<story><title>Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors?</title><url>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1374349/full</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>xpl</author><text>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&amp;#x27;t what happens with them.&lt;p&gt;But normally, you won&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;actually see&lt;/i&gt; anything with your eyes closed, otherwise it would be a &amp;quot;closed-eye visual&amp;quot; (CEV) which is you only experience when you do hallucinogenic drugs (shrooms, LSD)!&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, most people can &amp;quot;visualize&amp;quot; when they imagine objects, people&amp;#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 &amp;quot;mind&amp;#x27;s eye&amp;quot;, disconnected from real eyes. It is very faint and tacit, like you&amp;#x27;re perceiving a very abstract high-level representation of an object, instead of seeing actual &amp;quot;pixels&amp;quot;. And it doesn&amp;#x27;t require having eyes closed, people often can do it as easily with their eyes open, as it doesn&amp;#x27;t interfere with the normal vision at all.</text></comment>
<story><title>Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors?</title><url>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1374349/full</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>asveikau</author><text>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&amp;#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&amp;#x27;s weird to perceive this way.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s accents when they talk. I think it might be related somehow.</text></comment>