What does your imagination look like?? Please help me calibrate where I stand on the scale of visualization Full episode here - • How Vivid is Your Imag...
Side note, SOME people with Hyperphantasia have Synesthesia as well. Synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. Some examples include tasting words or linking colors to numbers and letters, or seeing sound as color. Fun fact, Tori Amos is in this category, and I think some famous composers were as well.
I recognize myself in what you say and all those years I thought I was bizarre and perhaps crazy. I can imagine anything and be very precise, adding, if I want to, shades, sounds, odors, etc. It is something I do before going to sleep since my early childhood and the source of this habit is the terrible physical pain I had to endure with juvenile arthritis : I found a way to escape when I was 3 years old and I still use it because it works. It is, I think, some sort of meditation. I get to so many details that I get exhausted and in the same time it helps me think about nothing else. Also, what I thought was very weird seem to be something others do and thank you for sharing with us that : Naturally, to me, some songs or sounds have an odor, a kind of perfume(s). Time has shapes and different geometric forms, letters have colors, and so on. This is good to know I am … normal 😅
@@LHeptade_Nomade Synestesia is actually one effect sometimes experienced with the aid of psychoactive drugs like psilocybin (magic mushrooms) or so I've heard. As an aphantastic neurodivergent and someone who resonates so deeply with music and rhythm, I often think about what it would be like to experience something like that. Especially when mental imagery in my minds eye is concept that is foreign to me. Thanks for taking the time to share. After all, The more we can relate to others, share our experiences, and talk about these things, the more these things become demystified.
I suspect I might have hyper Fantasia. And possibly some synthesia. I have an example down below does it seem like it might be. Last year on my mom's birthday. I looked outside at sunrise. This is what I saw and heard. And I was just describing it. Happy Birthday mom. The day is starting out beautifully. Looked like nature was (dawning) a dress for Celebration of your birthday. What a gift, A masterpiece of Jack frost. Adorning your day with the finest crystals. That twinkled like stars and sparkled like gems. It all looked so peaceful, Felt like you could almost hear the gentle sound of Bells. The frost looked like It was waiting in anticipation. As the morning's rosy, golden light Touched down upon the frost. In an instant. The gentle Bells became an exuberant, chorus. The gems and crystals appeared to be singing and dancing in joy. Their spirits set a blaze To welcome This day. Happy Birthday mom I love you.
Yes I have both. It made me an Audiophile as well. Listening to music creates colors and patterns in my head. It helps me identify what causes certain distortions. Another possible Synesthesia? Is drinking wine. Last few years I've joined a wine club at a local wine bar and do a lot of tastings. I literally see X/Y line graphs in my head when I drink some. Like a Zin will often show a quick zero to max leading edge. A nice Brunello shows a more smoothed upward slope.
my mind's eye is like movies that play on the back of my eyelids. "Imagine an apple" and I'm standing in my orchard amid my apple trees. "Imagine a beach" and I'm at a specific beach taking in the whole beach town. Then I think about other beaches in detail. "Count the windows in your house" and I'm standing in my kitchen in front of the fridge then mentally walking through my house (without being there) counting all the windows in all the rooms. I can also for instance, imagine and "see" rehabs or additions, or the barn that would sit behind the house, and the get togethers that would happen in those non existent places.
dang, that sounds pretty cool. How long would you say these 'movies' are? like 4-5 seconds of scenes? or does the scene extend as long as you think about it? do you feel like you have any control over what you see (other than the prompt)?
I would say I can see them as long as I'm thinking about them, and can walk around in them to an extent. One parlor trick I can do is if I know the area you are driving in and when you left, I can pretty accurately pinpoint where you are, then it's like I'm riding beside you in my mind's eye until I stop. I definitely have control of my thought world though after years of practice.
@FutureTechPodcast exactly like you. Just the counting test of windows in my mind of my parent's house in which I haven't been for months. And counted all of them in a matter of 5 seconds. Imagining my self floating around the house like a ghost so that I go from room to room quicker in order to count them
Me too. What I see in my mind is like a movie in first person. I float and I can move in my own house, or float back to school to a certain situation. But I cant picture like an apple. It becomes blurry like an Ai generator
I am all D’s. In third grade I was “shocked” out of a book I was reading , by the principal. I looked up and saw that he had been talking to me. I said, “Oh!” And sat up straight. He said, “ were you “in” that book you are reading?” I answered yes. He said, “ you have a very vivid imagination!” I am 66 years off. I never forgot that moment. I put myself in every book I read, including the Bible. I am with David as he fights the giant, Goliath! I am an alterations exert and deconstruct things in my mind so I know where to begin. This is helpful I working on wedding gowns. When I design, I pick fabrics and details in my mind and then create. It’s very fun to see a picture in my mind come to life and look exactly as I imagined it. Thank you for this video. I think it will help I. Relationships when communication is a problem it might be they don’t “see” as I see! 😊
That sounds fascinating! Some of my most vivid memories are 'day dreaming' in grade school as well. As in, I don't remember what I was thinking about, but I can remember absolutely not being present in class anymore lol
The best way that I can explain is not only can I hold the Apple I can grab it cut it into pieces take a bite taste it, my mouth starts to water I can feel the smooth surface and cold texture of the Apple while I'm holding it I can fill the crunch in my mouth I can smell it a little bit I can fully taste it tho
I have a high degree of "visualization" for all 5 senses. I can, in my mind, see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. If I know a song well, I can hear the exact qualities of the singer's voice. I can call up two different tastes that I'm familiar with, put them together in my mind, and test whether they would compliment each other, or not. I can easily alter visual images as well, changing the color, setting or lighting on objects I see in my mind. I can call up the very different tactile sensations of holding an emery board vs touching a raw piece of meat, etc. Strangely, I've never considered myself to have a strong sense of imagination. This sort of recall or "visualization," to me, is different from generating new or novel ideas, stories, or situations.
😂 what you described sounds like a pretty powerful imagination to me haha I definitely don't have that taste ability - being able to combine tastes is a little out of my control
@@FutureTechPodcast The taste/smell thing is probably down to me having gone to culinary school and cooked professionally. I can only do it with flavors I'm pretty familiar with, not with anything that's not part of my mental "pantry" already. I would guess that a lot of people could do the same if they focused on flavor as much as the average food professional has.
Your taste example is an interesting one. Chemistry is very complex, so I would assume your sheer amount of experience is what allows you to combine flavours the way you do.
That must be wonderfully helpful when cooking, to be able to "taste" multiple things at once and know what might go well together. I try things that I like with other things I like but I never know if they will compliment each other until I taste them together. I can't do that in my head.
Is it just me or is there anyone out their who can not just imagine but could have an eagle eye, go out and in of your body, taste, smell, feel in visualisation. It's crazy
if you say imagine a beach,i can hear the seagulls and the waves, i can taste the air and feel a cool breeze and the warm sun on my skin. If i think about eating something very sour i starts salviating, if i think about looking into the sun my eyes react to it and try to close.
