If I ask you to think about an elephant do you see an elephant in your head whenever you shut your eyes?
I don’t. No matter how descriptive the imagery, story or textual content I can’t create any footage in my head in any respect. 2% of individuals can’t do that both. This lack of ability to visualise known as aphantasia.
I by no means knew this absence of psychological imagery was even a factor till my daughter identified that she and I have been lacking one thing my spouse and different daughter had. Ask us to visualise a rainbow or a sundown and we simply see nothing. We will’t create footage in our head of objects, individuals, locations or experiences. The place others can visualize this stuff, we are able to’t. Not for individuals, recollections, or photographs previous or future. When individuals say visualize this in your thoughts’s eye I simply thought that was a flip of phrase. It now dawns on me that different individuals have been actually seeing one thing of their heads.
If you wish to see what aphantasia is like take a look at the image of the Apple. 
Now shut your eyes and attempt to think about the apple, seeing it mentally in your thoughts’s eye. When you don’t see something, you may need aphantasia.
For a extra detailed check take a look at the Vividness of Visible Imagery Questionnaire.
(I’m additionally realizing that that when individuals describe that they’ll hear the sound of their voice of their head (a prepare of thought), that it wasn’t only a metaphor. However my ideas are silent.)
My response to studying that most individuals can create visible photographs was “huh.” I lived my complete life pondering the phrase “visualize” meant “take into consideration what this implies,” not really with the ability to “see” it. Studying that different individuals really see photographs of their head was like studying there was one other sense that most individuals had that I used to be lacking. I used to be bemused that I had lived my complete life with the equal of seeing the world in black and white and discovering out that different individuals see the world in colours. (The one exception to that is that I usually wakeup remembering visible photographs from my desires.)
Handicap or Asset?
My lack of ability to visualise doesn’t appear to have handicapped my creativeness or creativity. I’m continuously excited about new issues – I simply don’t see them as footage (or hear them.)
I’m undecided what it’s I can’t do this others can. Maybe I can blame my failure in sports activities on it? Or my lack of ability to sing or dance? It probably explains why when my spouse asks me what somebody was sporting or what their home appeared like, I come up empty. Or extra telling, why I can’t visualize the descriptive language in poetry or in a novel.
What’s fascinating is that missing what most everybody else appears to have the ability to do could clarify how I believe, talk and course of info. Maybe this explains how I am going concerning the artistic course of. Once I wish to describe an occasion that occurred, I don’t carry up the visible imagery of what the locations or individuals appeared like. As an alternative my tales are of what I bear in mind concerning the info/information/conversations across the occasion.
It may also clarify why sample recognition and summary thought (the flexibility to consider rules, and concepts that aren’t bodily current) come simpler to me. Presumably as a result of I’m not distracted by visible footage related to the info that others see. I simply see uncooked information.
To work out difficult concepts, I usually diagram concepts and ideas (however don’t draw footage of issues.) I break concepts and ideas down into easier steps by drawing every half. This helps me simplify concepts so I can first clarify it to myself after which to others. 
I then translate the diagram into phrases.
At occasions the consequence has been transformative for extra than simply me.
The approach I’m wired has given me (and sure different founders and people in different fields) an edge. So, how can others with aphantasia consciously harness that? And for many who do see footage in your heads is there something you possibly can be taught from these of us who don’t?
(I’m wondering if I may have benefited from a modified classroom curriculum if this had been found this early. Or if I may have been taught how you can visualize. However what would have been have misplaced?)
Pluses and Minuses
Once I first heard about aphantasia I questioned if these of us with it will are inclined to excel in sure fields and keep away from others. I used to be shocked to search out out that somebody already ran a examine that confirmed that folks with low or no visible imagery usually tend to work in scientific and mathematical industries. And having hyperphantasia (individuals with the alternative situation – having an especially vivid psychological imagery) predisposes individuals to work within the arts. It makes me marvel if the response and restoration from trauma/PTSD has some correlation with these with the flexibility to visualise these recollections versus those that don’t. (Right here’s a terrific future examine space for the Veterans Administration.)
We’re Simply on the Starting of Understanding
This newest recognition of aphantasia as a neurological distinction is simply a decade or so previous (though references within the literature return to the 1890’s.) My guess is that as science continues to discover neurodiversity (mind variations amongst individuals), we’ll acquire a wider understanding that folks expertise, work together with, and interpret the world in many alternative methods. And the way that results in totally different strengths in comprehension, sample recognition and problem-solving. We’ll probably uncover extra connections.
I’m curious if there’s anybody else who can’t see footage of their head.
Let me know.
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