"My wife would see an apple like she could reach out and touch it. She's on the other side of the spectrum: she has hyperphantasia. She would also see the table the apple is on, see the kitchen around it, smell the apple, and hear the sounds of a kitchen. Basically, she IS there. Personally, I don't even see a faint design of the apple. I would describe my experience as looking at a wall of black glass. I can detect the apple and I know it's there, but I can't actually see it. Oddly, when I'm half awake, I can have a lucid dream where I can "punch holes" in the wall and see the object. Normally, I don't see images in my dreams. Something else of note: I'm really good at discerning matching rotated 3D diagrams, like the ones on IQ tests. I just know which one(s) match, even though there's nothing but black "in my mind's eye"."

"Hey Martha, you're right that many aphantasia studies involve small sample sizes, especially those conducted in lab environments. However, several larger studies are now converging around a 1-5% population estimate, with sample sizes ranging from 500 to over 5,000 participants. The variation in findings primarily depends on whether researchers use a strict definition of aphantasia (total absence of imagery) or a broader definition (including dim or vague imagery). The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) is the most widely accepted tool for measuring these rates. Here are a few key population studies, including one with a multicultural sample: https://aphantasia.com/research/10.1016/j.concog.2021.103243 https://aphantasia.com/research/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1703706/v1 https://aphantasia.com/research/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1454107 You can always explore more in our research library at aphantasia.com/research."

"Because I study computers, this is not really a problem as I turn the visual problem into a coordinate geometrical one. Just mapping each coordinate to a number and than thinking about the rotational transformations of the numbers is enough for me to figure out, since the wrong answer has no such transformation."

"My wife would see an apple like she could reach out and touch it. She's on the other side of the spectrum: she has hyperphantasia. She would also see the table the apple is on, see the kitchen around it, smell the apple, and hear the sounds of a kitchen. Basically, she IS there. Personally, I don't even see a faint design of the apple. I would describe my experience as looking at a wall of black glass. I can detect the apple and I know it's there, but I can't actually see it. Oddly, when I'm half awake, I can have a lucid dream where I can "punch holes" in the wall and see the object. Normally, I don't see images in my dreams. Something else of note: I'm really good at discerning matching rotated 3D diagrams, like the ones on IQ tests. I just know which one(s) match, even though there's nothing but black "in my mind's eye"."

"Hey Martha, you're right that many aphantasia studies involve small sample sizes, especially those conducted in lab environments. However, several larger studies are now converging around a 1-5% population estimate, with sample sizes ranging from 500 to over 5,000 participants. The variation in findings primarily depends on whether researchers use a strict definition of aphantasia (total absence of imagery) or a broader definition (including dim or vague imagery). The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) is the most widely accepted tool for measuring these rates. Here are a few key population studies, including one with a multicultural sample: https://aphantasia.com/research/10.1016/j.concog.2021.103243 https://aphantasia.com/research/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1703706/v1 https://aphantasia.com/research/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1454107 You can always explore more in our research library at aphantasia.com/research."

"Because I study computers, this is not really a problem as I turn the visual problem into a coordinate geometrical one. Just mapping each coordinate to a number and than thinking about the rotational transformations of the numbers is enough for me to figure out, since the wrong answer has no such transformation."