I'm wondering if I have this. I never really thought about it, and always considered myself very imaginative, and people always make comments on how I seem to always be stuck in my head even though I dont notice it half the time. When I was a kid, I used to create entire fantasy worlds in my head. I liked to imagine buildings made of food, like a hyper detailed castle made of chocolate for example. I would also imagine about what kind of person I wanted to be, I imagined a future of me having a wife and kid and how i would raise them, I could visualize the house we were in, the esthetics of this dream-like world, what time of day it was, the exact words I said and the exact words everyone else said, i can even imagine how they would sound, everything in full detail. Sometimes I liked to imagine my favorite videogame characters interacting with the real world, like sonic the hedgehog running along what I can see while I was riding the school bus, I was actually able to see him. I was 6 years old when I saw this in my mind. Oh god and yeah my story telling was so surreal in school too. Looked like you'd have to be high to write what I wrote when I was a kid. But no its just how i think. Now that I think about it, people always ask me if im high when im actually not at all. That is so interesting to me. Sometimes I actually hear music in my head, and I didnt even initiate it. Just happens. Random nonsense too, I hear gibberish sometimes as well. Throughout my teen years I would imagine these colorful vibrant worlds with different themes depending on how im feeling at the time. mostly, entire societies that have everything I personally wanted in a world. I kinda stopped doing this since I started working and you know what I really should do it again I should really tap into this part of my brain and see what I can do and test my limits. I did it for a little bit just now and I can actually changed the art style of what im looking at in my mind on command. I can changed the quality of detail too, from dreamlike and vague to hyper detailed. Interesting. I can even recall smells and sounds pretty accurately too. Another note, my long term memory is really good too, always had that skill since I was young. I can recall pretty much everything in the way I experienced things, and I can look into them and visually see the memories in my mind like as if im going through a file cabinet. Im also a pretty extreme overthinker, I can write about my own thoughts for my whole life. Not in a self interest kind of way, but in more of a continuous pattern seeking way.
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience! It honestly sounds like you would have a lot of fun exploring generative AI - it can create as easily as you can think!
Oh my gosh I'm so glad to have met you on this rabbit hole. I think we are in the same exact position. I want to recommend this book the Corridor Crew (a well known group of VFX artists and TH-camrs) tried to popularize a while back. its called "Top 10 Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself" and its insanely fun to have him set up scenarios for you to explore and flesh out with your imagination. been reading it for years and I didn't even know the name hyperphantasia so its cool to learn about now if I have it or not.
@twilighthunter6583 Wow!!! Thank you! I'll definitely take a look, sounds super interesting! And yeah me neither, I never knew there was a word for it, and I was always confused why people always call me out for daydreaming so much. I thought it was normal, but I guess not. It's nice to know I'm not alone on this
When u visualise you can say to yourself "im walking up to the door" "im turning" " im sitting down" ect it helps you keep focus and its like a game controller and you can go around your imagined places better im into the law of attraction so i use this alot
You did such a great job of articulating your experiences (I could really relate to them) and especially pointing out that time element--how you can hold the image for a short time, and how it can be vague until you're prompted and then very vivid. That's my experience too but I never thought of it that way. This video really gave me a lot to ponder. Thank you!
Super interesting. I (at this current moment) can clearly visualize the beach, but everything has a grainy feel, like watching it on a nintendo DS. I find that different lights, time of day, being overstimulated and understimulated, have great effects on this. One time I was cycling (NOT ON DRUGS) and I could nearly imagine the entire sky pink, with fantastic buildings in the distance.
Can anyone relate to being able to be a director of an action movie or whatnot in your mind? It's like the movie Inception, you can bend and manipulate any reality, like taking your hometown city and folding it in two making a roof of one half, like in Inception. Or how when you are having a conversation with someone, you can "go out of your body" like a drone, hundreds of meters up into the air, and watch yourself and whomever you are conversing with, while also taking in the breathtaking scenery from up there, details from the streets, houses, people walking around etc. Usually when bored in the conversation lol. Basically, if I know what something, or someone, looks like, i can twist and turn and manipulate that reality at will, sort of. Like for instance, I know what a rag doll looks like, the ones used for wrestling practice etc, i know what cucumbers look like, what sunflowers look like, and what a basketball look like. Putting these together to make a rag doll body with a basketball head, cucumber arms and sunflowers for legs is nothing at this point, cause you know what the source looks like. You can also make a "human centipede" of all kinds of animals mixed with objects or whatnot, the imagination is the only limiting factor as long as you know the source. If that makes sense. Those examples were a bit grim, sorry lol. Hopefully someone can relate to this. I could go on and on about this for hours. There is so much fun to tell.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Subjective reality is hard to translate into words, so I appreciate you making the attempt. I can't say I have that same director vibe as you. Maybe I'd describe my role more like a 'guest' - I don't break the reality of the imagination - I tend to take the visions for what they are. It's cool to hear about different perspectives, eh?
I see so many videos about aphantasia and have known about it for many years, but having an imagination it seems pretty easy to imagine just not imagining things. But today I learned about the term hyperphantasia. This was a very unique video (in my experience) and I'd say our experiences are pretty similar, although I'm not constrained to one snapshot in time. You raised a lot of good questions about whether it's just recalling memories or creating new images, and whether there's even a difference when it comes to visualsing things, which are some things I thought about myself watching those other videos. Even though I can definitely visualise things it's hard for me to believe when people say they can visualise things more vividly than reality. I have dreams that feel more vivid than reality, but as far as optical resolution goes it doesn't compare. I can recall memories (at least recent ones) and focus on any detail I want, but seeing with my 3rd eye is just nothing like experiencing it through my 1st and 2nd eyes. And when it comes to imagining new things.... I can do it, but I'm a bit un-creative. I don't tend to visualise things in super extreme detail unless prompted, despite having vivid feeling daydreams at work, in transit etc. I've also found that I suck at trying to draw (typically in gartic phone) things I have visualised, and even before drawing I'm terrible at actually coming up with a scene in the first place. If I'm reading a book and it says there's a man out in a blizzard, I can visualise the man in the blizzard. But I wouldn't go out of my way to imagine a mountain, rocks, trees, the sun, the lighting, the man's footsteps and such. The only reason I thought of all that stuff now was because I was specifically trying to visualise things that I didn't think about when coming up with the blizzard man example in the first place. So I CAN imagine things, but just creatively limited. I'm not sure how much creativity comes into play for the varying levels of phantasia but I think it's an important thing to mention when discussing the topic. Also sorry if I repeat myself a bit, I'm terrible at writing consistently with perfect flow. Which may be related to all this, but who knows.
Another thing I just thought of (but won't edit my comment because it's long enough as it is) that's worth mentioning is I can very vividly imagine myself playing through a videogame like Metroid Prime or Zelda Majora's Mask in real time. Obviously if I were to see it on a TV it would look much more "real". But again is this true "imagination"? Or would it be a separate thing since I'm recalling memories when I do it? I will say though, I've definitely imagined some pretty unique places and games in my dreams, and it always sucks when I get pulled out of them and have to go back to the same old reality I live in.
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience! It's really hard to wrap my head around what other people are able to do with their imaginations, so I'm glad that ours seems to share some overlap
Not sure if this is apart of hyperohantasia - but in the apple thought experiment I can even imagine the taste and texture. The crisp tart of a green apple vs the crumbled sweet of a macintosh.
