I forgot the technical term for it but some people cannot see anything, I am one of those people. According to a study not seeing anything is a rare phenomenon. On the other hand Some people see it crudely and some people see it in HD 4K.
Seeing a prefect apple or not seeing anything just knowing you are thinking of the word does not correlate to intelligence. There has been studies on this but why some people see it prefect and some not at all is yet unknown.
I see black when I close my eyes, but at the same time (in a parallel area of perception?), I can visually/imagine any apple and intricate details, not physically seeing them. This is similar to what happens if you’re blindfolded and given an apple: From the feel in your hands, you imagine exactly what it looks like.
I don’t ‘see it’ in the sense that I can see my phone in my hand but if I close my eyes and think of an apple I can ‘see’ it but it’s all dark and fuzzy and where I ‘see it’ is to above my eyes in a sense
It’s like where the third eye is usually depicted, that’s where I ‘see’ the apple
No, I don’t. You might be interested in r/aphantasia. Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create mental images, and that’s how I am.
There’s not a whole lot of research into it but the weird thing about it is that it doesn’t seem to affect all that much. I’ve read some suggestions that it might be related to slightly worse facial recognition or autobiographical memory but those are massively variable anyway. Basically, people with aphantasia appear to be indistinguishable from anyone else up until we start asking specific questions about how they visualise.
If I think about an apple, try to picture an apple, then no image appears in my head. Nothing comes. But I can do spatial thinking about the apple. I can imagine manipulating it. Maybe the best example here is that if I imagine playing Tetris then I can move the shapes around in my head without having an image of the board.
We also know that people will overestimate how clearly they can visualise an object. Ask someone to visualise a ten pound note (or whatever currency they use) and they’ll often say they can see it perfectly clearly. Then ask them to draw it with as much detail as they can. Then you pull out a real ten pound note and ask them to add in the details they missed. Suddenly they’ll realise they missed a ton of things out, say the serial numbers, the words, bits of the hologram etc. That tells us that whatever they see in their head isn’t the same as the real note or else they wouldn’t have missed those details the first time.
It’s really hard to get at what’s happening in people’s minds, but we know that they don’t all work quite the same way, and we know that we can be mistaken about how we think our own mind works.
Is the question, do our eyes lie to us when we imagine things and we are actually physically seeing our imagination with our eyes. Or is the question just is it super vivid that it looks real?
Sometimes, maybe when I lack sleep, I can see it physically. It’s like my eyelids have LED screens on the inside that show whatever I imagine when I close my eyes
No, there’s nothing but blackness coming from my eyes. I have to ignore that and look at the apple with my mind’s eye. Concerning hearing, I never hear, physically or otherwise, when thinking about music or speech. I have to imagine it.
It’s like there’s multiple layers. When I close my eyes it’s black but I can also see the apple on another “layer”. Though when I concentrate on it it kinda disappears?
No. that’s impossible. Your eyes are closed. You can not physically see it. In order to physically see an apple, light from an apple needs to enter your eyes and stimulate the rods and cones to send a signal to your brain.
In the centre of my skull, it’s like there’s a second screen projecting a slideshow of images of an apple. It’s like a really, really crisp echo of the image. Have you ever stared at the sun and then seen the afterburn of it when your eyes are closed? It’s like that, but with extreme clarity, and it’s bypassing my eyes and just being seen directly in whatever the visual cortex is.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by physically seeing it. I can picture an object like an apple as if it were a movie or a memory in my head. The apple is three-dimensional, I can manipulate it, I can envision cutting it, I can imagine picking it up and cutting it and what it looks like if I dropped it and it bruised. There’s no fog or darkness because I am imagining it rather than having it physically in front of me. I often do this better if I don’t close my eyes. However, I’m not entirely positive what you mean by physically seeing it. I do not have any issues with thinking that the object I’m imagining is actually there in front of me.
This is why I think when people say some people don’t have a functioning visual imagination. I’m 90% sure it’s all just based on a misunderstanding of what a visual imagination actually means. I think some people are putting way too much weight into the words, visual and physically.
