I learned a few years ago that I have aphantasia, which is, to quote from Wikipedia: “characterized by an inability to voluntarily visualize mental imagery.” Before learning about this, I’d never believed people had actual visual mental images when they imagined things. Honestly, it’s still hard for me to imagine such a thing being possible. In June 2020, I was on Visakan Pillai’s podcast The Untypical Podcast to talk about what it’s like to have aphantasia. I rebroadcast this episode for my own podcast.
A transcript is below.
Here are episode links:
- Apple Podcasts (embedded below)
- Spotify
- YouTube
Here’s the link to Visakan’s original interview on Spotify. And here’s Pillai’s Twitter.
Topics we discuss and related resources:
- A well-known post about aphantasia by Blake Ross, which brought it to many people’s attention for first time.
- 2018 Scientific American article about aphantasia
- My Twitter poll asking people about their visual mental imagery. This and other conversations make me think that more people have aphantasia than the 1% or so often said to have it.
- 2015 NY Times piece about aphantasia.
- 2020 NY Times piece about aphantasia.
- 2015 BBC piece about aphantasia
- 2020 piece by fantasy author Mark Lawrence about his own aphantasia
- A book Aphantasia: Experiences, Perceptions, and Insights (while this had some interesting descriptions and observations, it’s mainly a compilation of people’s self-reports and self-reports on consciousness are so inherently ambiguous and flawed that it’s hard to reach much conclusions from them)
- Piece about how people born blind don’t develop schizophrenia. I haven’t seen anything written about it, but I would theorize that people on more aphantasiac side would be less likely to develop psychosis.
- Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained, which I recommend for understanding the human mind, and which I think helps explain why people over-estimate their visual imagery abilities (as they often over-estimate other mental capabilities).
TRANSCRIPT
[Note: transcripts will contain some errors.]
Zach: Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast. I’m your host Zachary Elwood.
Today I’ll be sharing an interview from June 2020 that I did with Visakan Pillai for his podcast, which is called The Untypical Podcast; it’s a podcast where he interviews people with unusual experiences or beliefs. Visakan interviewed me about my experiences with, and thoughts on, aphantasia.
If you’re not familiar with that term, aphantasia is a name given to the self-reported trait of not having mental imagery. Most people say that they can form fairly visual images in their minds.
People with aphantasia say that they don’t do that at all, or at most very slightly. In my case, for example, if you asked me to imagine a car, while there are things going on in my head that are spatial and conceptual and while I could come up with certain details about a specific type of car, I would never call that process visual, whereas many people report that their mental imagery is quite rich and image-like.
In the process of talking about this, Visakan and I talk about other things, including psychedelic drugs, the nature of memory and human thought, and more.
I thought Visakan’s questions were good and I thought this was a good conversation on this topic, so I wanted to give it more exposure. And the topic has a psychology and behavior tie-in so I thought it fit well with my own podcast focus.
Okay, here’s The Untypical Podcast episode about aphantasia.
Visakan: So, uh, I understand you have this condition called aphantasia. Yeah. Uh, guess I do. So can can you just run? I do. Can you just run me, can you just run me through what
Zach: it exactly means? Sure. Uh, my understanding, um, and I’ve read a good amount about it, is basically people that say they do not have a.
And inner, uh, mental imaging, um, a [00:02:00] visual processing when they imagine things. So in other words, a lot of people would claim that they can see things when they imagine things, see them pretty clearly in a, in a, a way that they would describe as visual. And people with AIA would say that they can’t relate to that at all.
Like there’s nothing visual about, you know, their thoughts or their, you know, their, their inner representations of, of, of things.
Visakan: So when you say that you’ve had no visual visuals in your mind and your mind’s eye is technically blind mm-hmm. How, how did you come to know that you had this condition?
Because you can’t know that you have something that you don’t know doesn’t exist. Right, right. Yeah.
Zach: And, and like a lot of people, um, I didn’t, I didn’t realize that other people were different than me until maybe. You know, I’m, I’m 42 now, so maybe like 10 years ago when I first read about, oh, uh, you know, people, you mean pe not everyone is completely, you know, non-visual.
And I, I, I was kind of, I still actually am skeptical. Like I, I find it hard to believe that anyone actually [00:03:00] could, I. Uh, have something that was visual that they would describe as visual when they imagine things. I, I still am, I, I, I just sort of like people that, you know, if people can visualize things, they probably find it equally hard to believe that I, that, that people can’t.
But I, it just was so far to me, and, you know, yeah. So it was something that I hadn’t realized later. And like a lot of people, there’s a lot of articles about people realizing like, oh, I had no idea that, you know, this basic thing was different for other people.
Visakan: I mean, yeah, that, that makes sense to me because, uh, I, I don’t have avania, so when you first told me that you don’t visualize things in your mind, that was kind of difficult for me to wrap my mind around.
Mm-hmm. So, uh, does it work like, uh, if I tell you to imagine yourself on a beach with like the sun and the water’s blue and there’s like a palm tree on the right, you’re not able to visualize that in your mind.
Zach: Not in a way I would describe it as visual. Like I think there’s, [00:04:00] the way I I would describe it, which I’ve seen it described as, and people have said it was a good analogy, is like you can, you know, just like a computer, you can imagine a computer imagining things without, without a display plugged in.
And so it’s more of like a, you know, a, uh, an internal wire frame. I mean, I can. I can get like a foggy idea. Like I can, I can kind of loosely say like, oh, if I was imagining, if I was looking at a picture, there might be something in this area. There might be something in this area, like, you know, in, in my mind’s eye or closing my eyes, but there’s nothing resembling visual, uh, a visual appearance.
It’s more like a vague sense of like, oh, there’d be something like this over here. There’d be something like this over here in this general spatial sense. But there’s nothing like a, an image. Yeah.
Visakan: But then it does. How
Zach: do you,
Visakan: uh, how, how do you recall memories then? Because if you can’t visualize memories, then, uh, how exactly do you, you know, just look back at times
Zach: and stuff?
