Ever since I was a kid my dreams have been crazy as hell. Last night, I had a dream where I was dropping my kid off at school, but there were people on both sides of the road standing waiting for a wedding. I see the couple and nope right out. Turning around a curb, suddenly I was in a fucking baseball stadium and rows of seats cut me off. I had to get home so I got out of my car? I’m walking down the stairs when I hear “oh, there it is!” I look up where the person was pointing to the sky. I see some rocket like thing, and assumed it was fireworks. It stopped, I hear three dreaded bomb falling noise, and then it slams into a seat a few rows down from the wedding. I hit the deck because I don’t want to die. But instead of exploding it sprays enough glitter throughout the stadium I ended up with a mouth full. Then I get out of there, call my mom, explained what happened, head to their house which is now a bunker in new York City and they refuse to believe what I went through. Then I woke up.
Sorry for the necro on this - but I like to read past threads and see if I pick up new information.
It turns out I can’t see an apple in my mind, not exactly. There is a very brief moment where an apple manifests for like a single frame, but the image is gone the next tick.
I believe this classifies as aphantasia. Interestingly, the “concept” of the apple remains. I can “feel” the entirety of what the apple is, just not see it.
At the same time, when I recall strings of text or numbers it is always a image of when I saw it. I also have an internal monolog that others don’t. Brains am weird man
Hey no worries! I don’t mind at all! 😃
That’s really strange actually! Almost like a 3D model which is in the framebuffer for a split moment, but then kind of disappears… This is the first time I’ve heard of this and I can’t begin to understand the neurology of it but I appreciate reading your story! When you say that you feel the entirety of what the apple is, do you mean you can “feel” it in a tactile sense, or like you feel the presence of an apple that’s not there anymore?
I didn’t really think about it before, but yes, the tactile sensation of its smooth but clearly not artificially smooth surface is there. The apple isn’t in one piece like this. It’s fragmented but connected (seemingly like everything else in my memory). When I think of an apple, the shape, the various red shades, surface feel, crispness, smell and flavor of a bite, as well as the visual guidance of a knife to cut into it all manifest at nearly the same time.
And yes, that’s exactly how I would describe it like a framebuffer. Almost as fast too, a single frame where an image of an apple sits on a table then the rest of my processing continues.
For whatever reason, computer science and architecture has helped me explain this as sort of a populated instance of class Apple. This instance sits in hard storage, and retrieves it when I get apple from main memory.
But that’s not just all. Apple is a fruit, so I also get information about the fruit object, and fruits connected to it too, in real time.
I have ADHD, so I know my brain is physically wired differently. I suspect it’s related to the “cobweb” of thoughts that is normally present.