When tying your shoelaces what images or dialogue you have in your head?

I find it gets better with practice to some degree, if I go for a long stretch reading more or less fiction I find it affects my imagination and ability to visualize with more or less detail and memorability. I don’t think it’ll bridge the gap to 5 necessarily, but it might bump a 4 to a 3 or a 2 to a 1.

I have severe 5 aphantasia. It was such a relief when a name was put to it.

How many Au/ADHD can do this vs non-neurospicy? Just curious of there’s a difference or likeliness one way or another.

I can see and manipulate objects in my head. I can make up voices or objects in my head and “hear” them. I can remember a smell, but I couldn’t make one up - iow I could slice an imaginary apple and imagine the smell. I can feel an object’s texture without touching it.

I can’t imagine not having these things in my head.

Is this new, somehow? I’ve always recognized that the people around me think differently. I even recognized that there was a spectrum.

I’m definitely a #1, and always recognized that about myself. I’m like to write, and I think that activity demonstrates the spectrum well. Stephen King once said that he doesn’t understand why people struggle with writing. He just pictures the story in his head, and writes what he sees. When I read that, I instantly recognized myself. That’s how I write.

But I also know that some people write almost like they are putting together a puzzle. They choose certain words that go together well, and they are constructing their narrative brick by brick. I think poetry is often constructed like that, and I think those prose writers have a more poetic sensibility than others, and that sort of writing reflects it. That might explain why I really don’t care for that style of writing much, because I am extremely bad at poetry. That construction style just doesn’t work for me.

Your mind has an active visual cortex. Other folks think more using their audio cortex. Some more with somatic awareness (feeling tone).

Mathameticians can visualize math.

Everyone is wired a bit different.

I’m a two or a four on the scale, depending on how much weed I consume. As heavy weed use dulls the minds eye. Though irregular use can enhance it.

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.

Do you guys sometimes also get the weird feeling of: “this is my body, this is planet earth, this is my flat and I live here.” Sometimes that happens. And when that happens, I usually think about things like how the universe came to be the big bang, the laws of physics fighting each other until settling on a seady state. Then the Earth is created, millions of years of evolution go by and here you are, sitting on the toilet. The entire chain of thought only lasts for about five seconds and then you’re again stuck with the feeling of “I am back here on planet Earth”. Do you guys also get that sometimes?

Considering your specific example with an apple, what about other senses, what happens if you try and recall texture, smell and taste?

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I can’t actually see the image with my eyes, I don’t believed people actually can but I suppose it can be. I can see flashes of black and white stills in my mind but that’s it. My dreams are the same just with weirdly numb feelings. Like when you are in vr and someone touches you, you have the feeling in your mind but don’t feel anything physical.

@KoboldCoterie you can still be an artist. You’ll just have to rely more on references but it’s possible. There’s one person that made a video about it that I saw some time ago. https://youtu.be/ewsGmhAjjjI

My brain is like a vector database, it stores the “feelings” of information, not the actual information - if that makes sense?

I can make lightning fast connections in my head when something happens, like when something breaks in production, I see the symptoms and the vectors just connect from effect to the cause.

Can I explain to others why and how I know where the problem is? Nope. …Or yes, but it’ll take a long time for me to follow the feeling-vectors and put them into words I can actually communicate to other people.

For actual people and characters in books I also retain the shape and …something about them, but I couldn’t explain how most people in my life look like to a sketch artist.

When I read a book, I kinda retain the “feeling” of the characters and maybe one or two visual traits. I can read thousands of pages of a character’s adventures and I can maybe tell you their general body type and clothing - if they have an “uniform” they tend to wear.

I’ve read all 5 books (over 5000 pages) of The Stormlight Archive and I couldn’t tell you what Kaladin (the main character) looks like. I have no visual recollection of his hair colour, eye colour, skin tone or body type.

It always baffled me when a movie adaptation of a book came out and people were really upset that the characters looked wrong. And I was just “… you remember what the people in books look like??”. It turns out they do.

Oh, and DEFINITELY no voice in my head. I’d get myself committed if I had someone talking to me in my brain.

You guys are gonna lose your shit when you find out some people don’t have an inner monologue.

3 or 4

I can “picture” with images but it’s not top accuracy. It’s mostly imagining a thing existing

Isn’t 5 is called Aphantasia ? To be unable to visualize something in the mind?