Yes, I read about individuals who have an active imagination and those who don’t. I forget the specific term for this. I can vividly think of moments in my life. Used to be very chaotic in my earlier life but now in my middle life I can control it very well. Evan thinking of the smell of that moment. In school one of my teachers would says “are you in lala land again”. She would see me looking out the window and day dreaming. Albert Einstein called it a thought experiment.
Not in my eyes, no. I don’t think anyone does. It’s not like we can magically produce an eyeball image of an apple on the retinas of our closed eyes.
But I do ‘see’ a mental image of an apple. It feels the same as seeing it; I can mentally perceive the visual idea of the apple, how it’s lit, it’s curves, light, shadows, shape color, stem, type (McIntosh, Gala, whatever). I can ‘see’ the table and bowl it’s sitting in, etc. I can manipulate it and and imagine it in different environments, being eaten, whatever. Right now, as I’m typing this, with my eyes open, I can ‘see’ an apple in my mind.
I am obsessed with the subreddit r/aphantasia. I think in this broadly general subreddit someone should start a poll to check what percent are aphants.
I don’t know what you mean exactly by “physically” seeing with eyes closed, but I can close my eyes and imagine/recall the shape of the apple, the surface of the skin, the color, the texture…
Also I have synesthesia, so it immediately comes with the feeling at the touch, the sound of the knife cutting it if I imagine cutting the apple, or the texture/taste of a slice when imagining it
Yes, I can see it on a black background just floating in space, resting on a table, rotating, morphing or blinking into other colors, different apple shapes, anything…
No, physically seeing an object means that the light rays reflected of that object have impacted your optic nerves. The information received by those nerves is then directed to one or more areas of your brain that interpret it.
Imagining the same object may very well evoke the same areas of your brain that interpretsseeing the object, but the optic nevers and visual vortex are bypassed in this exercise. And those are the parts of you that physically see.
Yep, I do. I can see it in any form I like, and I can do with it as I will and either watch the doing or just switch to a different image of it and skip watching the changes.
Kind of, i see its as an semi transparent, muted color, version of it. I can picture it perfectly in my mind, but i dont see it perfectly with my mind.
i know how an apple is supposed to be, details, form, color, taste, etc. I can even draw it life like, but i dont see it in my mind as it is irl
Yes, I can imagine it on a tree, on the grass, on a table, a person eating it, I can make that person a boy, girl, man, woman, real life, cartoon, or anime.
I can imagine a little girl on a little boys shoulders pulling off a fresh big apple from the tree to see it has a little green spot, the girls eyes are lit up with excitement and the boy is grunting to then get hot in the head from the girl dripping it making him mad and the little girl laughs as the apple rolls away.
I can change the looks of all of it at any point to be anything really. I can clearly see it almost as if it was real with a tiny bit of a picture from/no deep peripheral.
How well you can do this exists on a spectrum. For me it’s a basic image and basic manipulation. It can get better with practice but everyone has a natural starting point. And like other people are mentioning, some people can’t imagine it at all.
I imagine it. I can imagine the way it looks and like picture it in my mind. But it’s different from actually seeing with my eyes. Like it looks the same but the sensation isn’t “seeing”.
Like how imagining a melody in your head is different from actually hearing the same melody. But yes there’s an actual image of an apple on some level.
Kind of but it’s not like really seeing something. When I picture something in my head, how clear it is depends on how familiar I am with it. With stuff I’m very familiar with like my partner’s face, I can picture parts of his face in great detail, but it’s like the rest of the face besides the part I’m seeing clearly is covered in gray mist/not there. I can change to picturing other parts of the face clearly, and the previously clear parts are greyed. I can picture his whole face at once but if I want to see it in great detail it has to be a portion of the face. on this scale I’d say it varies between 1 and 3 for me.
I want to say that even the most detailed thing I can picture in my head, it’s different than closed eye visuals from psychedelics. With picturing something with my eyes closed, it’s like the thing floating in the void of my mind, and like I said depending on the item not all parts of it are perfectly clear at the same time.
With closed eye visuals, it’s like it’s painted on the inside of your eyelids, and ofc the visuals do change but sometimes they stay for a while and you can “look around” at different parts of it like looking at a painting. The whole thing remains detailed no matter where you are looking, unlike how it is when I picture a face. I assume for people with hyperphantasia, this is how picturing something always is.
