After speaking with enough people about this topic, I can assure you it's not just a difference of language.
It's incredible what friends, family and coworkers have told me they're able to do with visual imagery. A large portion of them could overlay imaginary objects over the real world. My wife, who may be hyperphantasic, can spend hours watching TV shows/cartoons she's created in her head. She has no idea what it's like to think without visualization.
I'm extremely jealous of their abilities to replay memories, old or contemporary, as films in their head. I can tell you basic facts about what happened in my life, I can't re-see those experiences.
Sorry I'm not sure of the relation to antibiotics, but Hypnagogia is something even aphantasics experience. It's typically more involuntary than not, so it's grouped with dreams rather than visual imagery/thinking.
Oh, that's interesting. Do you mean they experience visual hypnagogia? Because I'd say at the time I lost it, those visual experiences were the only ones I had, so it did seem distinct from any non-hypnagogic visualizations.
Also, I remember as a kid if I played video games I would see images of them when I closed my eyes. I don't think that happens now. Maybe those brain pathways got pruned....
I don't mean to take away something so small from your great posts, but...
> repetitive PTSD-like school dreams
I'd really like to know how common this is. I'm now almost ten years removed from my school years, but the vast majority (90%+) of my dreams are based there.
Disturbingly common, judging from the people I've asked about it. It took at least a decade for my own to go away. I too am curious exactly how common they are...
I suspect you do, as well. Your realizations are very similar to mine when I first found out.
> I couldn't describe a person's face to you at all, but if you asked 'do they have a big or small nose'
The day I told my wife about this, she had me try to describe a woman who'd just sold us food a few minutes prior. I've seen this woman many times, but the only thing I could really conjure is that she was old. I don't have face blindness, no problem recognizing people, unless, like you mentioned, I very barely know them.
> This even applies to people close to me such as my own immediate family, partner, etc.
After that, my wife had me try to look at her face, then look to a piece of paper and immediately draw. Of course, artistic ability and aphantasia are totally different things, but it really cemented how little visual information gets retained. As soon as I looked away, all I knew was factual information like "curly hair", "mole next to nose".
> Whenever I read about this phenomenon, there doesn't seem to be a good quasi-objective metric of this subjective capability to visualize -- there's no test or questionnaire I can use to see how my abilities rate against others'.
There certainly is. The Vividness of Visual Imagery questionnaire, or VVIQ [1]. It's been referenced in most of the recent aphantasia research I've looked at.
It looks like a good try, but I wouldn't call that "quasi-objective". The answers are highly subjective in my view. I just don't know how vivid the so-called mind images are supposed to be, so I don't know what the "scale" of the answers is.
While I understand the desire to use less vague terminology, to hallucinate usually implies that it is done involuntarily.
Based on your description of your abilities, have you considered that what you're describing is spatial thinking, rather than visual imagery? It is common for people with aphantasia to retain strong spatial cognition.
Point taken. Merriam-Webster says "usually arising from disorder of the nervous system or in response to drugs (such as LSD)" so I take "usually" to mean not always.
Regardless I hope the distinction I was drawing comes across clearly.
Regarding spacial thinking, yes it seems fairly accurate however where I would expect it to break down would be recollection of colors, touch, sounds, tastes, or smells. But I don't feel I experience such a breakdown in ability to recall those either albeit in the same conceptualized not-connected-to-my-realtime-senses way.
Out of the examples given in this thread I would say faces are the most challenging object to recall. Though, depending on the distinction of the features I can also do that without much difficulty.
> where I would expect it to break down would be recollection of colors...
Could that not be explained by simply storing that information as "textual" data? As in: using spatial imagery to recall the layout of a room, and basic knowledge to recall the color of the walls.
> ...touch, sounds, tastes, or smells.
These other senses are considered separate from the topic of Aphantasia. It seems there are many people with good visual imagery, but none of the other senses... as well as people with zero visual imagery, but some or all of the other senses.
I have zero across the board, unfortunately.
Could you explain your taste or smell imagery? My recollection only goes as far as "I remember liking this dish more than most things".
Perhaps I have overblown the ability to recall taste or smell, or at least it was incorrect to say there isn't some level of breakdown in comparison to the spatial/visual recollection we were discussing.
In general, I think of it in the terms you might hear someone on the food network describe a dish. "High notes", "low notes", "mellow", "pungent". On Sunday I made biscuits and sawmill gravy (good southern boy that I am). Sawmill gravy has a distinct profile, it's a base of nutty/earthy from the roux and peppery. I start describing the constituent parts, however if you asked me to describe "peppery" now it's getting more difficult. The only way I would have to describe it would be how your tongue and throat burns when you taste it.
You can see I'm getting more vague and conceptual.
It's entirely possible that as you say this is just "textual" data, however that feels like a drab description of what feels to me like a more vivid experience. It feels as if there "more to it" than just recalling information.
Unrelated, but I also think it's interesting how as we start talking about other senses how entangled memory is. We aren't talking about a nondescript sphere hallucination in my visual field anymore, but rather a memory of my Sunday brunch. When I imagine the smell of beer I inevitably will recall the last time I was at the bar with some mates and the spatial/visual memory of that space as well as my emotional state, etc.
I have aphantasia, an absolute 0 on the visualization scale. Not sure about LSD, but I've had vivid open and closed-eye visuals on quite large doses of psilocybin. Even though those visuals tend to lean more to the involuntary side, it feels like there's at least some level of control, so it's pretty exciting to experience that for the first time in my life. I very rarely had lucid dreams as a child, but I couldn't control the narrative, I just knew I was dreaming.
Do you get any closed-eye visuals while falling asleep? Obviously psilocybin massively increases ability at this, but I've found practising daily at night can increase control and level of detail dramatically over the course of a few months.
And from there it's possible, with effort, to do it while awake and with eyes open. If you've ever read Roald Dahl's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", I've found the experience remarkably reminiscent.
I'm not sure if it's the same mechanism as aphants have, as it still feels far more laboured than what they describe and very much still in the realm of closed-eye visuals, but I've found it's better than nothing.
Yes, I rarely experience hypnagogia just before I fall asleep, and it seems like I can force it to happen if I focus on my eyelids. Though, paradoxically, as soon as I realize it's happening, it's gone.
Memory tends to be poor among folks with aphantasia, but supposedly whatever details we do actually remember may have less of a chance to have been morphed over time through re-visualization. So we'd make for better eye witnesses.
This past weekend, I attended the conference he was interviewed at for this article. During his talk, he mentioned he had them complete the VVIQ from University of Exeter (which the other replies linked to), the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/psychology/imagery), plus several more questions, maybe a dozen or so.
It's incredible what friends, family and coworkers have told me they're able to do with visual imagery. A large portion of them could overlay imaginary objects over the real world. My wife, who may be hyperphantasic, can spend hours watching TV shows/cartoons she's created in her head. She has no idea what it's like to think without visualization.
I'm extremely jealous of their abilities to replay memories, old or contemporary, as films in their head. I can tell you basic facts about what happened in my life, I can't re-see those experiences.