I have aphantasia and it always astounds me when I see an article like this, or hear a friend talking about it (about not having it) and realize that their experience of the world is so fundamentally different than my own.
https://lianamscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/f4c55-1_b...
As in: if you look at this image, can you place yourself on a scale of 1 - 5 of with what kind of fidelity you can picture an apple if you try to imagine it?
I'm a 5 for example, and in asking many people this question I've gotten a solid spectrum of answers from 1 - 5. Generally in a single group of a handful of people I'll get several different numbers.
Now, I've chatted with friends, and my one friend is close to a 2, or maybe a 1 from how he described it (being able to visualize the apple and rotate it 3-dimensionally).
Even this feels like only a partial scale. I can picture what an apple looks like, rotate it in my, and see how light would reflect off of it as it moves.
How about smell? Can you call you mind what it would smell like to slice open an apple and experience that in some sense? Or what it would sound or feel like? I'm curious if it's literally "seeing" or if it's the entire experience of imagining an event.
I barely ever dream.
Guided meditation has never worked for me.
I have a crazy good sense of direction. My girlfriend doesn’t understand how that works if I can’t see it in my mind.
I do have vivid recall of what things look like but I don’t see them at all.
It all made so much more sense when I figured this out.
I can do none of the things you describe. I know how an apple looks, smells, tastes and sounds when you cut into it, but I can't visualise or hear those sounds at will. I cannot call to mind any visual image of an apple.
I also can't visualise my wife or children's faces, although again, I know what they look like (so it's not face blindness).
I do think I also have SDAM as well, which I think quite often goes hand in hand with total aphantasia.
Hasn't really affected how I go about in the world. I don't feel deficient in any way. It was only a few years ago I found out my experience isn't what the majority experiences.
I find this absolutely fascinating. I appreciate you sharing.
I'm very adept at conjuring up sound, though. Maybe it doesn't apply in the same way, but I can hear full symphonies and pick out individual instruments and harmonies and the like.
For example I can picture infinite combinations of apples, large, small, one with bites, one with orange inside, one with glass skin etc…
