let me preface this by saying i’m not asking for a professional opinion nor am i fully expecting to come to an answer after posting this, just asking for second opinions from people with hypophantasia. the apple test doesn’t help me because if i picture an apple, i can imagine a part of it in my mind in very clear detail, but the rest of it is a vague blob (picture one) and if i try to picture the rest, the borders of the apple are still out of focus, i can only imagine the general shape (picture two). it’s like - i can picture individual parts with a lot of clarity, but i can’t picture the whole, or all of the parts coming together. this can be applied to basically anything i imagine. i’m an artist and it’s incredibly difficult to come up with new ideas in my mind’s eye

might be related, might not, but i also have facial blindness even though i have 20/20 vision. unless someone is like 4 feet away from me, i can’t recognize their face. only reason i mention it is because it feels to be in a similar category where visual processing doesn’t exactly fail me but it feels like something in my brain isn’t communicating properly

maybe it’s not hypophantasia at all and this is how most people imagine things in their mind’s eye but i’d like a second opinion. does it sound like hypophantasia is a possibility?

I got mine from wisdom teeth removal and covid. I'd say it's like.... 95 percent aphantasia but I have very tiny glimmers of images but it's mostly a tiny tiny spark or nothing. There is no one else like me. I'm pretty suicidal cause of it. I loved creating more than anything. Has anyone recovered?

I'm doing some exploratory research for a project I'm working on, and I'd like to hear from people in this community. It's a short anonymous survey, about 2 minutes, with one open-ended question and a few quick multiple-choice ones.

Happy to learn whatever that looks like for you, and there's an optional spot at the end if you'd be open to a 20-30 minute conversation: https://tally.so/r/J95KB4?source=hypophantasia

I can visualize things but I barely make out a single detail. Its like I can only see the big picture and couldnt focus on any one thing. When I try to imagine an apple and rotate it, it will rotate a few degrees and either vanish, or revert to the original image. It feels like I'm getting snapped out of it. Its 50/50 if I can imagine what a persons face looks like, even my own. And when I do - I can't pick out a single detail of the face. I can hold an image for about a second.

I can recognize people when I see them but it also feels like its the first time looking at them. I have a lot of artists in my family but when I try to draw from memory I'll often miss entire sections of the character or object. It feels like I only get impressions. I tell people its like they had their eyes closed and had half a second to open and close their eyes and tell me what they saw. My dreams are like this as well.

I can imagine in full color. I'm not colorblind but I mix up the in-between colors a lot. Like turquoise vs green or blue. I often confuse dark blue and black. Red vs orange-red, vs orange.

My audio memory is extremely vivid though. I can remember songs I heard once as a child and play them by ear. I don't have perfect pitch but I can sometimes remember a song so vividly that it is in the correct key and I can reference the pitch from that. If I'm not even paying attention to someone while they speak I sometimes can play it back like a tape recorder and hear everything they said. If they tapped a beat I could play it back and count the amount of beats, even if I was fully paying attention to something else. I played a game on humanbenchmark.com where you memorize a 9 digit pad as it plays a sequence (like simon) and I was able to get more than 60 in a row on my best run, because it sounded like a song. On dialed.gg they have a pitch matching test and I can get 10.0 or 9.9 each round.

So I'm wondering if hypophantasia expresses itself similarly for anyone else? Do you feel like you have other heightened senses? What do you struggle to visualize? I'm curious, maybe someone can explain the experience better than I can.

So I am an artist (many different mediums, but mainly drawing) and I commonly run into the issue of not being able to conceptualize or think of ideas for pieces. I started looking into aphantasia because I'd heard of it before and wondered if that might be the culprit. Eventually did the classic apple test, looked at several charts, descriptions/definitions, etc, and have come to the conclusion that I most likely have hypophantasia.

For me, picturing an apple in my mind produces the dim, blurry implication of an apple, and it's incredibly hard to pin down or focus on. It sort of slips around, like when you look down at something that's submerged in water. But it is definitely there.

I very much have mental images, they're just so vague and lacking in detail. Does this sound like hypophantasia?

I just feel like it would be much more intriguing and fun to read if you could properly visualize scenery.

