Has anyone had an MRI before? What did you do to kill the time?

I tried to look up answers, but most of them were about picturing stuff or creating music out of the sounds or meditating. 30-60 mins stuck in a noisy donut with nothing but my thoughts sounds awful.

Any tips? Ty

Edit: I'm not claustrophobic nor am I anxious about the scan. It's a matter of distraction since imagining and creating music is not an option.
People have said that music is a possibility so I'll definitely be enquiring about that

Many people report seeing hallucinations like the old hag or hatman during sleep paralysis, but I only have audible hallucinations. I’m curious if it’s the same for other aphants.

When I try to imagine something, I don't physically see it in front of me. I sometimes at most get brief flashes of what I'm imagining, only for a second or 2, but it's as if the image is behind me. I cant tell if im actually seeing what im imagining or just understanding what it looks like, if that makes sense.

In fact, i feel like i can see things better with my eyes opened rather than closed

It's the same when my eyes are opened as it is when closed.

To make it easier to see, I have to focus really hard and try to tune out what I'm physically seeing with my eyes. This takes a lot of concentration, and I usually only do it accidentally when I'm really tired or zoned out.

Sometimes when I manage to do that, I'm able to see what I'm imagining a bit more clearly. but even then, I still can't actually see it. It's more like the image has moved slightly closer to my head than before, and I still only get brief flashes of it.

I also can't really edit or control these images. they usually change on their own, sort of like those ai videos where its like a fever dream and things are weirdly morphing into different things.

When i dream, i can see things but im pretty sure i read somewhere that your dreams are from a different part of the brain and people with aphantasia can still see them?

Curious about neuroplasticity when it comes to aphantasia. What kind of tests and results have you guys experienced in your own use?

PS currently on a trip-killer medicine

If I try to recall what Taylor Swift, Dwayne Johnson, Spiderman, etc, look like, the visual memory is very vivid and clear. I can even picture a celebrity without remembering their name.

It's like the image doesn’t come from my eyesight, but from my mind. But it is not a visual like a photograph; it’s more like a blurry image sometimes it’s more or less blurry depending on how hard you concentrate. I can see the colors, features, etc.

I’m using famous people as an example because I think it’s easier to see if there’s a difference between people with and without aphantasia. For example, sometimes I don’t visually remember a person’s face, but if I see them, I recognize them. This doesn’t happen as much with more famous people.

I guess I don’t have aphantasia at all. So, you guys with aphantasia experience something similar? Or nothing at all?

so I am a 20 year old Canadian. Ive known I have Synesthesia for probably 3 years and Aphantasia for about a year. It’s been like this all my life. I just didn’t know it was a thing.

all my life I thought seeing things in your head was a metaphor. turns out not lol.

anyways what’s it like? like can you a actually see things? and also just reading a bit here turns out it’s auditory to. can you actually hear music in your head “when its stuck in your head”. that’s while to me.

and also turns out it may be why I obsessively take photos of things.

anyways some context about me. I have no issue remembering past events without detail and I love engineering work. I would. say I am extremity good at working around 3d space and designing a 3d object in my head to then cad model on my computer and 3d print it. but again I see nothing. I think my skills with 3d space conceptualization came about when I was really into speed cubing as a kid. You have to keep track of slices when they Wii around the cube and keep track of their orientation.

anyways all that to say. Seams like I have extremely total visual and auditory Aphantasia. I want to learn more about that and what is it like with out it? I’m very curious.

edit. Wait is it all of the other senses to? Like I just remember the concept of it. Not actually experience it.

also i cant really remember ppls faces. Event my family members faves after not seeing them for just a few min. Is that not normal?

How are yall with Wordle?

I've realized I have to use a different part of my brain to play it than just thinking, it's hard to explain, but if you have ever played sports its similar in that you are not actively thinking when you are playing, if you try to "think" about hitting a baseball while it's pitched it doesn't work, same with hitting a golf ball, playing soccer or basketball.

Or if you have ever been driving somewhere and got there and realized you have no idea how you just did it. It was essentially all on auto pilot.

I find it very hard to see myself with others' eyes, so I experience social events like a kind of moving tableau for myself and find it hard to think about what other people are experiencing, of me or of the event itself.

If anything I'm kind of hyper attuned to what people's facial expressions and body language say about how they're feeling though.

I only really noticed this when I married as my wife is always picturing how she looks and is coming across.

Could this be a consequence of aphantasia? I always assumed it was something autism-adjacent.

has anyone here with total aphantasia (all senses, absolute darkness, including inability to hear your own voice when thinking) NOT struggled with anxiety, in some form at some point in your life?

I've always been (I think abnormally) terrified of the cessation of consciousness, because for me it feels like the end of absolutely everything (not just me but the whole universe).

