much about what people meant when they asked you to visualize something. I would just basically think of adjectives that would describe the thing they were asking me to 'see' I suppose because I certainly wasn't getting anyimages! I know it sounds silly, but I honestly never really thought about it until I stumbled across this and did a little more research recently and I found it pretty interesting.

Does anyone else have any experiences with it?
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Good of you to share this, most interesting - are you a very good artist? May we see an example?
 
For what it's worth ...

My take on the subject is that it's more a matter of habits / internal skills learned during childhood rather than any somatic or neurological deficit per se.

I was 9 years old before the adults realized I was legally blind. During my childhood I'd developed elaborate tactics and strategies for coping - one of which was reliance on mental modeling / imagery. Once the visual deficit was corrected, I was left with considerable imaginative 'muscle mass' that's served me well ever since.

For example, it's been a running joke for 2 decades that my mind is like a large hangar within which complicated conceptual / abstract structures are sitting for my ready inspection. If someone asks a question about some component of the design at issue, I (figuratively) walk out to it in the hangar and check it from multiple angles.

The easy part is answering the question after stepping out into the hangar. The more difficult part is explaining the answer in words or illustrating it on a whiteboard.
 
Coal said:
Good of you to share this, most interesting - are you a very good artist? May we see an example?
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Better than average, but nothing special when I have a reference, fairly terrible without. If I check my temperamental scanner and find it to be working I could possibly post something but it really wouldn't be worth seeing I don't think.
 
Enid Coleslaw said:
Yes that would be fairly accurate, but like I said they also have an emotional quality. You know when you can feel the tension in a room after someone's had an argument? Well I get those kind of vibes in my dreams too although maybe everyone does? I'm not sure.
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Yes - I get those unspoken / contextual / emotional vibes as well.
 
Enid Coleslaw said:
I do dream, but actually, my dreams aren't really visual either - they're more emotion-based and instead of seeing what's going on I would 'hear' descriptions. ...
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This reminds me of something I read long ago about the French mathematician Poincaré (at least I seem to recall it was Poincaré). Mental imagery was often mentioned as a useful skill among mathematicians / scientists. Poincaré claimed he didn't / couldn't 'see' the abstract objects of his scrutiny, but rather 'heard' them. He's the only example I've encountered of a noted thinker who'd denied any visual aspect to his deliberations.
 
EnolaGaia said:
For what it's worth ...

My take on the subject is that it's more a matter of habits / internal skills learned during childhood rather than any somatic or neurological deficit per se.

I was 9 years old before the adults realized I was legally blind. During my childhood I'd developed elaborate tactics and strategies for coping - one of which was reliance on mental modeling / imagery. Once the visual deficit was corrected, I was left with considerable imaginative 'muscle mass' that's served me well ever since.

For example, it's been a running joke for 2 decades that my mind is like a large hangar within which complicated conceptual / abstract structures are sitting for my ready inspection. If someone asks a question about some component of the design at issue, I (figuratively) walk out to it in the hangar and check it from multiple angles.

The easy part is answering the question after stepping out into the hangar. The more difficult part is explaining the answer in words or illustrating it on a whiteboard.
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Yes, I can see how that would make sense. It's given me something to think about, at least.

I don't know if it's in any way related but I can't really remember very much of my childhood at all either!
 
Enid Coleslaw said:
Better than average, but nothing special when I have a reference, fairly terrible without. If I check my temperamental scanner and find it to be working I could possibly post something but it really wouldn't be worth seeing I don't think.
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No probs. I was wondering whether the lack of ability to visualise, made you a better than average 'recorder' of real things.
 
EnolaGaia said:
This reminds me of something I read long ago about the French mathematician Poincaré (at least I seem to recall it was Poincaré). Mental imagery was often mentioned as a useful skill among mathematicians / scientists. Poincaré claimed he didn't / couldn't 'see' the abstract objects of his scrutiny, but rather 'heard' them. He's the only example I've encountered of a noted thinker who'd denied any visual aspect to his deliberations.
Click to expand...
I wonder if Pythagoras was Aphantaisic. IIRC, one of his systems of thought pertained to the entire world of mathematics and all else being made of music. I liked the idea in sentiment and thought it would be a fascinating focus of research.
 
Coal said:
No probs. I was wondering whether the lack of ability to visualise, made you a better than average 'recorder' of real things.
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To fully explain my thinking (and off the mobile now). I was speculating whether the lack of the ability to form mental imagery might make the drawer better able to produce life-like 'exact copy' reproductions of scenes or items, as there's no facility to 'construct' areas of an image by inference or using related memories.

