I got aphantasia from Covid, apparently it's an extremely rare side effect - so rare I've only found a handful of people on the entire internet who've experienced it. So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize, I used to be extremely good at visualizing. Most major impact (apart from the loss of ability to daydream) is that my memory is worse, as my memory was very much based on playing back memories as movies in my head. Especially childhood memories suffered. Also reading books is a very different experience, as when I previously would make up movies and picture the characters visually when reading, now it's all black. That said, reading books is still an enjoyable experience, it's just very different.
I also stopped dreaming in images for a long time, which was weird. It's still very dim (not so vivid), but at least that part came back.
That sounds incredibly sad and frustrating. I can't imagine what it's like to suddenly lose that ability, being so dependent on it.
Indeed many of my childhood memories are mostly sequences of pictures, the emotional content kind of "floats" on the imagery. It must be very frustrating, being forced to reinvent how you experience your inner life and memories.
Edit, after reading some more comments: are you musically inclined? Did your ability to hear melodies in your "inner ear" suffer similarly?
It sucks, but that's life - there are worse things and life is still plenty enjoyable. In addition, I lost my sense of smell/taste completely and that was much worse to be honest (but still, you learn to live without and focus on what's good). If I had to choose between the two, I'd choose being able to smell/taste any day. Funnily enough not because of food, but actually because of the added experience you get when walking in nature or other places - smell has so much to do with experiencing things, but you never consider it until it's gone. Luckily it came back, even though it's been 2.5 years now and it's still only 80% normal (but 80% is quite good!).
As you mention, the most sad part about it is actually the childhood memories, but I still have the memories of course, they're just a bit more "facts based" than re-living experiences.
Luckily, I didn't lose my inner ear or even inner monologue like in another reported case [0]. I do play instruments, so I guess I was/is musically inclined to some degree. I still have ability to imagine music exactly like I would hear it, unlike a friend with aphantasia who can't.
Another interesting detail is that I regained the ability before losing it again (Covid re-infection), and during this time of recovery I could gradually see grey, blurry images that got better and better. It's like the image generator in my head didn't have capacity to create full blown images, but only low res ones. Which makes me believe that in my case the "image generator" was damaged as I couldn't even dream in pictures, while for most people with aphantasia that's not the case, as they can dream normally.
On the bright side, I don't get horrible, lifelike images popping up in my head anytime I hear about something disturbing. Not that that was a big problem, but it's something you notice. It makes me believe that people with aphantasia might be better at coping with disturbing events, as they don't have to re-live the experience visually. But that's just a theory.
Smell is super tied to memory so that could be the cause of your imagery issues. I almost completely lose my sense of smell due to concussions in early adulthood but occasionally it randomly comes back (briefly) in full force. Anything I smell at that time triggers very visual memories in my head from childhood.
Neurology is still such a black box medically. Did you by any chance have a brain MRI at any point? If yes, and your willing to share, what portion of the brain was impacted? If more than one, has there been diagnostically visible change between them? Did you get any treatment? I can be reached at first at full tod moc if you prefer.
I've had a brain MRI to rule out other causes (tumors etc), but it was clean. I don't think they looked specifically for tiny damages to areas (if that's possible), but I'm not sure to be honest as I only got answer that there were no signs of disease.
Well maybe it's a good thing. You live in the present instead of an imaginary past. The past is gone no matter how much your mind tries to come up with images. The memories no longer have any existential significance apart from causing you trauma, generating false sense of pride, etc. Helps you to do and try new things instead of relying on a past you once lived and no longer exists.
I do tend to think I live a bit more in the present because of aphantasia. However, I also do have an experiential memory. It's not great, and largely not visual, and to the degree there are any visual elements they're pretty useless, like burnt fragments of a Polaroid. I think you're kinda having a hard time imagining this condition.
> So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize
True, but this is not the same as being born aphantasic.
I'm thinking that people like me who have never had the ability to draw pictures in their head have decades of dedicating brain power to alternative ways of thinking about the world that you wouldn't have in place.
You wouldn't be able to compare the experience in any real depth, but you might have more than typical insight.
I fully agree, especially since it hasn't been that long since I got it. I notice my brain is thinking a bit differently already, but my memory is extremely wired to thinking visually, so I'm for sure impaired compared to someone born with aphantasia. A friend of mine who has aphantasia is much better than me on remembering facts and thinking logically for instance.
Reading reddit etc, there are so many people getting very distraught and worse when they discover they have aphantasia (and reddit, for many people, is a magnifier for such thoughts unfortunately). Having been very good at that ability and then lost it I can provide some perspective on that. I would be lying if I didn't admit it's a very nice ability to have, but I also wouldn't really bother spending much energy on considering how life would be if one had it, but rather as you and the article points out, focus on the strengths one builds without it.
Not sure why I was downvoted (I know it wasn't you), but it sounds like we are on the same page.
It's important because in my case I think quite differently from how it seems most people do: I have a sort of "conceptual graph" that I sense my way around. When people discuss stuff, I update that graph. Often this causes issues in personal relationships, but in other ways it's helpful.
I tend to detect incompatible information more often than others, I believe, as a result of this (but I'm still human and miss stuff/make mistakes). It makes me very good at my line of work (software development in the regulatory space where we don't have clear internal requirements and users).
