another subpower: aphantasia

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first it was stereoblindness, now i was googling what's the name for the opposite of prosopagnosia aka face blindness (the opposite of it being the phenomenon of recognizing people you've never seen before), and i ended up finding out about another invisible impairment of "sensory interfacing" with unclear implications: aphantasia, the inability to recall and recombine sensory memories

unlike stereoblindness, which i have, i don't have this other "subpower". but i think it's very interesting to learn about it. the funny thing is it sounds to me like a very serious impairment, like it would make it impossible for someone to ever live anything resembling a normal life. but... that's not the case at all. one of the creators of the firefox browser has it, and he only discovered earlier this year that everyone else doesn't:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/

it looks like there's no known link between this and autism. yet. i seriously doubt there's no link at all

meanwhile, i keep wondering if and how much my stereoblindness influenced my development, or if it's just a mostly inconsequential curious thing about my brain, among the many other sensory oddities (and associated memory oddities, along with their associated self-perception oddities)

I saw a news report on Aphantasia on TV only a couple of months ago:

BBC Aphantasia A Life Without Mental images

I was totally dumbstruck, until that point I'd never known that some people could see images inside their mind. I had always assumed that terms like daydreaming were simply metaphors and did not realise that they actually described a real mental process. I can see very vivid and realistic images inside my mind when I dream. I can see when my eyes are open but if I close my eyes when I'm awake I see absolutely nothing. I'd always assumed that everyone else was exactly the same. Now I know that I was completely wrong in my assumption. It seems that the vast majority of people can "see" images inside their waking mind, at least to some degree, but I'm a member of a small minority who can't.

I suppose that my discovery that I have Aphantasia at least offers some explanation for why I have a large collection of DVDs and why I collect photographs. I need to look at photographs of people because I can't see those people, no matter how familiar they are to me, in my mind. Likewise I have no visual memory of movies that I've watched. It might also explain why I'm absolutely rubbish at recognising people, perhaps because I have no internal remembered image of the person with which to compare them with.

Me too! I discovered this earlier this year. I just assumed that everyone was like me and they were just exaggerating. It turns out that they weren't.



I very rarely remember my dreams (I can count them on one hand) but I do remember one dream that I had when I was in my mid-teens and that was so vivid that, the next day, I tried to track down the imaginary person I dreamt of.



About 1000 DVDs/Blu-Rays and counting

Yeah, I've got around 1000 DVDs too but it's a while since I bought any because nowadays I generally just download movies, it's easier and I don't need extra shelf space to accomodate them

I'm not much of a downloader, I like to have the box in my hands. So what sort of film do you like? I've all sorts from silent (mostly German expressionism) through to this year's releases. I do have a thing for horror and exploitation cinema and, being of a certain age, have been collecting the "video nasties" on disc.

I know what you mean about shelf-space though. I've built a couple of very large cases (6' high) and have run out of room again.

This is very interesting. Does it apply just to faces, or objects and geography also? If you visit a new place, can you draw a map of it the next day? Or a picture of a building you once visited?

I always thought I had a good visual memory but since reading that article and doing the test it appears not. I can't be sure but it seems that my visual images are very dull and not very detailed ( or am I tricking myself that I am seeing something - if that makes sense ) , it could also be the meds I'm on messing with my mind. My GF on the other hand seems to see everything like real life.

It most definitely applies to faces but also to buildings and to essentially anything with specific individual details. I can remember facts about objects, for example I could visit a stone circle and I could count the stones, so I'd remember how many there were but not what they individually looked like. I could remember the generalities of the location, whether it was on a mountainside, a farmer's field or in the middle of a forest but the actually details of the location, that make it into a specific place, I'd have no way to access those sort of memories.

I can read maps with no difficulty but if I tried to draw a map of a route to a place I'd just visited I'd get bogged down in details, like how many side roads you'd need to pass before taking a turning and stuff like that. But a map isn't really a picture, it's a schematic, like a wiring diagram. I can figure them out logically but can I picture them inside my mind? No.

As far as I'm concerned, no, I cannot see faces, or objects or geography - I see nothing apart from, occasionally, a split-second of a very, very fuzzy image. I can still sketch a map (I studied A' Level art and then graphics at college back in the 80's), but it's based on non-image memory. It's pretty hard to explain. The memories are there but not accessible as images. I had no idea this was different to anyone else until very recently.

Yes!

Yes, I much prefer to have a DVD than a download, in fact I often buy DVDs of movies that I already have as downloads, if I really like them. However if a downloaded movie turns out to be a dud I don't bother to get it on DVD. So in effect, for me, watching movies as downloads is like a trial viewing before deciding to buy the DVD. I mainly like coming of age type dramas, generally foreign language and often made my small independent studios.

Last edited by Jute on 10 Oct 2016, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's pretty much my take on it too. I've also got an A level in Art and I could produce really accurate likenesses of people, provided they'd either sit in front of me or I had a photograph to base my painting or drawing on. I actually made quite a bit of money at one point with commissions and then, one day, a little switch flicked off inside my mind and I've never drew or painted anything since, the interest is simply no longer there. As for my memories I've thought about it a lot since discovering the existence of aphantasia. My memories are not visual. They're essentially not verbal either, they seem to be based on some unexplainable process that involves a mixture between "feelings" and logical deduction, which is pretty strange because I'm also alexithymic so emotions and "feelings" are pretty much a mystery to me.

Yes, I seem to have an unproportionate of Italian films (over 100). I buy/crowdfund a lot of small studio films as well; mostly extremely low-budget horror and buy a lot of small label releases: Severin, Blue Underground, Arrow, BFI, Grindhouse Releasing. If you like "coming of age", I'd recommend found. An unusual twist on a serial killer film.

I've already got it as a download, I like it I've got a few "horror" movies, of the coming of age type, things like Joshua, Whisper, Who Can Kill A Child, The Shadow Within and many more.

I have an uncut (the British release was cut by 3 minutes), signed, limited DVD from the director! I've funded every one of his films and just received the latest in the post last week. Check out "Harvest Lake" if you can. It's a great film. Very beautiful, odd, abstract and sexual. Totally unlike "found".



Sounds right to me. I've not drawn or painted for years either.

Another good one I've seen recently is Afraid of the Dark.