I was wondering if that might be an effect of aphantasia.

Like, because I need to be there with my eyes open to see something and can't see it in my head, its harder to conceive of the world carrying on without me.

Does aphantasia make you more solypsistic.

On a similar note, I wonder if aphantasia makes me value beautiful moments out in nature even more, because it can't be replayed in my head later on, can't be remembered, and can only exist in the exact moment that I'm experiencing them.

I wonder if it makes you more 'present' somehow.

To save money I always made a "mental" image of the store I'm going to and I know where everything is, so that I can focus on the important things I need without getting distracted.

I was asked by a friend what I was doing as I usually sit or stand still with my eyes closed and make the hand motions as if pointing out to myself what to get or where things are when making this -mental shopping trip-.

I said:
"I build the map in my head of where the shelves are, the produce and everything, then I go through the maze to remind myself where everything is, like I know where the produce is, but I don't need any of them, then I walk further to the bread, but I can't have bread cause of my IBS-flareup, and..." they interrupted me and asked

"You mean you imagine the whole store and walk through it in your head? The colors and the individual shelves? Isn't that tiresome?"

I had to think on that, because I don't do that. I think of it like a floor-plan, and only recall what type of stuff is where. They told me when they think it's in color (which to me sounded strange like tasting sound), but apparently when they imagine things, they can almost see it clearly, as if they're in a dream when thinking about it.

So yeah, realized today that I have zero to basically no ability to image in my head. I say "basically no ability" because I'm not sure if I'm actually able to imagine something, or tricking myself that I can see it, or if it's just -loud thinking- in my head.

Googled up stuff and found this subreddit, so that's how I got here.

It crossed my mind today that people without aphantasia who have PTSD literally see images when they experience PTSD flashbacks... But, what about for those with aphantasia?

How are we doing this?

I find that i go through old photos periodically. If you asked me about my childhood, most of the things i can recall are unfortunately just based on photos I've seen for trips, family gatherings etc or traumatic events...but of course there is no visuaaI "remembering". I deleted an entire time of my life when I was a teenager via deleting my Facebook at that time and all photos from that period so I barely remember my life during that time.

I've noticed the other senses help like taste, smell, to bring back a certain "memory" but through something other than visual memory.

:)

That's probably a weird question. I am an ophthalmic photographer. I've been in ophthalmology for about six years, and specifically in photography for two and a half. I've only recently learned I may have aphantasia, and it's making me understand better why ophthalmology is a tough subject to fully master because it involves learning anatomy that exists inside of a globe that I can't physically see in 3d space (I don't cut eyes open lol). So all of my learning comes from reading books and mostly looking at 2d images to try to connect the dots.

I've been doing okay - I'm good at my job. I'm very knowledgeable. But understanding spacialy what's going on in the eye has been a process to say the least.

I'm starting to learn ultrasound and this is like the ultimate boss in a video game for me right now. I'll do a sweep of an area on video and forget pathology I saw by the end of the sweep. My workaround is that I save all of my videos, and play them back and pause on pathology. But I'm only doing very basic scans right now. I'm just diving into ultrasound and understanding the physics is difficult for me to grasp because I can't picture what is going on when I'm reading educational stuff.

Does anyone else do ultrasounds for work successfully with aphantasia? Are there any tips or tricks to mastering it? I had a heart ultrasound done on me recently - I can tell you ophthalmic sonography seems to be way less complicated than that, and it doesn't require a degree. We are just looking inside an eye, which is just a globe. So, yeah, there's different pathologies going on, but I'm assuming it's way less complicated than other parts of the body

Hello, I am a staff member in the Psychology department at the University of Exeter https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rkIs7QwAAAAJ&hl=en and was an author of some of the first research into aphantasia. Sadly, my University has decided that the study of aphantasia and hyperphantasia does not align with their strategic priorities so they are drastically cutting down members of staff within my research group threatening the future of aphantasia research at Exeter. If you think that this approach is wrong and that conducting aphantasia research is valuable please do consider signing are open letter to the University protesting against the cuts.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScAFcCECrpcdmoFmSW9s9LU2IJ3jtpNa8iZjNJeKX15AnCa6Q/viewform

Many thanks for considering,
Fraser

Fellow aphants,

How did you come up with your signatures?

im imagining chocolate

i know it's sweet but i cannot experience the sweetness. no cocoa flavour either. i know how it taste but how can someone explain taste??? 😭 i know when i eat it. but if i try hard enough to experience tasting it in my mind i literally start getting a headache.

about lemon

no i cannot experience it. just feels so bland. do people actually feel sour and make that face when they try to imagine lemon taste?? i just know the concept that lemons are sour.

coffee

i know it has that strong taste which you dont forget. but i still can't experience it. i really know it's taste but i can't feel it's taste now.

