What it’s like to have no visual imagination or inner voice

Look at these pictures. Do you see a cube on the left and a face on the right?

Can you imagine seeing things in your head? Can you hear an inner voice when you think or read?

One of the authors, Loren Bouyer, can’t make out any of it. To Loren, the image on the left looks like a jumble of two-dimensional shapes, and on the right she can only make out a mop.

Unable to imagine auditory or visual sensations or hear an inner voice when reading, Loren suffers from a disorder we describe in a new article in Frontiers in Psychology as “profound aphantasia.”

“A blind mind”

Both authors are aphantasics – we are unable to imagine visual experiences.

Aphantasia is often described as a “blind mind.” But often we cannot imagine other experiences. So an aphantasiatic may have a blind and a deaf mind, or a blind and a tasteless mind.

We are often asked what it is like to be aphantasic. Some analogies might be helpful.

People are multilingual

Most people have an inner voice when they think. You may only speak one language, so your inner voice will “speak” that language.

However, you know that other people can speak different languages, so you can perhaps imagine what it would be like if your inner voice spoke several different languages.

Likewise, we can imagine what your thoughts must be like. They can be varied and experienced as internal visual or auditory sensations or as imagined tactile or olfactory sensations.

Our minds are different. Neither of us can imagine visual experiences, but Derek can imagine auditory sensations and Loren can imagine tactile sensations. We both experience thoughts as a different set of “inner languages.”

Some aphantasics report a lack of any imagined sensations. What might their thought experiences be like? We think we can explain it.

Loren can imagine the sensation of touch, but that is not necessary. She has to choose to do so, and that requires effort.

We assume that your imagined visual experiences are similar, so what if Loren is thinking but chooses not to have imagined touch sensations?

Our subconscious thoughts

Most people can mentally hear what they are saying before they say it out loud, but often they don’t. People can participate in a conversation without hearing themselves.

For Loren, most of her thoughts are like this. She writes without having any prior knowledge of the content being written. Sometimes she stops because she realizes she is not ready to add more, and then starts again when she feels ready.

Most of the processes in our brains are subconscious. Although we don’t recommend it, we suspect that many of you have had the experience of being distracted while driving and suddenly realizing that you were driving home or to the office and not to your intended destination. Loren feels that most of her thoughts are similar to these subconscious processes in her brain.

And what about planning? Loren can experience it as a combination of imagined textures, body movements and recognizable states of mind.

There is a sense of completion when a plan has been worked out. A planned speech is a sequence of imagined mouth movements, gestures and body postures. Her artistic plans are experienced as textures. She never experiences an imagined acoustic or visual listing of her intended actions.

There are big differences between aphantasics

Unlike Loren, Derek’s thoughts are purely verbal. Until recently, he was unaware that other ways of thinking are possible.

Some aphantasics report occasional involuntary imagery, often of unpleasant past experiences. None of us has had an imaginary visual experience while awake, whether voluntary or involuntary.

This underlines the diversity. We can only describe our own, particular experiences with aphantasia.

Frustrations and the humor of misunderstandings

Aphantasics may become frustrated when others try to explain our experiences. One suggestion is that we may have imagined visual experiences but are unable to describe them.

We understand the confusion, but this can seem condescending. We both know what it’s like to have imagined sensations, and so we believe we can detect the absence of a certain kind of imagined experience.

Confusion can go both ways. We recently discussed an experiment. The study was too long and needed to be shortened. So we considered which imaginary visual scenario we should eliminate.

Loren suggested that we create a scenario where people should imagine seeing a black cat with their eyes closed. We thought it might be difficult to picture an imaginary black cat against a background of closed eyes.

The only person in the room who could have imagined visual experiences began to laugh. Apparently most people find it easy to imagine seeing black cats, even with their eyes closed.

Deep Aphantasia

Researchers believe that aphantasia occurs when activity in the front part of the brain does not stimulate activity in the back parts of the brain. This “feedback” would be necessary for people to imagine things.

Loren appears to suffer from a form of aphantasia that has not been previously described. Unsuccessful feedback in Loren’s brain appears to result in atypical experiences with actual visual inputs. For example, she may not see the cube at the top of this article, or the face instead of a mop, or have a number of other typical experiences with visual inputs.

We coined the term “deep aphantasia” to describe people like Loren who are not only unable to imagine sensory experiences but also have atypical experiences with actual visual input.

Our aim in describing our experiences is to draw attention to the fact that some aphantasics have unusual experiences with actual visual stimuli, like Loren. If we can identify these people and study their brains, we may be able to understand why some people can conjure up imaginary sensory experiences at will, while others cannot.

We also hope that raising awareness of the different experiences people have when thinking could promote tolerance towards different ways of thinking.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.