Well I had a full near 1 hour video essay about it (the one I mentioned in this video) all ready to go before I found out the hard way just how much TH-cam doesn't respect fair use. Despite Y know... It being a well recognised part or copyright law. I'm trying to retool it but finding the motivation to do... anything has been pretty difficult
@@Synapse-CrossroadsOfKnowledge awn ;w; I hope ya feel, motivated, soon akef´poa but ye youtube is kind of a jerk when it comes to copyright and the lack of fair use ´pawlkefpo
Interesting! For most of my adult life (now 77 years old) I have never been able to close my eyes and visualize anything - it's all just a vague, blurry backdrop. My dreams are also far more tactile, with blurry visuals. When I was a child the usual childhood illnesses unerringly came with vivid hallucinatory images and imagination so I had convinced myself that my adult lack of visualisation was probably just a mental rejection of those frightening childhood memories. Perhaps I'm just aphantasic? My wife is very 'arty' and when we first met I tried to explain my lack of visualisation to her but she just looked at me as if I was nuts. Surprisingly, I have quite a well balanced eye for art, photography and design, both symmetry and asymmetry, which annoys my wife enormously. I've spent my adult life as an engineer (including design engineering) and have been quite creative, particularly with productive lateral thinking, but am a terrible artist. Often I've had to prototype designs myself before being able to convince others that my ideas are sensibly viable. Perhaps, like dyslexia, which I apparently also suffer from, aphantasia forces you to think outside the box rather than just being a 'herd thinker'?
I find aphantasia to be very interesting, and I’m thankful to hear about your experience. In fact, it would be great to hear even more about some of the details of your personal experience with it. I’d like to know about how you recall information, the process that your mind goes through, step-by-step. For instance, how you remember where things are located that you’ve sat down. Also, I love how you ended the video. Great reference to Ed Catmull. That’ll definitely shut up any critics, lol.
I’d also like to know your MBTI personality type. I’d imagine that you are highly swayed towards a Sensing preference over Intuition. However, I could imagine that gut feeling is still possible, but likely more subconscious.
It's kinda difficult to explain. I would imagine it's not much different to how someone without aphantasia does it, just minus the mental imagery. Like if I put an object on a shelf and then turn around, I still know it's there and I could still pick it back up again with my eyes closed, I just don't see it in my mind while doing so.
@@dlprofitt Hi! I'm also an aphant and have a deep interest in MBTI. I'm curious to hear your theories on the relationship between personality and aphantasia. One interesting observation I've come across while reading about other aphants is that some apparent correlations don't actually exist. For instance, I have a terrible sense of orientation and often get lost, which led me to wonder if aphantasia played a role. However, I've discovered that there are aphants who navigate their surroundings just fine. Similarly, while some aphants have no interest in art, I do. I'm an INFJ (inferior extraverted sensing), one of my hobbies is art, particularly digital illustrations. For me, the inability to visualize what I imagine has been a driving force behind my desire to draw. I have concepts, feelings, and "images" that I can't see, yet I somehow perceive them. To explain our imaginative process, my favorite analogy is entering a dark room where you can navigate and locate objects, even without visual perception. It's like finding the light switch effortlessly. I can "imagine" (maybe i should say "think about" a picture but I can't see it. I'd like to make one more comment about my thinking process that may be relevant-I have an "inner voice," which some people don't experience. When I think, it's as if I'm speaking to myself. If you have this inner monologue, you'll need no further explanation. The idea of not having this inner voice is incredibly perplexing to me, as I can barely spend two seconds with a quiet mind. But that's basically how I think.
@@Celessam Well that's interesting, I'm an aphant as well and I totally understand the dark room analogy, the will to create beautiful things and the ubiquitous inner voice. I actually believe my inner voice is so detailed it allows me to imitate complex sounds better than the average person (like regional voice accents, precision singing, etc) inside the limits of my vocal chords. I surprisingly also developed an interest in MBTI: I'm an ISFJ with very pronounced "I" and "S" and very very slight "F" and "J". When it comes to spatial representation, my sense of proprioception (knowing where your own limbs are situated without seeing them) was tested as above the average when I was 8 years old. Never broke any bones, twisted an ankle or had a car or bike accident in 21 years of life. Moving in my appartement in the complete dark is almost just like doing so during the day. I kinda know where and how far objects are from my body if I saw them once. Then the other objects are just factually positioned in relation to the first ones. There was this mobile app I downloaded from the appstore called "Symmetry" by Platonic Games in highschool. It was about recreating the correct symmetrical shape in a 2 dimensional square matrix. All of my friends were just so lousy at this game I couldn't believe their "symmetrical attempts" were serious. When I completed the mirrored shape in like 1.2 seconds before their eyes they basically called me Einstein. I experiment significant memory issues though and really struggle to """picture""" an objective in advance in many domains.
