<story><title>What happens in the brain while daydreaming?</title><url>https://hms.harvard.edu/news/what-happens-brain-while-daydreaming</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hombre_fatal</author><text>I wouldn’t be surprised if 99% of the discourse here is just miscommunication on what “picturing something in your head” means and 99% of people who think they are different are not.&lt;p&gt;Picture a dog in your head. It’s such an fuzzy, imprecise action that you can skew the definition of “seeing it” from nothing (you are mostly reasoning about what this dog looks like) all the way up to a visual mental concept of it that does everything but actually block your field of vision.&lt;p&gt;Depending on what they think &amp;quot;seeing it&amp;quot; means, 100 different people can have 100 different explanations for the same phenomenon.</text></item><item><author>Forricide</author><text>Conversations around this kind of thing are so fascinating to me, because they seem to present this fundamental breakdown in human communication - how impossible it is to convey what &amp;#x27;really is going on&amp;#x27; inside your mind.&lt;p&gt;The idea (to me) that people can just see full-fledged lifelike photos in their mind is crazy, especially with low effort. I can&amp;#x27;t really draw things in my mind very well but I can &amp;#x27;pretend&amp;#x27; I see them, blurring the line between &amp;#x27;knowing I&amp;#x27;m seeing something&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;actually seeing that thing&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;But, is that the same thing as actually visualizing that object? It feels like it for most use cases, but then there&amp;#x27;s some task that actually would be way easier if I could legitimately &amp;#x27;see&amp;#x27; that thing, and suddenly everything becomes more complicated.</text></item><item><author>robluxus</author><text>Are there tests for aphantasia?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s fascinating to me that (as far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned) we mostly learn about it by self-reporting but then those reports vary pretty wildly.&lt;p&gt;I myself don&amp;#x27;t have aphantasia I think but I feel like I really have to work on &amp;quot;drawing things up&amp;quot; when I try to picture something with my eyes closed. 
Or maybe that&amp;#x27;s just the normal amount of effort for the complexity and detail I&amp;#x27;m trying to capture?
Actually it&amp;#x27;s easier to &amp;quot;imagine&amp;quot; things with my eyes open which I always thought was weird before I read this comment about daydreaming blocking out vision. 
Which still sounds extreme to me, but maybe not more extreme than all those other reports that claim they can procure fully detailed houses &amp;#x2F; places &amp;#x2F; system architectures &amp;#x2F; electrical diagrams &amp;#x2F; etc on a whim.</text></item><item><author>jermaustin1</author><text>As a person with aphantasia, the only time I&amp;#x27;m able to &amp;quot;see&amp;quot; pictures is while dreaming (including day dreaming), but daydreaming has a weird effect of completely blocking out my vision. My mind is still actively processing cues from my vision, but I am unable to see anything but the daydream.&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#x27;t even realize that aphantasia was a thing until a couple of years ago when a YouTube video popped up on my feed about it.&lt;p&gt;When people ask what I &amp;quot;see&amp;quot; in my mind when told to &amp;quot;picture&amp;quot; something, is basically auditory database of descriptions in my inner voice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>basscomm</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s this kind of casual dismissal that makes the aphantasia so frustrating to talk about. The people who are able to visualize find it so fundamental and easy that they literally cannot conceive that someone else might be lacking this ability. They tell aphantasiacs that what they&amp;#x27;ve experienced their whole lives isn&amp;#x27;t real, they just misunderstand what visualization actually is.&lt;p&gt;No, I understand what visualization of something in your head is. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I can still see part of my dream in my mind&amp;#x27;s eye, but it fades quickly. I can&amp;#x27;t do it consciously. Never have been able to.&lt;p&gt;If you tell me to visualize a dog and describe it to you, I can&amp;#x27;t do it. I can describe what a dog looks like in general, but I won&amp;#x27;t be able to tell you what the specific dog that I&amp;#x27;ve conjured up looks like because it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like anything. I&amp;#x27;m not looking at an image in my mind&amp;#x27;s eye of a dog.</text></comment>
