r/science • u/unsw UNSW Sydney • Jan 11 '25

Health People with aphantasia still activate their visual cortex when trying to conjure an image in their mind’s eye, but the images produced are too weak or distorted to become conscious to the individual

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/01/mind-blindness-decoded-people-who-cant-see-with-their-minds-eye-still-activate-their-visual-cortex-study-finds?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social
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u/DienstEmery Jan 11 '25

Visuals play out like movies in my head, I can't imagine not being able to do it. I use it all the time to do 'work'. Math, deductive reasoning, going over mental images of systems, etc.

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u/Fudgeygooeygoodness Jan 11 '25

Same, and I also sort of visualise reading through something when I’m trying to recall things. I’m a lawyer so when I’m recalling a section of a piece of legislation but I can’t exactly recall it immediately, I kind of flick through the legislation in my head reading it until I get to the section I want and read that in my head. I often look up when doing that and my boss jokes that I’m “going through my archives” when she sees me doing it.

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u/SlyDintoyourdms Jan 11 '25

See I think I’m close to being aphantasic but I would still sometimes do that. I’ll tend to know where on a page I’m looking for something. My brain doesn’t literally store a high enough resolution image of the page for me to be able to read it though.

But when I’m saying to someone “you need to flip to a table that has values for bla in it,” I know roughly how far into the book and I know it’s down the bottom on the right and there’s a picture of a tiger on the same page.

Is that having a minds eye or is it not??? I really genuinely struggle to know what my experience is.

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u/DienstEmery Jan 13 '25

When I saw The Good Doctor for the first time I was pointing at the screen like the Leonardo meme.

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u/Fudgeygooeygoodness Jan 13 '25

Haha yes kinda like that!

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u/watermelonkiwi Jan 11 '25

This seems more auditory. You're remembering the words, the inner monologue you said when you read it, not seeing the print on the page.

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u/Fudgeygooeygoodness Jan 11 '25

Nah it’s definitely visual I can see it in my head. It’s like I’m reading a book inside my head with the words on the page visually. I’m not really like thinking sound wise at that stage or hearing it being read like if I were to actually be reading a book in front of me.

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u/ImNotSelling Jan 11 '25

Ive heard of tennis or chess players doing this in a way. Kind of going over past plays and trying different ways to play it in their heads. They replay mistakes and fix them etc. I can definitely see it as a performance enhancer

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u/jawnink Jan 11 '25

I’m just a bud tender during the day but I’ll take orders in my head, get back into the vault and only know where I am going but I won’t remember what items I went for until I’m reaching for it. It becomes a spatial list in my head instead of words.