Well, it’s, yeah, it’s, see, I, I would say, you know, [00:05:00] it’s, I would say it’s conceptual to me. There’s nothing visual about, you know, uh, imagine a computer like calling up something. It doesn’t, you know, it can call up many things. Um, you know, including complex 3D representations of things without, without it ever being visual.
So, um, you know, when I, I, I would say it’s, um. You there, there’s no limit really to, I mean, because, you know, advantage people can be very creative. They can have very good memory. It, it’s more about conceptual. Like if I, if I’m remembering something that happened to me, it’s more about concepts. Like, this happened, this happened.
I know that I can still remember like, oh, I remember like this was, this was green, or this was, you know, it, it looked this way in some conceptual sense, but none of those things are at the form of a visual representation, if that makes sense.
Visakan: Uh, you mentioned that, you know, this doesn’t affect creativity as such, uh, [00:06:00] but how, how would someone with Aphantasia or, you know, draw or like paint something from memory without having the subject like in front of them?
Zach: Well, it’s, it’s pretty simple because, I mean, I, I actually went to art school and I, and I, I would argue that, you know, there’s, there’s no limit on that because when I’m drawing, say I’m drawing something, it’s about. You still have a concept of what something looks like. You know, it doesn’t mean that you have no.
Memory or no concept of what things look like, you still have a spatial sense. You know? So if I’m drawing something from memory, uh, which I’m pretty good at by the way, I, I mean, I can draw things. I wouldn’t call them, they’re not like being someone from a visual representation, but I have a sense of where things belong and.
And, and part of, part of the human mind is, or mind in general, is you have a, you have a memory of how things looked, even if you can’t describe those things concretely. So for example, like even though I can’t summon a picture, I. Of my, you know, mother’s face in a visual way, I could still look at a picture and [00:07:00] say, that picture is wrong.
Right? Because be beneath the hood of your mind, you still have memories about what is correct and what’s not. Even if those things aren’t conscious to you. So when I’m drawing something, for example, I would be like, oh, well spatially, I know this thing’s over here. I intellectually know this thing’s over here.
I should draw this over here. And I know, and I know when I look at what I draw. I know it looks right or not right, because I have that under the hood knowledge of, of how things should look, even if I’m conscious of it or not. I, I can, I can, I can reality check and say that’s correct. That’s not correct.
Um, and actually, you know, it, it actually gets back to why I’m kind of skeptical that most people, I. Uh, can visualize as well as they claim to be able to visualize mentally, because I, I think if you, you know, if, if, if you took people who said that they were good visualizers, uh, I would, I would, I would, uh, expect if you sat them down and told them to draw things from their visual memory, they wouldn’t be that good at it compared to, you know, looking at an actual picture of it.
And I think that’s because [00:08:00] people’s. Claims of being able to visualize things just aren’t as good as they think they are. I think, I think some of it’s an illusion, you know, but we can get into that later if you want.
Visakan: I mean, sure. Yeah. But, uh, how, how accurate would you say that your drawings are? Like, uh, if I asked you to draw an elephant from memory, I.
Would it be a very, would you, would you be able to go into the details or would it be more of like a, like an outline?
Zach: I mean, I don’t think there’s any limits on people with advasia. My personal ability is, I’m, I’m probably better than average because I went to art school and I, you know, like I said, it’s, it’s less about the, it’s less about the visual, uh, memory of the thing that it is about like, well, I know that.
I, I know that an elephant has these traits and I’ll start drawing them. And when I get them out on paper, when I start looking at it, I will be able to fact check and be like, well, that doesn’t adhere to, you know, my, my memory of how it should look. Even if I can’t visualize it. It’s more like, well, now that I see it, I can adjust it.
And, uh, and also just, yeah, so being able to [00:09:00] fact check is a big part of that. Um, but yeah, I think I, I mean, def to. To your point about creativity though, I, I definitely think people with Aphantasia would be much less likely to get involved in, in visual art forms because for me it’s just is not something I’m that interested in.
I, I’m more interested in concepts and, and, uh, traits of things and, and more intellectual things like I’ve, I, I, even though I went to art school, it, it was mainly because of video and film. Like I, I, I doubt that there would be many people with aphantasia who would want to get into like the, um. You know, drawing and painting, those people are probably, you know, almost certainly gonna tend to be people who rate, rate themselves as high visualizers.
Like I’ve talked to some artists who, who claim that their visual representations were like a hundred percent, so they claimed, they were like, oh, I think it’s even maybe better than a hundred percent. They claimed. And, and that to me is just kind of, you know, kind of mind blowing like that they, that they would claim that because it’s just so foreign to, you know, my internally blank world, you know?
Visakan: [00:10:00] Mm-hmm.
Zach: Oh,
Visakan: so, so you went to art school for, for video and film, right? Mm-hmm. So, uh, I mean, you correct me if I’m wrong. So, uh, suppose you need to draw a storyboard or you need to visualize a scene that you’re going to direct. Mm-hmm. Uh, for, for, for, for a movie or like a, or, or anything for that matter. Uh, what is your process like?
Do you, would you say that your process differs from, uh, you know, directors or movie makers who do not suffer from appia? Or would you say it’s about the same?
Zach: I would think functionally, I, I don’t think there’s that much difference when it comes to those kind of things just because, you know, for the reasons I mentioned, like, I just think there’s, there’s, there’s not many limitations when it comes to actually just drawing stuff.
And, and you can be a very good draw. Like I’m a pretty good storyboarder just because I understand the concepts of, you know, a a a, a film screen is, you know, this ratio and I know. I know intellectually what has to go in each quadrant to make a, to set up a good scene and things like that. I don’t [00:11:00] think there’s any limits in that regard because it’s, and a lot of those things are just a more intellectual knowledge where it’s like, oh, I, you know, I still understand the concept of concepts of space, the spatial representations where they have to go in the, in the, in the, uh, quadrant of, of the, of the scene.
You know, things like that. Uh, so I, I would say, yeah, I don’t think there’s much different though, you know, you could make the argument. It’s probably, you know, if you, if you pulled, uh. You know, uh, video film directors or, uh, you know, directors specifically, you probably would find that they, they are more, uh, visual, uh, thinkers.
