I’ve just discovered that something I never gave a thought to, is I something I don’t have!
I have lived 65 years without knowing I do not have a ‘mind’s eye’
When I close my eyes, everything is black - I do not have mental pictures, and I find it difficult to conjure them - but I didn’t know, until this weekend, that it is not ‘normal’!
I rarely, almost never, have vivid dreams; I do not retain vivid memories
I have recollections, but not vivid memories, and I do not ‘picture this’ - I actually never knew it was a thing. I’m officially weird!
I don’t think I would do well with this test, but I can certainly picture my grandparents’ living room in my mind’s eye (their first example). I’m not sure how drawing a room they’ve seen only in a picture is a test of mental imagery vs just a memory test (not saying your experience isn’t real, just I think this is a really odd test of it).
I’m the opposite. I’ve alway had a vivid graphic memory that enabled me to study by photographing pages in my mind (not perfectly like a true long-term photographic memory, but close enough to ace any memory/recall-type test). I can also stand in a room and “paint” the walls in different colors or install new furniture in my mind. For the longest time, I thought this was normal until DH mentioned once that he was amazed that I always seemed to know exactly which storage container would perfectly match the amount of soup/stew/liquid I poured in. I said, “Well, you just have to look…” and that started a discussion about something I took for granted that he didn’t share. Though my verbal memory palace has begun to crumble, my mind’s graphic eye is still pretty sharp. Our son takes after me. He sees code in his head and can do complex math without a pencil. (If you’ve ever watched “The Good Doctor,” our son “tech trances” like that.)
I have a strange thing. I can have a mental picture from a book that I read better than what I have just seen. The actual picture is almost there, but the other sensations are much stronger.
Evidently, most people are like me - somewhere between what @momo2x2018 describes, and what my wife describes. The fact that most people are in between is obvious from the fact that people like having the ability to “virtually furnish” a room on a computer, rather than relying on their imagination alone. My wife can close her eyes and actually see a detailed picture of what she in thinking about. If she wants to think how a couch would be with a different upholstery, she closes her eyes and can see it. She has that 3-d image in her head as clearly as the image that we see on the screen.
BTW, there are also people who do not have an inner narrator. So they don’t have a voice in their head which talks about what you’re thinking.
Interestingly, it seems that people with the inner narrator are better at hearing it than they are at creating an image in their mind’s eye. People not only hear the narrator as an actual voice, they can “hear” accent, tone, singing, etc.
Evidently, mentally imagining odors is not common.
Nope, no mind’s eye here either. I already knew where this was going when I saw the thread title. Before I closed my eyes I knew I’d just see “black”.
I’ve mostly known this for a long time, but didn’t realize that it wasn’t typical until recently. I brought it up in conversation last month, and my spouse was absolutely floored, dumbfounded, flabbergasted to learn that some people don’t see vivid pictures in their head. And that I’m one of them!
The rough layout of buildings etc are some of the only things I can sort of make out in my mind’s eye. This might explain why structures and geometry feature so heavily in my dreams. Many of my dreams have me living as an adult in my childhood home, but never the other places I have lived in adulthood. Brains are cool and weird.
Spouse and I have had fun interpreting some things about ourselves and each other through our new lenses. I’m not nostalgic, spouse is. I don’t form detailed plans about my future/life, spouse does. I don’t think much about people when I’m not with them, spouse does. We wonder if the mind’s eye has something to do with all of that. Nearly 3 decades together and we’re still learning stuff about each other
Meanwhile, my inner narrator never shuts up. I also have a song in my head 100% of the time. It can be the same song for days on end. It will stay until another one displaces it.
Interesting article, thank you! I found this particularly fascinating
“If I asked you to imagine your favorite song, most people can hear the music in their mind, whereas I can’t do that.”
I can sing a song, in tune, in my head, but I cannot hear the music - is that what the above is describing? I really feel as if I have missed out on a giant swath of life’s experiences, I didn’t know I was missing!
No pictures but definitely music. In fact, if a song suddenly pops into my head and starts playing, I’ve learned to pay attention to the lyrics, because it usually is my subconscious sending me a message, often based on how I’m feeling.
I started a thread about this a few years ago. I can’t see anything either. When I try, I get only brief flashes of what I really think are memories, not imagery. I wonder what you all who don’t have this condition see when you close your eyes (without actually trying to visualize something in particular)? It’s not just black?
