Aphantasia

This post will be a lot more personal than other posts on this blog, because rather than catching my curiosity, this topic has personally affected me, and as such, I’ll be sharing my own experience in learning about this thing called “aphantasia.” Though this is a personal story, I find that learning about how other people perceive the world and how other brains work to be endlessly fascinating. (If you do too, read anything by Oliver Sacks)

I’m not going to define what aphantasia is quite yet, because for me, the most interesting part of this topic is how I learned about it, and I’d like to try to share a small part of that experience.

Mystery 1: My first inclination that my cognition might be a little different from others came as I started taking masters-level classes in Education. Having graduated college in a STEM field, I’ve noticed numerous changes in pursuing a liberal arts degree, one of which is the introspective nature of much of the coursework. The instructor would often questions like, “Think of a time when a teacher didn’t understand something you were trying to communicate;” or, “How were you taught about ‘X’ subject?” 

I drew a complete and total blank for specific examples like that. I thought they were overly specific questions, but everyone else had very detailed answers. I continually thought “How could you possibly remember something like that?” I remember that I learned things, but never how I learned things. I am among many people who always hated the “essay about personal experiences,” the “two truths and lie game,” and thinking about what to put on a resume, but I never realized that my troubles might related to the fact that I simply don’t remember any of these details. I thought it was because I don’t like talking about myself, the oft-cited reason I’ve heard from so many others. In truth, while I also don’t like talking about myself (despite doing it for this entire blog post), there might also be this underlying reason of poor autobiographical or experiential memory.

Mystery 2: I took up the practice of vipassana meditation several years ago, and among the many cues delivered from my guided meditations are things like “close your eyes, and notice that while you can’t see the desk or wall you have been staring at, this visual space is still active.” When I closed my eyes, I could see some small modicum of activity (subtle grey blobs, and very fait light cues), and it was that to which I though the mediation was referring. 

One session however, the daily meditation said something along the lines of “Look at the table in front of you, and imagine a candle, sitting on the table. You may see a faint outline of a candle, or your experience may be no different than if the candle were really there. Look at the candle, and see if it is one that you recognize, or a candle you have never seen before. Closing your eyes and placing the candle on the table in your mind may help.” That is a paraphrase, but I listened to that section 3 or 4 times. It was the first time I had ever heard, in completely unambiguous terms what the visual sensation should be like, and this didn’t match which my experience at all. I was completely unable to conjure any whisp of an image of a candle with my eyes open or closed. The prompt of “is it a candle you recognize” was completely nonsensical to me because I was imagining the idea of a candle, not any specific one. It could just as easily have been red or white, tall or squat, vanilla or plain paraffin.

I initially chalked this second experience with the meditation app up to not being quite that good a meditator yet. I couldn’t believe that with enough practice, I might be able to actually “see” something that wasn’t there! To most of you, I suspect, this is starting to sound off because, of course, you don’t need to be some Level 20 meditation expert to see a candle when you close your eyes. You just picture it, what’s the big deal? Maybe it’s just an outline, or a flash, maybe it’s in greyscale, or you need to concentrate to see it, but it’s there, right?

I lack any an ability to visualize things. In other terms my “mind’s eye” is completely blind. Yesterday as I write this, I listened to a podcast that mentioned the term “aphantasia,” and out of curiosity I Googled it (well, I DuckDuckGo’d it). It was having a name for it that finally collapsed all the weird phenomena into one explanation.

Aphantasia is a term coined in 2015 by Adam Zeman that refers to the inability to picture things in your “mind’s eye” There has been relatively little research on it, with the majority of research just starting to break out from two researchers: Adam Zeman from Exeter and Professor Joel Pearson from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

My experience of trying to visualize things seems to be different from others. From accounts I’ve read and people I’ve asked, if asked to picture an elephant, the experience varies from flashes of a full picture, being able to conjure and hold an image, to registering an outline or a greyscale image. To me, when asked to visualize an elephant, this is approximately what I’m seeing when I close my eyes:

Subtle grey shades, the occasional indistinct shape or line, and a faint awareness of some sort of network, which I suspect might be blood vessels in my eyelid. This is what I’m seeing regardless of what I’m being asked to picture – an elephant, my wife’s face, a place I’ve been on vacation

If I had to categorize the thought process, it would be something like this:

Note that I don’t actually “see” the text or lines, I just think them. I could continue adding details like this until I ran out of things I knew to be true of elephants, but there is never any image I’m referencing.

