<story><title>Aphantasia: &apos;My mind&apos;s eye is blind&apos;</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unquietcode</author><text>This has been nagging me for weeks since I &amp;#x27;discovered&amp;#x27; that almost everyone around me can visualize things in their mind. Frankly, it helps explain a lot about my life. The inability to picture the face of friends, family, places I&amp;#x27;ve visited, all contribute to a sense of isolation and distance that I feel daily. My strong preference for non-fiction, too, is likely an artifact of reading fiction word by word but &amp;#x27;seeing&amp;#x27; nothing interesting. My failed attempts at all sort sorts of meditation and mindfulness exercises are also now suspect. The anecdotes about being unable to understand the concept of &amp;#x27;counting sheep&amp;#x27; also resonate strongly with me. That face-blindness is also commonly co-morbid also helps me understand that aspect of myself better.&lt;p&gt;All in all, while I don&amp;#x27;t feel &amp;#x27;robbed&amp;#x27; of this ability to visualize things, it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the human experience. I can&amp;#x27;t really visualize a future life for myself, let alone my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite mind-blowing, and I&amp;#x27;m glad it&amp;#x27;s getting the wave of media attention that it is now (or else I would not have known).&lt;p&gt;But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ux-app</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve got aphantasia too. When I first heard about it about a year ago I was surprised to learn that others &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; actually see things in their mind&amp;#x27;s eye. Had to confirm with friends and family, with questions like &amp;#x27;so you can actually &lt;i&gt;see&lt;/i&gt; a ball if you think about it?&amp;#x27;. Their answers blew me away.&lt;p&gt;So far I&amp;#x27;ve boiled the side effects down to:&lt;p&gt;1. A complete and utter lack of direction. I literally get lost in suburbs surrounding my home (i&amp;#x27;ll very often take an extremely sub optimal route home from a store that is just 10 minutes from my home - a bit embarrassing tbh, gives my wife a laugh though). These are streets I&amp;#x27;ve travelled for over 30 years. Apparently quite common with aphantasia.&lt;p&gt;2. An almost superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. People with aphantasia don&amp;#x27;t have the tendency to ruminate. I&amp;#x27;ve had some traumatic experiences in my life and within a few months it&amp;#x27;s as if the experience never happened. I can recall details of it but the recollection is as if the experience happened to someone else.&lt;p&gt;Regarding no.2, photos are super important. There was a period of 10 years or so where I didn&amp;#x27;t take many photos, and that period feels like a black hole.</text></comment>
<story><title>Aphantasia: &apos;My mind&apos;s eye is blind&apos;</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>unquietcode</author><text>This has been nagging me for weeks since I &amp;#x27;discovered&amp;#x27; that almost everyone around me can visualize things in their mind. Frankly, it helps explain a lot about my life. The inability to picture the face of friends, family, places I&amp;#x27;ve visited, all contribute to a sense of isolation and distance that I feel daily. My strong preference for non-fiction, too, is likely an artifact of reading fiction word by word but &amp;#x27;seeing&amp;#x27; nothing interesting. My failed attempts at all sort sorts of meditation and mindfulness exercises are also now suspect. The anecdotes about being unable to understand the concept of &amp;#x27;counting sheep&amp;#x27; also resonate strongly with me. That face-blindness is also commonly co-morbid also helps me understand that aspect of myself better.&lt;p&gt;All in all, while I don&amp;#x27;t feel &amp;#x27;robbed&amp;#x27; of this ability to visualize things, it does seem to lob off a chunk of things which are particularly joyful to the human experience. I can&amp;#x27;t really visualize a future life for myself, let alone my current life. To discover all of this after decades of being alive is quite mind-blowing, and I&amp;#x27;m glad it&amp;#x27;s getting the wave of media attention that it is now (or else I would not have known).&lt;p&gt;But then, perhaps, in this case, ignorance would be a bit more blissful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crimsonalucard</author><text>The picture we conjure up in our mind is also not the most detailed picture. It&amp;#x27;s not exact. It&amp;#x27;s a very blurry image but not in the same sense that an image is made blurry through a camera lens. It&amp;#x27;s also not an image, but a 3D model and it usually sits in some sort of relevant but made up setting.&lt;p&gt;For example. If I was told to imagine a barn, the first image to pop up is the barn. For no apparent reason, the barn is red.&lt;p&gt;How many windows does the barn have? No clue, didn&amp;#x27;t even realize that the barn had some windows. I can then sort of materialize the windows into a concrete amount (two for example). But do note that before I thought about the windows the 3D model of the barn existed in a state that can only be conjured by the imagination.  The barn literally had an unknown amount of windows, not no windows or some windows, but I just wasn&amp;#x27;t thinking about the windows. The other weird part of this is that we don&amp;#x27;t consciously realize that the model is incomplete, yet if we took this incomplete model of the barn and put it in the real world we can then instantly identify this inconsistency and weirdness.&lt;p&gt;Also for no apparent reason the barn is sitting on a grass field and it&amp;#x27;s dusk.&lt;p&gt;If you can dream, the image is exactly the same as your dream. Blurry three dimensional objects that can materialize in greater detail as you focus.</text></comment>