I have hyperphantasia. As a kid (and still sometimes now) I would constantly create massive fantasy words with magic and different races. Usually I kinda just spectate a story I create while focusing on 2 or 3 characters. Very rarely do I experience my minds eye in first person tho, I can do it but it feels weird. My memory is kinda foggy tho and I suck at drawing.
7:10 got me, As a gymnast with apparently hyperphantasia the video really helped me, every time the GPT asked a question I could i instantly come up with a full scenario, and everytime it added detailed I'd have to "lessen" my imagination to fit the scenario. 9:24 I was able to imagine a beach I never went to, with crystal clear sand, restaurants in the background, kids playing around, imagine the temperature and change it, make the mountains have details such as moss and palm tress, a boat, an island in the background, waves hitting and crashing upon the sand, a riptide happening on my left, while a sun set was happening in 3 or so seconds, I couldnt get to imagine the grains of sand I stepped on but I could imagine the feeling of the sun burning the grains of sand stuck to my arm. Pretty sure this is hyperphantasia :D
I'm not an artist but I do have hyperphantasia, and good at making verbal descriptions of it. So I find it really fun to see how close an AI art generator with verbal prompts can get to how my brain pictured it.
Regarding memory recall, mine are a little fuzzier than explicitly prompted visualizations. But the perpsective is that of a camera operator, never through my own eyes. My brain puts that external cinematographic layer on my own experience. It's so wild.
nice video. there's not many videos on this topics so I'm glad you made one. I have a very similar experience to yours. I say yes to all of those questions, although I also need to "be prompted" before I am aware of the details being there. it doesn't feel like how I visualize is particularly special, it just feels quite normal. however at the same time I definitely wouldn't describe it as "lacking detail" or unclear. I definitely can tell my visualizations don't "take place in the same world" as my vision, although it doesn't make what I see less clear. then when it comes to the sound ones, I hear everything very precisely. my sound imagination matches the real experience one to one, other than the fact that it also feels like it is "taking place in a different world" than my real life ears. I do not have a limit for how long I can imagine sound for. I wasn't aware that some people have a limit or what that would be like. I'm definitely also curious what other people see/experience with this. as you said, a lot of these descriptions were ones I originally just thought of as something "everyone has".
Thanks for sharing your experience!! I really appreciate it haha makes me feel less alone. And what you said about a 'limit for sound' is really interesting. I hadn't heard of that and it is kinda hard to imagine what that would be like. But I suppose my own limit is something like similar to 'storage issue' - I can recall scenes from a movie one at a time, or a song I've heard over and over. But the strength of those memories is determined by my exposure to the sound ... so that's a sort of 'limit' of its own
There indeed are not many videos on this. I can imagine a lot of things - from very simple shapes to movie scenes - in all sorts of clarity and detail. All the way to photorealistic. And as of recent I tried out whether I can get myself to actually see what I imagine (as in have the mental imagery join my real vision) and while I (yet) don't see colors and textures I can indeed perceive shapes. What's cool about this is that I can place imagined objects into my surroundings and perceive depth and perspective very accurately and even combine that with imagined tactile perception. I also don't need a prompt to imagine something. All this might explain why I can draw very well without reference and why I can imagine sounds very accurately (something I use while producing music).
Hey soo because of your video i ubderstood im a guy with hyperphantasia. I did not know that not all of us can do things in mind. When i think of any enviroment i even feel the temperature. I can even eat the apple in my mind freling the taste. It is ridicolous that my mind can do that. Also it feels almost like a dream.
Interesting video. Your description of your mind's eye sounds very similar to mine. A few exceptions. The first time I heard the "imagine an apple" I messed around in my head with its looks from red, to green, to mixed color like a Fuji, to fresh to bruised. I think I settled on green with some slight brown spotting near the stem, lol. Then, as I remember the instructions said something like now make it green. So, I turned it red and then green again! Your descriptions really seemed spot on to me. The idea of a lot being in your peripheral until you focus in on something for more detail. Then again, I think we kind of do that in actual real life as well to some degree. I agree it's really hard to figure out where you are on the spectrum as you can't jump inside someone else's head to compare. There's no way I would mistake what I see for real life. It's just more remote (or dreamlike), but I can imagine things in great detail. One thing is I write fiction sometimes and I'm existing in the world I'm writing about in my head. It's like being in a movie, sort of. It's more remote and I'm always aware it's not real life. Wow it's so hard to describe. Somedays I wonder if I don't really have a mind's eye at all, and other times I wonder if what I see is more vivid and detailed that most other people. One side note - while I don't have a photographic memory, I collect old SF paperbacks and despite having a few thousand sf paperbacks, I can tell if I have the book by my memory of the covers. Every so often I come home with a different edition of a book because I got tricked by the new cover. Anyway, a very interesting topic and I like the way you talked about it.
😂 it definitely sounds like you have a minds eye. But I agree, it's extremely difficult to understand if we're all describing the same experience or not. Just have to try our best with the words at our disposal!
My minds eye works best with my eyes open. It’s like a veil with a movie playing on it. Sometimes it is more clear than the real world and I’ve always been distracted by it and it took me most of my early life to differentiate between reality & my minds eye since they overlapped. I am 53 years old now and feel bad for those who don’t have this. I can run through different possibilities or build things in my head before I actually do something so I can work the kinks out of a lot of problems before performing the actions. It’s like a workspace in my head, 😂
I know i have hyperphantasia because just from the very start of the video. The images changing in the background already got me excited thinking about every universe in them 😂😂😂
Aphantasia here. I can't produce a mental image. I cant picture anything. There are also people that don't have an inner DIALOGUE. now THAT is weird. Also, I don't think it has to do with 'imagination', as much as it has to do with being able to visualize and project an image in your minds eye. Picture yourself on a beach, at the club, in the car, on a plane. Where do you see yourself in five years, or "Hey I can see us going to Hawaii one day" Nope, I cant see any of that. It makes it hard to plan for anything. It makes it hard to set and achieve goals. It also makes it hard to recall things like faces. You have a reference point that you can look back on and be like " oh yeah, I worked with that person at such and such a place" where i'm like " I know that I know this face, but WHERE". You would call up images in your minds of times you have interacted etc as a reference. Kinda hard to do if you can't see it. Hyperfantasia is the opposite. Where images can be in great detail. Sometimes even more detailed then the ocular input from those eyeballs of yours lol. And while I can't create a mental image, I can certainly go over characteristics in my head. I also do support and can walk customers through pretty much anything by following menus and key sequences in my head. One thing I can say, is I can speak sounds and rhythms quite fluently in my head. I can talk out a drum beat or pattern very well in my mind, and my inner dialogue is HEAVY. There is a correlation between aphantasia and ASD as well. The process of calling up a mental image happens between the back part of the brain and the front. When one has a disconnect in their wiring because they are Neurodivergent, there is often a connectivity issues between these regions of the brain, which is where we get our executive functions. The ability to plan and organize, the ability to regulate ones emotions, the ability to self regulate, and the ability to VISUALIZE are all part of these executive functions. Try and plan for the future without knowing what it may even look like. Likely one of the reason that so many divergents are impulsive and live in the "now". Because we have no concept of looking 'forward' ( as in ahead, not as in " man, i'm looking forward to this ..whatever" )
So, I have to ask ... when you say you can't 'see' things or produce a mental image - is it just a black void? is it grainy white noise? Like, if I showed you a number, asked you to close your eyes, and then visualize the number, where would your mind go? What actually happens when you attempt to produce an image? does it just come in the form of shapeless thought? I hope my question(s) make sense!
