Aphantasia: 'Mind Blindness' & Lack Of Mental Imagery

Mrs. Coal is heavily dyslexic and has to arrange her hands in an L and inverted L to work left from right and I'm so used to 'your side' and 'my side' as directions I use them with other people! She really struggles with android o/s as well.
 
I know we've mentioned dreams on here before, but I'm now wondering if aphantasia also leads to a lack of imagery in dreams? So if one with aphantasia does dream (and my aphantasic ex swore that he NEVER dreamed, and on the one occasion he woke and remembered one he recounted it in great detail because he was amazed that most people had this EVERY NIGHT), then do those dreams lack the related imagery that we are often told about (ie, the house standing in for the self, dreams where the meaning isn't literal)?
 
catseye said:
Weirdly, I am not dyslexic, even slightly. I have ADD and possibly dyspraxia - and I think it's the dyspraxia which causes the 'reversing' effect. It doesn't affect me generally in day to day life at all, but I know what you mean about things feeling ;famiiar; when you're allowed your own mental image. I don't reverse things in memory, just in imagination.

The brain is a very strange place.
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Catseye - I thought that having a poor grasp of left and right meant that one was dyslexic. Your response inspired me to look it up and I now see that this is now thought of as not dyslexia, but a related condition. So, I have "left-right disorder" as well as letters or numbers occasionally getting replaced with similar ones. Like most dyslexics, I have invented my own work-arounds that work most of the time.
 
catseye said:
I know we've mentioned dreams on here before, but I'm now wondering if aphantasia also leads to a lack of imagery in dreams? So if one with aphantasia does dream (and my aphantasic ex swore that he NEVER dreamed, and on the one occasion he woke and remembered one he recounted it in great detail because he was amazed that most people had this EVERY NIGHT), then do those dreams lack the related imagery that we are often told about (ie, the house standing in for the self, dreams where the meaning isn't literal)?
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I have aphantasia and I dream quite vividly, almost as if my mind is compensating somehow!

I will say though, and I've never thought about it before, that my dreams are quite literal, even though they're fantastic, and contain unreal scenarios, alien planets, vampires ect. I've had a few dream dictionaries over the years and have never found an interpretation of the imagery in my dreams that seemed to relate to me at all.
 
Fluttermoth said:
I have aphantasia and I dream quite vividly, almost as if my mind is compensating somehow!

I will say though, and I've never thought about it before, that my dreams are quite literal, even though they're fantastic, and contain unreal scenarios, alien planets, vampires ect. I've had a few dream dictionaries over the years and have never found an interpretation of the imagery in my dreams that seemed to relate to me at all.
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That's exactly what I was wondering, Flutter, and you've answered my question admirably!
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
Catseye - I thought that having a poor grasp of left and right meant that one was dyslexic. Your response inspired me to look it up and I now see that this is now thought of as not dyslexia, but a related condition. So, I have "left-right disorder" as well as letters or numbers occasionally getting replaced with similar ones. Like most dyslexics, I have invented my own work-arounds that work most of the time.
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I think poor grasp of left and right is probably more linked to dyspraxia, which I may or may not have. Do you also have trouble telling the time? I struggle hugely with any clocks that don't have large faces with big numbers printed on the. Although I am also rubbish with numbers in any format, so it might be more down to that.
 
catseye said:
I think poor grasp of left and right is probably more linked to dyspraxia, which I may or may not have. Do you also have trouble telling the time? I struggle hugely with any clocks that don't have large faces with big numbers printed on the. Although I am also rubbish with numbers in any format, so it might be more down to that.
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No. I suspect that all of us have a variety of symptoms, and that each of our clusters is different, and come up with different degrees of severity, at different times, and with different triggers. Not being able to easily tell time is a challenge, and from your postings here on FMB, I suspect that you have invented good workarounds for all this.

So, my main problems are left-right, and transposing numbers. For example, if I read or hear 1607, I will sometimes but not always write this or speak this as 1407, 1617, or 1670, or... I also am physically clumsy, so regularly run into furniture or bang my hands on solid objects; but I view this as more being impatient. I can tell time correctly with either digital or analogue clocks. I only rarely transpose entire words: blood work becomes work blood. :)

Emotional stress, tiredness, or hunger will make this worse, which I interpret as evidence that this is a combination of flaws of both brain structure and biochemistry. Genetics likely are a factor, as my father had most but not all of this stuff, and some other symptoms as well. He could read or hear "chimney" but neither say nor spell it correctly: "chimmeny," "chimbly," or "chimbeny." The combination of the letters mn he found impossible. He barely made it through high school (ages 14-18).