@@LerogFR Haha that's amazing! I haven't had major accidents either but I bet that if I were to try that app you mentioned, I would do pretty badly. And I think my long term memory is also worse than other people's. I was trying to remember a teacher I had for a public speaking workshop like, 5 years ago? and I can't even remember if it was a man or a woman. The good side of this is that I can enjoy again fiction I've previously watched or read all over again x). By your brief description of yourself, it kinda sounds like you could be ISTP? Instead of Si-Fe-Ti-Ne the function stack would be Ti-Se-Ni-Fe.Your strong spatial awareness could be indicative of high Se. It also aligns with your self-perception of being "very I and S, and slightly F and J." Of course, this is just a guess based on the limited information I have... If you've read about the cognitive functions you probably know whether you're ISFJ or ISTP.
I was on a nerve medication that gave me amnesia and found out Aphantasia swell! Actually shocking considering not know who I was but knowing I was remembering wrong. I was taught very visually in the world so no longer having this ability made navigating out of this world!! Great video hope we get more attention !
Wow, I really relate to what you are saying. I have wondered all my life about 'counting sheep' to go to sleep ...what sheep? I close my eyes and see only darkness yet my dreams can be quite lucid, even to the extent that I tell myself to try not to wake up yet I am not very good at that but I remember when I awake. People say 'Just Imagine' and to me that's like 'what if', not actually seeing anything. I don't know what pricked my curiosity but in my '60s I asked people if they really counted sheep, and folk looked at me odd. A sort of Duhhh like look. I even asked within my own family and had the same response but I could never shake the fact that they were humouring my nonsense. I mean. how does another prove that they are actually seeing something? I have come to realise that they actually can see things and I guess that they are lucky .. good for them. It makes no bones to me that they can do what I can't as I can do a lot that they can't, that is what being a Human is all about. We all have our different skill sets. I can't paint for toffee, but can play Beethoven Symphonies in my mind whilst not being even to play a guitar. Something just doesn't translate from mind to sensors and back again. I am totally happy as I am, as I was before I discovered Garlic. Lenny Susskind, recently in a youtube video about Quantum Complexity mentioned that Richard Feynman used to close his eyes whilst solving a problem. I interpreted that as Feynman being able to see in his mind. Me, I have to grub around in the dirt until I feel it. You'd be amazed at how sensitive your fingers are when you close your eyes trying to fix your old car engine.
Here is a kicker ... I once worked with a bloke who was brilliant at solving things and he used to do the closed eyes trick ... yet he was colour blind and regretted it. There is no optimal 'seeing' here .... just that when the lights go out they really do, no matter how many bloody sheep on the mountain.
I can only unlock my visualization with thc or lsd, or just before or after sleep, I wonder about possible therapy or training, I didnt really mind my aphantasy (and didnt really pay attention to it) until my first experience of visualization on drugs, the wierd thing is that I felt like It got better after that, and more common after I started drawing
I'm not sure, I know that definitely lines up with my experience but perhaps that's future research that can be done: The prevalence of aphantasia in certain fields and professions
Funny, we must have seen the same podcast or an offshoot of it. I just discovered about 18 months ago that I, too, have aphantasia. I used to believe folks were just _imagining_ things/objects and _saying_ they "saw" these things in their heads when they closed their eyes. All I see is...a big, dark nothing! Now I realize I am inner-vision challenged. Since this has been a life-long condition, I have no idea how different my life would have been had I been born with inner visualization capabilities. Oh, well. In aptitude/personality tests, I fall squarely within the "analytical" category. I always had a facility for math. But can draw nothing but stick figures! Ironic, since my childhood ambition had been to become a comic book illustrator and writer due to my love for comic books! After I found out about my condition, I began to ask my friends and family to describe what they saw, boy did those answers vary! Some thought I was being whimsical; others were as inner-blind as me! What a world. I wonder whether this condition runs in families? Interestingly, I dream quite vividly--both in color and in black-and-white! Be well.