@FutureTechPodcast For sure! Just black, nothing. Like I can RECALL things. things I know ive seen, but its more like a list of parameters. Don't forget, there is a difference between CREATING a mental image from nothing, and RECALLING something you already know. Whereas the former is creating an image from nothing with no reference ( other than the request to "picture an Apple"); the latter is referencing memory that you already have stored. So if you were to ask me to picture an amish dude racing his buggy. Ok, I need to picture an amish dude, think iv'e seen one before so that's easy, I can look into my memory for an amish dude. Same with the buggy. For arguments sake, lets assume I’ve NEVER seen either of these things. So now my canvas is BLANK. Black. Now, if you were to ask me specifics, like what color is his hat, I would select whatever that thing is right then, make and decide, then spit it out " It's Black" In contrast, You would have the image there to reference, "Black hat, long beard, white horse"....Make sense? Lol On the other end, are Hyperfantastics. These are people who can not only see it in better then real life detail, some can actually project it visually and multidimensionally. Thanks for the discourse, I enjoy learning with people, and intelligent discussion is always welcome. I find this subject very fascinating.
I'm pretty sure I have hyperphantasia, it's hard to tell cause yeah it's what I've always known so I don't know what it's like for people without it? But I think if I didn't have it I would've bought a TV a long time ago lol I haven't had one since I moved out of my mom's house years ago, at first cause I was broke but now I just don't see the need to get one if I can just watch my own stories whenever and wherever I want. For me it's easier with my eyes open, like if it's with my eyes closed I can still see things vividly but it's mostly memories, prompted things or just random shit lol. If I have my eyes open though I can see what I consciously decide I want to see, idk if that makes sense 😅
I suspect I may have hyper Fantasia. For my mom's birthday I looked outside When the sun was rising. And I saw something that looked and sounded so magical. And I wrote down describing what I saw and heard in that moment. I sent it to my mom as a gift. The gift being The magic of how I perceive the world. It's always so disheartening, People who can't see and feel the magic. Feels like I'm gifting a part of my soul, To show how much I care and value them. And it gets the same Reaction as a Hallmark card that just says Happy Birthday. Or a Facebook post that says Happy Birthday and a birthday cake emoji. Happy Birthday mom. The day is starting out beautifully. Looked like nature was (dawning) a dress for Celebration of your birthday. What a gift, A masterpiece of Jack frost. Adorning your day with the finest crystals. That twinkled like stars and sparkled like gems. It all looked so peaceful, Felt like you could almost hear the gentle sound of Bells. The frost looked like It was waiting in anticipation. As the morning's rosy, golden light Touched down upon the frost. In an instant. The gentle Bells became an exuberant, chorus. The gems and crystals appeared to be singing and dancing in joy. Their spirits set a blaze To welcome This day. Happy Birthday mom I love you. She sent me a message back, Saying thank you I love you too. 😢
For me: Apple question: Not at all. No image whatsoever. Not even in a dream-like sense. Beach question: Not at all. No image whatsoever. I'm at the beach very frequently, so I know what a beach and grains of sand look like in great detail. In my mind? No. Sensory immersion: No, I can't see or hear anything at all. I know what a concert sounds like. In my mind? No. Changing elements: I don't visualize things, even if prompted. I don't see anything at all, so changing it has no meaning. Intensity: No images at all. Intensity, as a concept, has no meaning when talking about internal images. With all this, I'm comparing to sleeping dreams, which are vivid for me. Do people who "see" images in their mind see them like they see dreams? Or is it different in some way?
hmm .. it's more like, you can see someone get hurt, and 'feel' their pain, like you know you wouldn't want it to happen to you. So, I can 'feel' the water, meaning I can recreate the sensation - I can imagine what it feels like - but it doesn't actually feel like my body is wet ... if that makes any sense lol
I've been looking into this some. Yes some people literally have no internal dialog. When told to think of an apple, they literally have no image in their head. They "saw" black. There are many videos of people with Aphantasia discussing and researching it. I wonder about the specific definition of Hyperphantasia. Not just level of image detail and control, but how often and how many? I've been asking friends and most seem to have occasional but not continual internal dialog, images, movies in their heads. I'm news room central with a dozen monitors going all the time. I had no idea this was not normal. So when you talk level of detail, of which of the streams at any one time?
It's such an interesting topic! haha cause it's basically impossible to settle on a definition if we can't imagine what the other person is even talking about lol
@@FutureTechPodcast The more I look into it, the more I realize how possibly very different each of our thought processes are! And how very different mine are to most people.
I've always called myself a visual learner as I do better when I have visuals describing a word. I can remember the apple. But I don't actually see it in my mind. Does this count? If I wanted to, I can also try to watch a movie in my mind in my memory, but I think I can only do clips of a movie. But I don't actually see it if this makes sense however, I can hear it. The only thing I do actually see is what I see around me in my environment. I know if you ask me where the United States is located, I can easily show you as it is stored in my memory kind of like a battery that stores electricity. When you ask me to close my eyes to visualize. I'm, not sure how this works if it is supposed to actually show up all I see is blackness in my eyes. ⚫ 😅🤨 Strangely though when I did hypnosis session to figure out my past life back in the year 2014, I did ACTUALLY see an image in my eyes like a dream, an image of a kid that died couple years before I was born, but I was awake with my eyes closed. I never seen him before. That was the only time an image actually showed up. But just my thoughts. 🤔😅😎
Sounds intense! And thanks a lot for sharing your every-day experience. It's so cool how we can all operate under different settings. It's hard for me to imagine what your visual thoughts are like ... and if anything, I can clarify that I don't 'see' things when my eyes are closed - it's also just black - but the visuals I do see come from a different place. They aren't in my eyes, they're more like way behind it. Which is why I think people call it the 'minds eye'
Side note, SOME people with Hyperphantasia have Synesthesia as well. Synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. Some examples include tasting words or linking colors to numbers and letters, or seeing sound as color. Fun fact, Tori Amos is in this category, and I think some famous composers were as well.
I recognize myself in what you say and all those years I thought I was bizarre and perhaps crazy.
I can imagine anything and be very precise, adding, if I want to, shades, sounds, odors, etc. It is something I do before going to sleep since my early childhood and the source of this habit is the terrible physical pain I had to endure with juvenile arthritis : I found a way to escape when I was 3 years old and I still use it because it works. It is, I think, some sort of meditation. I get to so many details that I get exhausted and in the same time it helps me think about nothing else.