I view my problems as very mild disabilities, and rooted in some sort of brain misfunction. They hamper my ability to function; but to a very minor extent. Once I realized this was going on, as a child, I invented my own workarounds, which have sufficed over my life. In my former working life, I had to be very careful with both numbers and mathematical formulas. I would review my work several times, and arranged for someone else to review it looking for my specific types of mistakes.

In my Ph.D. program, I ran into fellow students who had been diagnosed with some variant of dyslexia, and decided to view themselves as differently-abled instead of disabled, and then tried to force the university into large - not reasonable IMO - accommodations: no time limits on timed tests, no written dissertations for a Ph.D., etc. Some were quite vocal and self-virtuous about it. I knew a few very well, and these friends did not want to invent and use work-arounds; they wanted the world to accommodate them, and lower standards to do so. Ironically, they were all from California and graduates of the California school system! In the US, the California school system is viewed by many as too focused on a primary goal of ensuring every student's self-image is positive, and not actually on education: learning stuff.
 
I'm very fortunate in that I don't have any impairment with words, just numbers. Cannot, for the life of me do anything involving numbers! I'd reduce maths teachers to tears, they would carefully explain how to work something out, I'd seem to 'get it', do a page full correctly, then the following day be back to not understanding again. It was as if anything involving maths just didn't 'stick' to my brain. I assume this is part of my inability to tell the time!

But words behave for me, fortunately.
 
Newly published research indicates aphantasia has a substantial impact on one's ability to recall the past in detail and to generate predictive scenarios of future events.
Aphantasia Makes It Harder to Visualize Your Past And Future, Study Shows

A rare condition that makes people unable to visualize images in their imagination could have further-reaching effects on the mind than we knew, scientists report. ...

Those studies are telling us more about how aphantasia manifests in people, while also revealing new insights into how important mental imagery is as a component of other brain functions, such as memory.

In 2020, a team of researchers led by cognitive neuroscientist Alexei Dawes from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia found that people with aphantasia showed a reduced ability to remember the past and envision the future, in addition to recalling fewer dreams (and often with less detail).

Now, in a new study, some of the same scientists have discovered new evidence of aphantasia's impact on our memory and imaginations of the future. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/aphant...visualize-the-future-and-the-past-study-shows
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the published research report.

Alexei J. Dawes, Rebecca Keogh, Sarah Robuck, Joel Pearson,
Memories with a blind mind: Remembering the past and imagining the future with aphantasia,
Cognition, Volume 227, 2022, 105192, ISSN 0010-0277.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105192.

Abstract
Our capacity to re-experience the past and simulate the future is thought to depend heavily on visual imagery, which allows us to construct complex sensory representations in the absence of sensory stimulation. There are large individual differences in visual imagery ability, but their impact on autobiographical memory and future prospection remains poorly understood. Research in this field assumes the normative use of visual imagery as a cognitive tool to simulate the past and future, however some individuals lack the ability to visualise altogether (a condition termed “aphantasia”). Aphantasia represents a rare and naturally occurring knock-out model for examining the role of visual imagery in episodic memory recall. Here, we assessed individuals with aphantasia on an adapted form of the Autobiographical Interview, a behavioural measure of the specificity and richness of episodic details underpinning the memory of events. Aphantasic participants generated significantly fewer episodic details than controls for both past and future events. This effect was most pronounced for novel future events, driven by selective reductions in visual detail retrieval, accompanied by comparatively reduced ratings of the phenomenological richness of simulated events, and paralleled by quantitative linguistic markers of reduced perceptual language use in aphantasic participants compared to those with visual imagery. Our findings represent the first systematic evidence (using combined objective and subjective data streams) that aphantasia is associated with a diminished ability to re-experience the past and simulate the future, indicating that visual imagery is an important cognitive tool for the dynamic retrieval and recombination of episodic details during mental simulation.