No, it’s like a daydream. It’s just imagining with your eyes closed. You can’t see anything without light reflecting off of it, making the “physically” part impossible
Yes. I can make it grow a face and limbs and do a dance if you like. Years of being a CGI animator has given me an internal imagination like an IMAX cinema.
However, while I get song stuck in my head I could not maniplate music in my brain to save my life.
The brain is a muscle. I’ve just trained mine to do 3D spacial stuff.
Do I physically see it there with my eyes? No, because it’s not there physically.
If you mean do I actually “see” see an apple in my mind, yes, I can. Vividly. I can see it, smell it and taste it. I can explode it, I can cut it, I can do whatever with it.
Sort of. I have a hard time making out clear images of things in my head but I can imagine bits of things and understand them conceptually. It’s like looking at something with a very narrow beam flashlight that is behind a translucent black cloth.
Nope. Nothing. I know the apple is there in a conceptual way and can think about an apple, but it’s basically dark blank space, no colour. I do have a ‘spoken’ commentary or conversational ability in my head, but no pictures at all.
That’s a great question actually. Finding the correct answer is an insight into human intelligence. As I understand … Which is definitely flawed, when we generalize, we don’t visualize. We don’t necessarily “see” an apple in our heads when we tell someone to buy an apple. There are people who lack the ability to visualize. There are also people who completely lack the ability to generalize. Temple Grande is a famous autistic person who claims that she can not think of a general thing called a shoe, she MUST visualize a specific shoe and has trouble understanding that the things in the shoe department are related.
And there are levels of visualizing. When I say a man walks into a bar, you imagine a bar. The bar is different for everyone but nearly everyone can describe it in great detail. On the other hand, when we visualize an apple, see it in our heads, it isn’t a three dimensional, real looking, apple. It’s like a picture of an apple. But when we seriously meditate on an apple, sometimes something pops and suddenly the apple becomes a real apple. An image so real it seems it can be touched. This takes much practice for most of us. Others are cursed with this type of visual image with every waking thought.
If you find this interesting, I’d recommend reading up on famous idiot savants. Watch the documentary on Temple Grande too. And watch every possible interview with Marilu Henner who famously has perfect memory, able to visit every moment of her life and watch it like a movie.
I have hyperphantasia. I don’t even have to close my eyes to imagine an apple and see it right there. I can look around with my open eyeballs at my actual space, yet envision something else, somewhere else, so clearly and intensely that I could reach out and touch it.
Comments
In my mind, yes. I can even manipulate it like imagining a knife cutting it or someone throwing it.
I forgot the technical term for it but some people cannot see anything, I am one of those people. According to a study not seeing anything is a rare phenomenon. On the other hand Some people see it crudely and some people see it in HD 4K.
Seeing a prefect apple or not seeing anything just knowing you are thinking of the word does not correlate to intelligence. There has been studies on this but why some people see it prefect and some not at all is yet unknown.
I don’t “see” it, but I “know” what it looks like, if that makes any sense
No
I see black when I close my eyes, but at the same time (in a parallel area of perception?), I can visually/imagine any apple and intricate details, not physically seeing them. This is similar to what happens if you’re blindfolded and given an apple: From the feel in your hands, you imagine exactly what it looks like.
I don’t ‘see it’ in the sense that I can see my phone in my hand but if I close my eyes and think of an apple I can ‘see’ it but it’s all dark and fuzzy and where I ‘see it’ is to above my eyes in a sense
It’s like where the third eye is usually depicted, that’s where I ‘see’ the apple
No, I don’t. You might be interested in r/aphantasia. Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create mental images, and that’s how I am.
There’s not a whole lot of research into it but the weird thing about it is that it doesn’t seem to affect all that much. I’ve read some suggestions that it might be related to slightly worse facial recognition or autobiographical memory but those are massively variable anyway. Basically, people with aphantasia appear to be indistinguishable from anyone else up until we start asking specific questions about how they visualise.
