Casual Conversation

5, unfortunately 😕

I’m a 5 on this scale. I was 50 years old when I discovered aphasia. When discussing this with my father I realised he has eidetic memory. This prompted me to think back and I remembered that used to see pictures in my head but it changed when I had traumatic head injury at 7 years old.

1. I can spin it, animate it, transform it into other things

It's complicated for me because it's not a specific one? It depends on my present state of mind and stuff, like when I try to visualize an apple I can kind of do it but sometimes it's a little staticky, or my mind just kind of cycles through a bunch of what feel like video feeds? Like memories of times i have seen an apple played as YouTube videos in a series? Except some of them are purely imagined?

Sometimes I can have a pretty much perfect mental visualization of what I'm thinking of though.

-1.

I can daydream so hard that it should be studied

1 i can make a 3d model with full detail color reflections and picture it at any angle

Full on 5. Maybe a 4 if I try really hard. But I still have a "big imagination", I just can't see it in my mind.

It varies based on context and how much thought I put into it. I might just think apples and not image them if its just a place holder but if Im thinking more about apples or like a scene in a book is engaging then the apple will be there in the visualization but how detailed it is is going to be based on its importance in whatever the thing is. I would have to be really trying to visualize the perfect apple to get a high detail one in my head. I used to read a lot and I feel like I visualized a lot more then but now that I am consuming media that just has the thing its like im not working out the muscle.

Can you guys actually see things? Like I can pretty clearly imagine things but theres no physical things to see things. I can imagine folding a box in my mind or spinning it but I wouldn't say I can see the box

Follow up question.

Is it easier to imagine it with your eyes open or closed?

Probably a 3.

Unless I have nightmares, then it gets hyperrealistic and off the scales like I can see the the mushroom cloud of the nuke going off.

Edit: To add to this, I hate reading books, its just not enjoyable for me, for the most part. I need visual media to understand. whats going on.

I can see a kind of a framework. If I imagine a wooden cottage in a mountain scenery, what I see is just metadata. I "see" the following:

• The concept of a mountain scenery
• The concept of wooden cottage exists within the said mountain scenery (its location is not defined, though).

Then I can take a look at the mountain scenery. I "see":

• The concept of there being a valley
• The concept of a river flowing in the valley

Next, let's take a look at the valley. I "see" for example:

• There is a concept of another mountain beyond the valley.
• There is a forest growing on the slopes of the valley

If I "look" at the forest, I "see", among others:

• Many individual coniferous trees

Etc.

But, when I'm "looking" at the trees, I never see the actual tree, only a knowledge of "here's a tree". And while "looking" at the forest, I do not see the rest of the scenery, only the tree. I can of course go back to seeing the whole scenery with the cottage in it, but now I only "see" the information "there is a mountain scenery with a valley, and a cottage exists within the scenery". Okay, the valley has appeared in a more stable fashion now that I've taken a look at the image.

So, shortly put, I do get very precise instructions for how to draw the image, but I do not see the image. The only way I can actually see it is to take physical pencils or an image editing program and actually draw a picture according to the instructions. This is also how my memories work. Everything is just metadata. A very thorough metadata that can be used for drawing a very precise replica of what I have seen, but no real visual information.

I can even "paint" the abovementioned scenery more precisely:

• Mountain scenery
  • Valley with river
    • River: Water is streaming relatively fast
      • White "foam" visible on top of waves
      • Basically this is something between a river rapid and a wide mountain creek
    • River: Slightly bending here and there
    • River: Has waves
    • River: Going from near the lower right corner, meeting the horizon maybe 30 % from the left side of the image.
    • River: Direction of flow not clearly defined
    • Valley: A slope exists on the other side of the valley
      • Forest on the slope
        • Consists of coniferous trees
          • Spruces, maybe 70 % of trees
            • About as tall as a four-floor building
            • The shape is uniform, beautiful
              • Branches have needles on them
                • Branches have subbranches
                  • The branches' structure seems to be recursive
                • Needles are dark green
                • Individual needles are visible
            • For some reason, there is one squirrel among the spruces.
              • The squirrel is brown.
              • Its tail is fluffy
                • Reaches a bit over the top of its head
          • Undefined coniferous trees, remaining 30-ish %.
            • Cannot be further observed
  • Sky
    • Covers a bit over a quarter of the upper part of the image
    • The sun is setting or rising
      • Yellowish or orangeish colour
      • Seagulls or similar
        • Far away, not visible very clearly
        • Gliding, not flapping their wings
• Cottage
  • Wooden
    • Made of horizontal planks, possibly logs
      • The logs/planks have lines visible in them, as wood does.
        • Lines are somewhat winding, calmly
  • Has a door
    • Wooden
    • No window
    • Planks on door are vertical
    • I am apparently unable to see a handle in the door
  • Has a window
    • Made of four panes
      • Pane is transparent
      • A sofa visible through the pane.
      • A flower vase is standing behind the window
        • It is on a windowsill
        • The flowers are roses
          • Red
          • Petals
            • Petals are more tall than wide
            • Overlapping each other
          • Leaves
            • Two
  • Chimney
    • Smoke rising from the chimney
  • A person is sitting inside the cottage (okay, apparently I can "see" through the walls; hadn't really noticed this earlier that this makes very little sense)
  • Male
  • Old
  • In a rocking chair

