Can you see images of stuff in your head?

Like, if you think about the cassette on your bike or your front door at home? If someone asks you to picture an ice cream, can you see it in your head?

I can. I didn’t realise some people can’t until I was talking to one of the guys at work recently . He can’t visualise anything and I can’t wrap my head around that.

It’s a technical job that involves taking stuff apart and putting it back together again. I can’t imagine (no pun intended) how you can do that without being able to see the thing in your head?

Apparently, it’s quite common but I’ve made it to 41 years of age without ever even questioning that people might not be able to do it.

Which one of us is the weird one? Me or him?

Neither.

Some people tend towards verbal reasoning, some visual, and some are kinaesthetic.

Like all these categories, I’m pretty sure that what we may have thought was fixed in the past is actually pretty fluid, but may take some effort to change.

…I see dead people!

Yes, always been able to do it as you describe. I also can take flat images at different angles and translate those into 3-D ‘images’ in my head. It’s been a useful skill for me but I am aware it’s not something everyone can do. I spent a lot of time sketching and modelling in card elements of our house conversion for my partner as she just couldn’t translate architectural drawings into what the outcome would be.

Yes.

I can even see conceptual design based on criteria.

Which has been handy on a number of occasions. Can tweak a design in my head before handing it over to a technician to prove it works.

Which serves me quite well as  a civil engineer.

There was a pretty good Rutherford and Fry on this last year –  BBC Link 

Yes – I very much see shapes and spaces.  I can also look at a tech drawing like plans of a house and rotate it in my mind and not just see the shapes but the spaces left around the shapes.  I am very much a visual person

I see words as images. I can say any word backwards as I ‘see’ it as an image so just read it in reverse. Nobody else I know has my superpower.

I’m great at parties…?

Of course I can – its what normal people can do.

Only the deviants can’t 😉

Yes vey much. When i was young and doing exams i could close my eyes as see my revision notes, unfortunately rarely the words in them i needed to recall. Even how i see alsorts of pictures in my head when discussing things

Yes , everyone can cant they?

In a similar vein.

I was shocked to learn that some people don’t think in words! Like my entire thought process is basically a narration.

Which one of us is the weird one? Me or him?

Aphantasia is not being able to see stuff although, like most things, its on a spectrum from being able to perfectly visualise a book (for example) to nowt. I am towards the nowt end of the spectrum.

The, sort of, opposite is internal monologue/inner voice which again people have along a spectrum.

The two can sort of balance each other out so instead of having a video you can have a step by step guide of what you want to do.

Very interesting. I’ll have to give that R4 thing a listen. I can’t even picture something basic like a blue square, let alone visualise family or my drive to work that should be ingrained. I can construct how things will be or should be in my mind by logic and memory- I just can’t “see” them as such…

Similar to the above, I can visualise shapes, make them 3D and turn them around etc… as well as visualising random stuff, like say a chicken with a pair of jeans on.

I can visualise, rotate, modify, etc images in my head; It keeps me awake at night… thinking, designing, problem solving! Useful though, I look at a map and quickly see it in 3D. On the other hand, I cannot learn other languages, play music or draw anything other than technical diagrams. It’s amazing how our brains work.

My son says he can’t see things in his head especially when reading. We’re not sure of this is completely true as it’s his main excuse for not wanting to read when he’s meant to! But definitely seems at least partly true and I wasn’t aware of such a thing until he talked about it.

Yes – I can rotate them and do 2D flat shape to 3D “built” shape too although that does decline if I don’t practice it. Like those tests asking which flat shapes can be folded to make a cube or what this shape looks like as a mirror image.

It’s an important part of the testing for jobs like Air Traffic Control and mechanical engineering where 3D visualisation is critical. Mirror image stuff was useful for working with enantiomers in my chemistry degree.
Enantiomers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiomer (if anyone is vaguely interested!)

I got to the point, when I was doing loads of sudoku puzzles during breaktimes of being able to visualise rows of numbers too. Not done a sudoku in ages though.

FunkyDuncFree Member
Yes , everyone can cant they?

Certainly not, see the Rutherford and Fry link above. I had no idea until I listened to that, happened to mention it when chatting with my Dad one day and it turns out he’s got a mate with no mind’s eye. The proper name is aphantasia

No I cannot see things visually in my ‘minds eye’, the condition is called aphantasia. There is quite an active community on reddit of people realising they have it and having their mind blown when they realise the advice to ‘picture everybody naked’ at job interviews is not just a metaphor…

bens

It’s a technical job that involves taking stuff apart and putting it back together again. I can’t imagine (no pun intended) how you can do that without being able to see the thing in your head?

Best way I can explain it is that i have a sort of ‘wireframe’ in my mind of what a shape or room etc would be, but it isn’t visual. I have kind of ‘spatial sense’ where I just know what an object would feel like and look like if i held it in my hands and rotated it.

Same sort of feeling as if you had a powercut at night, you could navigate around your lounge well enough to get to the kitchen drawer for the torch.  It’s that instinctive feeling of “just knowing” the shape of the object/room/whatever.

The only visual “minds eye” pictures I’ve ever had are my close families faces and it’s fleeting and really weak.

I can however ‘hear’ music clearly in my ‘minds ear’. Apparently some people cannot do that.

I am quite a bit the opposite, I can picture stuff in my head quite clearly, but struggle to put it into words, I use a lot of comparison and analogies when trying to communicate concepts because I just don’t know how to describe what I know.

I have never had the ability to write notes when studying, and really don’t even understand what anybody gets out of them. I am also awful at describing what I do in job interviews. even though I consider myself pretty good at what I do.