Everyone "Sees" blackness and nothingness. I think people are confusing communication when they ask, "what do you see?" Dreams are a terrible example, because you actually "see" things while dreaming, which is entirely NOT what's happening when you "visualize" something. Nobody "sees" the things they imagine. They're just thinking about it.
Are you seriously trying to say aphantasia isn't real? When 1. *I* have it. 2. I showed you about a dozen papers on it and 3. I literally have one of those researchers in my comments. Why don't you go tell them that their work is dumb, go on. Lemme spell it out: If I tell you to close your eyes and try to picture something.... and you see nothing.... you have aphantasia. End of story
@@Synapse-CrossroadsOfKnowledge I received a notification on Altmetric that my research was cited in a TH-cam video and got curious. Thank you for your work in science communication!
Maybe you (your mind) just refuse, for what ever reason, to understand what seeing an "image" of something in your mind actually means? Yea I know, having "aphantasia" is much cooler.
I don't believe this exists. Let's have someone pop up in these comments and explain to us exactly how they can see things with their eyes closed. C'mon.
"I don't understand the thing, so therefore the thing must not be real" solid logic. Just ignore all the peer review research I showed in this video, or better yet why don't you take it up with one of the authors of said papers who LITERALLY has commented on this video themselves. Why don't you go tell them to stop wasting their time studying something that "doesn't exist"
![โรงเรียนห้ามรัก โดนจับได้ตาย...!! [เอิร์นไดเม่]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4u02Sbr556Q/mqdefault.jpg)
I told my wife that i think i have aphantasia because i cant imagine a life without her.
Can you imagine a future *with* her tho?
Aw cute
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUGGESTING Fantastic Mr. Fox, I JUST WATCHED IT!!! It's so good I love it awww thank you so much thanks
Well I had a full near 1 hour video essay about it (the one I mentioned in this video) all ready to go before I found out the hard way just how much TH-cam doesn't respect fair use. Despite Y know... It being a well recognised part or copyright law. I'm trying to retool it but finding the motivation to do... anything has been pretty difficult
@@Synapse-CrossroadsOfKnowledge awn ;w; I hope ya feel, motivated, soon akef´poa
but ye youtube is kind of a jerk when it comes to copyright and the lack of fair use ´pawlkefpo
@@Aragubas nevertheless. I thank you for being interested in my videos. I hope you stick around and see what else I create in the future
Interesting! For most of my adult life (now 77 years old) I have never been able to close my eyes and visualize anything - it's all just a vague, blurry backdrop. My dreams are also far more tactile, with blurry visuals. When I was a child the usual childhood illnesses unerringly came with vivid hallucinatory images and imagination so I had convinced myself that my adult lack of visualisation was probably just a mental rejection of those frightening childhood memories. Perhaps I'm just aphantasic?
My wife is very 'arty' and when we first met I tried to explain my lack of visualisation to her but she just looked at me as if I was nuts. Surprisingly, I have quite a well balanced eye for art, photography and design, both symmetry and asymmetry, which annoys my wife enormously.
I've spent my adult life as an engineer (including design engineering) and have been quite creative, particularly with productive lateral thinking, but am a terrible artist. Often I've had to prototype designs myself before being able to convince others that my ideas are sensibly viable. Perhaps, like dyslexia, which I apparently also suffer from, aphantasia forces you to think outside the box rather than just being a 'herd thinker'?
I find aphantasia to be very interesting, and I’m thankful to hear about your experience. In fact, it would be great to hear even more about some of the details of your personal experience with it. I’d like to know about how you recall information, the process that your mind goes through, step-by-step. For instance, how you remember where things are located that you’ve sat down.
Also, I love how you ended the video. Great reference to Ed Catmull. That’ll definitely shut up any critics, lol.
I’d also like to know your MBTI personality type. I’d imagine that you are highly swayed towards a Sensing preference over Intuition. However, I could imagine that gut feeling is still possible, but likely more subconscious.
It's kinda difficult to explain. I would imagine it's not much different to how someone without aphantasia does it, just minus the mental imagery. Like if I put an object on a shelf and then turn around, I still know it's there and I could still pick it back up again with my eyes closed, I just don't see it in my mind while doing so.