If I were to hazard a guess, the brain capacity that would have been used for image processing is being used for this instead.
Have you tried any visualisation exercises to attempt to reaccess your abilities?
I think I know which ability you refer to, as my fear when I discovered this was that I couldn't work as a software developer anymore (before I got a grasp of what had actually happened, it took a while to actually understand the extent). I used to visualize arrays/tables/graphs in my head (like images/fancy animations) and do operations on them to imagine how one could transform them etc. But I also had/have a native sense of "depth" to data structures, which I also used. That one can move around in a data structure in a sense, I'm sure you know very well what I mean. Luckily that ability is still intact, which I've been relying a lot more on lately, but I can imagine you being much better than me on those kind of tools. The mind is so extremely fascinating, and it's so weird to think of the ways we think of things.
I tried visualization exercises (there's a lot more to the story that I didn't consider space to add here) and the first time they worked rather quickly, so I regained the ability in the course of days. But as I mentioned in another comment, I contracted covid again and then it was even worse than it had ever been and training didn't feel like it worked. I regained a little bit since that infection, but got covid yet again (it's an awful disease) and then it was back to square one. It seems like something in the brain had to heal before I could train it back up, but I'm afraid that the damage will be/is so severe that it will not be possible to recover (especially since I couldn't even create images in my dreams).
I might get better over time if I just stop getting covid, but as isolating myself is out of the question, that's unlikely to happen. Unfortunately it seems much harder to recover each time. Since last time it's not really been recovering. On the bright side, my sense of taste/smell has not been damaged again, which has been great.
I'm aphantasic, but I also have a very good visual/geometric intuition. The brain's a funny thing that way. Give me a shape rotating problem and I'll get the answer pretty rapidly compared with a baseline, but it's by a process that doesn't involve explicit visualization.
Hopefully you'll be able to access similar mental pathways with practice.
I'm pretty sure you can regain the ability. Covid damages the brain, and the brain "forgets" how to do certain things (like smell or visualise or focus), but brains are incredibly powerful and flexible, and can re-learn these things. I myself have long covid and lost a lot of sensing ability, but have been able to improve my senses of smell and touch by training with promising results. Here are some techniques people have used to help learn/relearn how to visualise: https://www.reddit.com/r/CureAphantasia/
Thanks for trying to help! I answered in another comment, so you can see a better reply there, but I've been trying (a lot) of these things and the short version is that it seemed to work when my brain had been given some time to heal, but repeated covid infections might have made it permanent in my case, or at least given the prospect of future infections. But time will tell. My smell/taste survived the last infection(s?), so there might be some hope that it gets milder.
It's so weird, as I know exactly which "muscle" to trigger to make it happen, which I guess someone having aphantasia wouldn't instinctly know, but it just doesn't do much.
-edit-
Oh, forgot to mention, in the beginning when I trained on visualizing again (back when it did work), I got _so_ exhausted in my brain afterwards, it was like really trying to used some damaged "muscle". I find that really fascinating. I'm not able to invoke such exhaustion in other ways, that quickly.
I was aphantasiac(?) most of my life and I self discovered similar techniques to what they discussed in the Reddit while learning multivariate calculus. I was trying so hard to visualize the integrations and using the “fuzz” I see when I close my eyes to infer the shapes then one day I could actually see them in my minds eye. I never applied the technique to other things because I didn’t have the same motivation to practice that induced my first breakthrough but I am pretty confident the technique works. The plasticity of the brain is remarkable and it’ll adapt to what you need it to do if you work at it.
As someone outside the spectrum completely, I can sympathise with your lack. I find you experiencing both sides fascinating. But the reason I replied is that my wife is a Chinese medicine practitioner, and also treats using a not so common method of scalp/brain acupuncture. After contracting COVID myself and losing all sense of smell and taste, she cured me in one session of that technique. Minutes after the needles went in my scalp I got back about 5% of my senses and by the evening it was all back. I don't know where you are geographically but it might be something worth exploring.
Thanks for your tip/reply. My sense of taste/smell is much better now and seems to be on a good trajectory as well, I won't seek more treatment at the moment. What you describe kind of sounds related to a stellate ganglion block[0] which can have these instant (and for some permanent) effects on covid-induced anosmia.
I was referring to scalp acupuncture as a maybe-potential-who-knows remedy to the Aphantasia, but it's a projection of it curing my smell/taste in minutes, not a "scientific assertion".
It's not the same as described in the link. I'm referring to acu needles at the top of the scalp in specific locations, triggering whatever nerves are there.
Covid was/is a weird one. Hope you get your visuals back. I've never had them but if I did I wouldn't want to miss them.
I just realised that I had similar experience. I can still picture things in my mind but dreams only came back a few weeks ago after being absent for a long, long time. Thinking about it it's not been months but a year or two.
I know it’s basically cliche at this point to recommend psychedelics for anything, but one effect I’ve certainly noticed is a strengthened mind’s eye in the comedown and following days. More so with acid and more so for legitimately visual trips than smaller-dosed, heady trips.
Im not sure if my total aphantasia comes from a burnout or whether I was born with it. After a severe work related burnout, when things came to, some things did not return to normal. I have learned about aphantasia recently and did not test before the burnout.
I also stopped dreaming in images for a long time, which was weird. It's still very dim (not so vivid), but at least that part came back.