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Prisoner’s Cinema-Not completely dark in here.

I just took the screening test. When it comes to visualizing images, I can’t visualize even simple things like an apple. Aphantasic? Yes!

That said, I never thought much about my inability to visualize images because I have always been fascinated with my experience of what I now know is termed prisoner’s cinema. (link below) Ever since I can remember the colored patterns have been there dancing about. I can see them when I look at blank white walls or when close my eyes. It’s a 1960 concert projection liquid light show in my head. Nothing ever resolves into any visual imagery while I’m awake. (Dreamland is a completely different story. I see all sorts of weird things there.)  This personal light show has fueled a large part of my creative output in textile design and abstract art.

Anyone else with the light show but no images?

https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_cinema

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DaveHewitt
on November 10, 2021

Thanks for that. Chalk this up to yet another thing that I thought everyone had but it turns out isn’t universal.

For me regardless of whether I’ve been exposed to light whenever I close my eyes there’s a permanent lava-lamp type display going on. It can be quite entrancing at times, although if I’m not tired it, combined with my tinnitus, can keep me awake.

Sometimes the patterns repeat, sometimes not, but they are always there. It’s similar to the blobs you get after looking at bright lights but they are there all the time, even if I’ve been in darkness the preceding few hours and move in the exact way a lava-lamp contents do. This has been the case as long as I can remember.