This was a long, but a super interesting read! I had heard about aphantasia, and I knew that I had some form of it. I can recall a flash of an image, but I can’t sustain anything. I’ve always had trouble recognizing faces unless I knew the person well. And I can’t recall my past well. I can recall photographs better, which I think is similar to the face recognition thing, where it’s an image that’s built up over repeated viewings.

Another interesting thing mentioned was the person who always had music playing in their head. I always have something playing in mine, even if it’s a snippet that’s on loop. I don’t know that I really could “hear” a complete song from start to finish, though.

Ok your comment sounds a lot like what I am experiencing, now you got me interested in reading the whole article after all.

Thanks! Interesting article. I have a couple of friends with this.

I learned about aphantasia about two years ago and realized I had it as well. I never thought I had it different then others but was always frustrated with people on how they couldn’t understand concepts as quickly. I was always someone who just got it and could see the big picture (that phrase is pretty ironic with me). Being able to process images only in a conceptual manner has helped me a lot to succeed in life. The article title had me very confused on what is so negative about aphantasia I never thought it was a hindrance in my life any way. Until the last quarter of the article it hit home with not really recalling or caring much about my past. For me it’s not as dramatic as the lady who basically said when her kids are not with her they are out of her mind almost completely, but it does resonate on some level.

I always thought people talking about seeing things that weren’t there was metaphore. It blew my mind to find out it was literal.

The inside of my head is like watching a movie. I know memories get blurred, lose accuracy, etc., but I can watch scenes from prom night 35-years ago.

Cannot believe the ancient Greeks or Chinese didn’t figure out that we had these totally seperate experiences. I first learned about it on reddit. People on both sides were shocked.

The inside of my head is a movie screen. If I have a picture to help me along, I can keep the memory accurate and sharp. My memories are very short video clips, but I can see them clearly. I can picture sitting around the breakfast table after seeing Star Wars, 1977. I can feel and smell the cheap, smooth texture of my parents polyester comforter, when I was old enough to stand up and touch the top.

If I lost this ability, it would be tantamount to being blinded, no idea how I’d cope.

I kinda get how others do without. Sometimes solutions to problems come to me by instinct, gut feeling. Playing Solitaire on my phone I have no real memory of what’s in the draw pile, but I “know” there’s another red queen in there. But I have to be moving fast, otherwise I stop to smell the roses, look for the picture. Does that make sense? I’m imagining that instinct is much sharper in people without internal pictures.

EDIT: Tested my wife. She’s about totally eat up with aphantasia. No wonder I’m so fucking frustrated when she can’t describe a thing! “Harrison Ford. Can you see his face?” No clue, but she knows him when she sees him. “Can you picture an apple?” “Red.” I see every detail of an apple. I can “see” every pore in my wife’s nose. Fucking mind blowing.

Have you ever experimentally tested the accuracy of your recall? I read a study a while back that found that most people overestimated their accuracy.

Same! I grew up playing a lot of dungeon crawlers, so I’m pretty good at making mental maps. I tried explaining to an ex how I could envision a rough map of wherever I might be and he was completely baffled.

Neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient Chinese had video recording or even photography, which seems to be the metaphor that allows people to explain what they do or don’t have.

I must have relatively weak mental imagery? I can imagine seeing an apple, or recall the visual memory of my fruit bowl, but I’m hard-pressed to extract any definitive visual information from it, like I could if I really was looking at it. I’m visualizing the fruit bowl, but how many apples am I visualizing exactly? If I decide I’m visualizing two, now I’ve lost the relationship between the banana and the orange. I can see the Mona Lisa, but where do her arms go, actually? Maybe sort of crossed somewhere? What’s going on behind her, some kind of green-brown pointy trees? Nope, there’s her cheek again and some paint cracks. It’s less like looking at a picture and more like dreaming of one.