General "Did you Know?"s

[ZpaceJ0ck0]

So I found out there are people out there who have no inner monologue. People who cannot hear themselves think.


I also found out about Aphantasia. Basically it means that you don't visualise things in your mind.

From the video description:

A lot of us can stop and visualise things in a flash – a rainbow, your breakfast table, your Mum's 80s haircut. But "visualising" isn't the norm for everyone – some people don't imagine things in a visual way. While our "mind's eye" allows a lot of us to see things in our head, other people imagine with words or concepts – in non-visual ways. Aphantasia is a recently named condition where people don't experience visuals in their mind – sometimes the images are to a lesser degree, sometimes they're completely absent. I speak with Andy Lord, a BrainCraft viewer who commented about his Aphantasia on my last episode. We all experience the world a little differently.

I often heard of people who lack imagination. Didn't knew there was a scientific name for it. People with Aphantasia must hate reading books (this isn't a joke at the expense of people with Aphantasia. This is merely an observation). The main joy of reading is picturing what's being narrated in your head, which is something people with Aphantasia can't do.

EDIT: if you have Aphantasia and you are reading this, yes. Most people can actually see things in their heads, it's not a metaphor or a figure of speech. How does that work? Well, just look at media like movies and such. There are so many examples out there. You now how sometimes there's like a small bubble on top of the character's head while they're thinking? That's the "mind's eye" or what most people refer to as imagination. The mind's eye is also the reason why people can have flashbacks.

"What if someone had Aphantasia AND having no inner monologue/being incapable of hearing their own thougts? You would basically have to resort to saying your thoughts out loud. Damn, that would suck. So many people would give you weird looks or call you crazy or even just bully you for it!"

I suppose it depends on the person. Some would say their thoughts out loud while other would see words rather than images (just like how the dude with Aphantasia described it in the interview), no hearing. But yeah, I could see why it would kind of suck.