EnolaGaia said:
For example, it's been a running joke for 2 decades that my mind is like a large hangar within which complicated conceptual / abstract structures are sitting for my ready inspection. If someone asks a question about some component of the design at issue, I (figuratively) walk out to it in the hangar and check it from multiple angles.

The easy part is answering the question after stepping out into the hangar. The more difficult part is explaining the answer in words or illustrating it on a whiteboard.
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Interesting, although a thread diversion. I've got quite a strong grasp on complex imagery, I can essentially 3D quite complex thing in my head, both mechanical and abstract things like time and frequency domain plots for the same signals.

However I've struggled with using such space for memory storage. The much vaunted memory palace has only limited use and much like dynamic RAM needs constant refreshing to maintain its contents.
 
As an artist, one thing that has stuck with me was a nugget I read in a Pear’s cyclopedia in the early eighties. IIRC, There was an experiment where a group of people were split up and isolated in different rooms and given one instruction. Visualise a polar bear..
After 15 minutes, the examiner came back and ask what the polar bear was doing. While some had it doing a hula dance or pushing around a giant mint, some said he was just standing there. I found it intersting that some people weren’t able to take the ball and run with it but I was more interested in the statistic that psychologists scored highly among those not taking the bear anywhere.
 
Someone here might be able to help me remember a case of a woman who trained with some monks at the start of the last century and was able to create a though form entity, a man from my recollection who at first was only in the corner of her eyesight but eventually mixed with her and her group .. I seem to remember the monk's calling these entities tulupas, I've probably got the name wrong because Google doesn't come up with any results.

edit: here we go .. Tulpa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa

and ..

http://www.tulpa.info/faq/
 
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skinny said:
I wonder if Pythagoras was Aphantaisic. IIRC, one of his systems of thought pertained to the entire world of mathematics and all else being made of music. I liked the idea in sentiment and thought it would be a fascinating focus of research.
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First, an important qualification ... It's not certain how much of Pythagoras' storied life and accomplishments were his, as opposed to glosses and attributions added on by writers decades and centuries after his death. The musical teachings are among the items of uncertain provenance.

Having said that ... I'd say the most defensible answer is that there's no particular reason to ascribe aphantasia to Pythagoras just because he attended to the audible in addition to the visible.

If, as some claim, Plato's focus on perfect forms derived from Pythagoras it's difficult to believe his geometric acumen was achieved without a capacity for mental visualization.
 
Swifty said:
Someone here might be able to help me remember a case of a woman who trained with some monks at the start of the last century and was able to create a though form entity, a man from my recollection who at first was only in the corner of her eyesight but eventually mixed with her and her group .. I seem to remember the monk's calling these entities tulupas, I've probably got the name wrong because Google doesn't come up with any results.

edit: here we go .. Tulpa ...
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There's an FTMB thread dedicated to tulpas:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/tulpas.9172/

A tulpa represents a manifestation of some entity originally envisioned mentally. Aphantasia refers to an inability to generate or apprehend such mental imagery in the first place.
 
This 2006 FTMB thread:

'seeing' thoughts
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/seeing-thoughts.26549/

... is interesting in that the OP mentions generating a visible mental image when drifting off to sleep, yet both the OP and follow-on posters seem to seize on the notion there's something odd about such a thing (i.e., having a subjective vision of something clearly of / within the mind).

Is mental imagery so rare or odd to some folks that it seems it can or should be addressed as something paranormal?
 
maximus otter said:
Synesthesia?
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I doubt it. Synesthesia pertains to 'bleed-over' between sensory modalities. Poincaré(?) claimed he always engaged abstract concepts in terms of sound rather than visible appearance. He was alluding to an uncommon modality for all such introspective perception rather than cross-over between modalities.
 
EnolaGaia said:
First, an important qualification ... It's not certain how much of Pythagoras' storied life and accomplishments were his, as opposed to glosses and attributions added on by writers decades and centuries after his death. The musical teachings are among the items of uncertain provenance.

Having said that ... I'd say the most defensible answer is that there's no particular reason to ascribe aphantasia to Pythagoras just because he attended to the audible in addition to the visible.

If, as some claim, Plato's focus on perfect forms derived from Pythagoras it's difficult to believe his geometric acumen was achieved without a capacity for mental visualization.
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Thanks for the response. He's a character I must give more time to.
 
Coal said:
No probs. I was wondering whether the lack of ability to visualise, made you a better than average 'recorder' of real things.
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Unfortunately not.

Someone here might be able to help me remember a case of a woman who trained with some monks at the start of the last century and was able to create a though form entity, a man from my recollection who at first was only in the corner of her eyesight but eventually mixed with her and her group .. I seem to remember the monk's calling these entities tulupas, I've probably got the name wrong because Google doesn't come up with any results.
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That would be Alexandra David Neel. I can highly reccomend her book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.
 
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