I believe that I have aphantasia, this is all coming on very quickly right now, but after talking to my wife for about 30 minutes I'm certain of it. She highlighted the fact that I don't have any ability to recall my dreams outside of exceptionally rare instances.

I, too, have a good sense of direction and am often relied upon to be the guide on hikes or backpacking trips in places that we've never been before. I know how to read maps and use a compass and orient myself but that is less visualize than it is analytical, IMO.

But! I also have the black hole effect that the GP described. I have an almost uncanny ability to just get beyond trauma and bad experiences and I'm seeing now that that is probably due to this black hole memory effect. I don't carry memories with me the way that other people do, but I've known that about myself for a while. It's caused some strife in my life, and it continues to do so, but I've taken to keeping a physical journal and making frequent notes about things that happen throughout each day. The act of writing this stuff down seems to force these things into my memory. I learned recently that my father operated similarly in his career, using a single sheet of A12 folded into quarters where he'd divide each quarter into an hour of work, with 8 folds in total representing the average day. When he worked 12/16 hour shifts, he'd add additional folds.

And, so... I guess that in light of this, I've always wondered if I'll have dementia or Alzheimer's late in my life. My paternal great grandmother lived well into her 90s, but my paternal grandmother succumbed to dementia in her mid 80s. My maternal family has some folks in their 90s, as well, and everyone there seems to have their memory in tact. But, my father has had his struggles and I've personally noticed that my mother is starting to struggle with conversational memory recall today.

Were you always this way?

I can still picture things in my head, but with huge gaps and difficulty; when I was a kid, I used to replay a 17km road to my grandparents with exquisite details in my head: the bus, the driver, walking down the isle, seating myself, the initial jolt, watching the road turn, every unique house, porch,bench, tree, telephone wires and so on and all without a conscious efort "what happens next" .

If I try real hard and ask myself questions like "ok, so now picture grandpa's mustache, now his hair, now his neck" then maybe I get a glimpse of his whole face.

My sister and I used to play a game as teenagers: one of us would closd his eyes, the other would narate a scene, it was pretty great.

In the 7th grade I was a 6/10 student at math, then trigonometry came and I was a 10/10 at trigonometry and 6/10 at algebra, because trigonometry made absolute sense because I could draw everything in my head; I needed tutoring with algebra, but never with trigonometry.

I also almost never remember any dreams; my rem and deep sleep are toast anyway, according to fitbit.

As opposed to my childhood when I woke up exactly once per night to drink water from the cup my grandma left beside the bed -- the rest of the night I had great adventures, I'd be chased my demons, fly across the clouds, escape some trap my grandfather told stories about.

Nowadays I get about 1 hour of tossing and turning througout the night, and depending on my anxiety I sometimes get completely wake for 1-2 hours at about 4AM; only about 1h of rem and 1h of deep sleep, the rest is just light sleep according to fitbit.

I'm not parent, but yes, I've always been this way.

Just like he says in the article, and other posters are saying, for decades I didn't even realize because I didn't think people were being literal about "seeing pictures" in their head. I thought it was simply a label for remembering.

It was only when doing the course "Learning how to Learn" and getting frustrated with the memory techniques that I found out that people really do see with their mind's eye.

Your math anecdote resonated with me, but with Chemistry instead. I was a Chemistry/CompSci major. I only did a Bachelors degree, but for Chemistry I never really had to study or memorize much because I could generally figure out just by imagining the structure of molecules and feeling how they might interact (this was for organic, materials science and inorganic chem wasn’t so intuitive).

Same with algorithms on data structures- I would imagine a toy data structure and play around with how algorithm would interact with it.

The compulsory first year Math papers on the other hand were impossibly hard to follow, even with a lecturer who happened to specialize in mathematics education I was always lost about 20 mins into a lecture and always struggling to catch up.

I don’t feel like I can picture things as clearly as some people describe in this thread, but it’s not a total blackout either. Something in between.

Everything you've described rings 100% true with me as well (great with directions, can only recall dreaming every few years, no issues moving part traumatic events, etc).

I have not yet tried journalling as a coping mechanism; I may have to give that a go.

Similar here. I can reconstruct spatial relationships from memory in great detail, to the extent that before I realised people are literal about being able to see things, I considered myself to be a very visual thinker.

E.g an example I often used is that I remember pieces of code by how they look on screen to the extent that the syntax and formatting is something I'm unusually obsessed with because it affects my recall, and that I remember pages from papers I read 25+ years ago by visual appearance and layout.

But I can't see them, even though I can recall them to the point that I know what they would have looked like had I been able to see them.

> have an excellent sense of direction. I'm excellent at learning maps in computer games.

That's interesting. I wonder how your mind has learned to compensate. Maps are such visual things, you must be tapping into some other brain areas to store/retrieve this information.

> When I remember traumatic experiences I don't visualize them, I remember the feeling, the shame or the guilt or the embarrassment.

hmm, interesting. Maybe this part of my personality isn't related to the aphantasia.

There's actually already a study on spatial reasoning and aphantasia: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

Basically, aphantasiacs tend to do just as well at spatial reasoning tasks as people with imagery, but tend to be somewhat slower and do not exhibit the gender gap that has been identified in the broader population.

I'm aphantasiac as well, and can identify with some of the experiences you've mentioned in this thread, and not at all with others. My spatial reasoning is great, and I'm a singer who has no problem at all with singing along to songs - if they're sufficiently regularly structured, even singing along with the chorus the second time it happens in a song I've never heard before. However, like you, I cannot replay sounds in my head. Memories are easily put behind me.

We're clearly very early in understanding what impact aphantasia has on people. It's a fascinating topic, and always interesting to teach people about.

A map is just a visual representation of spatial relationships, and often a poor one because it's from a fixed vantage point that is certainly not well suited to visual translation into what you see at a street level.

When I look at a map, I rarely try to remember what it looks like (I couldn't visualise it anyway) - I remember directions and distances relative to other places.