@Je3ff
Joined 4 days agoRetired researcher/data analyst for higher education fundraising and formerly professional musician. Had industrial-solvent induced visually imagery at age 62 and realized I was visually aphantasic (without dangerous chemicals =); also, very, very weak results from recent strong effort to develop my historical weak "inner musical ear" revealed I'm also auditorily aphantasic.
Last year when I needed an "emergency" shower replacement at home, the crew used industrial strength acetone for a few hours. I had doors and windows wide open and all fans blowing during and after their work. After I went to sleep that night, I had amazingly colorful dreams and as I was waking up I called up various mental images I could zoom in and out of, change the colors, change the borders between the colors, change the focus of various parts of the image...all the things I'd ever done with cameras, film, computer graphics, drawing, and art, BUT WITH/IN MY MIND!!! When I got up I went directly to the computer and typed a version of what just happened and that's when I learned about phantasia/aphantasia. As I've read about aphantasia, I also realized why my decades-long efforts to develop my musical "inner ear" lead to nearly no results. If I really focused hard and have no distractions, I can often (but not consistently) hear a couple of patterns I've worked really hard to audiate--the patterns are very basic (tonic and dominant arpeggiated chords), but they aren't stable enough to build on.