If I think about an apple, try to picture an apple, then no image appears in my head. Nothing comes. But I can do spatial thinking about the apple. I can imagine manipulating it. Maybe the best example here is that if I imagine playing Tetris then I can move the shapes around in my head without having an image of the board.
We also know that people will overestimate how clearly they can visualise an object. Ask someone to visualise a ten pound note (or whatever currency they use) and they’ll often say they can see it perfectly clearly. Then ask them to draw it with as much detail as they can. Then you pull out a real ten pound note and ask them to add in the details they missed. Suddenly they’ll realise they missed a ton of things out, say the serial numbers, the words, bits of the hologram etc. That tells us that whatever they see in their head isn’t the same as the real note or else they wouldn’t have missed those details the first time.
It’s really hard to get at what’s happening in people’s minds, but we know that they don’t all work quite the same way, and we know that we can be mistaken about how we think our own mind works.
No, but then I know I have aphantasia which I’m guessing is why you’re asking.
No, I have aphantasia. Only realised kind of recently that it was even a thing.
Nope- dont see nothin but darkness! Aphantasia for the….. er… w win??
sigh
Sort of… I’m not closed eye hallucinating a green Granny Smith apple with the stem slightly going to the left… But I know that’s what I’m visualizing.
Yes
It’s as though the apple is right in front of me.
Is the question, do our eyes lie to us when we imagine things and we are actually physically seeing our imagination with our eyes. Or is the question just is it super vivid that it looks real?
Sometimes, maybe when I lack sleep, I can see it physically. It’s like my eyelids have LED screens on the inside that show whatever I imagine when I close my eyes
Nope, I have aphantasia, I don’t see shit when I close my eyes
Except when I’m on psychedelics or a high dose of opiates
No, there’s nothing but blackness coming from my eyes. I have to ignore that and look at the apple with my mind’s eye. Concerning hearing, I never hear, physically or otherwise, when thinking about music or speech. I have to imagine it.
It’s like there’s multiple layers. When I close my eyes it’s black but I can also see the apple on another “layer”. Though when I concentrate on it it kinda disappears?
I can smell it and feel the texture and everything …
PHYSICALLY ?
No. that’s impossible. Your eyes are closed. You can not physically see it. In order to physically see an apple, light from an apple needs to enter your eyes and stimulate the rods and cones to send a signal to your brain.
I can only get a vague idea of what it looks like
In the centre of my skull, it’s like there’s a second screen projecting a slideshow of images of an apple. It’s like a really, really crisp echo of the image. Have you ever stared at the sun and then seen the afterburn of it when your eyes are closed? It’s like that, but with extreme clarity, and it’s bypassing my eyes and just being seen directly in whatever the visual cortex is.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by physically seeing it. I can picture an object like an apple as if it were a movie or a memory in my head. The apple is three-dimensional, I can manipulate it, I can envision cutting it, I can imagine picking it up and cutting it and what it looks like if I dropped it and it bruised. There’s no fog or darkness because I am imagining it rather than having it physically in front of me. I often do this better if I don’t close my eyes. However, I’m not entirely positive what you mean by physically seeing it. I do not have any issues with thinking that the object I’m imagining is actually there in front of me.
Often the images in my head are so real that I don’t realize my eyes are closed.
I don’t think this is how the word physical should be used
I can create movies in my head lol
No it’s not anywhere near like the apple is physically in front of me. It feels more like it’s behind me, but I can still see it and manipulate it.
This is why I think when people say some people don’t have a functioning visual imagination. I’m 90% sure it’s all just based on a misunderstanding of what a visual imagination actually means. I think some people are putting way too much weight into the words, visual and physically.
Yes, I read about individuals who have an active imagination and those who don’t. I forget the specific term for this. I can vividly think of moments in my life. Used to be very chaotic in my earlier life but now in my middle life I can control it very well. Evan thinking of the smell of that moment. In school one of my teachers would says “are you in lala land again”. She would see me looking out the window and day dreaming. Albert Einstein called it a thought experiment.
Yep.
Yes, I can imagine the concept of it as well as see the image of it in my minds eye. I can rotate it, taste it, imagine what the bite would be like.
You don’t even need to close your eyes to imagine it.