Yeah. And probably less likely to have aia. I would, I would expect, I mean, it might be the reason I’m no longer, you know, I, I barely was in the video film industry. It just wasn’t, it turned out to be, not to be something I was that interested in.
Visakan: So what, what kind of movies would you, would you direct or would you be interested in?
Zach: Oh, I, I, I never really got that, you know, far into it. I worked on, I worked on some, um, you know, when I was young in, in college and outta college, I worked on some like local commercial, uh, [00:12:00] online commercial kind of stuff. And then I worked on some, you know, production assistant type of stuff and video in some films.
But I haven’t done much in that area. Uh, but I, I, I do think, like, I do think there’s probably a good amount of. Visually creative people that have ectasia. I haven’t looked into that. That would be an interesting poll though. But I think it’s more common that people think, I think, you know, I, I think when you get down to it functionally, I.
Um, I think there’s the, you know, both people with advantage and people nod, and everybody on the spectrum finds it hard, uh, to imagine somebody, uh, somebody reporting such a different, uh, way of being. But I think when you get down to it functionally, you know, we all still have to, we’re all still spatial beings.
We all intellectually, whether we visualize it or not, we all intellectually have to understand, uh, space and where things go in space, whether you have a visual representation of it or not.
Visakan: Well, I mean, yeah, naturally. Uh mm-hmm. So, I mean, it, it works the same with people who, uh, have eyesight and then lose their sight through.
It’s not like they can’t visualize things anymore. Right. They still know where things [00:13:00] are.
Zach: Right. And I think the, and I think those people, yeah, and I think those people, like if you, if you had, say you had sight and you, uh, were, you know, rated yourself as a high visualizer of mental images and then you lost your eyesight, I would imagine you’d still be able to.
You know, still visualize mentally images, even if you couldn’t visually actually see. Yeah, I would think. Yeah.
Visakan: So, uh, would, would you say it works to see what happened to Asia? Is it possible for you to develop it over time? Or is it something you’re always born with?
Zach: Well, I, you know, I’ve actually worked on trying to visualize things more like I’ve sat, you know, including when I’ve done some psychedelic drugs, I’ve actually sat and tried to.
Uh, have more visual, you know, experiences, uh, you know, including like in a meditative way, um, just, you know, without drugs too, obviously. But, uh, I’ve tried that and I, and I, I haven’t had any success. I mean, maybe in the slightest way, like, you know, uh, very, very, [00:14:00] very fleeting things. But, um, I, I, I would say it’s, I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I, it seems like it’s something that’s very, you know, it, it’s either there or it’s not.
And, and it’s hard to imagine it changing much for me. Uh, you, you said you, you’ve
Visakan: experimented with psychedelic drugs, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, so, so like with psychedelic drugs, like LSD or mushrooms or anything, or people usually see visuals, right? They, they see things. Mm-hmm. So what exactly did you experience when you were, uh, you know, uh, for lack of a better term, drip, right?
Zach: Uh, yeah. I would say it’s, uh, you could, I definitely have had amazing, you know. Experiences on drugs, including, um, ketamine, which was probably the most, you know, one of the most amazing experiences. But, um, and I would say on. LSD and mushrooms, the, the, uh, for those, the visual experience, I, I definitely had strong visual experiences, but they were, when I was looking at things in my, you know, in, in the real world, like, so I was [00:15:00] looking at a scene and things would change when it comes to actually like closing my eyes and, and visualizing there wasn’t anything, uh, visual there, but it was very conceptually, experientially, uh, you know.
Um, different and powerful. Uh, so for example, on ketamine, you know, I would have these, uh, I’d be laying there with my eyes closed and have these amazing experiential feelings and dots and, you know, while there was some kind of slight visual aspect to it, it was almost like more like a. Uh, imagining those things than it was seeing them.
You know, it was like I was imagining a, a, a scene from long ago, but it was very conceptual, just like it is in, I’d imagine in my own dreams and maybe in a lot of people’s dreams were afterwards. You can talk about those things as if you experienced them, but in the moment, uh, how much of it was visual?
In my case, I don’t think it was, it wasn’t visual. It was, it was more like. The feeling, the, the [00:16:00] concepts, you know, sort of like a, a computer dreaming or something. There’s, there’s nothing, you know, there’s nothing necessarily, uh, visual about it. But all of those things happened, you know.
Visakan: So, I mean, uh, I had this question when you first told me that you had advasia as well, was that, uh, and I, we discussed this briefly, is that there, there’s a difference between visualizing and imagining, right?
Or, or Right, right. When, when people say that, oh, I can see this in my mind, they’re not technically seeing it. They’re just imagining it.
Zach: Yeah, I think that is a good, that, that is a good line of draw. And I think a lot of people, even with on the more advantageous spectrum, ’cause I do believe it’s a spectrum.
I think people would, would, could still use that, you know, uh, that, that expression, you know, and, and, and a lot of people will report, you know, who have, are on the more advantageous side. They, they’ll, they’ll say like, oh, I always thought when people said, I can see it, I can see it in my mind, or I can see it in my mind’s eye that.
That was a figure of expression and not something that they were actually experiencing. And that was what I always thought too. I always [00:17:00] just assumed people were, you know, using a figure of speech of like, oh, I’m getting a sense of it. In my mind it’s conceptual and not like I actually see it.
Visakan: But then, uh, how would you say that your, that your dreams work?
’cause dreams are like, you know, essentially imaginations, right? So how would you say that your dreams work? What, what exactly do you see when you dream?
Zach: Yeah, I mean, I, I think that’s, that, that’s a very hard question to answer because I would claim that even I, I, in my opinion, I think many people’s dreams are not what they seem, because I think there’s plenty of writing and, and research on this too.
To back some of this up too. It’s, I think what we report about our dreams, uh, often is reported as it being visual or something that we visually experience. But I think what actually happens in our dreams is something like it’s triggering concepts, triggering thoughts, triggering words, uh, triggering, you know, like cliched storylines.
And we re, we can report that as visual after. Even if [00:18:00] those things may not have had any visual characteristic during the dream. And you know, for an example of this, just something that happened the other night. I was, I had a dream that was, you know, very vivid as, as dreams can be. And you know, it’s kind of like memory.