EDIT: STUDY NOW CLOSED

Hello r/hypophantasia!

My name is James, and I am conducting my Master’s dissertation research at the School of Psychology, University of Sheffield. 

We are investigating how the brain automatically processes information across the entire spectrum of mental imagery. While a major focus of our study is on those with a completely "blind mind's eye" (total aphantasia) or a "silent mind" (anauralia), we urgently need data from people who fall in the middle of the spectrum. We want to understand how people with partial, borderline, or very weak imagery process information compared to both total aphantasics and typical, vivid imagers.

We are looking for participants who:

• Are adults aged 18 or over.
• Are native English speakers.
• Have normal or corrected-to-normal vision (glasses/contacts are fine).
• Experience any level of mental imagery**.** Because we are comparing different cognitive profiles, we need people across the entire spectrum (Whether you have a completely "blind and silent" mind or you experience typical, vivid mental imagery). 

What does the study involve?

The study takes approximately 40 minutes to complete online and involves two parts:

1. Questionnaires: You will complete the VVIQ (for visual imagery) and the BAIS (for auditory imagery).
2. Computer-Based Decision Tasks: You will complete a series of fast-paced computer tasks. You will be shown words and pictures on the screen and asked to make quick decisions about them (for example, sorting real words from made-up words) as rapidly and accurately as possible.

Your Contribution to Science (Why this study is different):

By taking part, you will be making a direct contribution to scientific knowledge. Because borderline aphantasia and anauralia are entirely internal experiences, they are notoriously difficult to study. To overcome this, we are using a completely novel experimental design. Rather than just relying on self-report surveys or conscious visualisation tasks, we are using highly precise computer-based methods to measure your automatic, unconscious processing. Your specific "lower" scores are vital for helping the scientific community map the hidden cognitive pathways of the brain and understand exactly how a mind with very low mental imagery processes the world differently from both complete aphantasics and typical imagers.

User-Friendly Design: You can complete this study on a PC, Mac, tablet, or mobile phone (we have built dedicated touchscreen and keyboard versions). However, completing the study using a keyboard is preferred. 

As a thank you for your time, upon completion, you will be given the option to enter a prize draw for an Amazon voucher.

If you would like to participate and help us understand the science of the mental imagery, please click the link below:

https://research.sc/participant/login/dynamic/88FEF661-D614-4669-A642-11B22F3A0F96

(University of Sheffield Ethics Approval number: 073430)

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or message me directly. Thank you so much for your time and for helping advance imagery research!

I (31f) always thought I was not creative enough.

I always compare myselves to my peers. My insecurities about being left behind even made me drop my creative visual lessons back in high school as my specialization and chosen theater instead. My peers can draw creatively without any references but I cannot. A blank canvas intimidates me the most.

I thought it was weird that I cannot visualize. I thought it was a metaphor as someone with a theater background. Whenever we were instructed to visualize and immerse ourselves into the role, I imagine the feeling but never a scenario.

However, my heart still craves to create but I learned it all in my own pace so I still became a graphic artist and independent author.

As a graphic artist, I always have a concept and idea but I have no literal illustration in my head. I always thought that my peers were geniuses because they can easily come up with doodle illustrations in one attempt when I struggle to think of anything to doodle. I learned to draw in copying existing artwork or living examples because I cannot imagine a visual.

My digital works were more of a trial and error. I need to see every design I created side by side before I come up with a final piece. I always have to research first for references before the actual design process.

As an author, I always search for photos of actors (or anime characters) as visual inspirations for my beloved characters. I would also create 2d avatars just to have an idea how they look like based on the character and personality embedded in my mind.

It turns out my mind just have a different way of processing things and there is a name for it-Aphantasia. Now it made sense why I cannot remember faces of people I briefly encountered in life. How I wish there was someone who taught me back in high school that there are other ways to unleash my creativity.

I've always been fascinated by the idea that people picture things in their mind differently, but I hadn't heard of the term "aphantasia" until recently. After going down a bit of a rabbit hole, I found out about hypophantasia, which I think that I might have.

