Same here, I can rotate things in my head and change their color, but it’s not quite HD. It’s like an abstract image of what it should look like. It’s also quite fleeting since I get easily distracted. But when I’m half-asleep or waking up on a lazy Sunday, holy shit, I can visualize so many things in bright colors and can see them clearly. I wish I could do that all the time.

My architect buddy wanted to hire me to handle IT, do drafting in my down time. He met me managing a reprographics shop, blueprint place. “I can’t look at a blueprint and visualize what it’s going to look like.”

LOL, he looked like I slapped him! Totally alien thought to that man.

WARNING your neurochip implant has detected copyrighted material in your imagination cortex. Please be aware that we are legally obliged to report repeat offenses to the authorities. For your protection, please refrain from picturing further copyrighted material.

On the upside our kids aren’t going to be traumatised by pictures of apples.

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Some people also don’t have an internal monologue.

I have an internal dialogue.

I mean I guess that’s lucky in some ways my thoughts never stop

I have a feeling that this is also influenced by people that experienced (emotional) trauma. Some people dissociate from their feelings as a result of things that happened in the past, and this can also impact their ability to visualise things. (Because their brain is protecting them from re-experiencing their trauma)

Holy cow. This is possibly the best description of how I usually think I’ve ever encountered. It was actually a bit unnerving to read. Though I’ve always conceptualized it as “shapes” and “holes” rather than vectors.

The ability to near-instantly make connections between symptoms and cause for any given issue in a system I’m familiar with especially resonated. The best explanation I could give someone without stepping back and basically re-solving the whole thing from a standing start would be “the shapes fit together”.

It feels like I’m being asked how I knew a puzzle piece fit in a space, and for some reason “I looked at it and could see that it fit” is not a sufficient explanation. No, I didn’t need to investigate other possible pieces. They are obviously different shapes. The one that you’re asking about doesn’t even belong to the same puzzle.

Similarly I am also utterly incapable of describing what a person looks like in any detail. I have a “mind’s eye” and can conjure up images of them in my head, but for whatever reason I just completely lack the ability to express what I see in words outside of very high level details. They have brown hair, they’re tall, what do you mean “what shape is their face?” Sara’s face is the shape of Sara’s face. It couldn’t be any other shape.

I do have an internal monologue or voice though, but it’s not constant. It usually only comes up when I’m dealing with other people and need to try to reason through what someone else is doing.

This is a perfect representation of how my mind is laid out. Everything is a tree with things connected together by feelings/relations. Individual events are painful to keep track of (wife constantly tells me that we’ve already had conversations multiple times). Superfluous detail is lost immediately.

But how a certain function in code breaking can ripple to the whole system is as natural as I breathe. Random trivia facts too, since they were novel enough to connect at the cool thing to know node. What someone wore yesterday or where the ketchup is (I don’t eat ketchup) is just completely filtered out. Couldn’t describe peoples faces but I know them when I see them. 99% of those “celebrity lookalike” things look nothing like them and I get baffled how people can confuse them, but I’d assume it’s from them visualizing the celebrity with some error

For my own inner monologue, it often feels more like a preview or mirror than like hearing something external. Definitely English words, though I can also navigate nonverbal ideas in a similar sense to how you describe. The “essence” of the item, its database ID in a way.

Same with my inner audio sense: I can play things back I’ve heard several times and recall, like an old song, which is just a copy of how I heard it before (mostly). If it was a 90s mp3, it’ll still have whatever weird audio glitch crept in there during all the piracy. Can’t pick the elements apart, it’s just one layer.

No mind’s eye for me. Good spatial sense, though; it just isn’t tied to any feeling of sight. As for “imagining” an apple, I definitely don’t in any way see an apple. But there’s a part of the brain that, when you look at an apple, takes the incoming light analyzes it, and returns “Apple”. When I imagine the apple, I get that same return, the sense that I have just experienced or currently am experiencing an apple. Does my brain tell me I saw the toothy curves of the bottom of a red delicious? Yep. Did I see anything, anywhere, metaphorically or otherwise? Nope. All analysis, no pixels.

And after years working in kitchens, I can think in smells. I.e.mix spices in my mind and smell them in my head before adding to a dish.

