this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 72 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I have a friend at work who openly confessed to not being able to mentally create images when discussing why he wasn't into reading books.

I was like "Wow, I can't really imagine your reality for myself, that sounds strange."

he said, "Now you're getting it, as I can't imagine it, either."

Video games and film though? 1000X more entertaining for him via his testimony. He can't conjure those images so seeing someone else's interpretation is often thrilling.

[–] _____@lemm.ee 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't really do that either and I read books.

I also do have an inner monologue which might be a part of it.

[–] genuineparts@infosec.pub 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Wait are there people without inner monologue?

[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't think I have an inner monologue. Also I have full Aphantasia. I can't visually imagine an apple let alone rotate it in my mind.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 12 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I do! I visualize when I dream. But I can't do it on command. This is how I realized I probably have aphantasia. I can never consciously visualize. I can think and conceptualize, but not 'see'.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I also have aphantasia. I only learnt about it a year or so ago. It was eye opening when I realised. People used to say "picture this or that" and I thought it was a figure of speech! Turns out there are people who can picture shit.

[–] nichtsowichtig@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago

it's absolutely wild! I still struggle to imagine how other people can picture things.

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[–] HandwovenConsensus@lemm.ee 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I realized after reading about people with aphantasia that what I do is kind of a combination of visualization and conceptualization. If you ask me to imagine a cow, I'll tend to visualize the cow itself, but it doesn't come with a field for the cow to stand in. The cow is just in the concept of a place. That is, until I concentrate on visualizing details of the place, at which point I'll probably lose the visual of the cow. Like, it's still there, it's just become the concept of a cow.

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[–] _____@lemm.ee 9 points 1 week ago

Yes, it's quite wild but I guess I can't really say that as someone without the ability to imagine things.

[–] Wereduck@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago

Yeah! I don't think I do in the sense some people do, in the sense that some people describe having a narrator or something like that. If I am to think in words or sentences it takes a little more effort and happens when I'm thinking about talking to someone or putting things into words, whereas my passive thinking is generally wordless, and more conceptual/spacial/tactile.

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[–] TheHotze@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

On the other hand, I also can't create images in my head and prefer reading.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I often find myself getting distracted from whatever I'm watching because my brain takes over and starts making up alternative scenarios.

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[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 52 points 1 week ago (18 children)

A friend of mine has that condition where she can't visualize things. I wonder how she would like this comic. My guess is she'd crack a joke about it being a good thing she can't do this.

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I developed aphantasia. I used to be able to visualize things and now cannot... EXCEPT for in the first 20-30 minutes after waking up. It is quite disturbing since I only recently realized this, but can't actually tell when the last time I was able to picture or conjure things in my mind visually.

What's crazy is that I have no problem conceptualizing the apple. I am highly capable of imagining it. Not only that, I am a DM for a D&D game that's been going on for nearly a decade - so it has no bearing my creativity. Also, I am an artist and can draw and paint both realistic images as well as stylized or abstract things without problem.

I wish I could see images again. I do like being able to do so after waking up. Perhaps that's how I can exercise the skill and try to extend it.

[–] SunshineJogger@feddit.org 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I can't really imagine the combinations you described.

If someone described a sunset or other vivid cliché, that would spark what in your inner eye?

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

I have something similar. I have to push, extremely hard, mentally. Even then the resultant visualization is weak and fuzzy.

In my mind, the concept and the image are decoupled. I have the concept of an apple. A viewed apple can be matched to it for comparisons. That concept includes all variants. Red, green, yellow, small, large, bpy or smooth. It also doesn't have a view direction built in.

It's a bit like how you can still recognise a cat, when seen from below. You might never have seen it like that, but your model of "catness" includes it. You can mentally render it and compare. My brain just drops the rendering stage as useless fluff.

[–] match@pawb.social 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sorta sounds like your job / routine is making you stressed and unable to focus

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This might be it.

I gave up watching the news daily back after the November election. Since then, my creativity has returned.

The only logical thing to do is quit my job so the hallucinations will return.

[–] Caesium@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've got aphantasia and honestly the comic kinda reminds me of how I feel 'left out' but I also spent most of my life trying to draw and only found out about the term a few years ago making me realize I spent so much time following a dead end. that's just a me thing tho

[–] blandfordforever@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

I should preface this by saying that this is just my opinion and that I may be completely wrong.

I'm convinced that for 99% of people thinking they have aphantasia, it's just a miscommunication about what it means to "see" something in your mind. When people picture something in their mind, they can't literally see it in the way that they would see something with their eyes. Seeing something in your mind is just having an understanding of what it would look like.

People will say that they can "see" whatever you're asking them to "picture" but they only ever hold an understanding of what the thing would look like. This understanding can be elaborate but there is not actually an experience that could be perhaps better described as a visual hallucination.

If you visualize a cube in your mind, you don't actually see it. You just understand where all the lines, faces, and vertices would be. If you rotate it in your mind, you understand how those angles and the appearance would change at each moment as it rotates. You can even superimpose where these lines would go onto something you're looking at, but still you don't actually see it there, you just understand how you would perceive it, where the edges would go, what it would obstruct.

