Has there been any research on Aphantasia and psychedelics. I seriously think that there is something major to look into. I know for a fact someone with Aphantasia can visualise colors and patterens with these substances. If this could be regulated by a doctor, this can open a door thats never been seen behind litterly for people with Aphantasia
I’d be curious if you’ve done any further searching on the internet.
I’m guessing it’d be possible to discover aphantasics in psychedelic-related groups/forums/discussion boards. Make a post on one of them and see if anyone replies. It’s not the same as controlled research with reliable resources, but it’s likely you’d get lot of helpful anecdotes.
I’ve found some aphantasics in a personality type group so I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find some in other groups. I was able to start a small discussion about visual imagination too.
You might have to include a link/explanation that provides a reference for the uninitiated to understand what aphantasia is if you think a lot of members may not know what it was.
I’d be curious to know what you find, especially if you report back on here!
I was actually just wondering this yesterday. I recently found out I have aphantasia and yesterday I was listening to a podcast about psychedelic assisted therapy and I was wondering how that would work for someone with aphantasia!
A recent study on light flicker-induced illusions (the Ganzflicker Effect) amongst three groups – aphantasics, hypophantasics (low-level mental imagery), and phantasics – indicated that voluntary mental imagery is a prerequisitie for experiencing complex illusions, such as faces, landscapes, animals, buildings, etc. Instead, the aphantasics only experieced simple illusions, such as fractal patterns. Furthermore, aphantasics experienced fewer altered states (which are another common response of the Ganzflicker Effect) than the other groups.
These results are resonant with my own experience with psychdelics and other transcendental mediums. I’ve robustly experimented with with psilocybin mushrooms, salvia, ayahuasca, DMT, and other compounds yet haven’t experienced much more than distorted space-time, colorful patterns, physiological responses, ego-death, confusion, and abstract hallucinations – meaning I haven’t experienced complex illusions, like other beings or imagined scenes playing out in my head. Furthermore, I have felt oddly sober compared to much of the experiences I’ve read or have had described to me.
I think this resistance to altered states may explain why the majority of aphantasics report they are unable to be hypnotized.
Hey Janette, are you saying alcohol has no effects what so ever? Have you tried psychedelics? If so, what has been your experience?
How would you rate your own skepticism, on a scale from 1 to 10? Conversely, how would you rate your ability to develop conviction of a belief or idea?
I found out about the term Aphantasia in 2015 from the BBC News article on the subject, and that was quite a mind boggling thing, given I’d not appreciated that people were actually able to internally visislise memories or abstract thought, and always assumed people were talking metaphorically.
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However like Zach mentions above, I too have robustly experimented with psilocybin mushrooms & DMT, so I can provide some input on my experiences.
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I have no internal visualisation ability normally, although I do dream with visual imagery, and occasionally as I’m drifting off to sleep, I do see some fleeting images; so I gather my internal imaging circuits do work, just appear not to be engaged in normal wakeful states.
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My psychedelic experiences stretch back over 20 years or more, however I became much more interested in their potential after learning what I did in 2015, and how they could let me experience what others take for granted.
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To summarize there does seem to be a threshold you have to cross to be able to experience any images with closed eyes (CEV’s) on mushrooms.
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The usual guide dosages (3-4g) do not have any CEV results for me. I would experience moving patterns with open eyes at this dose, but still internally black. However once this is doubled to 6g plus, then CEV occurs strongly for around 20-30 minutes, and increases in intensity as the dosage increases. For normal non-aphants this would seem like a high doseage, but I suspect for aphants this is the threshold dose.
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Non aphants seem to report much longer lasting effects, but for me this always seems limited around the half hour mark. So I assume there must be a much higher threshold required to unlock the internal images.
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As Zach also mentions, the lack of structure in these visualisations..Fractals, patterns etc. Certainly that was my experience at first, as if my brain did not know how to put an image together, and so it was all abstract..
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However with time, and many repeated journeys, this has developed into very coherent imagery every time. City scapes, tropical islands, intricate flyovers, people, animals etc..so I feel this is simply my brain having to learn to use the stimuli effectively. I’ve read similar stories for blind people who have had imaging sensors implanted into their brains to give rudimentary sight, at first it is all abstract, but gradually the brain learns to put it together.
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DMT has had similarly very effective results, but lasts for only a few fleeting minutes before returning to black.
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Legality issues aside, I am extremely thankful for having been able to experience what I have seen internally with these journeys; to see how the other half live every day without a second thought, for which otherwise I would almost certainly never have been able to.
Thanks, Olly! That’s fascinating to hear that with time your mind learned to assemble complex visuals. In my experience, DMT did provide unparalleled visuals and they did have complexity but it still wasn’t like any of the breakthrough experiences I had heard or read. And any psychedelic experience since then, I have experienced the same visuals as the ones that came immediately after “blast off” with DMT. It is like my brain just grappled onto that sequence and deployed it anytime after. That was a leading reason I stopped taking psychedelics and began to trade my more spiritual beliefs for a more grounded fascination in neuroscience.
Thanks Zach for the comment, that’s v interesting that your experiences going forward latched onto the types of visuals that you had with DMT. I suppose it makes sense, in that like most reactions to stimuli your body learns how to interpret those signals and then repeats them on the next occasion.
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As I say for me it was incremental, for a long period, maybe a year or more, it was simply fractal noise without any structure, which gradually got a little more organised. And that was with very regular trips, at least monthly, sometimes weekly..And ramping up the dosage, 9g+ with mushrooms was not uncommon, which gave very intense experiences, including generating sounds\buzzing\body vibration as well as closed eye visuals. However, and I think it was all of a sudden, it started to form coherent images and scenery which were very life-like. Hence it was as if with practice your brain learns how to ‘see’ and interpret the stimuli, rather than just the random patterns. But similarly to you, once I reached that level, I never went backwards to the past levels of visuals, it was always scenery going forward.
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I imagine a similar pattern to how people learn to control advanced prosthetic limbs using their brain signals, or even riding a bike, at first it’s very random, the brain fires off all manner of signals, but with practice the brain learns how to focus, and you never regress back.
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Anyway I think it’s a very interesting subject, and I’m v glad there are other people out there who are having similar breakthroughs, to see for the first time what internal visualization can look like, whatever their version of it looks like, but just seeing ‘something’ is quite the miracle after a lifetime in the dark 🙂
Do you feel like you are a more effective visual thinker now? Have your experiences with CEV had any perceived affect on your day-to-day cognition?
I feel like I am a visually creative person, I am often the first to offer up visual ideas (regarding things such as logo's, branding, user interfaces) in team meetings… but this could also have to do with my willingness and eagerness to engage and problem solve. Nonetheless, I have noticed improvement in visual cognition over the years from working in signage and marketing.
I feel like developing your visualizing abilities so dramatically in an altered stated would possibly translate into improved visual reasoning during unaltered states. Any thoughts?