SOURCE: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027722001809
 
I never realised that the lack of mental imagery was actually a thing. I' ve always had a really good ability in this respect but a while ago it disappeared completely apparently for no reason. I was slightly concerned but dismissed the issue and about 12 months later it came back as quickly as it disappeared. I'm glad it did. At the same time my dreams became very detailed indeed awhich leads me to conclude that there must be some connection.
 
catseye said:
I just came upon this article about aphantasia, and hyperphantasia (which is what I believe I have). It made me wonder about the conditions anew - and whether there is any link with synaesthesia (which I also have, more so as a child but still occasionally now).
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Personal experience of maybe 50 people... lots of co-occurence of aphantasia and synasthesia. Unsurprisingly all of my 50 people are autistics. I think, but cannot reference, that both conditions are more likely in autistics than in everyone else - but I can't provide a proper reference for that. It'll have been in a lecture or a tutorial.
 
The whole topic fascinates me. The only aphantasic I know is autistic, but it's not a topic that arises in conversation that often so I don't know how many I might know who aren't autistic. Likewise, I know a lot of people who think they have a really good imagination, but I don't know if they are hyperphantasic or just have a good imagination. I'd love to see how many authors come into either bracket too.
 
catseye said:
The whole topic fascinates me. The only aphantasic I know is autistic, but it's not a topic that arises in conversation that often so I don't know how many I might know who aren't autistic. Likewise, I know a lot of people who think they have a really good imagination, but I don't know if they are hyperphantasic or just have a good imagination. I'd love to see how many authors come into either bracket too.
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I've always thought that authors must have a vivid imagination to continually come up with different stories. It's an interesting topic that's for sure.
 
When I wrote fiction as a hobby, I found it interesting that while I could very readily come up with a 'voice' and backstory for characters I created, I could rarely if ever imagine their faces; instead, I had to make do with describing rather clichéd faces which supposedly matched their personalities or social class etc etc, just to move the story on or to 'help' any readers enter into the story's atmosphere. That's okay as a kind of makeshift work-around but in real life this 'absence of imagination' can be very frustrating; for instance, literally each day I have to remind myself how my late parents looked and spoke*, and I worry that I'll no longer be capable of doing so.

* Is this actually a commonplace problem for bereaved people, or is it as singular an issue as I've assumed?
 
A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia.
Abstract:

For most people, visual imagery is an innate feature of many of our internal experiences, and appears to play a critical role in supporting core cognitive processes. Some individuals, however, lack the ability to voluntarily generate visual imagery altogether – a condition termed “aphantasia”. Recent research suggests that aphantasia is a condition defined by the absence of visual imagery, rather than a lack of metacognitive awareness of internal visual imagery.

Here we further illustrate a cognitive “fingerprint” of aphantasia, demonstrating that compared to control participants with imagery ability, aphantasic individuals report decreased imagery in other sensory domains, although not all report a complete lack of multi-sensory imagery.

They also report less vivid and phenomenologically rich autobiographical memories and imagined future scenarios, suggesting a constructive role for visual imagery in representing episodic events. Interestingly, aphantasic individuals report fewer and qualitatively impoverished dreams compared to controls. However, spatial abilities appear unaffected, and aphantasic individuals do not appear to be considerably protected against all forms of trauma symptomatology in response to stressful life events.

Collectively, these data suggest that imagery may be a normative representational tool for wider cognitive processes, highlighting the large interindividual variability that characterises our internal mental representations.

Source: Dawes, A.J., Keogh, R., Andrillon, T. et al. A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia. Sci Rep 10, 10022 (2020).​
 

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The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from fear-based imagery and aphantasia
Abstract:
One proposed function of imagery is to make thoughts more emotionally evocative through sensory simulation, which can be helpful both in planning for future events and in remembering the past, but also a hindrance when thoughts become overwhelming and maladaptive, such as in anxiety disorders.

Here, we report a novel test of this theory using a special population with no visual imagery: aphantasia. After using multi-method verification of aphantasia, we show that this condition, but not the general population, is associated with a flat-line physiological response (skin conductance levels) to reading and imagining frightening stories.

Importantly, we show in a second experiment that this difference in physiological responses to fear-inducing stimuli is not found when perceptually viewing fearful images. These data demonstrate that the aphantasic individuals' lack of a physiological response when imaging scenarios is likely to be driven by their inability to visualize and is not due to a general emotional or physiological dampening.