‘Visualizing’ things has always been abstract like this for me. If I asked you to picture a star, something visual will likely come to mind, but I asked what the next word is in “Twinkle, Twinkle Little ____” you likely just thought the word “star” rather than picturing one. For me, everything is like the latter case. If I care to draw something (I’m about average at drawing), I refer to these descriptors, and draw them out such that they resemble what I know to be true about elephants. Here is a drawing I did of an elephant with no reference:

I tried being fancy and making the elephant take a step. While drawing, I thought things like “elephants have pretty wrinkly knees, so I’ll add knee wrinkles” and “I know they have a little diamond shaped tail because I remember thinking that was odd while watching Tarzan once.” After looking at a reference I realize I got the tusk and the back leg/belly areas pretty wrong, and the eyes should be lower down. Close enough.

I’m sure aphantasia has been noticed by individuals for as long as there have been humans, but the earliest real account of aphantasia was written down by one of Darwin’s cousins in 1800. Francis Galton asked 100 people to visualize their breakfast table, and 12 reported little to no imagery, which took Galton by surprise. Fast forward a few centuries and in 2009, neuroscientist Adam Zeman had a patient, called MX in the literature, who lost the ability to visualize internally after surgery. This curious case opened up the field and the eventual coining and description of aphantasia. Others who are known to have aphantasia include Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios; J. Craig Venter, the biologist who led the team that first sequenced the human genome; Glen Keane, Disney animator and creator of The Little Mermaid; and Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller.

The most interesting thing about all of this to me is that it took until my late 20’s to realize this. For years, I thought everyone was using “picture this” as a metaphor, a figure of speech. I thought it was the same usage as “feel the music” or to get a “taste of success.” Those aren’t literal feelings or tastes (I know you can feel bass in your chest, and feel emotions with music, but I still think the expression is mainly metaphorical). If asked to describe an elephant, my process and that of looking at an elephant in your mind's eye and listing details are indistinguishable. The fact that I can’t see it never comes up. I assume they can’t see anything, they assume I can see something, and it never gets brought up. It took listening to someone really carefully spelling out their experience visualizing something to realize that I’m doing something different.

It blew my mind to realize that when many people are reminiscing, they are revisiting the sights, smells, and sounds of past times. I have none of that sensory input with memories. My memories are more or less a list of facts, or major plot points, like Cliff Notes or Sparknotes.

I’ve seen tweets such as these one that made no sense to me:

People saying “that’s not how I pictured it” to a movie finally makes sense to me. “Counting sheep” makes a little more sense. Math word problems make a little more sense now. That example from earlier of being able to conjure up a candle on a table that’s as real as if it were really there still seems like a superpower to me. <sidenote> "Conjure" is the perfect word if you can't do it. It seems like magic. </sidenote>

To wrap up one more thread before moving to some FAQ, that first mystery from my grad school classes hasn’t really come up yet. This is the main insight that I had upon learning the word “aphantasia.” I’ve always considered myself to have a decent memory. I memorized the lyrics to Blackalicious’ Alphabet Aerobics, and Tom Leher’s Elements Song, I have known pi to 50 digits, I can solve a Rubik’s cube by remembering sequences like “U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F” 

These are sort of memorization ‘feats’ which are categorically different than being really good with names or remembering stories from your past. It’s that last type that I am really terrible at. If you know me well, you’ve probably heard me say, “that sounds like something I’d do,” or you may have looked at me dumbfounded while explaining something that we had done together while I registered no recognition. I’ve always kind of acted along while feeling a bit guilty for forgetting the memory.