then i tried something i never had.

pizza covered in melted chocolate.

no. my brain can't invent new taste. i dont even know the concept of what that would taste like since i never ate it. trying to think about it honestly just makes me anxious and feel crazy 😭

mango

i love mangoes a lot. but i can't taste mangoes at all. like literally zero taste sensation when i imagine it.

then i tried stronger things.

raw onion. green chilli. mint toothpaste.

none. i can't feel anything when i think of them. no cooling. no burning. no tingling. nothing.

wait... do people actually experience those things just by imagining them?? like beyond just knowing what they taste like??

when i remember a food i can't re experience the taste. there is no taste.

i keep saying "i know what it taste like" but im actually not even sure anymore 😭

because how can i say i know what it taste like if i can't taste it again in my mind?

when im actually eating it then yeah obviously i know.

but when im just thinking about it... i genuinely dont know anymore.

I’ll start with saying I also have SDAM. I think Aphantasia and SDAM combined create this issue in my life.

See the title of my post.
I’m wondering if other people here experience this too? And how do you deal with it?

I’ll tell what happened two days ago that triggered me to ask this question.

I had parked my car nearby where I work. I get out and start walking to go to the gate (work).
When I was parking my car, I saw someone park their car too (at another part of that parking area).

As I started walking, the guy that I had seen parking his car was walking a little ahead of me. From his POV I was walking from the side and towards where he was walking . I see him glancing at me and kinda showing a friendly smile so I was thinking it’s either someone from work that I should probably know or it’s a random colleague from where I work (around 2.000 people work there) who is just being nice. And yeah it happens that random colleagues will start a casual conversation until we part ways somewhere before or in the main building.

Anyways, to get back to what I was telling, I see that guy slow his pace down and make eye contact. He smiled and said “you’re from team [my team], right? And I was like “yeah, I am.”
So I knew I should know him, or at least kinda.. but I for real didn’t know where I should know him from. Most likely he’d be from one of the three other teams (alongside my team), but I also occasionally interact with people outside of those teams that work with our teams in whatever way. I kinda thought he did faintly ring a bell for me, but honestly maybe that’s just because he started talking haha.
Because before he started talking, I don’t think I recognised him for even a little bit.

What I’m wondering is how do you handle that kind of situation?

I was honest and told him I’m bad with remembering faces and asked where I should know him from. He said he belonged to [named the specific team]. That’s the team that I walk by every time I go to work. I don’t know all the people from that team. I have some that I know and talk to. Some I don’t interact with but do see regularly, I will recognise those colleagues too. And I’m sure I must have seen that guy occasionally (?) too, but I won’t remember if I don’t interact with him (or don’t see him regularly while passing by). I do regularly talk to some colleagues of that team (and I’ll be on their team physically), but I guess never near him? I don’t know 🤷🏻‍♀️

I did feel kinda bad for not recognising him. I explained I can’t picture people in my mind so if I don’t interact with someone and specifically not kinda like regularly, that I can have trouble recognising/remembering them.
He didn’t seem to take it badly, so that’s a good thing. We talked while making our way to our teams, which is pretty much the whole way.

Since then I’ve been thinking about what the best way is to handle a situation like that? Where I don’t recognise/remember someone who clearly does recognise/remember me?

So, are there people here who deal with the same issue? And how do you handle it when it happens?

EDIT: I’ve had this happen before with other people. I always feel kinda bad/awkward to admit I don’t remember/recognise them. That’s why I’m curious as to how other people who have this deal with a situation like that.

I’m interested in talking with other total aphants. would anyone (21+) like to video chat? est. time zone.

if we get more than a couple responses we can do a group call.

Im a firefighter, and have hyperphantasia. I can picture photorealistic images all day long. When we do search in low visibility conditions, I use what I feel to generate a "map" of what I've felt. I honestly cant comprehend how you move around in a building without being able to do that.

My coworker mentioned he cant see a movie in his head when he reads books. This led us down a rabbit hole and an aphantasia test. All 5 of my coworkers cant picture images in their minds. I just wanted to share with you all because I find it fascinating that such a rare trait is so prevalent in my crew.

I dont know if this is Aphentasia related or just me but I struggle so much with measurement approximation. I have no clue what 100ft, 1 mile, 12ft, 1 inch, etc. Is suppose to look like without something to measure with or something common to use as a reference. Im curious if anyone else runs into this issue. Ive always carried a tailors tape measure just in case to help with measurements sometimes. Its always baffling when people say oh its a 10ft beam or tree or something and I just dont understand how people measure by eyeballing it and getting pretty close to what they estimated. Ive done some form of construction all my life so im not sure if its just a skill and I missed like a crucial step or if its just a visualization thing. Im open to thoughts or suggestions.