Are you like the 3% who can't see this?

Yep, 3% or so of the population has aphantasia, the inability to form any image in our minds eye. Are you part of the 3% or 97%? Comment below! Share this video if you have Aphantasia too! Don't forget to subscribe!

#aphantasia
#shorts
#neurodivergent

[TheRealGypsyJane]

I'm betting we're more than 3%. I never thought about it until i was like 45 and it was irritating me that guided meditations often said to visualize this that or the other thing. I eventually ran a well attended workshop at an event called Mediation for Non-visualizers.

[canIdraw]

I feel so betrayed


Ppl can actually see when the close their eyes! I asked a colleague of mine yesterday, she said she could see a red apple in the middle of a blank canvas, and another one who was actually really good at art, said she could see it in a tree

I try to think of it as a talent, not an ability that I can never have, because that makes me feel less sad:'>

[Makingofabetterlife]

I think we will come to find it is much higher than 3%.

[midgardian]

People still get mad when I can't follow their driving directions, it's just words. I see no pictures in my head. 😢

[markiefufu]

I just found out 2 days ago I was a total aphant. No visuals, sounds, et al. I'm still in shock and a little depressed. Like the rest of us, I thought everyone was talking metaphorically when saying to visualize or use your minds eye.

[Tokechan]

You mentioned drawing: it's interesting, I'm an artist who CAN see things in my minds eye, but being an artist has made me realize how much more vague/symbolic those visualization are. I can look at a picture of a cartoon character and copy it by sight fairly accurately, and if you ask me to imagine a cartoon character like say, The Pink Panther, I feel like I can imagine what he looks like, but if I go to copy him the same way I can from a photo, the whole thing totally falls apart and I realize the image was never actually super clear in the first place. A character I've LEARNED to draw from memory though, like Spider-man or Mickey Mouse, I can draw consistently pretty accurately but, I'm not just copying like I would from a photo, I'm "building" it on the page to some extent every time. Same with drawing something completely from imagination—I might start with a vague image in my head, maybe enough to spit out a really rough sketch or thumbnail, but from that point on its more like building it on the page, guided by my feeling and impression of what was in my head.

[Mamaofmany]

Dude this is why I have struggled so hard with art and designing my garden! I can’t picture anything in my brain. I’m great at remembering facts and details but I can’t even picture my children or husband if I close my eyes and try my hardest.

[suzannekt]

I just found your channel. I’ve known I didn’t visualize since long before there was a word for it. Sometime in the 80’s there was a short, maybe PBS, TV series about the brain. There was a quick mention in one episode about the range of visualization skills, like a bell curve. At one end there were people who could see things clearly, turn them around and see from different angles and there were people who could not see things in their minds at all. When I heard that I knew I was on the very end of that bell curve. I can’t see anything in my head at all unless I had a traumatic experience (car accident or witnessing a bad injury) and then I might have a nano-second of a flash of a visual memory. I use other sensory imagery to think. I am also ADD. I was diagnosed in my late 40’s. I’m now 63. I understand that ADHD often is exacerbated during pre or peri menopause, but it was always there. I was just able to self medicate and mask. (Honestly, I didn’t mask that well. People just thought I was weird and scatterbrained) I probably also have SDAM. I’m not sure about lacking the 1st person memory aspect. I’ll have to think about that. I know, though, that I have very few memories of past events, almost none of childhood. I relate so hard to your story of your friend who thought she might have cancer and later you asked her to meet you for lunch, forgetting completely about her situation. I have a hard time with conceptually separating aphantasia from SDAM. I don’t think I’m autistic, though. I have some elements, but not enough to check all the boxes for diagnosis. Interesting fact: I’m a special education teacher who has spent her career working with kids with ADHD, learning disabilities, autism and kids with varied social skill and memory deficiencies. I’ve always said I went into that career because I could relate. You asked if we were in the 97% or the 3% and I told you my life story. Ahhhmmm … the 3%

[sydneybales]

I dont know if I actually have it but I might. Back during marching band the director was like, everyone close your eyes and see yourself marching perfectly and doing all the moves and i was just sitting there like, yall are seeing stuff?! I can "see" things better when i have my eyes open and like have them unfocused, but even then im just nostly thinking about it. Do people actually see stuff like how they show it in tv and movies?

