Poll: Can you visualize details with your eyes closed?

Aphantasic, so nada.

delecti comments [0] on a variant of this test [1] which I thought was interesting.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38655858

[1] https://i.imgur.com/gpN7EcP.jpeg

I have an extremely vivid internal imagination that could picture pretty much anything on demand. The same thing with my internal dialogue, I could basically "summon up" songs or vocals in other voices or just lines for movies basically just everything that I've ever heard at least once before.

For visualizing things I don't even really need to close my eyes I could just I guess you could call it daydream and just focus on trying to picture these things with my eyes open and it's like I could see both what my eyes see and what I'm imagining at the same time not like overlaid into reality or anything but just like two separate streams playing at once but giving time slicing to each with obviously more going to reality because that's kind of more important.

Edit: it's actually really hard for me to imagine that people can't do this and I've been working really hard on trying to not be judgmental against people who can't because it just seems so natural to me. And it's not like I'm psychotic or something or schizophrenic... I got my mental issues like long diagnosed ADHD since I was 2 years old but that doesn't disconnect me from reality in any way.

But I do know that there are some people out there who, are probably maybe fundamental religious people, who have a issue realizing that thoughts that they have aren't actually things that they consciously want to do... Like they judge themselves upon the sins that they think of in their mind. I find that weirder honestly. Imagine being haunted by judging yourself and your own moral compass upon the random brain firings that your subconscious has and brings to your consciousness. That's a self-imposed to hell that I couldn't even imagine, I mean they are just thoughts, learn how to meditate or something, let thoughts wash over you and realize that they are just thoughts don't try to push them down or silence them because that's not how brains work. Oh and also don't act on them but that shouldn't really have to be said. You're sentient being and you can filter what your subconscious thinks and what your consciousness picks up from it.

For me, it's much harder to visualize with my eyes closed (not impossible, just not as easy)... when I close my eyes, it's mostly black with some kind of overlay of what I was last looking at -- like burn-in on a screen.

But with my eyes open I can imagine up the elephants or anything else just as detailed as those that I saw in person (either via recall of what I have seen or imagining up something new). I've never given any thought to this... but now trying to explain that I can see something with my eyes open while still seeing whatever I am looking at at the same time sounds really odd. I wonder if the visual stimulation and recall are somehow linked, or maybe I just need to practice with my eyes closed.

I can't figure out which one of your poll answers is supposed to correspond to "vague and fleeting recollection". That's what it is usually like for me. Like I am remembering, and need to concentrate to see glimpses of parts of it.

I think that if I really meditate or get closer to sleeping then things get clearer. It also helps if I'm not tired or have just been visualizing things a lot recently, like reading a novel. It's never particularly clear though (while wide awake).

I know that I visualize things clearly at least when I am asleep, because when I wake up from dreaming I can still remember/see what I was dreaming about for a few moments.

I suspect that part of it is that I really don't "need" to visualize things clearly for most of my work. What I need to do is work in abstractions and state changes. But maybe I am just a bit stupid in terms of visualization.

I watched too many vfx movies. I can zoom in to the mites in their eyelashes.

Depends on how sleepy I am. In a near dream state I can visualize almost anything. Fully inhabiting my left brain wide awake, all I get is words and the black of the back of my eyelids.

I don't "see", as in, it does not start feeling like my closed eyes are sending signals of an elephant or some residual image of it. However, I am able to "visualize" an elephant in outline and some detail within that darkness. It remains clear that it's not from the eyes, but it also shows up in the perception nevertheless.

My best guess would be that the neural pathways related to an elephant would partially be firing, yet, the neural pathways from the eyes aren't, and the brain remains aware of this.

This is btw. a big issue when you teach things. As someone who can imagine geometry and light, rotate and manipulate it in my head, saying things like: "Just imagine a sliced donut intersected with a cylinder".