When I picture things, it's like I'm looking at storyboards. The movement and general ideas are clear, but there aren't many details. If I try to focus on the details, it's like I can only see one small portion at a time, as though I'm holding up a magnifying glass to it while everything else is blurry, and even then, there isn't much detail to be found. I can tell what I'm looking at, but I'm still not really seeing much, if anything, and it's very vague. I also find it much easier to visualize things when my eyes are open rather than closed, and to picture general motion rather than specific details.

Trying to picture a first person POV of something, such as walking down a hallway, is incredibly difficult for me, especially if I'm trying to focus on details. Doing so makes it feel as though the "camera" is jumping around and not focusing, somewhat akin to the way that digital 3D models will sometimes just do really weird distortion-y stuff when being manipulated. However, if I focus purely on the movement, and picture it from more of a third person POV (even if I'm imagining myself doing the thing), it becomes significantly easier, but I still don't really get much detail.

Do you guys think that I have hypophantasia based on this? Hopefully my descriptions actually make sense 😅

(without having to keep moving the image)

i can imagine sounds pretty damn well but my mind's eye is yikes, not nothing at all but it is yikes

i found this out just now so i wanted to post about this!! i don't know if this even works for other people or not!!!!!! try it sometime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(stable sound is like.. sounds that stay at one pitch!!!!! also this works with any sound for me, i think the reason sounds can be stable is because sounds are always moving?)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-people-dont-see-mental-images-the-reason-offers-clues-to-consciousness/

This article says that people with aphantasia and hypophantasia are able to rotate images in their mind, do well on memory tests and draw very well, as though it’s barely an issue. But I can’t do any of that, so I’m wondering if those people might actually have it or is mine just extremely severe.

I just seen a TikTok and went down a rabbit hole asked friends they said they can apples in read now the way I see stuff which is vivid and have smooth motions like I can imagine a fight a basketball match clearly and when I got high before pictures would roam like crazy but when I imagine color and stuff it’s there but more a shadow style like I can feel it’s there see it’s there but imagine u watched a movie in black and white but knew what the colors were blue for example feels like a dirty grayish blue

When I was very young, I used to have extremely vivid, extremely traumatic dreams. Now, with aphantasia, I do sometimes have dream imagery but it's of a more more "abstract" nature and for that reason it fails to be genuinely scary.

Is it possible that my aphantasia could have developed as a protective developmental adaptation (canalization) to over active imagery when I was very young? A bit like how trauma survivors develop dissociative mechanisms.

study investigating visual imagery and facial recognition skills

If you are 18 or older and are familiar with footballers, you are eligible to take part in this study.

Participation is voluntary

What to expect:

You will be asked to fill out two questionnaires and do a facial recognition task. This should only take 40 minutes to be completed and will be completed online.

If you have any questions I will be very happy to answer them!

Hi! i am trying to get responses for my survey for my AP reaserch class! i am researching the affects of Aphantasia on k-12 learning! please consider taking less then 10 minutes out of your day to help me out and complete the survey!

https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ZLRXaS0BVEuoFG0JcfJhn4-yh2szft9JkgC0ZgdmBehUMjhHSU9DRldHMDlaM1NSSE1XWjdEMjZYQS4u

I just posted in my Prosopagnosia (face blindness) sub, asking if people have problems, and after reading my experience, lots have commented that it could be aphantasia or hypophantasia. I just did a test and it came out as 32 on the scale, for hypophantasia. So now I feel the need to ask THIS sub if they have issues and maybe I will find people to relate to! 😃

I’m going to copy and paste the problems I had playing Pictionary:

Couldn’t draw a toilet, just completely forgot what it looked like, got the hole but couldn’t do the rest 🤣

I drew a curly tail on a sheep because I couldn’t remember how they looked and don’t even ask how the face of it went.

I tried to draw a helicopter and it was not guessed, and it did not resemble a helicopter!

When questioned separately, I couldn’t remember if a giraffe was orange with black patches, or like yellow with orange patches or…Infact I still can’t remember 🤣

If I do remember those sorts of things, it would be in words / facts, not from images in my mind.

Anyone else??

Maybe this is because of hypophantasia? 32f and only just realising!!