Ai: I have done blind contour drawings before, as in drawing something without looking at the paper, just looking at what you draw. They come out like most peoples drawings who have not done this a lot, wonky, but often recognisable.

As for drawing totally blind the result is pretty much the same, but often more wonky, because I do not have very clear tracking of where the pen is. Moreso when I have my eyes closed even.

Also, on the topic of definition and selfreporting, I guess we just have to take each other by our words. I believe that there are people who can actually manifest sense-perception in their minds without there being external input. I see no reason why friends would lie to be about this. And you would have to believe me that I am 100% incapable of doing this, always have been, as long as I can think back.

I would say it is both analytical as well as intuitive. I used to doodle a lot when I was drawing on paper more (something I really should get back to), and I used to do blind scribbles and then make characters out of those scribbles, like this one here:



A lot of the stuff that happened in those experiments I took up as things I now do a lot. One of those was the weird nostrils I do, though those did not happen as a result of a blind scribble.

The left/right brain thing is quite different though, as for that there would not even be any evidence that you make out yourself. You do not know which parts of your brain are active, your brain is pretty much a black box to you.

But people with aphantasia can tell you that they can not visualise things in their mind, and people who can, can tell you they can. So in that way the "conclusions" part does not really make sense.

The conclusion so far is that some people have worse visualisation skills than others, and some have none at all.
That is pretty much it so far from what I know, what might cause it, and how it works, we do not know.
Or if there is any way to somehow "fix" it. Then the question would also be what the impact on a brain that never did this kind of thing for ages, and now suddenly doing it, would be.

My general thought patterns are very associative, so yeah, my mind does tend to wander. It is also something that I had to learn to suppress in conversation, because people found it hard to follow my jumps in topic (understandably)

I have had the hyperactive brain thing quite a few times, and had an episode of quite bad insomnia in my late teens, so yeah.

Does not matter how I try to visualise something, I just can't. Zilch every time.

I don't think that it is a little thing, as it can have a quite profound impact on you every now and then,
but I agree that it is not something worth stressing over in general.

I think people who have aphantasia access memory differently than those who have not. And maybe dreams have less to do with memory, who knows. But thinking about it, my dreams might be lacking some things, such as less of a sense of touch and I also don't remember if I ever smelled while dreaming, I certainly do not smell in dreams anymore after losing my sense of smell, but that is a different story.

Your point about the "sanity/clarity" aspect is an interesting one, but it's not like this is guaranteed. Things like paranoia and similar mental states still can happen, and you can still have hallucinations. For example I have peripheral movement hallucinations quite a bit, where I think that something in my peripheral vision is moving around, some insect or what have you, but a lot of the time it is nothing at all. Something I have gotten used to over the years.

When it comes to art I think maybe it helps in certain ways. For me the process of making a picture is very much a journey of revealing the image to myself, a lot of the stuff I do is entirely subconscious and I don't really have a lot of insight into what I am doing from a rational standpoint, as in I could not really explain it super well. This however makes making art for me interesting. It is a way to externalise things which I have no other access to, without being creative.

I am not sure how much it helps in terms of not daydreaming, I never was the best when it comes to time management and procrastination, and I tend to think a lot about stuff, just having an internal dialogue. But once I get down to do something and get into it I have a very good focus and learn things quite fast usually. The matter is more actually getting to that point.

I don't think that this is a disability, but I don't think that the term condition is problematic here, because that is what it is. However, I have had bouts of depression in the past and the fact that the inside of my mind is void of images, sound and so on, can give you a pretty powerful feeling of emptiness and disconnection that is hard to describe.

Also things like being able to visualise my girlfriend, who lives in the Philippines, or other loved ones, relatives and friends who have died, would be nice. I know what someone looks like, and I have a very good facial memory in terms of recognising people. But describing someone outside of really hard facts, like eyecolour, where they have moles, etc., is pretty much impossible for me, and I doubt that I could draw many people from memory, if any.