Some people will and some people won't be able to do that, and those who can't very likely will blame themselves for not being able to understand it. But as educators we need to make sure we give people without mental images actual images they can look at.

For me, it has always been black or blank. As in what you see when you open your eyes in a completely dark room.

The most surprising thing to me is that this "condition" is not that well studied. Just shows how much we human still don't know and has many more science discovery to make.

I remember there was old post on HN about it from someone who used or still working in Amazon. I am on my phone now so may be someone else could search and copy the link.

I see it, but on a different "channel" than my main vision. It's like this old idea where there is a little humunculus in your head viewing the output of your eyes on a screen - imagine a second screen for imaginations beside it. But I don't see it spatially next to my normal vision, maybe overlaid or "somewhere else".

The resolution of the elephant is initially bad, my head doesn't bother to fill in all the details at once. But if I concentrate on a specific part, say the ear, it will fill in all the details like the hairs and the texture of the skin.

I think I could say each of the answers would be correct to me. Of course I don't see an image like I would see of a real elephant. I see black with occasional colorful noise. So does that mean I have aphantasia? On the other hand, I can "consider" the image in any detail in this part of my mind that is similar but distinct from my regular vision. Is that seeing?

I would speculate here that maybe people don't have different experiences, but they just describe the same complex thing in very different ways...

I would say it's like when looking at something in real life, I can focus deeply on one thing but not on everything in the "field of view": it's easy to imagine a detailed textured closeup of an elephant's head "in lush cinematic glory" but applying that detail to an entire elephant feels impossible because I can't just focus on every detail on an entire elephant at once. Mind's eye sounds accurate as it really kind of feels like looking at something.

It's also impossible to say whether it's accurate or not. It feels accurate enough without a direct comparison but it's not concrete or static enough to really say much more than that. When I imagine something and then try to recreate it in a real medium (drawing etc) it can come out differently, though then again I really suck at drawing so who knows.

I have to go with "something else". I can "visualize" the elephant's head, but I don't "see" it. That is, I can perceive a visual image of sorts, but its clarity is on par with seeing something at night by the faintest moonlight. It's a little worse than that, even, because I'm also actually seeing with my eyes at the same time, even if they are closed. There is some color and detail, but again very minimal.

One analogy would be hearing a conversation in a crowded room where music is playing. I can focus on the conversation, even while still hearing the music, and tell you some details of the conversation, such as who is speaking and tone of voice, but not actually understand the words.

I can trace a cartoony outline of an elephant’s head, but it’s not in the same buffer/canvas on which my vision appears. It’s a separate scratch pad for imagination and distinct from vision.

This separate canvas is extremely limited compared to my actual vision. I can only focus on very small parts of it at a time, it’s about as accurate as drawing in the sand with a finger.

One time I lost a slip of paper with a girl's phone number on it. I looked everywhere for two weeks. So frustrating - I could picture it right in front of me but I couldn't find it. I eventually read the number off my visual memory of the note, even though I had never memorized the number. Another time someone spoke to me in a loud bar and I couldn't hear a word. A week later I zoomed in on the memory and was able to lip-read what they said. Ironically I can't remember faces.

"See nothing but the back of your eyelids, try as hard as you can". That's me... I have aphantasia.

I think I see details, but the details are all wrong compared to what I see when I open my eyes.

Nothing, but similar to other accounts a small sensation of knowing what it should look like without the visual.

Shocked when I learned my immediate family member can actually visualize things without even closing their eyes which lets them essentially 'trace' what they're envisioning.

My best friend also is incapable of seeing things with eyes closed - they were a bit upset when I brought it to their attention.

Interestingly enough, of everyone I know I have the most vivid, engrossing, lucid dreams. Guess all that brainpower when sleeping saps the power supply for during the day.

My significant other only dreams in Black and White, which was more mindblowing to me than seeing black.

I think I picture an accurate elephant head, but I may just be fooling myself into thinking I picture that. I don't trust my brain farther than I can throw it.