The realization was that memories are so often tied to sights, sounds, smells, and emotions led me to understand that most can use those senses as a ‘hook’ to remember something from their past. They can call to mind a visual of what they were seeing, or an emotion they were feeling at the time, and access that memory. I don’t have any of these ‘hooks’ with my memories. So when I think about a vacation I had, I think things like “we saw this show, which I’m sure was quite nice, and stayed here, so the walk to there must have been pretty quick. The city was close to the sea, so I’m sure I could smell saltiness. I liked the people I was with, and I remember this funny joke we all laughed at...” Sparknotes. It’s absent of any visual, auditory, emotional, or other sensory components.

This quote from Blake Ross, Co-founder of Mozilla, rang really true for me:

"I’ve always felt an incomprehensible combination of stupid-smart. I missed a single question on the SATs, yet the easiest conceivable question stumps me: What was it like growing up in Miami?

I don’t know.

What were some of your favorite experiences at Facebook?

I don’t know.

What did you do today?

I don’t know. I don’t know what I did today.

Answering questions like this requires me to “do mental work,” the way you might if you’re struggling to recall what happened in the Battle of Trafalgar. If I haven’t prepared, I can’t begin to answer. But chitchat is the lubricant of everyday life."

 

It’s hard not to feel a sense of loss for this type of autobiographical memory. I wish I could “relive” moments from my past, remember childhood stories or the plots of fictional books I’ve read, or even access my favorite smells when they’re not around. Next time you see me, please don’t hesitate to tell me a story from our past, because unless it was in the last few years, I probably don’t remember anything but some really basic ‘plot points.’

One effect of this lack of autobiographical memory is that I find it very easy to “live in the moment.” Holding grudges or feeling embarrassment is basically an impossibility for me, which I don’t mind. It may sound callous, but my grieving process is mercifully short, as I can’t keep recalling memories from the past like most can. I suspect that moving on from loss is easier with less solid memories to fall back on.

While I’m talking about benefits of aphantasia, I’ll mention that I had always assumed my lack of memories from my childhood was the result of repressed memories, which I had heard of. I have always thought it was more likely than not that I must have been terribly bullied or lonely and attributed the fact I couldn’t remember much of it was due to repressing those memories. I’m relieved to figure out a happier cause for their absence. My own lack of these memories also led to the assumption that my grad school classmates were wildly inventing when asked about their own schooling, so it’s comforting to know that I can have a little more trust that they aren’t making things up.

A final result of this lack of autobiographical memories is that I don’t really identify with my past self. I think of “Scott from 15 years ago” as a different person who I have little in common with. I mean, that guy hasn’t taught a professional development workshop, hasn’t been to Scotland, nor does he even know who Cordelia the cat is. Those are all important aspects of who I am now. In many fundamental ways, I have more in common with my wife than I do with 15-years-ago Scott. As a result of this, I find it really easy to change my opinion on things. Since I don’t identify with ‘past Scott’ who held that old opinion, there’s no problem with having a different one now. For example, Scott from a year ago drank 2-4 caffeinated drinks a day. Current Scott drinks none (okay, maybe once every week or two). No problem. Present Scott has never been a coffee drinker, only past Scott has, and he's gone already.

General questions often asked about aphantasia, and the experience of having it:

1. Can you picture my face?

• No, but I know what you look like. I have always been able to recognize faces just fine, but have a hard time knowing from where I know them. I think this is common, though.

2. Do you recognize me when you see me?

• Yes. The process of putting a name to a face is different that the process of visually generating a face from a name.

3. What about simple shapes, like a circle or triangle?

• Nothing. If the brain is a computer, mine has no monitor. Asking “what is on the monitor?” doesn’t make sense to me.

4. “I can’t really SEE things either. For me it’s just picturing it in my mind. It’s not the same as seeing it.”