Also, what I thought was very weird seem to be something others do and thank you for sharing with us that : Naturally, to me, some songs or sounds have an odor, a kind of perfume(s). Time has shapes and different geometric forms, letters have colors, and so on. This is good to know I am … normal 😅
@@LHeptade_Nomade Synestesia is actually one effect sometimes experienced with the aid of psychoactive drugs like psilocybin (magic mushrooms) or so I've heard.
As an aphantastic neurodivergent and someone who resonates so deeply with music and rhythm, I often think about what it would be like to experience something like that. Especially when mental imagery in my minds eye is concept that is foreign to me. Thanks for taking the time to share. After all, The more we can relate to others, share our experiences, and talk about these things, the more these things become demystified.
I suspect I might have hyper Fantasia. And possibly some synthesia. I have an example down below does it seem like it might be.
Last year on my mom's birthday. I looked outside at sunrise. This is what I saw and heard. And I was just describing it.
Happy Birthday mom. The day is starting out beautifully. Looked like nature was (dawning) a dress for Celebration of your birthday. What a gift, A masterpiece of Jack frost. Adorning your day with the finest crystals. That twinkled like stars and sparkled like gems. It all looked so peaceful, Felt like you could almost hear the gentle sound of Bells. The frost looked like It was waiting in anticipation. As the morning's rosy, golden light Touched down upon the frost. In an instant. The gentle Bells became an exuberant, chorus. The gems and crystals appeared to be singing and dancing in joy. Their spirits set a blaze To welcome This day. Happy Birthday mom I love you.
Synesthesia is a super power and it blows my mind
Yes I have both. It made me an Audiophile as well. Listening to music creates colors and patterns in my head. It helps me identify what causes certain distortions.
Another possible Synesthesia? Is drinking wine. Last few years I've joined a wine club at a local wine bar and do a lot of tastings. I literally see X/Y line graphs in my head when I drink some. Like a Zin will often show a quick zero to max leading edge. A nice Brunello shows a more smoothed upward slope.
my mind's eye is like movies that play on the back of my eyelids. "Imagine an apple" and I'm standing in my orchard amid my apple trees. "Imagine a beach" and I'm at a specific beach taking in the whole beach town. Then I think about other beaches in detail. "Count the windows in your house" and I'm standing in my kitchen in front of the fridge then mentally walking through my house (without being there) counting all the windows in all the rooms.
I can also for instance, imagine and "see" rehabs or additions, or the barn that would sit behind the house, and the get togethers that would happen in those non existent places.
dang, that sounds pretty cool. How long would you say these 'movies' are? like 4-5 seconds of scenes? or does the scene extend as long as you think about it? do you feel like you have any control over what you see (other than the prompt)?
I would say I can see them as long as I'm thinking about them, and can walk around in them to an extent. One parlor trick I can do is if I know the area you are driving in and when you left, I can pretty accurately pinpoint where you are, then it's like I'm riding beside you in my mind's eye until I stop. I definitely have control of my thought world though after years of practice.
@@WalkingScriptureWithShanna Very cool!
@FutureTechPodcast exactly like you. Just the counting test of windows in my mind of my parent's house in which I haven't been for months. And counted all of them in a matter of 5 seconds. Imagining my self floating around the house like a ghost so that I go from room to room quicker in order to count them
Me too. What I see in my mind is like a movie in first person. I float and I can move in my own house, or float back to school to a certain situation. But I cant picture like an apple. It becomes blurry like an Ai generator
I am all D’s. In third grade I was “shocked” out of a book I was reading , by the principal. I looked up and saw that he had been talking to me. I said, “Oh!” And sat up straight. He said, “ were you “in” that book you are reading?” I answered yes. He said, “ you have a very vivid imagination!”
I am 66 years off. I never forgot that moment. I put myself in every book I read, including the Bible. I am with David as he fights the giant, Goliath!
I am an alterations exert and deconstruct things in my mind so I know where to begin. This is helpful I working on wedding gowns.
When I design, I pick fabrics and details in my mind and then create. It’s very fun to see a picture in my mind come to life and look exactly as I imagined it. Thank you for this video. I think it will help I. Relationships when communication is a problem it might be they don’t “see” as I see! 😊
That sounds fascinating! Some of my most vivid memories are 'day dreaming' in grade school as well. As in, I don't remember what I was thinking about, but I can remember absolutely not being present in class anymore lol
The best way that I can explain is not only can I hold the Apple I can grab it cut it into pieces take a bite taste it, my mouth starts to water I can feel the smooth surface and cold texture of the Apple while I'm holding it I can fill the crunch in my mouth I can smell it a little bit I can fully taste it tho
Very cool!
I have a high degree of "visualization" for all 5 senses. I can, in my mind, see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. If I know a song well, I can hear the exact qualities of the singer's voice. I can call up two different tastes that I'm familiar with, put them together in my mind, and test whether they would compliment each other, or not. I can easily alter visual images as well, changing the color, setting or lighting on objects I see in my mind. I can call up the very different tactile sensations of holding an emery board vs touching a raw piece of meat, etc. Strangely, I've never considered myself to have a strong sense of imagination. This sort of recall or "visualization," to me, is different from generating new or novel ideas, stories, or situations.
😂 what you described sounds like a pretty powerful imagination to me haha I definitely don't have that taste ability - being able to combine tastes is a little out of my control
@@FutureTechPodcast The taste/smell thing is probably down to me having gone to culinary school and cooked professionally. I can only do it with flavors I'm pretty familiar with, not with anything that's not part of my mental "pantry" already. I would guess that a lot of people could do the same if they focused on flavor as much as the average food professional has.
Your taste example is an interesting one. Chemistry is very complex, so I would assume your sheer amount of experience is what allows you to combine flavours the way you do.
That must be wonderfully helpful when cooking, to be able to "taste" multiple things at once and know what might go well together. I try things that I like with other things I like but I never know if they will compliment each other until I taste them together. I can't do that in my head.
Is it just me or is there anyone out their who can not just imagine but could have an eagle eye, go out and in of your body, taste, smell, feel in visualisation.
It's crazy
I can kinda, but really only when prompted
@@FutureTechPodcast good to know am not going crazy 😂
if you say imagine a beach,i can hear the seagulls and the waves, i can taste the air and feel a cool breeze and the warm sun on my skin. If i think about eating something very sour i starts salviating, if i think about looking into the sun my eyes react to it and try to close.
I'm wondering if I have this. I never really thought about it, and always considered myself very imaginative, and people always make comments on how I seem to always be stuck in my head even though I dont notice it half the time.
When I was a kid, I used to create entire fantasy worlds in my head. I liked to imagine buildings made of food, like a hyper detailed castle made of chocolate for example. I would also imagine about what kind of person I wanted to be, I imagined a future of me having a wife and kid and how i would raise them, I could visualize the house we were in, the esthetics of this dream-like world, what time of day it was, the exact words I said and the exact words everyone else said, i can even imagine how they would sound, everything in full detail. Sometimes I liked to imagine my favorite videogame characters interacting with the real world, like sonic the hedgehog running along what I can see while I was riding the school bus, I was actually able to see him. I was 6 years old when I saw this in my mind. Oh god and yeah my story telling was so surreal in school too. Looked like you'd have to be high to write what I wrote when I was a kid. But no its just how i think. Now that I think about it, people always ask me if im high when im actually not at all. That is so interesting to me.