It’s like, did. The, the way it’s stored in my brain, uh, you know, the way it ends up in my brain is not necessarily how it was ingested, right? So it could have gone straight to thought and memory form without ever going through a visual, uh, a visual intermediary, in other words. Uh, so even though I had this, you know, for this dream I had the other night.
It was very visceral and, and affecting. And, but when I thought about it, I couldn’t remember anything visual about it. It was like I just had this sense of me driving, you know, in this example I was driving up a cliff face, almost like a vertical cliff face in a car. And I, you know, thinking about it, the concepts were all there.
Uh, but visually, you know, was I inside the car? Was I outside the car? I don’t have a sense of that. So for me anyway, and I think for a lot of people. These things are more [00:19:00] conceptual. It’s like we have an idea, like I’m driving up a cliff face in a car, and that that can be a very affecting, uh, reality for us in the dream.
Uh, but did we, did we actually experience, experience that thing visually or not? I, I don’t know. I think for me, just because of how I experience day to day, and, you know, I don’t think that necessarily has a visual component even in my dreams.
Visakan: So you mentioned that, uh, AIA is a spectrum, right? So, uh, so, so if it were on a spectrum, then there are, there would be people who visualize all, like, are highly like, you know, dependent on their visuals versus people who have no visuals and in the middle there would be a gray area.
Right. How would you, how would you describe that gray area?
Zach: Yeah, I would think, I mean. I think these things, for obvious reasons are, are really hard to quantify and, uh, to, to get objective information about. But I think, you know, for one example, like on Twitter I did a poll that said it got [00:20:00] 150 or so responses and, you know, um, 14%, 15% of the people when asked if they could visualize well said, no images, just abstract.
That was 15%. Which is much higher than, you know, typically when you read about ectasia, uh, they write it like, oh, only like one or two or 3% or something, or whatever they say is in that ectasia spectrum. Uh, or, or, or on that side. But I mean, I think the results of this poll I did like, and I’ve seen other, you know, I’ve talked to many people who seem on that more in the intermediate spectrum area, you know, so in this poll, 15% of the people said, no images, just abstract.
That’s pretty high. Then another 25% said sort of imagery, which was my intermediate intermediary, uh, result. So that was 25% and then 50% said, can see strong visuals. Um, then there was another 10% that didn’t respond. That’s why it doesn’t have to a hundred. But, um, so I think, you know, that gives you a sense of like.
Trying to get a sense of these self reports of how [00:21:00] much of it is visual. I, I, I, I do think like, probably like all a human experience, uh, a lot of human experience. It’s, it’s in the spectrum of like, it can be, it can be more towards one side, more towards another. And I think probably most people fall somewhere in the middle where if you had to actually, you know, I, I think you can have an illusion of something being kind of visual or, or, or a sense of being kind of visual.
Uh. And, and still it not being actually visual. Like if that, if you ask that person to actually draw that scene, they’d be like, they would start, you know, they would fill in the details as they went maybe. And then, and then kind of may maybe not even be sure if they saw those things in their visual or not, because they’re just focusing on one part of the, of the idea at the time.
At a time. But I just think there’s these intermediate intermediary areas and the, and it’s, uh, to call it ectasia or not is, is kind of a misleading thing to me. I, I, and I think, uh. I would, I haven’t looked a lot into the recent research about it, but I, I, I, I, I would be pretty confident that would be the case if [00:22:00] they, if they researched it more.
Visakan: So would you say that some people also, you know, that their mind’s eye visualizes things, but not completely like the, the colors would be distorted or, or it would be fuzzy or, or something like that. Would that also qualify as aphantasia or would that fall on the spectrum?
Zach: Yeah, I, I, you know, I, I, considering, I think it’s a spectrum, I think, um, I just to call something advantageous or not, I, I, I think of it as more of a, a spectrum and I think, uh, yeah, I do, I do think people’s, you know, I think it’s like a lot like life experience in a way, because I.
You know, our experience of the world seems complete and seems seamless, but when you get down to it, it’s really not because our minds are doing a lot of like, smoothing over of things. You know, uh, that’s part of what the, the job our minds do is, is, is smoothing over experience and, and making it seem seamless.
Because otherwise the world would be a very. Jerky, [00:23:00] you know, um, random seeming place. Like, we’re just, we’re not aware of a lot of the things that go on beneath the surface in terms of processing and stuff. Um, so yeah. I, I, I just think, um, yeah. Lost my train of thought there at the beginning. What was your question again?
No, no. It’s all right. We can, we can, we can just move on.
Visakan: Uh, what, what would you say, uh, is, is the scientific reason behind. Or this condition. ’cause there has to be something, you know, I wouldn’t say wrong, but different. So, uh, what I don’t, I don’t, I’m not sure if you’ve, if you know this, but, uh, what, what would be the scientific reason behind this?
Zach: Well, I mean, yeah, I, I, I think it’s not well understood, but I think, um. It’s, you know, because it is so hard to object objectively, uh, quantify. But I think, um, to me it, to me it’s just a difference in terms of like what is exposed to the conscious mind, because I think. I think a lot of this stuff [00:24:00] is actually the same.
Um, when you get down to it, like, I think it’s just a dividing line between the conscious mind and between the unconscious mind. And this, you know, this explains why functionally there’s not much difference between people and that’s why people can go, you know, basically their whole lives and never realize that they are so theoretically different than other people.
Uh, but I, I, I think it’s more of a, in, in terms of like, you know. People with Aphantasia that we would call ha, having advasia still have the ability to do these same things that we’ve talked about, right? They have the concepts, they have the spatial awareness in their brains. They have the ability to fact check if things are right or not, based on their unconscious memory of how things should look.
So. It’s just a, if we’re talking about it’s, it just seems to be a matter of what’s exposed to the conscious v, you know, more visual side of the mind. So a person, you know, uh, without advantage who was able to. Who, who, who says they see things [00:25:00] more. Uh, it may just be, you know, this dividing line in the mind where it’s like, oh, the mind is exposing a little bit more of that information to their conscious mind.
