Totally get it. There are many modes of memory. I am looking for a "sample" memory description from someone with aphantasia that involves no words. It might be hard for me to understand.

*creepy post alert*

I've had a breakup a few months ago with my best friend of more than 2 decades. I can smell her neck vividly in my head right now, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, the memory of her telephone voice is what I can hear when I imagine her talking, while her in-person voice still seems somewhat foreign all these years later, probably because in the earliest parts of or friendship so much of our time "together" was in fact on opposite ends of a phone connection, but while I know how she looks, I can't see her face if I close my eyes. I can't see anything if I close my eyes besides the dancing phosphene.

Strange...we can never fully know the mind of another.

I am sorry for the loss of your friend.

I seem to remember much more about past events than most of my friends. Even then, I am sure that I have forgotten much more than I have remembered. There are so many things that I bring up that I am the only person who remembers. If and when I forget, it's just gone forever...like it never happened. To say nothing of the numerous events in my past that I would probably enjoy remembering, but it's just gone from everyone's mind and can never be recovered. I get sad thinking about it sometimes.

On the other hand, remembering painful things vividly isn't always great.

Fascinating, never really gave this much thought before

I have some basic ability to visualise but the images are very weak, and i can't hold on to them. It feels like the space i have to visualise on is very small. The space also has no clear boundaries, and seems to dissapear every time. Its mostly 2D. A red or blue triangle in 2D is possible. a red triangle in 3D is more difficult. Visualing a bigger object such as a person, room, or landscape in 3D is impossible. If i concentrate really hard i can picture a horse standing in the grass, but the picture is withouth details, keeps falling away, and I can't really imagine the whole scene clearly at one time, its more like my mind keeps bouncing between several smaller parts of the image (the horse body, the horse head, the grass) and tries to put it all in one image but doesnt have the space to do it.

Is it possible for people to imagine something in their heads, and then make a drawing based on that where you are just copying your imagination?
I cant draw at all, and when I do its mostly based on recalling how something is supposed to look like, not really based on visualisation.


The book example is very interesting. Ive read a lot since i was young and always ignore(d) the visual descriptions in books. Always thought the descriptions were redundant but i guess it makes sense if people are actually visualing things when they are reading a book. (Are they?) A book would be totally the same for me if every description of a person/house/scenario would be left out. Never even imagined a character to look a certain way. Im just reading the words.

I play chess/draughts and can see a few moves ahead when the board is in front of me, but I can't visualise moves in my head which makes it impossible to get to a really high level. But I always assumed the majority of people couldn't do this and that it required a combination of talent and training. I read a interview with a neuro-scientist who was trying to explain the ability of certain people to play blindfold chess on many boards at the same time. He said something amoung the lines of that every person has a certain amount of "bits" in their brain that they can use for visualisation, and that great blindfold players can put a entire chessboard into one bit while normal humans would need a lot of bits for that. But maybe they have higher amount of brainspace aswell for visualistaion.


For people here that say they are good at visualing. Even if you dont play chess, it is possible for you to get a clear image in your head of a entire chess board in starting position? (Maybe you dont know the pieces but just imagine it with whatever pieces you want)

Dreaming is a different story, i can more easily visualise stuff when im asleep. Its still a blend of 2D,3D, verbal, and experiences rather then fully vivid 3D but def visual.

Verbal imagining is easy I can remember songs, hear voices in my head. Can't imagine smells, physical sensations

So this is why people get upset when you are talking about their parents having sex, they are actually seeing it in their minds

I have this. It explains a lot. I've always said I have a bad visual memory, but this is actually what I've been referring to all this time.

If I am talking with someone and they walk out the room, I would not be able to recall the color of their clothes, unless told in advance that I needed to remember this.

I'm pretty pleased to find that I was talking about vividly imagining my girl's smell in my head a bit ago whereas in my first post I said I couldn't imagine olfactory sensations. Apparently just 3 of my 5 senses are ****ed for memory.

This is kind of strange, I guess, but I don't really know what anyone looks like, but I never confuse anyone with anyone else. I know them by face and by name, obviously, but I don't really know what they look like, per se. There is some visual connection to face / person / emotion I feel when I see him or her. I can describe what I know of their life situation, how I feel about them, general stats on race, hair, eyebrows, and other details like that, but their face.... I don't know. I never been able to say "looks like [celebrity]." This is partly my own ignorance of popular culture, but I wouldn't ever say someone looks like Angelina Jolie since I can't recall what she looks like to enough detail.

