Can You See Pictures In Your Head? I Can't

[barry1010]

It was only recently that I found out that most people can easily see pictures in their head.  I wonder if that is why I cannot recognise people I know if they are not in the usual places I know them from, such as local shopkeepers, the barber, my window cleaner.

I cannot draw, nor remember a sequence of numbers for a few seconds.  I don't know if that is because I don't have a snapshot in my mind's eye.

If you are like me, do you also have these problems?  

https://aphantasia.com/what-is-aphantasia/

What I do have, and I have discovered many people don't, is a memory smell.  I can see a picture of a sash window and immediately smell putty, or can smell grass if somebody is mowing on the tv.  It comes from nowhere and sometimes I have to struggle to remember where I know that smell from. It's a nuisance when I smell burning.

Just interested to know if anyone else is in the same boat

[barry1010]

Did your dad have a bike, Buen?

[Buenchico]

^^^ Er, am I missing something here, Barry ❓

Yes, BTW!

[jno]

Poirot looks red to me, though my synaesthesia isn't really very strong

[jourdain2]

When I'm writing creatively I quite often have pictures in my head - but it isn't always - sometimes (if it's a poem for instance) there is one picture but the rest is words sort of flashing up before me.  I do see a lot of pictures when I think or dream or read............

[barry1010]

Do you see them in the same way you see with your eyes? Moving or static? 

 

[1ozzy]

I feel sorry for you Baz.

My wife can't "visualise anything".

But I can imagine everything.

Now sometimes that is a drawback😏

Mental images are both awesome and dangerous. 

[Peter Pedant]

Hi lozza - sleepless from voraconazole " do you tell any of your patients they will hallucinate if they take this antibiotic?" AND codeine for the cough (*)

BUT I used to think in pictures and was a reluctant reader and then an uni changed into a reader and lost the ability to memorise in pictures

I think synaesthesia ( "I see butterflies when music plays") is different to aphantasia. I went to a lecture on "Synaesthesia in Hardy Novels" - yeah he enumerated every instance of them which were not many. But what conclusion can you draw ? " he does it but not much"

we must both go to bed - not with each other.....at least it is not a case of - - - - it will soon be dawn and then you will never sleep

 

[1ozzy]

I don't need drugs to have vivid dreams Pete. 

Guess I'm just lucky.

[Peter Pedant]

I dread another night - it looks as tho it will be a codeine night again ( cough wih added hallucinations)