Whereas like, that stuff may be just more conceptual on beneath the surface for, um, people on the more advantageous side, if that makes sense. It does. But uh,
Visakan: from, from what you’ve told me thus far. It it, does this ever get frustrating for you, especially after you found out that you do have this condition or did, does it get frustrating for you to, to think that, you know, to try and visualize but not be able to?
Zach: No, I mean, you know, just ’cause it’s, it’s so much about, you know, what you’re used to. It, it, it’s so hard for me to even comprehend what that would be like, that I just, I would never, I, I can’t co, I can’t relate to, you know, feeling a sense of loss or something like that. To me, it just seems, I, I mean, I honestly can’t imagine, uh, it would seem to me to be so.
[00:26:00] Distracting and scary actually, to be able to visualize things in a way that I would, you know, in, in a sense that was visual. I, I just can’t imagine it. And I’ve often wondered if, you know, people that are, um, I. If, you know, if, if they could research this, uh, there’s probably all sorts of angles you could take.
But one thing that struck me was like, I wonder if people who can visualize visual, visualize things more, uh, are more prone to, uh, schizophrenia like symptoms, for example, like the fact that they, uh, do have these, uh, very, you know, more visceral visual experiences, does that make them more prone to, to maybe mental disturbances, whereas.
Maybe people on the more advantageous side are more protected, which might play into ideas of, you know, they’ve done research showing that blind people are, are very unlikely to, uh. Uh, people born blind are, are very unlikely to experience schizophrenia symptoms. And maybe there’s some, you know, tie in there to the more visual activations being tied to more like [00:27:00] delusions and, and, and, um, auditory hallucination, uh, auditory visual hallucinations, things like that.
So I think there’s, uh, yeah, but getting back to your questions, it’s just really hard for me to, uh, to even comprehend that experience. And so I don’t feel like I’m missing out.
Visakan: So you’ve had this, uh, you’ve had aphantasia your entire life, right? Uh, yeah. I mean, you, you just discovered that you had it at like 32, but you’ve had it your entire life.
Yeah. Uh, so are there any distinct moments, uh, from your childhood where you feel like, oh, yeah. That, that was aphantasia, but at the time I just didn’t know it. I just assumed that like there was something wrong.
Zach: Yeah, I, I do have a funny story around that because I think, uh, there’s, there’s lots of these stories online.
There, there’s actually a book about AIA you can get by someone who, you know, it’s kind of a, kind of an informal book. It’s more of a, just a collection of people’s stories and, and talking to people with it. But one, one story I had, um, you know, which is off repeated when people talk about this, is when I, when I was, when I was younger, I remember [00:28:00] one, one time.
I went to see Lord of the Rings, uh, movie with my parents and my dad, you know, loved those books when he was a kid. And after the movie, uh, got out, he said something like, uh, you know, that’s amazing. You know, it really corresponded to the images I had in my head about that story. Like everything just really matched up and I just, you know.
I, I, I, I always think that stuff, you know, I always thought that stuff was like a figure of speech. It was like, you know, because I could theoretically say something similar in the, in the sense of like, well, I read a book and when I watched the movie, it didn’t, it didn’t like go against my concepts that I had about these characters, but I.
In his sense, when he said it, he was actually talking about actual visualizations of, of characters and scenes, whereas like, that would never have occurred to me. I always thought when people read books, they were like me and just had these concepts and, you know, uh, that’s why, you know, this is a common report too for people with advantage.
They can’t relate to all these descriptive, uh, scenes and books, you know, that [00:29:00] describe, uh, you know, how things look, how, how a scene looks, how a person looks. I mean, I always just. I, I, you know, unless I really like the writer, I would just skip over that stuff because I just thought it was kind of like flowery, you know, uh, or, you know, fancy stuff to seem kind of pretentious, whereas like other people really get something from that, they can actually visualize the scene.
And I just, I can’t relate to that. Like, I can, I can read it from an intellectual sense, and, but it, to me it’s like, that doesn’t do anything for me because it’s just like, oh. There’s a tree there, there’s a, there’s a, the, the, you know, in a sense it can, it can be, it can set a scene in the sense of like, oh, there was a dark sky, which is like, does set a mood even if you don’t visualize it.
But a lot of those visual aspects are just lost to me, like in terms of why are they telling me this? It doesn’t do anything for me.
Visakan: So, so when you read a book, you, so you don’t visualize anything in your mind. It’s more of just concepts that that occur. Yeah, exactly. It’s like,
Zach: and. You can still have a very, uh, yeah, and you can still have a very, you know, uh, I, I, I love books and I, and I love, and I [00:30:00] love fiction.
Um, less so now, I used to love fiction more, but I, I, I don’t think anything’s lost because, you know, kind of like getting back to the. The visceral experience of having a hallucination, uh, hallucinatory, uh, experience on drugs. It’s, it can still be a very visceral, affecting experience, even if it’s, it’s kinda like having a memory of something lived.
You don’t necessarily have to have all the visuals. It’s like you, you just have a sense all those things occurred.
Visakan: So, I mean, this is just a question off the top of my head. Uh, I suppose, for example, you read a book that’s, that’s fictional and the, the book gets converted into a movie someday, and you go and watch the movie.
Would you say that the movie, the scenes that ar occur in the movie, would more or less line up with your concepts of what happened in the book? Or is that completely different?
Zach: Yeah, I’d say it’s more that I just don’t have an expectation and I, I would say the thing I don’t like about it watching movies, uh, about books that I really like is that the, you know, it goes from being this amorphous.
A conceptual thing in my [00:31:00] head to being something very specific. And then those very specific things kind of supplant take the place of the amorphous thing, which was better to me in my head as a, as a theoretical story. That’s what I don’t, I don’t actually like, uh, a lot of times I don’t actually like watching.
Movies of books that I really like because it kind of takes over the story in my mind and not, not even in a visual way, uh, just in a, you know, a story wise way. But, um, yeah, but to, to your question, I don’t know. I, I don’t really have like concepts other than like, very loose. I, I don’t have visuals of the, of the characters, for example, other than a very loose way.