Not in my eyes, no. I don’t think anyone does. It’s not like we can magically produce an eyeball image of an apple on the retinas of our closed eyes.
But I do ‘see’ a mental image of an apple. It feels the same as seeing it; I can mentally perceive the visual idea of the apple, how it’s lit, it’s curves, light, shadows, shape color, stem, type (McIntosh, Gala, whatever). I can ‘see’ the table and bowl it’s sitting in, etc. I can manipulate it and and imagine it in different environments, being eaten, whatever. Right now, as I’m typing this, with my eyes open, I can ‘see’ an apple in my mind.
Yup. I can see it, rotate it, imagine it’s shine, imagine it’s smooth to the touch, etc.
In my brain, yes. It’s not like I’m seeing it with my eyes in front of my face though. I’m picturing it in my my mind.
I am obsessed with the subreddit r/aphantasia. I think in this broadly general subreddit someone should start a poll to check what percent are aphants.
I don’t know what you mean exactly by “physically” seeing with eyes closed, but I can close my eyes and imagine/recall the shape of the apple, the surface of the skin, the color, the texture…
Also I have synesthesia, so it immediately comes with the feeling at the touch, the sound of the knife cutting it if I imagine cutting the apple, or the texture/taste of a slice when imagining it
No, I’m a total aphant. I can’t imagine any senses but I do have an inner monologue, so it’s not completely lonely.
r/aphantasia
I see it.
Rotating and glistening, it’s highly detailed.
My sister sees nothing… it blew my MIND when we first asked one another that question.
It’s pretty blurry and not very detailed but yeah i see it
Yes, I can see it on a black background just floating in space, resting on a table, rotating, morphing or blinking into other colors, different apple shapes, anything…
No, physically seeing an object means that the light rays reflected of that object have impacted your optic nerves. The information received by those nerves is then directed to one or more areas of your brain that interpret it.
Imagining the same object may very well evoke the same areas of your brain that interpretsseeing the object, but the optic nevers and visual vortex are bypassed in this exercise. And those are the parts of you that physically see.
Yes! And can rotate it as well. I spend a lot of time dissociating so I feel like I’ve trained that muscle well lol.
No.
I just know the term apple and it’s definition but that is as far as it goes.
No. I can’t imagine anything with my eyes closed.
But with my eyes open, yeah, I can imagine an apple, very realistic, kinda like I just spawned it in front of me.
Yep, I do. I can see it in any form I like, and I can do with it as I will and either watch the doing or just switch to a different image of it and skip watching the changes.
I can conceptualize the image in my mind, but it’s not like looking at a photo, no.
Yes.
yes, I can rotate it, cross section it, recolor it
Sort of yes, and i rotate it around and stuff
Kind of, i see its as an semi transparent, muted color, version of it. I can picture it perfectly in my mind, but i dont see it perfectly with my mind.
i know how an apple is supposed to be, details, form, color, taste, etc. I can even draw it life like, but i dont see it in my mind as it is irl
Yes, I can imagine it on a tree, on the grass, on a table, a person eating it, I can make that person a boy, girl, man, woman, real life, cartoon, or anime.
I can imagine a little girl on a little boys shoulders pulling off a fresh big apple from the tree to see it has a little green spot, the girls eyes are lit up with excitement and the boy is grunting to then get hot in the head from the girl dripping it making him mad and the little girl laughs as the apple rolls away.
I can change the looks of all of it at any point to be anything really. I can clearly see it almost as if it was real with a tiny bit of a picture from/no deep peripheral.
see it, smell it, taste it, feel it, hear it..pretty much as vivid as in real time.
See it, smell it, taste it. I can imagin biting it and feel the pop as the skin breaks and the juice on my lips.
How well you can do this exists on a spectrum. For me it’s a basic image and basic manipulation. It can get better with practice but everyone has a natural starting point. And like other people are mentioning, some people can’t imagine it at all.
Yes and if i imagine biting into it i can taste it aswell.
No, I mentally see it. I’m not a conjuror.