Sometimes I actually hear music in my head, and I didnt even initiate it. Just happens. Random nonsense too, I hear gibberish sometimes as well.
Throughout my teen years I would imagine these colorful vibrant worlds with different themes depending on how im feeling at the time. mostly, entire societies that have everything I personally wanted in a world. I kinda stopped doing this since I started working and you know what I really should do it again
I should really tap into this part of my brain and see what I can do and test my limits. I did it for a little bit just now and I can actually changed the art style of what im looking at in my mind on command. I can changed the quality of detail too, from dreamlike and vague to hyper detailed. Interesting. I can even recall smells and sounds pretty accurately too.
Another note, my long term memory is really good too, always had that skill since I was young. I can recall pretty much everything in the way I experienced things, and I can look into them and visually see the memories in my mind like as if im going through a file cabinet.
Im also a pretty extreme overthinker, I can write about my own thoughts for my whole life. Not in a self interest kind of way, but in more of a continuous pattern seeking way.
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience! It honestly sounds like you would have a lot of fun exploring generative AI - it can create as easily as you can think!
Oh my gosh I'm so glad to have met you on this rabbit hole. I think we are in the same exact position. I want to recommend this book the Corridor Crew (a well known group of VFX artists and TH-camrs) tried to popularize a while back. its called "Top 10 Games You Can Play In Your Head, By Yourself" and its insanely fun to have him set up scenarios for you to explore and flesh out with your imagination. been reading it for years and I didn't even know the name hyperphantasia so its cool to learn about now if I have it or not.
@twilighthunter6583 Wow!!! Thank you! I'll definitely take a look, sounds super interesting! And yeah me neither, I never knew there was a word for it, and I was always confused why people always call me out for daydreaming so much. I thought it was normal, but I guess not. It's nice to know I'm not alone on this
@@PaulPickle Seriously! no wonder I have ADD lol
When u visualise you can say to yourself "im walking up to the door" "im turning" " im sitting down" ect it helps you keep focus and its like a game controller and you can go around your imagined places better im into the law of attraction so i use this alot
Definitely sounds like a video game!
You did such a great job of articulating your experiences (I could really relate to them) and especially pointing out that time element--how you can hold the image for a short time, and how it can be vague until you're prompted and then very vivid. That's my experience too but I never thought of it that way. This video really gave me a lot to ponder. Thank you!
And thanks a lot for sharing your experience with me! It's super cool to hear other people know what I'm talking about 😂
Super interesting. I (at this current moment) can clearly visualize the beach, but everything has a grainy feel, like watching it on a nintendo DS. I find that different lights, time of day, being overstimulated and understimulated, have great effects on this. One time I was cycling (NOT ON DRUGS) and I could nearly imagine the entire sky pink, with fantastic buildings in the distance.
Can anyone relate to being able to be a director of an action movie or whatnot in your mind? It's like the movie Inception, you can bend and manipulate any reality, like taking your hometown city and folding it in two making a roof of one half, like in Inception. Or how when you are having a conversation with someone, you can "go out of your body" like a drone, hundreds of meters up into the air, and watch yourself and whomever you are conversing with, while also taking in the breathtaking scenery from up there, details from the streets, houses, people walking around etc. Usually when bored in the conversation lol.
Basically, if I know what something, or someone, looks like, i can twist and turn and manipulate that reality at will, sort of. Like for instance, I know what a rag doll looks like, the ones used for wrestling practice etc, i know what cucumbers look like, what sunflowers look like, and what a basketball look like. Putting these together to make a rag doll body with a basketball head, cucumber arms and sunflowers for legs is nothing at this point, cause you know what the source looks like. You can also make a "human centipede" of all kinds of animals mixed with objects or whatnot, the imagination is the only limiting factor as long as you know the source. If that makes sense. Those examples were a bit grim, sorry lol.
Hopefully someone can relate to this. I could go on and on about this for hours. There is so much fun to tell.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Subjective reality is hard to translate into words, so I appreciate you making the attempt. I can't say I have that same director vibe as you. Maybe I'd describe my role more like a 'guest' - I don't break the reality of the imagination - I tend to take the visions for what they are. It's cool to hear about different perspectives, eh?
I see so many videos about aphantasia and have known about it for many years, but having an imagination it seems pretty easy to imagine just not imagining things. But today I learned about the term hyperphantasia. This was a very unique video (in my experience) and I'd say our experiences are pretty similar, although I'm not constrained to one snapshot in time. You raised a lot of good questions about whether it's just recalling memories or creating new images, and whether there's even a difference when it comes to visualsing things, which are some things I thought about myself watching those other videos.
Even though I can definitely visualise things it's hard for me to believe when people say they can visualise things more vividly than reality. I have dreams that feel more vivid than reality, but as far as optical resolution goes it doesn't compare. I can recall memories (at least recent ones) and focus on any detail I want, but seeing with my 3rd eye is just nothing like experiencing it through my 1st and 2nd eyes. And when it comes to imagining new things.... I can do it, but I'm a bit un-creative. I don't tend to visualise things in super extreme detail unless prompted, despite having vivid feeling daydreams at work, in transit etc. I've also found that I suck at trying to draw (typically in gartic phone) things I have visualised, and even before drawing I'm terrible at actually coming up with a scene in the first place. If I'm reading a book and it says there's a man out in a blizzard, I can visualise the man in the blizzard. But I wouldn't go out of my way to imagine a mountain, rocks, trees, the sun, the lighting, the man's footsteps and such. The only reason I thought of all that stuff now was because I was specifically trying to visualise things that I didn't think about when coming up with the blizzard man example in the first place.
So I CAN imagine things, but just creatively limited. I'm not sure how much creativity comes into play for the varying levels of phantasia but I think it's an important thing to mention when discussing the topic.
Also sorry if I repeat myself a bit, I'm terrible at writing consistently with perfect flow. Which may be related to all this, but who knows.
Another thing I just thought of (but won't edit my comment because it's long enough as it is) that's worth mentioning is I can very vividly imagine myself playing through a videogame like Metroid Prime or Zelda Majora's Mask in real time. Obviously if I were to see it on a TV it would look much more "real". But again is this true "imagination"? Or would it be a separate thing since I'm recalling memories when I do it?
I will say though, I've definitely imagined some pretty unique places and games in my dreams, and it always sucks when I get pulled out of them and have to go back to the same old reality I live in.
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience! It's really hard to wrap my head around what other people are able to do with their imaginations, so I'm glad that ours seems to share some overlap
Not sure if this is apart of hyperohantasia - but in the apple thought experiment I can even imagine the taste and texture. The crisp tart of a green apple vs the crumbled sweet of a macintosh.
Yah I'm not really sure if it's a part of it, but 'remembering' tastes is easy for me too
I watched this extremely abused. Followed you totally. Good vid.
haha I hope you meant to say 'amused'
I have hyperphantasia. As a kid (and still sometimes now) I would constantly create massive fantasy words with magic and different races. Usually I kinda just spectate a story I create while focusing on 2 or 3 characters. Very rarely do I experience my minds eye in first person tho, I can do it but it feels weird. My memory is kinda foggy tho and I suck at drawing.