@@dlprofitt Hi! I'm also an aphant and have a deep interest in MBTI. I'm curious to hear your theories on the relationship between personality and aphantasia. One interesting observation I've come across while reading about other aphants is that some apparent correlations don't actually exist. For instance, I have a terrible sense of orientation and often get lost, which led me to wonder if aphantasia played a role. However, I've discovered that there are aphants who navigate their surroundings just fine. Similarly, while some aphants have no interest in art, I do.
I'm an INFJ (inferior extraverted sensing), one of my hobbies is art, particularly digital illustrations. For me, the inability to visualize what I imagine has been a driving force behind my desire to draw. I have concepts, feelings, and "images" that I can't see, yet I somehow perceive them. To explain our imaginative process, my favorite analogy is entering a dark room where you can navigate and locate objects, even without visual perception. It's like finding the light switch effortlessly. I can "imagine" (maybe i should say "think about" a picture but I can't see it.
I'd like to make one more comment about my thinking process that may be relevant-I have an "inner voice," which some people don't experience. When I think, it's as if I'm speaking to myself. If you have this inner monologue, you'll need no further explanation. The idea of not having this inner voice is incredibly perplexing to me, as I can barely spend two seconds with a quiet mind. But that's basically how I think.
@@Celessam Well that's interesting, I'm an aphant as well and I totally understand the dark room analogy, the will to create beautiful things and the ubiquitous inner voice.
I actually believe my inner voice is so detailed it allows me to imitate complex sounds better than the average person (like regional voice accents, precision singing, etc) inside the limits of my vocal chords.
I surprisingly also developed an interest in MBTI: I'm an ISFJ with very pronounced "I" and "S" and very very slight "F" and "J".
When it comes to spatial representation, my sense of proprioception (knowing where your own limbs are situated without seeing them) was tested as above the average when I was 8 years old. Never broke any bones, twisted an ankle or had a car or bike accident in 21 years of life. Moving in my appartement in the complete dark is almost just like doing so during the day. I kinda know where and how far objects are from my body if I saw them once. Then the other objects are just factually positioned in relation to the first ones.
There was this mobile app I downloaded from the appstore called "Symmetry" by Platonic Games in highschool. It was about recreating the correct symmetrical shape in a 2 dimensional square matrix. All of my friends were just so lousy at this game I couldn't believe their "symmetrical attempts" were serious. When I completed the mirrored shape in like 1.2 seconds before their eyes they basically called me Einstein.
I experiment significant memory issues though and really struggle to """picture""" an objective in advance in many domains.
@@LerogFR Haha that's amazing! I haven't had major accidents either but I bet that if I were to try that app you mentioned, I would do pretty badly. And I think my long term memory is also worse than other people's. I was trying to remember a teacher I had for a public speaking workshop like, 5 years ago? and I can't even remember if it was a man or a woman. The good side of this is that I can enjoy again fiction I've previously watched or read all over again x).
By your brief description of yourself, it kinda sounds like you could be ISTP? Instead of Si-Fe-Ti-Ne the function stack would be Ti-Se-Ni-Fe.Your strong spatial awareness could be indicative of high Se. It also aligns with your self-perception of being "very I and S, and slightly F and J." Of course, this is just a guess based on the limited information I have... If you've read about the cognitive functions you probably know whether you're ISFJ or ISTP.
I was on a nerve medication that gave me amnesia and found out Aphantasia swell! Actually shocking considering not know who I was but knowing I was remembering wrong. I was taught very visually in the world so no longer having this ability made navigating out of this world!! Great video hope we get more attention !
Wow, I really relate to what you are saying. I have wondered all my life about 'counting sheep' to go to sleep ...what sheep? I close my eyes and see only darkness yet my dreams can be quite lucid, even to the extent that I tell myself to try not to wake up yet I am not very good at that but I remember when I awake. People say 'Just Imagine' and to me that's like 'what if', not actually seeing anything. I don't know what pricked my curiosity but in my '60s I asked people if they really counted sheep, and folk looked at me odd. A sort of Duhhh like look. I even asked within my own family and had the same response but I could never shake the fact that they were humouring my nonsense. I mean. how does another prove that they are actually seeing something? I have come to realise that they actually can see things and I guess that they are lucky .. good for them. It makes no bones to me that they can do what I can't as I can do a lot that they can't, that is what being a Human is all about. We all have our different skill sets. I can't paint for toffee, but can play Beethoven Symphonies in my mind whilst not being even to play a guitar. Something just doesn't translate from mind to sensors and back again. I am totally happy as I am, as I was before I discovered Garlic. Lenny Susskind, recently in a youtube video about Quantum Complexity mentioned that Richard Feynman used to close his eyes whilst solving a problem. I interpreted that as Feynman being able to see in his mind. Me, I have to grub around in the dirt until I feel it. You'd be amazed at how sensitive your fingers are when you close your eyes trying to fix your old car engine.