I don’t really have much of an inner monologue either, not like what I’ve heard others have. Again, only random phrases being ping ponged in my head. I think this is why I don’t have good skills at communicating orally.
I’m not musically inclined, but I can sometimes compose music in my head, from classical to country (which I hate, but it just happened). Unfortunately, because I have no musical skills, nor a good memory, I can never document it in any way.
I feel jealous of those who have the visual memory and inner monologue abilities. I think the lack of them held me back in my academics and my professional career. To do well, I had to do lots of memorizing instead of being able to naturally absorb or verbalize information.
I have an almost photogenic mind’s eye, which is helpful as I am a writer of fiction and essays, and very dependent on description. I also always have a song playing in my head.
But here’s a related thing–apparently, most people think in a continuous stream of words, like narrating everything. I CAN think in words, mostly when I am internally trying to explain something in my mind to an imagined audience, but i also think in, for lack of a better way to say it, thoughts themselves, “unsymbolized” as an article I recently read put it. It’s strange that as a writer, I am often slowed down trying to get to words.
Also, don’t know if it’s related to the rest, but I have synesthesia also, and see numbers and words in shapes and colors, and other types of associating patterns and images with things like time.
I do find this fascinating. I am a middle of the road person on all this, except the songs in my head. That is full blown like listening to the radio. I can hear every single part. It’s not me singing, it’s the band. I can hear guitars, drums, the whole works. I can sometimes call one up, but usually they pop up of their own accord.
If I am asked to picture something I do better with landscapes, etc, than people. My people will have a general outline, shape, hair color, and I might know their eye color and shape, but if I focus on that I can’t get the rest of the features to stick. They kind of fade out. Like I can’t see eyes, nose, mouth all at once and a complete face. But I can get a general outline of a specific person kind of like if they moved when someone was taking a photo. I often get the clothing right. Like if I’m picturing my mom I can see the shape of her and her hair and the shape of her face, but not her whole face at once.
I am also not great at names and faces in real life. My husband is the master at that. He can recognize someone he went to third grade with who is 250 lbs now with a beard and bald. No way I could do that. He’s always quizzing us on who some actor is on TV. I have no idea most of the time and then he’ll say and I’ll be like, “oh yeah I think I can recognize them now”. He can absolutely call up a face anytime.
For the inner voice, I have that sometimes, but I actually find it annoying. It is reading around (in my mind, not really aloud) what I am typing right now and I’d rather not have that going. Sometimes it will start reading aloud (in my mind) the book I am reading and I find that really annoying. I would rather just turn it off most of the time.
@LeastComplicated, since you asked when I closed my eyes before looking at this thread I saw just what I had seen before, my computer and second monitor. Then I visualized my cat down the hall because I heard her. Then I decided those were boring things to see so I visualized the beach. I can call up every room in my parents’ house, the carpet, the chair, etc. I could easily draw it.
When I read that NYT article awhile ago, I immediately thought of my son because his visual memory has always seemed off. Sure enough, he doesn’t have a mind’s eye. He is also dyslexic, and can not see letters or numbers in his head. He can hold a letter or number sequence in his auditory memory, which is helpful, but he has to keep repeating it, and it only goes into long term memory after a lot of effort. He did not learn our phone number until middle school, which caused us no end of grief every time someone found out. How could you fail to teach your ten year old his phone number?
Interestingly, he loves audiobooks of all kinds. I asked him whether it is frustrating that he can’t see, for example, a fantasy world in his head, but he says no. He doesn’t mind because he can feel the story and experience it without needing to picture it. He also loves music of all genres, although he has no talent at making it. He has tons of song lyrics memorized, and can tell you who sang pretty much any song you can think of. But he will forget the name of the next town over, and if two words are similar, he will use the wrong one and not notice.
I do quite often think about how much easier (and maybe better) life would be for S24 if he weren’t so dyslexic. But then he wouldn’t be S24. Who knows what gifts he has or is developing because he lacks a mind’s eye? He is remarkably intuitive about people’s emotions, especially for a teenage boy. He’s also strikingly humble.
For others out there with aphantasia, did you have trouble learning to read, or can you see letters in your head? Are you a good speller? I’m curious about the connection.