It’s not like I plug in a specific face or even like, um, you know, a specific visual. Um. Body type or hair color or anything for c characters, even characters that I, you know, really, really like a lot in fiction I’ve read. It’s more like I just have, uh, the concept of like, that person is this way that, you know, I, I, the visual aspect, it never really needs to be activated [00:32:00] for me to enjoy it because I’m just like, oh, I know this character.
I know about them, what they’re like, and they’re over here in my mind, you know, uh, they’re talking to someone. None of that stuff has to be visual for me.
Visakan: It’s interesting that you say that, that like, none of it has to be visual for you because, uh, you know, when, when we’re in school and stuff and you’re, you’re, you’re reading up a material for an exam, for example, and, uh, you know, you’re, you’re just mugging it up at this point and you’re just trying to, you know, commit it to memory.
And the next day, uh, at least this works for me. When I go to school the next day and I’m writing the, the exam, I can imagine like certain sections of my textbook and like literally copy it off my mind. So would you say, how would you say you wrote exams if, you know, you couldn’t imagine like pages. ’cause for me at least, I can’t imagine someone writing an exam without doing that, so, huh?
Yeah. Well that
Zach: must, that’s an interesting question because I, yeah, I can’t relate to that at all. I think it’s, for me, it’s more just about, you [00:33:00] know, memorizing, um, ideas and, and yeah, I’d say, I’d say rarely. I’m trying to remember. I. Studying something or looking at an actual book. I mean, I think there could be, I think there’s, there still can be concepts of like, oh, this stuff was on the same page.
It was located near each other. But yeah, again, it’s, it’s that spatial sense to me. It, it isn’t, uh, that wouldn’t be visual in any way. But I, I still think there’s, there can be things that jog your memory, for example. Like there, there can be things like, oh, uh, I, I know that stuff was located in the same place and that can, you know, jog a memory of like, oh, a kind of a spatial related memory of like, oh, these things were, were nearby it.
But yeah, I, I, I wouldn’t describe it as, as, as, uh, as visual, but that it’s an inter, there’s so many interesting ways to study this stuff. ’cause you could. You know, you could ask people like, uh, who, who describe themselves as highly visual, mental [00:34:00] imagineers, like how they, how they grade on tests in their life and ’cause I would imagine Yeah, like for people that, you know, the, ’cause then you have the people that claim they have photographic memories too, which I, right.
Visakan: Yeah. Yeah. This, that, that would be the complete opposite of aia. Right,
Zach: right. And I’m also, you know. I am pro. I’m a bit skeptical of that stuff too, too, just from like a bandwidth, uh, perspective. It’s like, how would you know? And I, and I recognize that these people. It must exist, but I haven’t delved into it much.
It just seems like that must be a, they couldn’t be always doing that. ’cause that would just be such a high amount of bandwidth, right? Mm-hmm. So it must be just when they really focus on it or something. I’m not really sure. I don’t know much about that.
Visakan: Uh, no. I, I actually happen to know someone who has photographic memory.
Mm-hmm. So, uh, like for example, this, it was a crazy experience that like I went through once where, uh, so I was walking into like my classroom. And, uh, he was walking right behind me. And I of course, like I, if I want to go and like, participate in class, I need to do my reading like a day before and [00:35:00] like, like keep reading it for it to like actually commit to my memory.
Literally five minutes before we walked into class, he opened his phone, he opened up the reading and he went through it in like five minutes and he came in and it was just all committed to his memory. Like he could read it from his mind. Mm-hmm. And that was quite fascinating to me. ’cause you know. That wouldn’t that technically, it’s, it’s unfair, right?
Because when you think about it, it’s just unfair when it comes down to it. Yeah, it does seem, yeah. Because I mean, I would technically classify that as cheating also, if it comes to like testing and stuff.
Zach: Yeah. I mean, and I would, I would say I, I, I could, I would think that there’s people with advantage that could do the same thing.
I think it, I think it is more just a sheer. You know, mental capacity thing. And I, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you found people that had, could perform that same function, but yet would describe themselves as, you know, having appia and not having a visual image. Because I think it’s, you know, in some sense it’s just about, you know, you, you could imagine doing the [00:36:00] same thing with, with a purely like brain power conceptual model and not like, I’m actually seeing this in my mind.
Right. But I, I, I don’t know, I’m just speculating. So,
Visakan: uh, so for example, I’m, I’m sorry, I’m asking you, I’m telling you so many examples, but like, uh, if you had to do math in your head, uh, how exactly would you do math in your head? Because for me, when I do math in my head, I, I literally visualize numbers adding up or like dividing.
So how, how does math work
Zach: in your mind? That’s a, that’s a pretty hard question. I mean, I think I’m, I’m pretty good at math and I mean, I don’t know, it just feels like a, a computer doing the work. It’s like. The, the, the numbers, the, the things pop into your head and it’s almost like thought in general.
It’s like, how much control do we really have about this stuff? There just seems to be like a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes and for me it’s, it’s definitely not visual, but I still can do some pretty complex math in my head and I think it just gets [00:37:00] down to the nature of how much of do is hard to describe.
You know, I, I, I wouldn’t know how to describe that, but I’ll, I’ll think about that in future. Um. Yeah. Oh.
Visakan: Are there any like, uh, studies going on for the treatment of Advasia? Is it something that like scientists are actively working on curing, or is this something that’s just not curable?
Zach: Um, yeah, I mean, I, I don’t think it’s curable in the sense that, I think it’s just a fundamental aspect of a lot of people, like more people than they estimate have it, I think are on, that are on that spectrum.
Um. I should clarify too. I think, you know, I think there might be, you know, I sometimes feel like people are talking at different angles because, you know, like if you told me to visualize the number two, I have a sense of something like the number two in my head. It’s not visual, but it’s like, it’s a sense of, you know, a sense of something sort of like.
You [00:38:00] know, you can, I, I would be able to recognize it if I saw it in real life, and I have a sense of in my mind. So there is like, and I think that some people might categorize those kinds of things as visual. Again, I think all that stuff’s on a spectrum, but I kind of wonder how many people, to me that thing is clearly not visual in any sense.
It’s a very abstract thing that’s just floating in my head, but. I kind of wonder if Symbio would describe that as visual, but to me it’s not visual because it has no visual characteristics, uh, other than the sense like I could, you know, I have a sense of it enough to be able to recognize it in real life if I saw it.