This work provides evidence that a lack of visual imagery results in a dampened emotional response when reading fearful scenarios, providing evidence for the emotional amplification theory of visual imagery.

Source: Wicken Marcus, Keogh Rebecca and Pearson Joel 2021The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from fear-based imagery and aphantasiaProc. R. Soc. B.28820210267​
 

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Steven said:
When I wrote fiction as a hobby, I found it interesting that while I could very readily come up with a 'voice' and backstory for characters I created, I could rarely if ever imagine their faces; instead, I had to make do with describing rather clichéd faces which supposedly matched their personalities or social class etc etc, just to move the story on or to 'help' any readers enter into the story's atmosphere. That's okay as a kind of makeshift work-around but in real life this 'absence of imagination' can be very frustrating; for instance, literally each day I have to remind myself how my late parents looked and spoke*, and I worry that I'll no longer be capable of doing so.

* Is this actually a commonplace problem for bereaved people, or is it as singular an issue as I've assumed?
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Strangely enough, Steven, I don't really imagine faces for my characters and I don't describe them (other than maybe a reference to eye colour and if they have any particularly distinguishing characteristics). I know how they look, how they walk, how they talk, but not their facial characteristics. However, I have no problem in remembering my late parents' faces - although I tend to remember them not as they were 'at the end', but as they were when they were still hale and hearty, aged about 65 or so.
 
An American Indian 'guru' of my wife's acquaintance, said that he couldn't teach white Americans meditation but it was easy to teach those from the East. This I believe is down to the Americans being 'out there' through action, rather than 'in here' through thought (no memory needed for information as they have the Internet).
 
https://theconversation.com/the-pin...oughts-244274?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb

An interesting article which seems to show there are positives to being aphantasic - namely that aphantasics are less liable to intrusive thoughts, and more able to block them if they occur.

The whole subject still fascinates me. I have too much ability to visualise things, but conversely, this prevents me from understanding what it might be like to have none.
 
catseye said:
https://theconversation.com/the-pin...oughts-244274?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb

An interesting article which seems to show there are positives to being aphantasic - namely that aphantasics are less liable to intrusive thoughts, and more able to block them if they occur.

The whole subject still fascinates me. I have too much ability to visualise things, but conversely, this prevents me from understanding what it might be like to have none.
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Yeah, I just can't imagine it, I think my life would be poorer for it.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Yeah, I just can't imagine it, I think my life would be poorer for it.
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Me neither, but I guess you don't miss what you've never had. And plenty of people with aphantasia manage to live perfectly happy and successful lives, often without even knowing that they have aphantasia. So I'd guess it's just one of those weird things about being human.
 
The thing is, as with seeing colours or feeling pain, none of us can ever truly know what the other person's experience is like.

Colour is the way that our brains interpret a particular wave length of light. If I like a particular shade of green and you hate it (and assuming we have no especially good or bad memories associated with it) does that mean:
a) That we experience the same colour but react to it differently? Or...
b) Experience a different colour?

As for visualising things from memory, how clearly can you or I conjure up an image of a loved one, a friend, a familiar scene?

I find I can only bring a fleeting glance of a person to the edge of my perception. I could describe them to you from factual memory (height, hair colour and style, glasses/no glasses, build, etc.) but I cannot put their image in front of my mind's eye and describe it to you exactly as I see it. What colour are my stepdad's eyes? I have no idea, because I have never made a point of checking, and I cannot bring up a mental image of him and check!

However, with certain things, like simple mechanical assemblies, knots I use for boating, dance figures and steps, I can run through them in my head in quite a detailed way.

Sometimes, when I am bored, or preoccupied, or struggling to sleep, or just learning a new knot, I can tie the knot "in my head" and even do it in left handed or right handed form, or from different starting points. I don't "see" the rope, but I do "see" the shapes and movements.

I am sometimes the same with music. I (used to) play harmonica, and I play Anglo concertina most days. Especially when I am learning a new tune, and I can't remember the melody, I can usually visualise the sequence of button pushes and bellows movements. (The funny thing with learning a new tune from scratch is that I can play it 20 times in a practice session, but the next day, I sometimes need a reminder of how it starts!)

