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When you close your eyes, what do you see? For me, it’s always been a black screen, sometimes with the static of a crackling TV. My dreams are tangles of thoughts, but when I try to remember them, I can’t actually see anything. I don’t need to pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming, because my dreams never resemble reality. I have a condition called aphantasia, mind blindness. I can see clearly with my eyes but not in my mind.
When I think of a memory, I can conceptually understand and answer questions about it, but cannot project it into my mind or imagine myself in it. I hold all the projector slides and have all the information, but can’t see the actual picture. Four percent of people are estimated to experience aphantasia, but we can go our whole lives without knowing we have it.
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I only realized when I was 21, sitting at a coffee shop with my best friend. She animatedly spoke about an article she had read on aphantasia and how she couldn’t imagine what it would feel like. Suddenly, I realized that I saw the world differently. I had always assumed that daydreaming, counting sheep, and picturing myself on a beach were metaphors. I couldn’t imagine what mental imagery would feel like.
After telling my family, we discovered that my mom has it too. Aphantasia is familial, with research showing that if you have congenital aphantasia, there is a 21% chance that your first-degree relative (parent, sibling, or child) will also have it. At first, it was hard to not see this as a loss, but over time, I’ve developed a new appreciation and interest in how I learn and experience the world.
The concept of aphantasia traces back to Aristotle, who described a sixth sense of visual imagination called phantasia. Aphantasia indicates the absence of mental imagery, but about 10% to 15% of people are at the other end of the spectrum with extremely vivid imagery or photographic memories, which is called hyperphantasia. Even though knowledge of…
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Source : time