See what I want to think about, but it is an unstable image flash against a dark background. Details seem there, but not enough persistence of vision to observe them. Can keep flashing the images as necessary, but it doesn't have the same persistence as reality or dreaming.

i would say that I can imagine picture, how something looks like, but it's kind of like bypassing some image recognition parts of brain and just fire "detected objects" neurons. wg. when I imagine elephant I think I can "see" but when I want to eg focus at exact unusual place, like eyebrows (does elephants have them? I cannot really see those details)

one also interesting thing is that when I read some book I can "see" story to point where I do not really notice text in the book I'm reading.

I think that I'm in the opposite camp than OP, because when I first heard about condition where some people cannot imagine things or do not have inner voice I had hard time to understand how such people think, because for me such visualizations are integral part of thinking. I guess this is one of those things that are hard to comprehend the other side.

Edit: for people believing they can see details there is interesting experiment I saw: try to draw a bike from memory. Everyone can recognize a bake but when you try to draw it, you might be surprised that you might not be able to reconstruct correctly some parts

I can instantly conjure up any image. The longer I focus the more clear the image becomes, up to photo-real or even perhaps 'hyper-real'. I don't have anything approaching what I would call a 'photographic memory', but I can see music notation in my mind's eye, surely as a result of staring at so much of it over the years.

I believe it is much more common for people to recall specific sounds, especially music, and to be able to imagine different sounds in different contexts, even variations on sounds you might not have heard before. For me, visualizing elephants is quite similar to imagining sound, but "weaker." So I can imagine a either a cartoon elephant on a 2D screen, or a "photorealistic"[1] 3D elephant I can rotate around, etc. It is much "fuzzier" than auditory stuff and requires more focused concentration; relatedly, I am a fairly talented guitarist but absolutely dreadful at visual art.

Another example: it was recently demonstrated that rats can use their imagination for problem solving[2]; specifically, they can visualize (or "visualize"?) the layout of a maze they've learned, thinking though what paths to take based on their memories. It seems beyond the reach of current science to answer what the rats were thinking about exactly: maybe it was pure olfactory and tactile reasoning. But whatever it was, there were clear neural correlates between those thoughts and the physical layout of the maze.

Another example I can't find the source of now: crows were trained to respond to an extremely faint pulse of light beamed onto a wall. The intent was to make the crow uncertain about whether they actually saw the pulse and monitor their brains while doing so. After the pulse was shown, the crows seemed to compare their recent sensory experience against their past memories, trying to rule out false positives. Think about doing this yourself: you might initially think you saw a pulse, compare to the memory of the last time you actually did see a pulse, and realize that the actual pulse was clearly brighter, so whatever you saw was probably either a flicker or an illusion. OTOH if whatever you saw actually was quite bright and circular, it was probably a pulse. Crows seem to have similarly advanced reasoning.

Putting these together, I am wondering if perhaps "they really see it" is a phrase whose meaning is entirely determined by the listener. Humans have impressive cognitive diversity and, just as some people are truly tone-deaf, some people have "true" aphantasia. But for many people, I wonder if the difference between "visualize a picture in your mind's eye" and "recall the visual details of this object" might largely be a difference in viewpoint and perception, rather than actual recall or reasoning ability.

[1] I do not mean that my imagination is actually true to life. Crudely, I mean that I can semi-plausibly BS details similar to an AI neural network. So I picked "lush cinematic glory" but for me "accurate shape, texture" involves a very loose definition of "accuracy." I suspect that's true for everyone that doesn't actually live and work with elephants. I don't have to BS the details of my own cats.

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh5206

> Specifically, if I ask you to close your eyes and think of an elephant's head,

I don't visualize it unless I want to, so I abstract this by default.

But if you said to visualize it I would.

I guess it's like the weaker emotions such as empathy, I can turn it on when I have to and just leave it off when it's not in use.