Can you picture things in your mind?

Previous aphantasia discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792 (75 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 (204 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18799550 (100 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19618927 (424 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20267445 (73 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22800815 (103 comments)

Fascinating question!

If you asked me, I would ask what sort of dog? or which dog? If you said, "it doesn't matter", then I just get some random dog. It's a bit like a slideshow of dogs. If you asked me to describe it, then it would be some fantasy dog or I might zoom in on a dog that I actually know.

I have bits of what could be called photographic memory. In school I would "snap" pages of notes and then in the exam recall the page and "read" it for the information required. I never actually tested it to see how many pages I could save and recall like that. Probably less than a roll of film.

Will look at @r721's links. Very interested.

Sort of? I mean, if you asked me to visualize, say, a Dalmatian, I can definitely say that I can summon up an image of a medium sized dog with a mostly white coat with black spots. I can even rotate it and look at it from different angles, etc. But the issue is the detail / specificity. Could I count the number of spots on the dog, or tell you definitely if he has a spot at the tip of his right ear? No, definitely not.

So yeah, there's an image of some sort there, but it's certainly nothing like a high-res photograph or anything.

Yes. I've always been able to see "pictures" in my mind for memories or otherwise. It is a talent that comes in very handy for navigation, in that I can "see" (as it were) a map and plot a route just from the mental visual imagery.

I couldn't see it. I could describe a dog.

No. I've often discussed this with friends. I seem to be completely "mind-blind", i.e., I don't see mental pictures. If I concentrate, I can cause something to appear in my mind that I know is supposed to be a visual impression of, e.g., a dog, for the briefest possible instant, but I can't just look at it.

Even things that are highly visual, like Chinese characters that I can write from memory, I don't copy them from mental pictures.

On the other hand, when I listen to music, I easily pick apart all the different elements and know their textures, kind of like flying and knowing what the terrain is via radar. It's still not visual, it's just knowing.