The reason that I'm convinced that people only hold concepts and visual understanding in their minds and not actual images is that most people are pretty bad at drawing. When people do start drawing, they create a representation of the sparse landmarks that actually made up their visual idea and then they have to start filling in the details using reasoning and logic. Artists and people who practice drawing get better at this, are more attentive to detail and learn techniques to make more convincing images. If people actually saw complete images in their minds, they'd be far easier to recreate and I think everyone would be more artistically inclined.

Furthermore, unlike "seeing" when you picture something while conscious, I think dreams actually do include visual hallucinations that can seem similar to actual visual perception.

[–] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not as clear as real vision, but if I close my eyes I can really "see" a visual image of the thing I'm thinking of.
Really like a "visual hallucination" as you said, but it clearly exists in, how can I say? "Another space"?

It doesn't automatically translate to the muscle movements required to draw it.

[–] blandfordforever@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Interesting. Maybe if there's a spectrum of ability for visualizing things, I'm just closer to aphantasia than I am to vivid mental images which rival visual perception.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 week ago

I think that's the case. It's definitely a spectrum.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

Yes it is. People on the opposite spectrum of Aphantasia have what is called hyperphantasia.

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 24 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If people actually saw complete images in their minds, they'd be far easier to recreate and I think everyone would be more artistically inclined.

People can't even draw stuff that is sitting in front of them, in real life, unless they've practiced. There's a lot more involved in drawing than just knowing what something looks like.

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[–] noxonad@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Sounds like somoene with aphantasia would say.

But jokes aside, it's most likely a significan difference since people with aphantasia would lack the physical reaction to inner images.

For example, when a normal person is asked to imagine a bright light source, a slight dilation of pupil can be noticed. Kinda shocking to find out that tbh.

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9018072/

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

I have aphantasia. I definitely cannot rotate a cube in my mind. I can with great effort and concentration kind of do what you describe, follow where individual edges and vertices would be in space relative to each other, but normally it would just be the idea in my head "there's a cube and it's rotating".

My go to test for aphantasia goes like this:

  • "Imagine a circle"
  • "OK"
  • "What color is it?"

People always answer with color and many times with a more detailed visual description, like texture, material, the surrounding scene, etc. I personally would very stumped by that question because when asked to imagine a circle, I just imagine the concept of a circle. It has no color, no texture, no substance.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

when asked to imagine a circle, I just imagine the concept of a circle. It has no color, no texture, no substance.

I mean, I don't have aphantasia, and if you ask me to imagine a circle, with no other details, I won't get most of that either right away. If anything I guess I'd tend to "see" it as a black thin outline, i guess because that's how it appears commonly in math problem figures. But I certainly wouldn't make up a texture or material for it if it wasn't mentioned.

Now if you're talking about a green and red tartan circle that smells like rotten cheese, yeah sure, I can summon that.

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[–] angrystego@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Ok, I'll add my personal experience here. When I imagine something, like an apple, my perception of the imagined object ranges from a rather blurry apple to a very detailed apple, but anyway I do peceive it very visually. It's definitely not just understanding in my case. I perceive the color, the shape, movements if need be, everything. When I do this, the normal perception coming from my eyes kind of shuts down and I only concentrate on "seeing" the thing I imagine, but if I focus I can also imagine something being somewhere in a real lication I see with my eyes, so then it feels a bit like AR. I've read somewhere that the same centers in the brain are active when you imagine something and when you see it, so you could say it's a kind of deliberate visual hallucination. I can also do this with music - I can play it in my head and enjoy hearing it.

[–] match@pawb.social 6 points 1 week ago

Oh, no, that's not a dead end! Holding mental focus is a skill you develop and you can practice it, and doing exercises specifically for that will help you learn to draw

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[–] match@pawb.social 38 points 1 week ago (9 children)

apples are uniquely hard to rotate in your head because apples are bland and uninteresting and nobody's favorite fruit. try rotating a cow instead. it's free and the cops can't stop you

[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What the fuck did apples do to you to deserve such a scathing review. Are you a doctor?

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[–] ignotum@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

You lied to me! I started rotating cows but the cops still arrested me for tax evasion

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

'90s Internet rotating cow GIF now playing in my head.

Me: Hmmmm.

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[–] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

A talking apple? How novel.

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Why do I feel annoyed by this picture?

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 11 points 1 week ago

I am also annoyed by the POTUS.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 13 points 1 week ago

My first attempt at rotating an apple in my head after reading this had the apple moving in 4 steps to do a full circle. Now the apple is spinning at a high speed after some more thinking.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This comic always freaks me out

Something about those characters is so uncanny

[–] Siethron@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can only rotate the apple in my head vertically

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I incidentally visualize a 3D object in my head complete with blender's UI. For some reason that helps

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[–] BotsRuinedEverything@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Lol. Im on the autism spectrum. You have no idea the complexity I can visualize and manipulate in my mind. I basically have CAD software in my brain.

[–] eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 week ago

I've got two kids. I told my older one "you've got a blackboard in your brain, practice making it bigger and making the things you write on it last longer". He says "oh yeah you're right cool".

My younger kid doesn't have one. Just, not there. She has an incredible eye for color and immediately sounds like a native when learning a new language, though, which neither of the other two of us have.

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