I’m that way with ice cream. I own an ice cream business that creates custom ice creams, and after many years, I can think of a a flavor combination, and sort of “taste it” in my mind.

I love ice cream, but I don’t eat it that often any more. If I have a craving, often just thinking about what flavor I’d have is satisfying enough, but I don’t really need to eat the ice cream.

I just did it as an experiment, and imagined a combo of honey, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper. My mouth watered, but after a moment of really concentrating on what that flavor would taste like, I felt fairly satisfied enough about experiencing the taste, that I don’t feel a need to actually eat the ice cream. I think my brain has trained itself to release ice cream endorphins based on the thought alone, and not the actual taste experience from my tongue, and that satisfies my craving.

I should write a diet book: “Think And Grow Thin.”

Some of us can even think without any senses.

I think I’m like a 3 or 4.

I remember some years back there was a “test” going around the internet where you were supposed to picture an apple moving off a table in your head, and then it would ask you “ok what did the person pushing the apple look like, what color were their clothes, etc.” and I thought “oh shit do I have aphantasia?”

Later I realized that couldn’t be entirely true since I do picture characters in books, although I always picture them as an actor or another character from a comic/show/movie, never as an original face.

Well, if it makes anyone feel better, I’m somewhere around 2 or 3. But that’s really nothing to write about.

I’m noticing that in this comment section, too. I hadn’t noticed before, but most people do seem to be one extreme or the other. I imagine it’s because at either end they feel like they have something unique to offer the conversation, but those in the middle probably feel as if they are normal and it won’t be interesting to contribute, maybe?

Ooc, what would you label yourself? I posted mine if you want to see my experience as someone who jumps around the spectrum a bit

Pretty lifelike. Full color/sensory immersion, even to the point of feeling things like cold, heat, wind, hearing loud noises, smells etc. Sometimes, if ive been really sleep deprived, it can take me a solid few minutes to realize Im even awake and in the “real world”.

I’m a 5. Dreams are fine. As realistic as I want them to be.

They can be amazing or terrible. Fly, go through days in dreams, sex, get chased by a monster. Lucid dreams. I also have sleep paralysis, so it can get pretty fucked up. It’s like having another life. Best part is I should be too old to have nocturnal emissions. Worst part is you can be so scared you wake yourself up (and your partner) by screaming. Or, in a few instances, choking or hitting your partner in your sleep.

If you think of how an apple looks and you get a visual representation, depending on how detailed it is. If not, you’re a 5.

I think the “test” is to describe a scene, then ask details that weren’t explicitly described, but would be necessary to fill in the gaps. It requires honesty (nothing to prevent 5s from making up answers post-hoc or 1s just feigning ignorance.)

If he see something with one eye but not the other, is it real?

Describe the apple you see in your imagination. Color? Texture? Shadows? Environment? Can you draw your image?

There is some flexibility here; I tend to have different levels (1-4) based with numbers scaling to how awake I am. (More awake = less detail)

I think it’s the amount of detail when you picture it. Can you rotate it, cut it, maybe take bite out of it?

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Did you try to think of a real apple but got a not real picture of it? Can you change it into some different thing? Can you change it to a realistic picture if you want?

I’m closer to 3 or 4 on OP’s scale, and that may explain why I have never been able to wrap my head around OpenSCAD.

I’ve settled on FreeCAD. It is visual enough that I don’t have to strain my brain too hard to imagine what my project might look like.

I do 3D modeling and design and I am a hard #5. Can’t see a thing unless I’m dreaming. But when I think about a part or machine I’m designing I do have an awareness of it in my head, but it’s like it is related to my proprioception (the awareness of where your body parts are) instead my vision. I can imagine the surfaces of what I’m thinking about, and how those surfaces will interact as things move, but can’t see them whatsoever.

I didn’t know real visualization and aphantasia were things until I was well over a decade into this career, haha.

Hahaha same! I started asking every person I know about it because I was so curious. Like, that can’t be real, you can’t see stuff. But everyone I know seems to have some level of actual visualization except me. And I am an okay artist, just need references and a lot of trial & error when drawing.