Some of this may be neurological (I don't have the sort of "wiring" that enables me to conjure up a clear fixed image of a familiar face or scene) but some of it is habit and practice (I have learned to approach knots in a systematic way, I am analytical about dance movements, I have practised doing arithmetic in my head).

Maybe I'm weird in this respect, maybe I'm about average. Until the last few decades, I suspect that no one ever asked these questions but just got on with life. Most people outside of academia and the psychological profession, and places like this forum, probably still don't ask.
 
Floyd said:
So would it be correct to say that if someone with aphantasia was, for example, waiting for a bus, they would not know what the bus looked like until it came around the corner?
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Good point. When I read your post I had a clear mental image of a red double decker bus, with an old-style route number in large white numbers on a black background. Someone with aphantasia would never get a mental image like that.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Good point. When I read your post I had a clear mental image of a red double decker bus, with an old-style route number in large white numbers on a black background. Someone with aphantasia would never get a mental image like that.
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Right.

But they'd know what it was when it came into view?

The mental picture of the bus must therefore be stored somewhere in their brain for them to know what it is when it appears.

Some kind of neuron blockage?
 
Floyd said:
So would it be correct to say that if someone with aphantasia was, for example, waiting for a bus, they would not know what the bus looked like until it came around the corner?
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It's hard to explain! I don't think we have the language to properly discuss these inner states to be honest!

I know perfectly well what a bus looks like. I can describe one, draw one, even imagine one, I just don't have a mental picture, nothing I can actually see, I guess the best metaphor I can think of would be one of those word clouds, except I don't see the words, I just think them. I suppose there is some vague notion of an image, but it's just like a vaguely bus shaped red blur on a black background, I'm not actually seeing that either though, I'm just imagining what it would look like if I could see it.

Does any of that make any sense at all? It's the best I can do!
 
Mikefule said:
The thing is, as with seeing colours or feeling pain, none of us can ever truly know what the other person's experience is like.

Colour is the way that our brains interpret a particular wave length of light. If I like a particular shade of green and you hate it (and assuming we have no especially good or bad memories associated with it) does that mean:
a) That we experience the same colour but react to it differently? Or...
b) Experience a different colour?

As for visualising things from memory, how clearly can you or I conjure up an image of a loved one, a friend, a familiar scene?

I find I can only bring a fleeting glance of a person to the edge of my perception. I could describe them to you from factual memory (height, hair colour and style, glasses/no glasses, build, etc.) but I cannot put their image in front of my mind's eye and describe it to you exactly as I see it. What colour are my stepdad's eyes? I have no idea, because I have never made a point of checking, and I cannot bring up a mental image of him and check!

However, with certain things, like simple mechanical assemblies, knots I use for boating, dance figures and steps, I can run through them in my head in quite a detailed way.

Sometimes, when I am bored, or preoccupied, or struggling to sleep, or just learning a new knot, I can tie the knot "in my head" and even do it in left handed or right handed form, or from different starting points. I don't "see" the rope, but I do "see" the shapes and movements.

I am sometimes the same with music. I (used to) play harmonica, and I play Anglo concertina most days. Especially when I am learning a new tune, and I can't remember the melody, I can usually visualise the sequence of button pushes and bellows movements. (The funny thing with learning a new tune from scratch is that I can play it 20 times in a practice session, but the next day, I sometimes need a reminder of how it starts!)

Some of this may be neurological (I don't have the sort of "wiring" that enables me to conjure up a clear fixed image of a familiar face or scene) but some of it is habit and practice (I have learned to approach knots in a systematic way, I am analytical about dance movements, I have practised doing arithmetic in my head).

Maybe I'm weird in this respect, maybe I'm about average. Until the last few decades, I suspect that no one ever asked these questions but just got on with life. Most people outside of academia and the psychological profession, and places like this forum, probably still don't ask.
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It's an interesting point. Are there degrees of aphantasia? So some people might be able to imagine some things (like your actions involved in tying knots) but not the complete sequence of picking up the rope and tying the knot... whereas other imagine the sensation of the rope, the smell of rope, the whole 'feel' of hands bending and threading the rope... And others who know what a knot is and how to tie one, but couldn't envisage any of the procedure.
 
There might also be a difference in wether someone needs to conjure up am image from memory of for example a tiger or if they need to imagine what a Jabberwocky looks like.
 
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