I'm terrible at drawing too! I think that's why I like AI so much
7:10 got me, As a gymnast with apparently hyperphantasia the video really helped me, every time the GPT asked a question I could i instantly come up with a full scenario, and everytime it added detailed I'd have to "lessen" my imagination to fit the scenario.
9:24 I was able to imagine a beach I never went to, with crystal clear sand, restaurants in the background, kids playing around, imagine the temperature and change it, make the mountains have details such as moss and palm tress, a boat, an island in the background, waves hitting and crashing upon the sand, a riptide happening on my left, while a sun set was happening in 3 or so seconds, I couldnt get to imagine the grains of sand I stepped on but I could imagine the feeling of the sun burning the grains of sand stuck to my arm.
Pretty sure this is hyperphantasia :D
haha very cool experience!! thanks for sharing
I'm not an artist but I do have hyperphantasia, and good at making verbal descriptions of it. So I find it really fun to see how close an AI art generator with verbal prompts can get to how my brain pictured it.
Regarding memory recall, mine are a little fuzzier than explicitly prompted visualizations. But the perpsective is that of a camera operator, never through my own eyes. My brain puts that external cinematographic layer on my own experience. It's so wild.
I'm with you on that camera metaphor. It really doesn't feel like 'me' imagining things, it feels way more like a 'movie' is being shown to me
@@FutureTechPodcast 100% the same for me
nice video. there's not many videos on this topics so I'm glad you made one. I have a very similar experience to yours. I say yes to all of those questions, although I also need to "be prompted" before I am aware of the details being there. it doesn't feel like how I visualize is particularly special, it just feels quite normal. however at the same time I definitely wouldn't describe it as "lacking detail" or unclear. I definitely can tell my visualizations don't "take place in the same world" as my vision, although it doesn't make what I see less clear.
then when it comes to the sound ones, I hear everything very precisely. my sound imagination matches the real experience one to one, other than the fact that it also feels like it is "taking place in a different world" than my real life ears. I do not have a limit for how long I can imagine sound for. I wasn't aware that some people have a limit or what that would be like.
I'm definitely also curious what other people see/experience with this. as you said, a lot of these descriptions were ones I originally just thought of as something "everyone has".
Thanks for sharing your experience!! I really appreciate it haha makes me feel less alone. And what you said about a 'limit for sound' is really interesting. I hadn't heard of that and it is kinda hard to imagine what that would be like.
But I suppose my own limit is something like similar to 'storage issue' - I can recall scenes from a movie one at a time, or a song I've heard over and over. But the strength of those memories is determined by my exposure to the sound ... so that's a sort of 'limit' of its own
There indeed are not many videos on this. I can imagine a lot of things - from very simple shapes to movie scenes - in all sorts of clarity and detail. All the way to photorealistic. And as of recent I tried out whether I can get myself to actually see what I imagine (as in have the mental imagery join my real vision) and while I (yet) don't see colors and textures I can indeed perceive shapes. What's cool about this is that I can place imagined objects into my surroundings and perceive depth and perspective very accurately and even combine that with imagined tactile perception. I also don't need a prompt to imagine something. All this might explain why I can draw very well without reference and why I can imagine sounds very accurately (something I use while producing music).
Hey soo because of your video i ubderstood im a guy with hyperphantasia. I did not know that not all of us can do things in mind. When i think of any enviroment i even feel the temperature. I can even eat the apple in my mind freling the taste. It is ridicolous that my mind can do that. Also it feels almost like a dream.
Interesting video. Your description of your mind's eye sounds very similar to mine. A few exceptions. The first time I heard the "imagine an apple" I messed around in my head with its looks from red, to green, to mixed color like a Fuji, to fresh to bruised. I think I settled on green with some slight brown spotting near the stem, lol. Then, as I remember the instructions said something like now make it green. So, I turned it red and then green again! Your descriptions really seemed spot on to me. The idea of a lot being in your peripheral until you focus in on something for more detail. Then again, I think we kind of do that in actual real life as well to some degree. I agree it's really hard to figure out where you are on the spectrum as you can't jump inside someone else's head to compare. There's no way I would mistake what I see for real life. It's just more remote (or dreamlike), but I can imagine things in great detail. One thing is I write fiction sometimes and I'm existing in the world I'm writing about in my head. It's like being in a movie, sort of. It's more remote and I'm always aware it's not real life. Wow it's so hard to describe. Somedays I wonder if I don't really have a mind's eye at all, and other times I wonder if what I see is more vivid and detailed that most other people. One side note - while I don't have a photographic memory, I collect old SF paperbacks and despite having a few thousand sf paperbacks, I can tell if I have the book by my memory of the covers. Every so often I come home with a different edition of a book because I got tricked by the new cover. Anyway, a very interesting topic and I like the way you talked about it.
😂 it definitely sounds like you have a minds eye. But I agree, it's extremely difficult to understand if we're all describing the same experience or not. Just have to try our best with the words at our disposal!
Some people have perfect pitch, most don't.
You really think most don't?
@@FutureTechPodcast yep. However, people without this ability can learn to achieve what's called relative pitch.
Great content, I think we have the same imagination, I make a prompt and then my mind gives me the result
haha very cool! Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one 😂
My minds eye works best with my eyes open. It’s like a veil with a movie playing on it. Sometimes it is more clear than the real world and I’ve always been distracted by it and it took me most of my early life to differentiate between reality & my minds eye since they overlapped. I am 53 years old now and feel bad for those who don’t have this. I can run through different possibilities or build things in my head before I actually do something so I can work the kinks out of a lot of problems before performing the actions. It’s like a workspace in my head, 😂
Sounds like an intense visual experience!!
I know i have hyperphantasia because just from the very start of the video. The images changing in the background already got me excited thinking about every universe in them 😂😂😂
hahah I know exactly what you mean!!
Aphantasia here. I can't produce a mental image. I cant picture anything. There are also people that don't have an inner DIALOGUE. now THAT is weird. Also, I don't think it has to do with 'imagination', as much as it has to do with being able to visualize and project an image in your minds eye. Picture yourself on a beach, at the club, in the car, on a plane. Where do you see yourself in five years, or "Hey I can see us going to Hawaii one day" Nope, I cant see any of that. It makes it hard to plan for anything. It makes it hard to set and achieve goals. It also makes it hard to recall things like faces. You have a reference point that you can look back on and be like " oh yeah, I worked with that person at such and such a place" where i'm like " I know that I know this face, but WHERE". You would call up images in your minds of times you have interacted etc as a reference. Kinda hard to do if you can't see it. Hyperfantasia is the opposite. Where images can be in great detail. Sometimes even more detailed then the ocular input from those eyeballs of yours lol.
And while I can't create a mental image, I can certainly go over characteristics in my head. I also do support and can walk customers through pretty much anything by following menus and key sequences in my head.