(Et cetera. I could "zoom" into different things in this "image" forever, and yet I cannot see it or anything it. Every time I zoom, I just get more information on what's visible – more "instructions for what to draw" if I ever wanted to make the image visible by bringing it physically to existence. I could also probably make the river flow to some specific direction or have the "undefined coniferous trees" defined more precisely, but those are not "visible" in the original image I got when I chose "a wooden cottage in a mountain scenery" as the image I'll be observing, so it means I'm kind of "painting over" the original image if I define them.)

5

Wait, there are people who aren't a 1?!?!

5. No pics in my brain at all. Also have Anendophasia (no inner voice).

I dream but it fucks me up. Same system my brain uses for reality stuff. Takes time to sort out if not fantastical. I still don’t see anything. Just remember like I do other stuff without pictures. It so disconcerting that I have smoked cannabis every night since I was 13 before bed to suppress the dreams even though they surface from time to time, at least then I know they are dreams.

So I'm really not sure where I lie on the scale. I try to imagine the apple but I really can't create any kind of image.

I read a bit about this and tried to imagine faces of people I know and had a little more success. However it is like I'm recreating each part at a time and as soon as I start to imagine another part, the previous disappears. I.e. I imagine the right side of the face, eye and cheek, the go to imagine the left side and the right side fades or disappears completely, imagine the hair, and the face is vague at best etc.

But also, I can also have incredibly vivid dreams!

It's almost like imaging an apple is too trivial for my mind to bother with! I try to imagine my front garden and its there, but rather vague and monochrome, so maybe 3-4.

1 or less I think. My mind also populated scenery in addition to the apple (a walnut stained table it was on outdoors).

4.5 on a very good day

3. Though colour is fine, I don't know why this graph removes the colour. Things I visualize appear quite faint, like I can hardly see them. But I can definitely visualize things.

I guess 1 and 4. When I see or hear the word apple, I don't picture anything, I just understand the word. But when I'm prompted to picture an apple in my head, I can fully see any type of apple I can remember encountering. The moving image in my head currently has the color/texture of water paint (and some oil), but I think that's more because I'm pretty stoned

I'm like a 2. I can picture an apple, it has color and texture, but when I try to rotate it the colors don't really work, like I don't know what's on the other side. Same thing with picturing a rubix cube. I can imagine seeing maybe 2 or 3 faces of the cube and I know how rotations/moves work but when I visualize it the new faces are just colorless.

If I try really really hard I might be able to visualize colors on the new face but the colors definitely wouldn't be consistent on each side of the rubix cube.

Somewhere between 3 and 5? I don't know.

Picture a line diagram of an apple, annotated with average dimensions, weight, taste, smell, possible colours, patterns, and whatnot, all cross-referenced to lists of apple varieties, recipes, and other random information about apples.

Now remove the diagram, and leave only the information. No, not as text, or spoken words, just as raw information.

That's the one, whichever number it is.

(This doesn't mean I couldn't draw you an apple, mind, the necessary information is still all there — I mean, I can't, but because my hand eye coordination sucks, not because of the aphantasia; give me a vector drawing software I'm familiar with and I'd probably be able to draw you a pretty cromulent apple.)

Does hyperphantasia count as 1 or 0?

It's like seeing reflections on glass over a black background. There is color, and I csn perceive details; but it's muted and dull.