#oneaday Day 1125: Aphantasia

Here's an interesting exercise for you. Grab a piece of paper or open a blank text document, then imagine a ball. Then write down everything you can tell me about that ball.

If you can't do that, then you have a condition known as aphantasia — the inability to picture things in your mind. My wife has it, as does Arin Hanson from Game Grumps, and doubtless numerous others. And I find it kind of interesting.

You see, when someone tells me to "imagine a ball", my mind immediately goes into overdrive. The ball in question is red, round, textured with a sort of "spotty" surface but unpatterned, slightly smaller than a basketball, looks a bit like a medicine ball you'd get in a gym but is more the weight you'd expect a typical ball to be, is sitting on a grassy patch in a garden which may or may not be the garden I grew up in (in the form it was when I was a child, not the form it is in now, which is slightly different) and is enjoying dappled sunlight streaming through the trees from above on a pleasant spring afternoon. It's been warm and dry for quite some time, so being outside is pleasant and even desirable, and the garden is in a condition where it's actually rather nice to just go and sit on the grass. Remember that wigwam I had when I was a kid that we used to put one of the old sofa cushions in and I'd sit in there and read music theory books… okay, I'm getting off the point a bit, but you get what I mean.

When someone says "imagine [something simple and/or abstract]" I can generally extrapolate an entire scene and possibly even a story from that. When I'm reading a book, I can picture the things described in the book going on in front of me — perhaps not in the exact same way as the author, but definitely in a vivid way. Since delving into Japanese light novels recently, I've found these to be particularly vivid and potent fuel for the imagination, even though their descriptive language isn't typically anywhere near as detailed as in what one might regard as "literature".

With aphantasia, you supposedly have none of that. And I don't say "supposedly" in doubt that it happens — I'm sure it does. It's just interesting that of all the things I can imagine, what it must be like to not be able to imagine anything is something I absolutely, definitely cannot picture!

I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone to go "imagine a ball" and for you to be unable to do so because the person asking you to do so hasn't given enough information about the ball. It feels like it would be remarkably inconvenient — and I find it a bit sad, too. As much as there are many occasions when I don't like how my brain works — and my imagination can certainly play a part in those times, for sure — on the whole, I'm glad I have such a vivid and active imagination. I feel there are certain aspects of life that I can simply appreciate more as a result — and if nothing else, it certainly makes for some pleasingly weird dreams at times.

I wonder how well-known aphantasia is as a condition? For it to have a name, it must be reasonably recognisable and apparently it affects 1-3% of the population — though from a casual browse around the Internet it appears to be a field of mental health that hasn't been studied all that much. I guess it's quite hard to study the absence of something — though there are, of course, various ways that you could assess exactly how far a person with aphantasia is able to "imagine" or "remember" things.

Anyway, that's my thought for the day. Can you picture that ball?