One thing I can say, is I can speak sounds and rhythms quite fluently in my head. I can talk out a drum beat or pattern very well in my mind, and my inner dialogue is HEAVY.
There is a correlation between aphantasia and ASD as well. The process of calling up a mental image happens between the back part of the brain and the front. When one has a disconnect in their wiring because they are Neurodivergent, there is often a connectivity issues between these regions of the brain, which is where we get our executive functions. The ability to plan and organize, the ability to regulate ones emotions, the ability to self regulate, and the ability to VISUALIZE are all part of these executive functions. Try and plan for the future without knowing what it may even look like. Likely one of the reason that so many divergents are impulsive and live in the "now". Because we have no concept of looking 'forward' ( as in ahead, not as in " man, i'm looking forward to this ..whatever" )
So, I have to ask ... when you say you can't 'see' things or produce a mental image - is it just a black void? is it grainy white noise? Like, if I showed you a number, asked you to close your eyes, and then visualize the number, where would your mind go? What actually happens when you attempt to produce an image? does it just come in the form of shapeless thought?
I hope my question(s) make sense!
@FutureTechPodcast For sure! Just black, nothing. Like I can RECALL things. things I know ive seen, but its more like a list of parameters. Don't forget, there is a difference between CREATING a mental image from nothing, and RECALLING something you already know.
Whereas the former is creating an image from nothing with no reference ( other than the request to "picture an Apple"); the latter is referencing memory that you already have stored.
So if you were to ask me to picture an amish dude racing his buggy.
Ok, I need to picture an amish dude, think iv'e seen one before so that's easy, I can look into my memory for an amish dude. Same with the buggy.
For arguments sake, lets assume I’ve NEVER seen either of these things. So now my canvas is BLANK. Black.
Now, if you were to ask me specifics, like what color is his hat, I would select whatever that thing is right then, make and decide, then spit it out " It's Black"
In contrast, You would have the image there to reference, "Black hat, long beard, white horse"....Make sense? Lol
On the other end, are Hyperfantastics. These are people who can not only see it in better then real life detail, some can actually project it visually and multidimensionally.
Thanks for the discourse, I enjoy learning with people, and intelligent discussion is always welcome. I find this subject very fascinating.
I'm pretty sure I have hyperphantasia, it's hard to tell cause yeah it's what I've always known so I don't know what it's like for people without it? But I think if I didn't have it I would've bought a TV a long time ago lol I haven't had one since I moved out of my mom's house years ago, at first cause I was broke but now I just don't see the need to get one if I can just watch my own stories whenever and wherever I want. For me it's easier with my eyes open, like if it's with my eyes closed I can still see things vividly but it's mostly memories, prompted things or just random shit lol. If I have my eyes open though I can see what I consciously decide I want to see, idk if that makes sense 😅
I suspect I may have hyper Fantasia.
For my mom's birthday I looked outside When the sun was rising. And I saw something that looked and sounded so magical.
And I wrote down describing what I saw and heard in that moment. I sent it to my mom as a gift. The gift being The magic of how I perceive the world. It's always so disheartening, People who can't see and feel the magic. Feels like I'm gifting a part of my soul, To show how much I care and value them.
And it gets the same Reaction as a Hallmark card that just says Happy Birthday. Or a Facebook post that says Happy Birthday and a birthday cake emoji.
Happy Birthday mom. The day is starting out beautifully. Looked like nature was (dawning) a dress for Celebration of your birthday. What a gift, A masterpiece of Jack frost. Adorning your day with the finest crystals. That twinkled like stars and sparkled like gems. It all looked so peaceful, Felt like you could almost hear the gentle sound of Bells. The frost looked like It was waiting in anticipation. As the morning's rosy, golden light Touched down upon the frost. In an instant. The gentle Bells became an exuberant, chorus. The gems and crystals appeared to be singing and dancing in joy. Their spirits set a blaze To welcome This day. Happy Birthday mom I love you.
She sent me a message back, Saying thank you I love you too. 😢
I suspect true poetry is closely related to extra-sensory imagination!
For me:
Apple question: Not at all. No image whatsoever. Not even in a dream-like sense.
Beach question: Not at all. No image whatsoever. I'm at the beach very frequently, so I know what a beach and grains of sand look like in great detail. In my mind? No.
Sensory immersion: No, I can't see or hear anything at all. I know what a concert sounds like. In my mind? No.
Changing elements: I don't visualize things, even if prompted. I don't see anything at all, so changing it has no meaning.
Intensity: No images at all. Intensity, as a concept, has no meaning when talking about internal images.
With all this, I'm comparing to sleeping dreams, which are vivid for me.
Do people who "see" images in their mind see them like they see dreams? Or is it different in some way?
I can do all of the sense really well especially taste and feeling but my smell isn’t nearly as good.
Thanks for sharing this - I experience it similar to you. However, when you say you can feel the water, do you feel physical sensations?
hmm .. it's more like, you can see someone get hurt, and 'feel' their pain, like you know you wouldn't want it to happen to you.
So, I can 'feel' the water, meaning I can recreate the sensation - I can imagine what it feels like - but it doesn't actually feel like my body is wet ... if that makes any sense lol
I've been looking into this some. Yes some people literally have no internal dialog. When told to think of an apple, they literally have no image in their head. They "saw" black. There are many videos of people with Aphantasia discussing and researching it.
I wonder about the specific definition of Hyperphantasia. Not just level of image detail and control, but how often and how many? I've been asking friends and most seem to have occasional but not continual internal dialog, images, movies in their heads. I'm news room central with a dozen monitors going all the time. I had no idea this was not normal. So when you talk level of detail, of which of the streams at any one time?
It's such an interesting topic! haha cause it's basically impossible to settle on a definition if we can't imagine what the other person is even talking about lol
@@FutureTechPodcast The more I look into it, the more I realize how possibly very different each of our thought processes are! And how very different mine are to most people.
nice videos man, keep going🗿👍🏿
Thanks for the support!
I've always called myself a visual learner as I do better when I have visuals describing a word. I can remember the apple. But I don't actually see it in my mind. Does this count? If I wanted to, I can also try to watch a movie in my mind in my memory, but I think I can only do clips of a movie. But I don't actually see it if this makes sense however, I can hear it. The only thing I do actually see is what I see around me in my environment. I know if you ask me where the United States is located, I can easily show you as it is stored in my memory kind of like a battery that stores electricity. When you ask me to close my eyes to visualize. I'm, not sure how this works if it is supposed to actually show up all I see is blackness in my eyes. ⚫ 😅🤨
Strangely though when I did hypnosis session to figure out my past life back in the year 2014, I did ACTUALLY see an image in my eyes like a dream, an image of a kid that died couple years before I was born, but I was awake with my eyes closed. I never seen him before. That was the only time an image actually showed up. But just my thoughts. 🤔😅😎
Sounds intense! And thanks a lot for sharing your every-day experience. It's so cool how we can all operate under different settings. It's hard for me to imagine what your visual thoughts are like ... and if anything, I can clarify that I don't 'see' things when my eyes are closed - it's also just black - but the visuals I do see come from a different place. They aren't in my eyes, they're more like way behind it. Which is why I think people call it the 'minds eye'