kokopelli wrote:
When I first heard of aphantasia, I didn't think that I have it. After talking to others, though, I find that they seem to be able to visualize things very readily -- often in very realistic detail. For me, I can kind of visual something, but it is very fleeting and highly cartoonish at a very low resolution. The image seems to last, at best, for maybe about 1/4 to 1/2 of a second and then vanishes completely. Once visualized, for that fraction of a second, I cannot bring the image back again for quite a while.
When thinking about the example of walking on the beach and looking over my shoulder at the sun, I get a flash of a beach and then it's gone. Then a flash of water and then it's gone. And a flash of the sun, but it's gone. Trying again, there is nothing.
Oddly enough, another mathematician once told me that he wished that he had my visualization ability. He thought that I could visualize higher dimensions much better than anyone else he knew. While I don't think that I can visualize higher dimensions, I did once have a really fantastic dream that I seemed to see in four dimensions.
Yes, I get the same sort of image flashes, but they are rare. They don't just flash whenever I think of something. It is completely random when they occur, and they never occur twice.
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