What does your childhood home look like? How many windows across the front?
Can you imagine what a fortune cookie looks like? Can you visualize a ten-speed bicycle?
People who can't conjure up any images of these things at all may have a condition called aphantasia, the inability to visualize images in the mind.
My mental images are usually hazy at best, almost never vivid and clear. I've noticed that when I've had a very high fever, very clear images arise in front of my mind's eye, but they're largely involuntary.
I'm better at visualizing things when I attempt to draw them. There seems to be a feedback loop between drawing something and visualizing it.
An action that I've done with my body, such as splitting firewood. is also easier to visualize. I have a harder time visualizing milking a cow, because I haven't tried it, even though I've watched someone else do it.
According to Wikipedia, aphantasia is only recently named and not well studied. Here are some questions about it:
• What's the relationship between drawing something and imagining it?
• Does actual tactile experience with the world (like waxing a car) aid in visualizing?
• How does virtual interaction, such as in a video game, compare to actual experience?
• How is visualizing an object different from visualizing an action?
• Are the same parts of the brain active when mentally visualizing as when actually seeing?
• How is the condition related to inabilities to recognize objects or faces (prosopagnosia)?
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