Here is a kicker ... I once worked with a bloke who was brilliant at solving things and he used to do the closed eyes trick ... yet he was colour blind and regretted it. There is no optimal 'seeing' here .... just that when the lights go out they really do, no matter how many bloody sheep on the mountain.
I can only unlock my visualization with thc or lsd, or just before or after sleep, I wonder about possible therapy or training, I didnt really mind my aphantasy (and didnt really pay attention to it) until my first experience of visualization on drugs, the wierd thing is that I felt like It got better after that, and more common after I started drawing
Aphantasia? Wow, I can't even picture what that would be like. I have the opposite condition. It is a gift and a curse
Hyperphantasia? I've always lowkey kinda wished I didn't have aphantasia because I'm adamant i'd be a much more creative person without it
its so frustrating bc i cant picture a keyboard when i try to type
My qualifications are in maths and physics and I don't visualize very well but am quite analytical. Is this typical amongst physicists?
I'm not sure, I know that definitely lines up with my experience but perhaps that's future research that can be done: The prevalence of aphantasia in certain fields and professions
Same here
Funny, we must have seen the same podcast or an offshoot of it. I just discovered about 18 months ago that I, too, have aphantasia.
I used to believe folks were just _imagining_ things/objects and _saying_ they "saw" these things in their heads when they closed their eyes. All I see is...a big, dark nothing! Now I realize I am inner-vision challenged. Since this has been a life-long condition, I have no idea how different my life would have been had I been born with inner visualization capabilities. Oh, well. In aptitude/personality tests, I fall squarely within the "analytical" category. I always had a facility for math. But can draw nothing but stick figures! Ironic, since my childhood ambition had been to become a comic book illustrator and writer due to my love for comic books!
After I found out about my condition, I began to ask my friends and family to describe what they saw, boy did those answers vary!
Some thought I was being whimsical; others were as inner-blind as me! What a world. I wonder whether this condition runs in families? Interestingly, I dream quite vividly--both in color and in black-and-white!
Be well.
I found out from Distractible if you're curious
Crazy how I can have weird and detailed dreams but I cant imagine an apple when i close my eyes 😂
Everyone "Sees" blackness and nothingness. I think people are confusing communication when they ask, "what do you see?"
Dreams are a terrible example, because you actually "see" things while dreaming, which is entirely NOT what's happening when you "visualize" something. Nobody "sees" the things they imagine. They're just thinking about it.
Are you seriously trying to say aphantasia isn't real? When 1. *I* have it. 2. I showed you about a dozen papers on it and 3. I literally have one of those researchers in my comments. Why don't you go tell them that their work is dumb, go on.
Lemme spell it out: If I tell you to close your eyes and try to picture something.... and you see nothing.... you have aphantasia. End of story
Nice summary 👍
Oh my god... I didn't expect actual researchers to watch this. Thank you for all the work that you do
@@Synapse-CrossroadsOfKnowledge I received a notification on Altmetric that my research was cited in a TH-cam video and got curious. Thank you for your work in science communication!
as the days goes by I just want more and more to just NOT have aphantasia and be able to visualize
Same here.
Maybe you (your mind) just refuse, for what ever reason, to understand what seeing an "image" of something in your mind actually means? Yea I know, having "aphantasia" is much cooler.
I don't believe this exists. Let's have someone pop up in these comments and explain to us exactly how they can see things with their eyes closed. C'mon.
"I don't understand the thing, so therefore the thing must not be real" solid logic. Just ignore all the peer review research I showed in this video, or better yet why don't you take it up with one of the authors of said papers who LITERALLY has commented on this video themselves. Why don't you go tell them to stop wasting their time studying something that "doesn't exist"
@@Synapse-CrossroadsOfKnowledge Turns out I have it. The thing, that is. I can't visualise a god damn thing. Most upsetting.