In short, every time I see someone, I'm kind of surprised at what they look like. They could be changing their entire face every morning, for all I know.

I guess another thing is that I don't recall characters very well in novels. I wouldn't ever be able to read a book, find a quote, and say Mr X probably said that!

I've been thinking about this, and oddly the answer is no. I'm having trouble with the chessboard, but I can keep pretty much every nut and bolt of the car I built in place easily. Faces are another that I'm having trouble with, way less detail than I seem to have with mechanical things.

I find this whole topic really interesting.

So basically what we have here is that there are people who when they hear Big Mac can't picture what the sandwich looks like? When you're not home you can't picture what your bedroom or your dog looks like?

Right. Key word being picture.

When I close my eyes I see black with spots or a dim whitish cloud like a space photo? This video had a section with what I mean...



I wanted to see if I could get a little something. I tried picturing an American flag. I thought that was a good subject. All I saw was black. After a little while it came to my mind that my flag was in the Betsy Ross style (I had to look that up just now to label it).

I have no affinity to that flag and was trying to visualize a modern one. I didn't see anything in the process. I had my eyes closed. The thought just surfaced, "oh, my flag has round stars"

Interesting stuff dT.
I have no creative visualizations, but very sharp memory visualizations. Once seen, I recall very well. If I read a description, I have to link to a similar memory. When I read a book, I never visualize what the characters look like.
Part of the explanation may be adapting to poor eyesight, but I never visualized when I was younger.

I have similar taste memory. In culinary school I could identify subtle ingredients by taste much better than everyone.

This is very fascinating to me. I had never considered that the way I visualize things in my mind wasn't universal.

So when you stand in front of your front door you're not sure what's happening on the other side?

This dude sees even more than I see if he sees that darkened nature shot

DaveT:

Just read the OP (and it's fascinating), so grunching here:

Does this condition affect your game playing ability (specifically poker, obv)?



Variations in the human mind are really interesting.

A big mac? Well, I know it is 2 meats, 3 breads, and some other sauce stuff in it. Does it come with anything else? I don't really remember since I haven't had one in about a decade.

I do know that old TV commercials used to do close up spins of the top bun with the sesame seeds, but I can't really notion that outside of a quick flash. There is an idea of animation, but I definitely can't hold onto anything long enough to "see" the food spinning.

One of my old roommates would comment how it looked like I was seeing the world for the first time when I woke up. "You wake up in the same place every morning. How are you looking so lost?"

I thought this was due to me moving so much when I was a kid. I'm not sure either way.

But yes, I am sort of surprised when I walk into my own place. It looks familiar but new at the same time.

The whole thread is pretty interesting.

I don't know if it affects my ability to play games. I was a winning player and played for a living for a short time. I never made a metric ton like many posters here.

I sometimes play video games with my roommates. They are pretty surprised at how fast I can pick them up and start to play competitively. Personally, I find video games boring to play.

I also played Magic before. Hated that game, but I'm not the proto-nerd who enjoys all things fantasy.

MeLoveYouLongTime:

What does this look like to you?



If someone asked me to pick out number 47 or 59, I'd be unable to do it quickly. Would your color-sight make this quick?

Confirmed terrible at that. Even worse are the "spot the difference" pics - **** you, they are all the same; it's a house.
I was good at memory the game though: "Row 3, second from left is a horse."

So... anyone's got any collateral super powers from being aphantastic? If you could, would you correct this deficiency? Gun to my head, having to decide now or never, I probably would.

It looks kinda like a yellow white green checker board. It took about 3s to find the numbers. And the colors just kind of flash or my brain just knows that the sevens are yellow....I can't explain it.

what the **** there are colors? the sevens are yellow? are you kidding me?

I would most certainly want to correct it. If only so that I would be able to have a mental spank bank, so to say, not being able to have one of those is definitely a huge downside. Being serious though... Actually being able to recall images in your head sounds insanely nice, I'm definitely down for that.

As for collateral super powers, I'm not sure it's related, but I have a very good verbal memory. It makes sense that it's related since I need to rely on like thought constructs/concepts that I make sense of in terms of words aka verbal memory.



From: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/

I was wondering if everyone's "spank bank" was like mine. I have these whole worlds built in my head and I have several scenes within the world's that I reference to. I'll make a world and use it for a while and then make a new one, but I know all of my previous worlds and can go back to them or any scene at anytime.l can't just picture having sex or whatever, there has to be a whole background story within the world that lead up to it.Do other people do it like this?

I'm obv not the person to ask this, but gonna go ahead and assume you're in the minority here. That sounds awesome though.