My “mind’s eye” works with eyes open: closing my eyes has nothing to do with it. I only see black, visually, with closed eyes but I can conjure images in my mind. They aren’t exactly visual in the sense that they are conjured by my brain, not my eyes.
I started first grade at 5 with no prior kindergarten and I learned to read pretty quickly. But I don’t think I ever see letters or numbers in my head.
This thread is so interesting. For those of you with aphantasia, does that also mean you can’t do math in your head?
As for the noise in my head, I have a constant stream of dialogue going, and song lyrics/music frequently playing too. It’s noisy in there. Makes it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep.
I’m no good at math or pictures of music in my head. I guess we adapt to how we are. D can ‘see’ and I believe here a lot. She can have a tough time quieting everything to sleep.
Perfect description for me as well.
I have a non-stop inner dialogue. Sometimes to the point of not paying attention to others when I should. My inner voice talks much more than I do.
I have aphantasia but an innate understanding of letters, words, etc. I rarely misspell anything. I don’t see words in my mind’s eye but I somehow just know how they’re spelled. It’s like they come out of my hand correctly. I write them down and they just look right (or not and then I fix it). It’s slightly harder for me to spell a difficult word aloud. I dislike audio books because I can’t imagine anything, and I feel unmoored by not being able to see words in print. If I’ve never seen how something is spelled (a new word or a name) it drives me batty.
I cannot hold number sequences in my short-term memory. I’m pretty good at math on paper, quite bad at arithmetic in my head. If I look up a page number in an index, I usually can’t remember it long enough to even turn to the correct page. I can commit important numbers to long-term (with effort) and remember them for decades. I memorize phone numbers by the pattern they make on the pad. Not sure what’s going on there, but probably has something to do with the mental storage container. Perhaps my weak mind’s eye is involved in the short-term number buffer.
Like some others in this thread, I can hear all the parts of a song in my head. I can’t hear a full orchestra, like some unusual people can, but I can hear all the parts in a typical band. The music in my head is so constant that I wake up and hear it first thing, and it’s usually the song that was in there when I went to sleep. My brain must store it during sleep. Even if I think it’s gone, it’s running like a background program in my subconscious and it will bubble up to remind me. I’ve always assumed this is pretty common but I don’t know.
However, my brain doesn’t store emotions during sleep and I will wake up a with an entirely blank emotional slate after even a nap – spouse is NOT like that. There has to be something objectively very wrong to carry through sleep for me. Sometimes I wake up feeling great and have to consciously remind myself about something bad that has happened.
One son is like me with aphantasia and the songs and the words (though not quite as good at spelling), and he taught himself to read early. Lacks emotional intelligence and intuition (he’s aromantic, got asked to prom tonight, and almost vomited from the stress, LOL).
Another son is dyslexic and sounds a lot like yours. He has trouble with things like phone numbers and the days of the week, etc. He is incredibly intuitive and also likes audio books and does the same music stuff as your kid. I don’t think he has aphantasia, though. I do see my family members’ personalities inextricably linked with their assortment of traits. They wouldn’t be themselves without them, both the helpful traits and the not-so-helpful traits! People and their different brains are so neat.
D1 and I both have aphantasia. She was the one who brought it to my attention.
I am a voracious reader. I read early. I am not a great speller. Words that I type or hand write never look correct, even if they are. It drives me nuts.
So, maybe aphantasia and dyslexia aren’t related, or only some types. I apparently started reading with no instruction at age four. S24 took years of one-on-one specialized programs and still is not a precisely accurate reader, although he has great reading comprehension. I thought maybe the difference between us was a mind’s eye for letters and words. Letters almost have personalities in my head, like jaunty J who twirls a cap on his cane.
I know S has trouble holding the way a word looks in his head at all. I remember his reading tutor asking him to picture “cat” and then remove the c and add b instead. He couldn’t. When he took Spanish (huge struggle) we used songs as much as possible. In order to remember any word, he needed a ton of repetition, and preferably a good trick. (Primavera means spring because a premiere is opening night and flowers open in spring. Or, caminar means walk because it sounds like commies marching.)
D19 and I can look at a list of vocab in Spanish and just memorize it. Not all of it will stick past the test, but we’ll be able to see the list in our heads for a couple of days. Even the accents. Feels very unfair.
