Neal White

My dreams are nothing but blackness and I rarely dream of people, but when I do, it's almost always a family member or close friend. I always know who they are, even though my dreams seem more conceptual than a mirror of real life.

1. No, I don't think it affects me emotionally. Instead, learning about aphantasia explains a lot about difficulties I face, like partial face blindness. 2. Yes, social interactions and procrastination. I used to do all my homework (due for that day) on the long bus ride to the school in the morning. 3. Yes, but aphantasia is becoming more widely known. 4. Remembering things. I think it's harder to remember stuff when you have no mental images.

"When Aphants are asked to imagine a shark or other scary imagery, their brains do not show a fear response (unlike neurotypical people)." There may be more neuro diversity among us than is widely known. I have extreme aphantasia, yet when I imagined a shark, I felt a surge of adrenaline, which is almost certainly a fear response. I wonder if this is because, as a scuba diver, I've had first-hand experience with sharks.

I can feel shame, but I think it may be less than others, and I don't dwell on it. My wife has remarked on this in the past, "Don't you feel shame?"

I have only studied a few Chinese symbols, of which I can only recognize 3 at this point. I've never tried to write Chinese.

No. I can't conjure photos either. When my eyes are closed, I see black, no matter what I imagine. Looking at photos usually doesn't spark any specific memories of the event (just general info about the people and places).

Sorry, no I don't.

I also have aphantasia. Very rarely, I can see things in my dreams, specifically when I'm sort of waking up and have a lucid dream. I have limited control over what I see, and it usually fades quickly.

I have aphantasia and am "partially face blind". I think you are too. With repeated and recent exposure, I can recognize some faces. Since I haven't seen my sister recently, I'd probably walk right past her, if we were both in a public space and I wasn't expecting to see her. I can recognize the faces of many actors and public figures, like politicians. Repeated exposure is key.

Unfortunately, not, but I can relate. My wife has hyperphantasia and sometimes struggles with vivid dreams and memories. She says she sometimes wishes she had aphantasia like me. Most of the time, my dreams are nothing but blackness. The only sense that I can truly remember/imagine are sounds and even then, it usually takes a lot of repetition before it sticks. He could try something I use to mentally reset my brain: Controlled breathing. Inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 16, exhale for a count of 8. Repeat a few times, as necessary. I've found that this can completely break a train of unwanted thoughts, at least for me.

I've never really thought about it. I do look forward to future events even though I have aphantasia. I do have apprehension sometimes, depending on the event and what it entails, which I think is normal. The term neurodivergent seems to cover a lot more differences than I previously thought. Some people might find your situation comforting. My wife has hyperphatasia and she says she sometimes wishes she had aphantasia like I do, since she's troubled by things which happened in her past and reoccur in vivid memories and dreams, and that includes the feelings which accompany those memories. My suggestion is to accept the situation and not fret too much. Now that you understand this about yourself, it's possible that with time you might learn to feel something with practice. If not, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that there are probably many other people like you.

Yeah, after decades of knowing nothing about aphantasia, suddenly, a lot of things make sense. When I was younger, when people said things like "in my mind's eye" or "envisioning" something, I always thought they were just being poetic.

Thanks for posting such a personal, thoughtful message. I have extreme aphantasia and often don't recognize my inner emotions or the emotion of others. However, I do experience loss quite deeply and it persists for years, especially the passing of a beloved pet or a close friend.

I've always been good at these sorts of quizzes. The answers just sort of jump out at me. It was quite a shock when I discovered that some people actually see things in "their mind's eye". I had assumed people were just being poetic. For me, it's all blackness. Trying to break it down, my eyes dart between the reference and each of the solution images in turn, and if there's a match, my perspective shifts and the object sort of rotates into position. If it doesn't match, the implied rotation does not occur. It all happens quickly. If I slowly look at each possibility, the shift does not occur, and I resort to double-checking my answer by noticing which colors or other features are adjacent, etc.

Mental rotation is trivial for me. I just "know" it, even though I can't see anything but black in my mind's eye. For example, on the IQ tests which ask you to determine which rotated figure matches the example, I don't even have to look at all the possible solutions. I just know which one is correct, in a fraction of a second. It's not just guessing, because my scores were very high. Also, with jigsaw puzzle pieces, I often just know where a piece goes; not only that, but my fingers can rotate the piece to fit the hole without any conscience thought. I just pick up the piece, and it just fits into place. I'm also good at "cube net" problems and can easily lay out a flat arrangement of polygons which will fold up into the desired shape. I'm not particularly good at estimating distances, but I can accurately find the center point of distances from inches up to 10 feet or so. I'm fairly good at estimating angles. For a recent programing project, I had to create line segments to form characters (letters, numbers, and symbols). I had to trace out the first few on paper, but I was able to do the rest without any sketches. Also, due to my desire to minimize the numeric notation, I directly entered the coordinate values in base-36 arithmetic. Here's an example: case 'A': pts = "0A,6S,CA;3H,9H"; break; case 'B': pts = "0A,0S,8S,CP,CM,8J,CG,CD,9A,0A;0J,9J"; break; case 'C': pts = "CD,9A,3A,0D,0P,3S,9S,CP"; break; How can I do that so easily? I have no idea.

Thanks for the links, Jennifer! I've often wondered if my brain was missing an off switch to turn off the signal from the eyes (black) which stomps over any imagined images. The thing is, I can somehow sense what's behind the black wall of my eyes. That fits well with the "The Locked Door" metaphor mentioned in the first article and explains why I can sense "something", even when I can't see it. So it looks like my fusiform imagery node may be fine; it's just the wiring that's messed up. It's not completely disconnected, as I have had (very) rare experiences when I've seen images, instead of the black.

In my case, it feels like the mental image is there, but I can't see it. It's like I can't switch off the input from my closed eyes, which overrides my mind's eye with real-world data that just happens to be solid black. On rare occasions, I can sometimes see through the black, such as when I have a lucid dream. Even so, the images are fleeting, more like glimpses instead of continuous movement.

Good question. I would think that having SDAM would make it easier "to leave it all behind". I came to this website to learn more about my aphantasia, but I'm learning so much more about how peoples' daily experiences vary widely. This is the first time I've heard of SDAM. While I have some memory difficulties, it apparently doesn't reach the level of SDAM.

"Its impossible to have more or less autism". Right, that's why I said high functioning, not less or minor. Autism wasn't talked about when I was a kid. I only realized I fit the profile a few years ago. It's helped me a lot, to understand and improve myself. Back to the subject of AI... I really worry about the impact it will have on society and the world.

I hadn't heard of alexithymia prior to this, but I certainly do have trouble recognizing emotions in others and myself. While I do have aphantasia, I am also on the (high functioning side) of the autism scale, which I think might contribute more to my issues. I do think aphantasia is why I am partially face-blind. (I recognize faces with great difficulty.) I've been able to make great use of AI, but I'm a computer programmer and I find relating to computers and machinery is easier than with people, so that could be the reason. For me, AI is just another tool, which I use for research and investigation, as well as writing "first pass" algorithms, which I then carefully review and tweak. I treat AI as a capable assistant, who doesn't always listen carefully, and has an occasional malicious urge to sneak bugs into the code, which is why I always ask the AI for references (and verify them!) on anything important.