Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors?

There is a sort of confusion when people read about aphantasia, they tend to imagine (pun intended) that most people have vivid pictures when they close their eyes, coming to conclusion that they must have aphantasia, because it isn&#x27;t what happens with them.<p>But normally, you won&#x27;t <i>actually see</i> anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a &quot;closed-eye visual&quot; (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)!<p>Nonetheless, most people can &quot;visualize&quot; when they imagine objects, people&#x27;s faces, places from memory — but it is totally not like AR (i.e. actually overlaying images on top of light perception). Nope, it feels more like you see it with some mysterious &quot;mind&#x27;s eye&quot;, disconnected from real eyes. It is very faint and tacit, like you&#x27;re perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual &quot;pixels&quot;. And it doesn&#x27;t require having eyes closed, people often can do it as easily with their eyes open, as it doesn&#x27;t interfere with the normal vision at all.

I slowly realized I have aphantasia by reading an HN comment about it last December. That day I started asking my daughter questions about visualizing things and daydreams and she ended up giving me a perfect description of aphantasia with minimal prompting. It&#x27;s very interesting to have gone through life not realizing I have this difference. A few people I asked the same questions of who do not seem to have aphantasia thought the topic was a little crazy, as if it&#x27;s weird to perceive this way.<p>I tend to process a lot of things through sound, and go around the world recognizing people by voice or unwillingly trying to place people&#x27;s accents when they talk. I think it might be related somehow.

I was pretty intrigued by Aphantasia a while ago, as I can’t picture anything at all with my eyes closed. Then I asked all my friends and none of them could either, apparently. So I’m wondering what “picturing” means in the definition of aphantasia? With my eyes closed all I see is pitch black, but I can “imagine” myself seeing a red apple even with my eyes open, I don’t actually see anything though.

I also have no visual at all, no inner monologue and I don&#x27;t have ability to hear sounds or music or bring up tastes or smells. I&#x27;ve accepted that about me, but there are two dishes my grandmothers used to make that I&#x27;m desperately trying to hang on to a memory of their taste profile,but I only remember it as an abstract description of the taste or as my reaction to eating it. I know I&#x27;ll recognize it if eaten again but I can&#x27;t bring that taste back otherwise.

It seems that Aphantasia does not globally bin into two groups, since I don&#x27;t fit in either.<p>By my rough count of Figure 2 tests, where Derek is at 0 to Loren at 6 (ignoring F), I have about 3.5 atypical responses.<p>My experience with Figure 2:<p>A) I can flip between cone and weird triangle, saw the cone first<p>B) I see it as if someone placed identical cat stickers on the drawing. I can intellectually understand the perspective, how the upper-right one is supposed to be bigger, but don&#x27;t experience it that way.<p>C) I see that there is an implicit rectangle (to me it looks slightly wider than tall). But the color doesn&#x27;t &quot;spread&quot; to the middle, it&#x27;s just like 2A -- a boundary in the surrounding shapes implicitly extends into the empty space to form a rectangle shape.<p>D) It takes minimal, but non-zero effort to see the vase<p>E) It&#x27;s trivial to flip between the two orientations of the cube<p>F) skipped<p>G) I don&#x27;t understand what I&#x27;m looking for here. I see clouds, sky, and a silhouette with a tree. Is there a face in it somewhere? I can see the smiley face on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pareidolia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pareidolia</a>

Some months, maybe a couple of years ago I realised that I have no &quot;mind&#x27;s eye&quot;. For example I know I have grandchildren but I cannot visualise them. I cannot visualise a neighbour, or food, or a location. That this happens is odd but I can live with it.<p>More recently I was thinking about gaming, and more specifically Prison Architect, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, City Skylines (all of which I own but get nowhere with) and other games where you play, you fail, you plan, you repeat. Even Minecraft.<p>Someone else - I presume - plays, fails, learns, repeats and so gain a step toward mastery of the game. (I accept from reading that mastery of DF isn&#x27;t happening soon). I presume that players visualise mistakes and visualise workrounds. I cannot do that, I do not know how.<p>I have thousands of hours in gaming but I cannot recall them visually, so I respond in-game to what is happening in-game. That may not make sense. There will be some learning but in a non-visual way.<p>Is this aphantasia? I have no idea and I&#x27;m not about to be diagnosed.<p>I do have vivid and lucid dreaming but ask me to close my eyes and visualise an apple and nope, doesn&#x27;t happen.

When I saw the title I thought it&#x27;s about current state of AI. That&#x27;s what currently AI is missing. Imagination.

plugging <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;cureaphantasia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;cureaphantasia</a> , started by a dev who claims to have cured his aphantasia

A good introduction to aphantasia (I&#x27;m a total, multi-sensory aphant): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aphantasia.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aphantasia.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;</a>

Cool! I think I&#x27;d be classed as deep Aphant like Loren (one of the paper&#x27;s authors) but I also have an internal monologue.

Why does aphantasia come up so often on Hacker News?<p>I find it mildly annoying that there is nearly no scientific backing to it, and that we are having the same discussions over and over again.<p>It seems very similar to the RSI craze, back in the 1990s, when almost everyone who went near a computer couldn&#x27;t work for months because they thought they had it. And then somehow the condition vanished.<p>Yes, some people actually have RSI, and some people probably have severe aphantasia and actually suffer from it. But I&#x27;m afraid there is a large group of people who think they are missing out on brain candy that simply doesn&#x27;t exist, (edit: or which they may have not successfully developed access to yet.)

The mass recoginition of Aphantasia and the rise of screentime seems somewhat correlated. They might be reinforcing one another, multiple avenues of cognition could be warping in unprecedented ways.<p>Highly industrialized societies have large populations that can experience, interact and survive their entire lives almost solely through screens. This seems to be an unknowing experiment we&#x27;re performing on brains.