<story><title>What happens in the brain while daydreaming?</title><url>https://hms.harvard.edu/news/what-happens-brain-while-daydreaming</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hombre_fatal</author><text>I wouldn’t be surprised if 99% of the discourse here is just miscommunication on what “picturing something in your head” means and 99% of people who think they are different are not.&lt;p&gt;Picture a dog in your head. It’s such an fuzzy, imprecise action that you can skew the definition of “seeing it” from nothing (you are mostly reasoning about what this dog looks like) all the way up to a visual mental concept of it that does everything but actually block your field of vision.&lt;p&gt;Depending on what they think &amp;quot;seeing it&amp;quot; means, 100 different people can have 100 different explanations for the same phenomenon.</text></item><item><author>Forricide</author><text>Conversations around this kind of thing are so fascinating to me, because they seem to present this fundamental breakdown in human communication - how impossible it is to convey what &amp;#x27;really is going on&amp;#x27; inside your mind.&lt;p&gt;The idea (to me) that people can just see full-fledged lifelike photos in their mind is crazy, especially with low effort. I can&amp;#x27;t really draw things in my mind very well but I can &amp;#x27;pretend&amp;#x27; I see them, blurring the line between &amp;#x27;knowing I&amp;#x27;m seeing something&amp;#x27; and &amp;#x27;actually seeing that thing&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;But, is that the same thing as actually visualizing that object? It feels like it for most use cases, but then there&amp;#x27;s some task that actually would be way easier if I could legitimately &amp;#x27;see&amp;#x27; that thing, and suddenly everything becomes more complicated.</text></item><item><author>robluxus</author><text>Are there tests for aphantasia?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s fascinating to me that (as far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned) we mostly learn about it by self-reporting but then those reports vary pretty wildly.&lt;p&gt;I myself don&amp;#x27;t have aphantasia I think but I feel like I really have to work on &amp;quot;drawing things up&amp;quot; when I try to picture something with my eyes closed. 
Or maybe that&amp;#x27;s just the normal amount of effort for the complexity and detail I&amp;#x27;m trying to capture?
Actually it&amp;#x27;s easier to &amp;quot;imagine&amp;quot; things with my eyes open which I always thought was weird before I read this comment about daydreaming blocking out vision. 
Which still sounds extreme to me, but maybe not more extreme than all those other reports that claim they can procure fully detailed houses &amp;#x2F; places &amp;#x2F; system architectures &amp;#x2F; electrical diagrams &amp;#x2F; etc on a whim.</text></item><item><author>jermaustin1</author><text>As a person with aphantasia, the only time I&amp;#x27;m able to &amp;quot;see&amp;quot; pictures is while dreaming (including day dreaming), but daydreaming has a weird effect of completely blocking out my vision. My mind is still actively processing cues from my vision, but I am unable to see anything but the daydream.&lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#x27;t even realize that aphantasia was a thing until a couple of years ago when a YouTube video popped up on my feed about it.&lt;p&gt;When people ask what I &amp;quot;see&amp;quot; in my mind when told to &amp;quot;picture&amp;quot; something, is basically auditory database of descriptions in my inner voice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>the_af</author><text>It can also vary depending on the subject to be imagined.&lt;p&gt;For some people faces, especially familiar ones, I can see their faces in high detail (flaps of their noses, even pockmarks and other texture). The &amp;quot;picture&amp;quot; doesn’t stay still and it sometimes requires effort; though some imagery comes unbidden and effortlessly.&lt;p&gt;Other topics I have a harder time with and are more abstracted.&lt;p&gt;The problem with discourse at this level, however, is how subjective it is: when I say I can picture in my head the beautiful outdoors scenery of my last vacation, how accurate is it? If you could download a hardcopy from my brain, would you tell me &amp;quot;this doesn&amp;#x27;t look like a photo at all&amp;quot;? But what if I&amp;#x27;m actually there, watching with my eyes -- is the image that forms in my brain accurate? Maybe someone would also scoff at it if they could download it, &amp;quot;this isn&amp;#x27;t what the scenery looks at all!&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I fear we will never be able to solve this riddle.</text></comment>