[blootooth]

Im here because after seeing another video on aphantasia, i was getting very nervous and curious. Thats no judgement when i saw nervous, but i am an artist and have always prided myself on my recall and visual skills. But the last few years ive become more aware of how little detail and consistency there is in my visualization. I think ive ruled out aphantasia, and but i probably am low visualization.

Explaining it is hard, but there are certain things my mind is very good at visualizing. I have always loved legos, and i feel like i can make a fully 3d lego model in my head very well, as well as deconstruct the pieces in my head (probably why i do 3D art but suck at more imaginative wacky 2d styles). However, visualizing something like an anime drawing, that is so vague i cant even distinguish if my brain is just feeding me non-visual, almost coordinate-like data of points and facts about the scene, or if my mind is just getting a very rough sketch. If i had to equate what i see in my minds eye to amything, i think AI animation is the most accurate way to describe it. I cannot maintain a single consistent frame, instead i almost get a low detail scatter box. If i focus on one point, like the stem of an apple, i can pull up more precise data on it, but it will flicker between blurred photo realism and animation styles without ever taking a concrete form.

I hope that at least clarifies one pov on this stuff for someone. Ive been trying to debate that question of "data set or low resolution" for literally an hour, so if anyone else is in that pit of confusion, heres a reference point. Theres another artist in these comments that described picturing pink panther, feeling confident in the image, but incapable of replicating, and i think that was an extremely accurate description of the same phenomenon.

[celeste]

Don't forget about hypophantasia! That's when you can visualize things, but not very well. That's what I have.

[real.]

so, i can dream and see clearly, but no matter how hard i try i can’t picture like an apple???

[VelvetWCUE]

I can very, very vaguely see it for only a few seconds when I close my eyes so I don’t really know if I have aphantasia and I’m just subconsciously trying to convince myself I don’t lol

[SariennMusic]

I definitely can see in my minds eye the blue elephant with spots, dancing and twirling, lifting a leg up now and then, trunk doing odd things to the rhythm of the dance. I can also "hear" the music as the elephant dances. It's so odd to explain and describe how it "Looks" and "sounds like" because it's not physically in front of me, and the "Music" isn't literally playing, yet I can still "hear" it in my mind. This is hard to describe lol. "Hearing" music in my head allows me to compose my own actual music on my keyboard (synthesizer) and on my pc with my music program. So it IS a thing to take it from inside the head and make it physical/audible to everyone else.

This is like trying to describe any color to someone who has been blind since birth. It's nearly impossible since it's not physical or aural. It just "is" while also being "Is not" at the same time.
And now I'm confusing everyone, haha.

[Keldren.]

That sounds really sad. I live most of my life watching movies in my head for entertainment, creating new memories, inventing and redesigning things and problem solving every day dilemmas, conscious dreaming, everything.. i don't know what I'd do without it.

[losfromla]

3%. I was great at drawing and art of all sorts as a kid and young man. Now I'm an engineer.

[Momento.Mori]

I’m part of the 3% also! Nice to know I’m not alone!

[livywithane]

So do you dream like an audio book? Just descriptions of stuff and what’s happening?

[elizeprislovsky]

When I was a kid I had to get eye therapy because reading was so difficult. The specialist told my mom I had something that meant I could never enjoy reading a novel, especially without pictures, because I couldn’t go on the journey and it was always going to be more of a chore to read than a pleasure. Essentially because I have to read a line, stop and try to imagine it and then repeat over and over again until by the time I finished the page I’d be totally lost. My mom never told me there was a name for this. She was a narcissistic mother and just made me feel like I was different because I was disabled or stupid. Are you saying that this is actually a thing? I’m not alone?

[tamadude]

I can sometimes have a flash of an image in my mind but i cant get it to stay there it disappears