Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

That would have blown my mind a few years ago before I knew about aphantasia, but not any more. I have spent a while digging deeper into it, and it has even come up in my recent graduate studies in cognitive science (to the great amusement of my program colleagues).

I am 100% jealous of your ability to do that, however.

I have recently learned that it might be possible to train myself to invoke mental images. There is a technique where a person with aphantasia sits their eyes shut and starts by imagining, e.g., a green apple. But you don't imagine it fully at first. You start with its different qualities, like imagine roundness for a while. And then greenness. Then shininess. Then some gradient. Then a stem. Then more detailed shape. Et cetera.

I have had a tiny bit of success with this technique, or at least I have fooled myself into thinking I have? If I try this, after a while I can start to picture a green apple, though it is like a faint, faded ancient photograph with almost no color or detail and certainly no vividness. But there does seem to be some little bit of something there.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: