@hvangalen Since I learned of aphantasia, I've thought a lot about how my mind works. Yes, inner dialogue, heck, even back and forth between groups of individuals, rehearsing how I think people might behave because that's how my brand of shyness and autism works: defusing unexpected behavior, preventing startlement and freezing up, by calculating what could happen. The written words that show on the page mimics my inner world. But do I hear distinct voices of the people I rehearse on that inner stage?
No. Not really. Recognize?
Yes.
Which leads to the visual, to the mental images. I can, for example take a book and rotate it is my head. I can take a cereal box and turn it to read the opposite side, the bottom, doing it mentally. I can imagine a fighter jet, seeing the nose cone, yawing it around, seeing the exhaust, flipping it, seeing the weapons under the wing, the flaps. Do I see actual images?
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I have what is called visual intelligence. I understand aesthetics, symmetry, composition in a snap. Photography is my art form. But to I see mental images? That's what discussion with people like @ElyseMGrasso made me realize:
No pictures.
No mental images.
It's all recognition. I recognize what I'm looking at internally. Like turning my iPhone around as I thumb type this to see the camera package, and that the exterior is orange. I'm evoking a mental pattern to match or a mental logically imagined structure, and feeling that I am seeing, hearing—but not really either seeing nor hearing. It's recognition.
My dreams, however, feel truly visual, vividly colorful, tangible. But I've read that' is the mental process of the brain exercising the visual and sensory processes in order to write memories into "permanent storage." The visual sensation might be phantom sensation because the REM state activates parts of the brain imagining does not.
Anyway, that's my theory of my visualization at the moment. Hope this impromptu essay is helpful at some level.
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