Um, so I think that, you know, these things are all very hard to describe, so I kind of wonder if a lot of the, I do wonder if a lot of the stuff comes down to. Uh, just people talking about it differently. But then again, I, I, I, I can’t relate at all to people say that, say they can, it’s a, it’s a visual experience, so there definitely is something going on [00:39:00] there.
You know, something extremely different going on there. Uh, but it’s, I, I do feel like some of this stuff is just really hard to. To talk about because I think, you know, when somebody like you might imagine like, well, yeah, this person has absolutely nothing going on. You know, like in any, in any sort of like spatial way in their brain where that’s not the case.
It’s, but it’s, it’s just so hard to, uh, talk about these things, I think, and I think that gets, that gets in the way too.
Visakan: I mean, Advasia is something I recently learned about. Uh, I, I mean, as far as I know, there’s not much representation for it. You know, in pop culture, any, anything like that, that really gets the word out to the masses.
Mm-hmm. So, I mean, w would, would you agree with that or am I missing out on something?
Zach: No, I think you’re right. There is some, there’s some researchers doing some work on it. Like I, I followed some people on Twitter who were some, you know, looked like some legitimate researchers doing some work. Then I’ve talked to some other, you know, psych, uh, neuroscience researchers [00:40:00] who say like, well, I.
How would you ever get to the bottom of this? Because at the end of the day, you know, you’re talking about self-reporting, uh, for people that largely do functionally the same things. So, you know, how would you ever differentiate these things? And at the end of the day, like how can you, you know, what one person describes as, um.
Visual might not be what another person describes as visual in their mind. And maybe a lot of it’s just speaking about it in different terms or something, you know? So I think there’s, you know, but at the end of the day, I do think there’s something, you know, dramatically different going on for, for people just.
You know, due to, I mean, like, there’s no way we can get around the fact that like, I can’t, I can’t, uh, relate at all to people that claim that experience is visual. And then you have people saying like, oh, it’s just as good as visual for me. You know, like there’s something obviously going on there, but as, as to like how many I.
You know, I feel like there’s a good amount of people that might fall towards the middle of the spectrum who, who might be like, oh, this is visual for me. Uh, whereas this, you know, that same experience [00:41:00] might be, other people might be like, oh, that’s, that’s not really visual for me. I wouldn’t describe that as visual.
So I feel like, you know, a lot of it gets down to this, this problems of language and, and, and, and the ephemeral, you know? Mm-hmm. Illusory nation, uh, na uh, nature of thought. It’s just so hard to describe what our brains do because so much of it happens underneath the surface and. You know, we can have the illusion of, of things being complete.
Like when I look at the world, it seems complete to me, but it’s only because I know that if I look somewhere else, I can see another aspect of it. What I’m actually absorbing might be a ti the tiniest fraction of what’s there. You know? And so it gives this sense of like, I have this complete worldview.
And I think something similar happens in our brains where it’s like, oh, I have the, I have a concept of it and it, and it, and it seems kind of visual to me, and I have the sense that if I focus on other part of it, that part is there too. But is that, is that visual? You know, is it not? I, I think those things can be hard to, hard to define.
Visakan: Yeah, I agree with you. ’cause you, you, you told me previously also that like, uh, when you actually examine [00:42:00] what people are capable of and like drill down into what details they actually have. Or you don’t think they’re actually seeing images as much as they believe they are? Yeah, I, I’m
Zach: skeptical because I think I, I would bet if you, if you gave me some people that said that they, their, their experiences, their mental experiences qualify as visual.
If you sat them down and told them to draw something and then told them later to draw the same thing with it actually in front of them, you know, draw it from memory versus draw it with them in front of them, I, I would, I would imagine, I would bet a lot of money that they’re. Their drawings from the actual thing would be much, much better.
And so they, you would run into the problem of like, them saying and, and making excuses for it. Like, well, I’m not just that, I’m just not that good at draw, you know, I’m not that good at illustrating. And, you know, oh, it got a little fuzzy as I tr uh, I tried to imagine it, but I, I think a lot of these things come down to like, maybe that is that experience that they’re describing as visual is just not as, it, it’s an, it’s more of an illusion that they think it is.
And, and I think that applies to a lot of our. Our, our human experiences, [00:43:00] our, our conscious experiences where these things are not as complete as we think they are. We have this, we have the, uh, you know, illusion that these things are complete, but when you drill down to it, if you actually did studies, I mean, like, why, why are, why isn’t everybody a great draw?
Because I, I would think if everybody had this amazing ability to visualize these things, why isn’t everybody a great artist? Because I would think. I, I, that’s all I require really. I mean, I have, I have a very bad visual imagination, but if you put something in front of me, I can, I can do a pretty good job with it, you know?
And so why can’t everybody do that if they claim that their experiences are actually visual? You know? So when you’re
Visakan: imagining people in your mind, do you just ex, do you just, uh, you know, think of personality cues, or are you thinking of like faces and like physical, uh, images of their body?
Zach: It’s more, yeah, I’d say it’s conceptual.
It’s like. It’s, it’s a sense of them and it, it’s kind of like, you know, even though I can’t, uh, I can’t imagine my mom’s face in a visual sense, for example, I could, I still know intellectually [00:44:00] that she has certain traits I. And I can get a sense of like those traits if I focused on them one at a time.
Like if I brought the, tried to, you know, imagine them, I can get a sense of them. And I can also know if somebody showed me a picture of, you know, my mom’s face that had been altered, I could easily recognize it because unconsciously I have all that stuff stored. I can, I can fact check against my unconscious memory of my mom’s face.
And so, you know, all of those thing things, uh, if I, yeah, I, I can’t bring my mom’s face up or anyone on my wife’s face, but. I can still recognize them very easily because all that stuff’s stored under the, under the surface. And if, and I just have a concept of them, right. I have, if I think of them, I think of all the things that I know about them, all the feelings I have about them, um, none of it becomes visual.
Yeah.