Idon’t see it as being a language problem either, it is just seams to be the way my mind works, I am also dyslexic which might contribute.

Gosh this is new to me. I thought everyone had vision in their mind.

As someone who dreads the dentist, I have to lie there and ride an entire trail on my mtb. I see the trail, the drop offs, the gates that need opening, the surrounding hills.

Is it similar thought process while driving or riding, where I picture a crash ahead, or me getting knocked off my bike? Riding home yesterday my head went through this whole scenario of how I’d hit the ground and slide and lie there afterwards. Bizarre. There’s a user on here called “thew” that can’t do it though! He only sees one scenario and that’s it, can’t imagine any other outcome for the scenario he’s dreamt up. Weird AF.

I can visualise, rotate, modify, etc images in my head; It keeps me awake at night… thinking, designing, problem solving! Useful though, I look at a map and quickly see it in 3D. On the other hand, I cannot learn other languages, play music or draw anything other than technical diagrams. It’s amazing how our brains work.

I think I’m a spatial visualiser. More visual than verbal but very verbal. I’ve a distant memory of cognitive pschol tests around this sort of thing which looked at whether you were more likely to mix up similar looking letters (O and Q) or similar sounding letters (P and E, I dunno I’m dredging this from depths of memory). I also like maps and mechanics, though the latter clearly not to the extent of many on here. I also like words, languages and playing music (the latter tends to go with more visual thinking, I think). Anyway It’s not one thing or the other, and it’s different styles more than we’re different species,.

A picture may be worth 1000 words but here’s a couple of thousand pretty good words on the topic:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/16/how-should-we-think-about-our-different-styles-of-thinking.

Yup,it’s a strange and wonderful place inside my head. 😉

Yes – I very much see shapes and spaces. I can also look at a tech drawing like plans of a house and rotate it in my mind and not just see the shapes but the spaces left around the shapes. I am very much a visual person

TJ,having read a lot of your posts over the years , I have often wondered why you became a nurse rather than an engineer*, you clearly enjoy a lot of mechanical/engineering type stuff.

* probably a very annoying one. 😉 🙂

Yep, can remember the shape and feel of objects from decades ago. Shimano 200GS shifters, Tioga Psycho tyres, toe clips & straps…

Can’t visualise or remember faces easily at all, though. They’re really murky as a comparison.

Yes, it’s a useful part of playing sport.

My dad’s dog does – recognises the vet when he gets near the house ands visualises the large thermometer that is about to invade his behind.

On the other hand, I cannot learn other languages, play music or draw anything other than technical diagrams.

Oh, that’s also me! Absolutely.

Languages, I can kind of get by once I’m in the country and getting used to it but the idea of anything more than the absolute basics is beyond me. I was terrible at school with languages.
I used to play guitar as a kid but it took lots and lots of work to claw my way up to Grade 3 and I was never getting any better. Can’t even read music now. I can *listen* to music and visualise all sorts – especially classical music where I can reasonably reliably identify a lot of it but playing anything…? Nope!

TJ,having read a lot of your posts over the years , I have often wondered why you became a nurse rather than an engineer*, you clearly enjoy a lot of mechanical/engineering type stuff.

I did look at engineering at uni but decided against it.  Partly public service ethos, partly looking at pensions even at 18.  Also I worked as a care assistant and enjoyed it.

I would probably have made a decent technician / mechanic but I am not sure about engineering – my maths is poor.  Probably have been a geeky annoying engineer with even less social skills than I have developed 🙂

To OP, yes. I can also visualise things based on touch (sometimes) and from photos/maps. It the main way I have for “seeing” parts of cars when I am taking them apart and fixing them (of “fixing” them).

Te map thing is super-handy if I am out walking. Beig able to relate what I have seen to how the ground is supposed to look is really handy.

W**k bank ?

that’s where i thought this was going…

I was equally baffled when I realised people could actually ‘see’ images in there minds. I’m on the far end of the spectrum for it and have pretty much no ability to visualise at all. I thought it was just a figure of speech.  It may be related but especially as an adult I don’t retain any memories of dreams etc (I assume I have them?).

Its caused me a few issues in my chosen field as being able to visualise stuff as a geologist is kinda handy. I just sketch stuff a lot.

Weirdly I do have an really really good sense of directions / spatial mapping but its all I guess instinctive? as I’m absolutely terrible at explaining a route.

I do have an active internal monologue though, so that’s something.

@redthunder it was more Levis 501 style in my mind’s eye, but close enough 😀

What generator did you use for that btw?

I had a strange dream last night where I went to a shopping mall but it was just a single narrow corridor crammed with little stalls selling knick-knacks and it zig-zagged around up and down stairs so I kept getting lost then I realized I had to meet someone at the food court but when I got there, it wasn’t a food court, it was a massage parlour and Rudy Giuliani was there wearing nothing but tighty-whitey undies. I can’t get the image out of my head, how do I make it stop?

I wonder what an aphantasic would see or experience if given a psychedelic drug, feelings rather than images?

Only the deviants can’t 😉

Oh well, that’s me on the wrong side again! Nope, no images here.

I can imagine lots of things but always ‘narrated’ and have a permanent inner monologue running. In addition, I have very vivid dreams that do contain stark, clear images, ‘video reels’, stories etc, so it must be a conscious vs unconscious thing for me.

Yes, to the original question, quite useful as a geologist who loves maps.

On the language thing I have ideas without language then find the words in the appropriate language to express them, or not depending on the language

Stable Diffusion XL

.fr site.

🙂