• I can’t even picture it in my mind. I don’t SEE things, but I ALSO can’t picture them in any “mind’s eye.”
• I was initially worried that this is all a bit subjective until I read about a study that looked at "Binocular Rivalry" In that study they asked participants to visualize either red horizontal bars, or green vertical bars. Researchers then flashed one image to the left eye and one to the right simultaneously, and asked which image participants saw 'more.' People who are strong visualizers saw the image they were asked to visualize about 80% more often. With aphantasics, there was no correlation between what they were asked to visualize and what image they saw 'more,' suggesting a real and objective measurement of a real phenomena.

5. What about other senses?

• Same with all senses. If a song is stuck in my head, it’s just lyrics and rhythm, no sound whatsoever.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a non-lyrical song stuck in my head. Concerning smells, I have no idea what coffee smells like, but I’m confident that I’d recognize it if I smelled it again. If you asked me to describe the smell, I’d say “nutty, earthy, and slightly burnt.” I’m referencing things I know about coffee, and nothing about the smell itself. The weird thing is that it’s the same with emotions. I don’t know what it feels like to be frustrated, but I know that if frustrating circumstances come up, I’ll be able to identify it.

6. Do you have an ‘inner monologue?”

• Yes, but it doesn’t have a voice, or accent. It’s just thoughts. I was amazed to hear that some people’s “inner voice” is not only auditory, but uses their speaking voice, or a high pitched version, or accented version.

7. What goes through your head all day if not sights, smells, and sounds?

• Just that ‘voice,’ and only when I pay attention to it.

8. Do you dream?

• I think I do, but I forget every last detail within a minute of consciousness. There are no images or sensory components, just ‘plot points.’ I can remember a grand total of 3 dreams from my entire life, one of them lucid.

9. How do you follow directions if you’re not following a map in your head?

• I have three lists: One is a list of turn directions like “left, right, right, take the exit onto the highway.” The next list is the street names: “Washington, 3rd, Ralston, Highway 287.” Last, I have the distances “right away, 1 mile or so, quite far, right away.” Those together get the job done.

10. I’ve heard of synesthesia, is this similar?

• Not really, I don’t experience anything like synesthesia.

11. Does not knowing what an emotion feels like affect your empathy?

• Yes and no. No in the sense that I don't feel others' emotions for the sole reason that they are feeling them. If someone is crying because they lost someone I never knew, I don't feel any sadness 'on their behalf.' So, in that sense, I don’t emotionally feel what anyone else is going through. Often, the thing that is affecting them is also affecting me, so I may feel the emotion independently. If I also knew the person who passed, I'll feel my own sadness. Otherwise my main emotion is one of compassion for my friend, not of sadness. However, I make a lot of effort to understand what others are going through and know that their feelings are valid, so in that sense, yes, I do 'feel' empathy.

12. Do you not have an imagination?

• I do. “Imagination” is a broader term than “visualization.” I use different tools, but I can still create things from scratch, even if I’m not visualizing them.

13. Do you feel that having aphantasia is a positive or negative thing?

• Neither. I sure would like to remember my own life better, but I am who I am because of my brain and how I think. With mental imagery and autobiographical memory, I would be a different person. It’s a difference, not a benefit or loss.
  
  There are a few fringe benefits though: I’ve never been scared by a verbal story because I’m not imagining anything; I can forget all the terrible images I’ve seen in movies and TV shows; adaptations of books are always spot-on because I wasn’t picturing anything in the first place; I’ve never held a grudge; I’ve never lingered on an embarrassing memory; and living in the moment without visual images 'intruding' on my mental space increases my mindfulness.

To me, it's a testament to the varieties of the human experience that it took me until my late 20’s to realize this difference in how my brain works. This cognitive difference, which has presumably always existed, has only even begun to be studied in the last 5 years. There are so many possible variants to cognition, memory, and more that we're presumably only beginning to discover. 

Who knows, maybe your red really is different than my red, and we can never know.

If you are interested in participating, or finding out about how well you can see with your mind's eye, you can take the Visual Imagery Assessment from the University of Exeter (Zeman), or the Vividness of Visual Imagery Quiz from aphantasia.com.

I'm a 1, unless you think you can see a faint star in "1," in which case I'm a 0

Cheers,

  - Scott

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