Visakan: Uh, but then would, would you say AIA would be considered to be a, a medical condition? Is it like a disability of sorts? Or is it something I would, I would
Zach: never, I would never classify it as that. I mean, just, you know, from a [00:45:00] functional perspective, um, so many people can go their whole lives and not realize that they’re different from other people.
And, you know, I would, I would also say, like me, there’s probably a lot of people that are, that are like, oh, I wouldn’t even, you know, want that. I don’t see how it would help my life to be able to do that. And maybe it’s even a little intimidating because it’s something so. Outlandish from your normal experience.
So yeah, I I, I would definitely never categorize it as a, as anything like that. Yeah. I think it’s just gets into that realm of things of like our, our minds can work different ways to achieve the same outcome. Um, and how much of it is, you know, how much of it is, is above the, the surface of consciousness and exposed to our mind versus how much of his unconscious, that kind of thing.
Visakan: So you mentioned that, uh, you, you went to art school, right? And, but then you didn’t really, like, uh, you didn’t pursue it further, but now, now you play poker, right?
Zach: Well, I haven’t, I don’t play that much anymore. But yeah, for a while I was a professional poker player and I wrote some poker books.
Visakan: [00:46:00] So, so how would you classify, uh, did, did afa, did AIA play any role in how you play poker?
Because I mean, uh, you, you probably can’t count cards, but like, uh, how exactly did, did AIA play a role in playing poker?
Zach: I would say there probably is a, is something there, because I do have a, you know, I often would have a hard time remembering the suits of cards, you know, like my suits. That’s exactly what I, yeah, that’s what I.
No, it’s a good, yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, and, you know, and, and whether that’s due to AIA or maybe just a, a, a short-term memory problem on my part. ’cause I, I can definitely imagine being, you know, being like me having AIA and still having a great memory, a great short-term memory. But, um, you know, it could be, could be a factor.
I just, I can easily, you know, I easily, I can remember the numbers and the, and the ranks. You know, the queen, the king. ’cause those are like more conceptual versus, like the suits are more visual maybe and, and less conceptual. So they’re hard to remember. So would you
Visakan: say that you faced, uh, you know, any difficulties in your adult [00:47:00] life that others around you generally do not experience, like people who don’t have aia?
Zach: Um, it’s, yeah, it’s debatable and I, I think there’s a lot to talk about there. ’cause I could think of like. Theoretical things people might call weaknesses. Like in terms of like not being that interested in, in scenery or not being that interested in, in descriptive passages and books and things like that.
But I think there’s other, you know, then you could discuss the strengths too. ’cause I think, you know, I. I, I think it, it leads to some, uh, being more conceptually, uh, oriented and being more interested in ideas and less interested in visuals. So maybe there’s, you know, some strengths there, but, you know, I think all that stuff’s debatable.
I think it’s probably just comes down to just being a, a, a different way of being. Uh, so,
Visakan: um, I mean, if you had to summarize AIA as a condition, how, how would you do it?
Zach: Yeah, it’s, it’s a tough one ’cause I think lots of people more educated than me on the subject would, would [00:48:00] struggle with it. But I, you know, I would just say, um, it’s, it’s a self-reporting that you do not experience, um, that your mental experiences are, don’t have a visual nature.
Whereas a lot of people would report that their mental experiences do have a visual nature.
Visakan: Alright, thank you so much and uh,
Zach: have a good day. Thanks Visakan.
Zach: I had a few more thoughts on this after talking to Visakan that I wanted to share.
Regarding Visakan’s question about doing mental math or imagining numbers: thinking about it later, I realized that when I imagine numbers or letters or simple characters like that, there is a very slight visual quality to them, but more strongly there’s a tactile quality. It’s almost like my trying to imagine a number or letter seems related to a childhood process of me writing the symbol out with my hand. So if you were to tell me to visualize the number 3, for example, I can actually feel some muscle memory in my hand as I’m imagining writing it out mentally. And if I had my eyes closed I’d say there’d also be a slight visual aspect as I imagine drawing it, almost like an imaginary sparkler tracing the character in the air and then immediately disappearing. I wouldn’t qualify it as visual but maybe slightly visual.
But that’s just imagining the act of drawing it out. If you asked me to try to keep that number in my mind, to try to visualize it, I don’t see anything but I do have a vague sensation of that number being present. I obviously know what a 3 looks like and if I close my eyes I can occasionally get a ghostly visual of there being something 3-like there, but it would be a huge stretch to call it visual. Mainly it just feels like 1) I have a spatial understanding of what a 3 is, and 2) I am very focused on that 3-ness. This seems somewhat visual in the sense that if you told me to look at a picture with a lot of noise in it, like a picture of a bunch of clouds or trees, I could probably find a 3 shaped structure in there, because I’m primed and looking for the visual characteristics of a 3. But the whole process seems very far from visual to me, but as I was telling Visakan, I can imagine some of this being interpreted by some people as being visual in some way.
When it comes to actually doing math: I’m actually pretty good at doing math in my head but I wouldn’t say there’s anything visual to it. It’s more just conceptual, using mostly pre-existing chunks of knowledge that come automatically to my mind, or else sometimes counting, which is more an auditory process.
To sum up; it’s very hard to try to describe mental processes; if not impossible, which is why at the end of all this I still am skeptical how different most people really are in these regards. You can find many people who talk confidently about what their mental perceptions are like, but I think we should always be skeptical about these self-reports because our minds are capable of many tricks and illusions.
It’s why I carefully define “aphantasia” as not being any sort of defined condition but more that it’s the self-reporting of not having mental visualization. That being said, I do think something is going on there, just because some people are so adamant that their mental imagery is so vividly picture-like. I just think it’s far from clear what’s going on.
Hopefully this was interesting. If you have some thoughts about how visual or non-visual your mental processes are, feel free to email me via my contact page at readingpokertells.video or reach out on twitter at @apokerplayer. If you’d like to read more about aphantasia, I’ve assembled a few articles and resources if you go to my blog at www.readingpokertells.video/blog and search for ‘aphantasia’.
If you like this podcast, please give me a rating on iTunes even if you don’t listen on there. That’s probably the biggest way you could show your appreciation. That or sharing it on social media. Thanks for listening.