Yes. It drives my balls up a wall thinking that some people can’t see shit in their mind
Yes its a perfectly green crispy apple with a drop of dew on it .. against a completely black background though
I imagine it. I can imagine the way it looks and like picture it in my mind. But it’s different from actually seeing with my eyes. Like it looks the same but the sensation isn’t “seeing”.
Like how imagining a melody in your head is different from actually hearing the same melody. But yes there’s an actual image of an apple on some level.
No, I have aphantasia
Kind of but it’s not like really seeing something. When I picture something in my head, how clear it is depends on how familiar I am with it. With stuff I’m very familiar with like my partner’s face, I can picture parts of his face in great detail, but it’s like the rest of the face besides the part I’m seeing clearly is covered in gray mist/not there. I can change to picturing other parts of the face clearly, and the previously clear parts are greyed. I can picture his whole face at once but if I want to see it in great detail it has to be a portion of the face. on this scale I’d say it varies between 1 and 3 for me.
I want to say that even the most detailed thing I can picture in my head, it’s different than closed eye visuals from psychedelics. With picturing something with my eyes closed, it’s like the thing floating in the void of my mind, and like I said depending on the item not all parts of it are perfectly clear at the same time.
With closed eye visuals, it’s like it’s painted on the inside of your eyelids, and ofc the visuals do change but sometimes they stay for a while and you can “look around” at different parts of it like looking at a painting. The whole thing remains detailed no matter where you are looking, unlike how it is when I picture a face. I assume for people with hyperphantasia, this is how picturing something always is.
No, it’s like a daydream. It’s just imagining with your eyes closed. You can’t see anything without light reflecting off of it, making the “physically” part impossible
Yes. I can make it grow a face and limbs and do a dance if you like. Years of being a CGI animator has given me an internal imagination like an IMAX cinema.
However, while I get song stuck in my head I could not maniplate music in my brain to save my life.
The brain is a muscle. I’ve just trained mine to do 3D spacial stuff.
I see a picture of it straight away even without closing eyes.
Do I physically see it there with my eyes? No, because it’s not there physically.
If you mean do I actually “see” see an apple in my mind, yes, I can. Vividly. I can see it, smell it and taste it. I can explode it, I can cut it, I can do whatever with it.
Sort of. I have a hard time making out clear images of things in my head but I can imagine bits of things and understand them conceptually. It’s like looking at something with a very narrow beam flashlight that is behind a translucent black cloth.
Yes and change the color or shape.
I can even imagine the taste
Nope. Nothing. I know the apple is there in a conceptual way and can think about an apple, but it’s basically dark blank space, no colour. I do have a ‘spoken’ commentary or conversational ability in my head, but no pictures at all.
I see it, but not as a clear picture. It’s a hazy blurry picture without much detail, kind of how dream sequences in movies are portrayed.
That’s a great question actually. Finding the correct answer is an insight into human intelligence. As I understand … Which is definitely flawed, when we generalize, we don’t visualize. We don’t necessarily “see” an apple in our heads when we tell someone to buy an apple. There are people who lack the ability to visualize. There are also people who completely lack the ability to generalize. Temple Grande is a famous autistic person who claims that she can not think of a general thing called a shoe, she MUST visualize a specific shoe and has trouble understanding that the things in the shoe department are related.
And there are levels of visualizing. When I say a man walks into a bar, you imagine a bar. The bar is different for everyone but nearly everyone can describe it in great detail. On the other hand, when we visualize an apple, see it in our heads, it isn’t a three dimensional, real looking, apple. It’s like a picture of an apple. But when we seriously meditate on an apple, sometimes something pops and suddenly the apple becomes a real apple. An image so real it seems it can be touched. This takes much practice for most of us. Others are cursed with this type of visual image with every waking thought.
If you find this interesting, I’d recommend reading up on famous idiot savants. Watch the documentary on Temple Grande too. And watch every possible interview with Marilu Henner who famously has perfect memory, able to visit every moment of her life and watch it like a movie.
Yes, I see a 4k picture of a red apple and it’s spinning lol
I have hyperphantasia. I don’t even have to close my eyes to imagine an apple and see it right there. I can look around with my open eyeballs at my actual space, yet envision something else, somewhere else, so clearly and intensely that I could reach out and touch it.