Close Your Eyes and Picture an Apple

I want you to try something. Close your eyes for a moment and picture an apple. Don't overthink it. Just picture an apple. Can you see it? Is it red? Green? Maybe yellow? Can you see the curve of it, the stem, the shine on the skin? Can you turn it around in your mind? Could you imagine taking a bite out of it and then picture what it looks like with that bite missing?

For some of you, that probably seemed like a ridiculous exercise. Of course you can see the apple. But there are people reading this who didn't see anything. Nothing. They know what an apple looks like. They can describe an apple. They can recognize one instantly. They can tell you its shape, its color, how it tastes, and probably draw you a reasonable picture of one. But when they close their eyes and try to see one in their mind, there is no apple.

And there's a name for that.

Aphantasia.

I recently came across this word, and what fascinated me wasn't simply the condition itself. It was realizing that I have known people who experience this. I just never knew there was a name for it. And that got me thinking about something much bigger. How many things do we assume everybody experiences simply because we experience them?

Most of us grow up hearing expressions like, "Picture yourself there." "Count sheep." "Imagine your childhood home." "See yourself crossing the finish line." "Go to your happy place." We hear these phrases so often that we assume everybody understands them the same way. But they don't.

For someone with vivid mental imagery, imagining a childhood home might mean actually seeing it internally. They might see the color of the walls, the front door, the furniture, maybe even the sunlight coming through a particular window. Someone with aphantasia may remember that same house perfectly well. They know where the kitchen was. They know the couch was against the wall. They remember that their bedroom was upstairs and that the carpet was brown. They possess the information, but they may not be able to summon a picture of it.

That's an important distinction. Not being able to visualize something doesn't mean you don't know what it looks like. Knowledge and mental imagery aren't the same thing.

Now think about someone you love. Your mother. Your father. Your husband or wife. Your child. Your best friend. Can you see their face? Some people can. Others know exactly what that person looks like but cannot voluntarily produce their face as an image in their mind.

Think about how strange that must sound to someone who has always had vivid mental imagery. Now flip it around. Imagine discovering that other people really do see faces in their minds when you've spent your entire life assuming that "picture Mom's face" was just a figure of speech.

That's one of the things I find so fascinating about aphantasia. We can't climb inside another person's consciousness. Unless we talk about these things, we naturally assume everybody's internal experience resembles our own. Sometimes it doesn't. Not even close.

Memory makes this even more interesting. We often talk about memories as though they're recordings. "Go back to your tenth birthday." "Remember your first day of school." "Think about your wedding." For someone with vivid mental imagery, remembering may include something resembling scenes or snapshots. They might mentally revisit the room, the people, the clothing, the decorations and the expressions on people's faces.

With aphantasia, autobiographical memory can work differently. A person might remember what happened without visually replaying what happened. They may know they went to Disney World as a child. They remember who was there. They know they rode certain rides. They remember being excited. But they may not be able to close their eyes and visually return to that day.

Researchers are still learning about these differences, and it's important not to assume that aphantasia means someone has a poor memory. People with aphantasia aren't all alike. Some report differences in how richly they experience autobiographical memories, while others feel their memory works perfectly well. It simply isn't visual. Different doesn't necessarily mean deficient.

Then there's dreaming, and this is where things get even stranger. If someone can't voluntarily picture an apple while they're awake, what happens when they're asleep?

Interestingly, having aphantasia doesn't necessarily mean dreaming without pictures. Some people with aphantasia report experiencing visual dreams. A person might be completely unable to deliberately picture a beach while sitting awake in a chair and then go to sleep that night and experience one visually in a dream. Others report dreams that aren't particularly visual. Once again, there isn't one universal aphantasia experience. The human brain apparently didn't get the memo that we wanted everything organized into nice, simple categories.

Reading is another fascinating example. Have you ever read a novel and created the entire world in your head? The author describes an old farmhouse at the end of a dirt road and suddenly you've built it. You know what the porch looks like. You know where the trees are. You have an idea of what the rooms look like. Then the movie adaptation comes out and you think, "That's not what the house looks like!"

Except, of course, the house never existed. You created it.

Someone with aphantasia can love that exact same novel without constructing a visual movie in their mind. They follow the characters. They understand the setting. They experience suspense, emotion, humor and sadness. They simply may not be watching the story internally. That tells us something important. Imagination does not require pictures.

And that brings us to creativity, because I can imagine someone hearing about aphantasia for the first time and wondering how a person who can't visualize could possibly be an artist, writer, designer, musician, engineer or inventor. But creativity isn't a projector hidden inside your skull. People can think conceptually. They can understand relationships between things. They can manipulate ideas, experiment, recognize patterns and know when something looks right once it's in front of them.

Someone doesn't necessarily need to see the finished painting inside their head before putting a brush to canvas. Sometimes creation happens through the process itself. You start with an idea. You try something. You change it. You don't like it. You change it again. Suddenly something appears that wasn't there before. That's creativity too.

As someone who works with hypnosis and guided meditation, this subject also makes me think differently about the language we use. Think about how many guided meditations begin with something like, "Close your eyes and picture yourself walking along a beautiful beach." The instructor continues by telling you to see the blue water, watch the waves and notice the clouds drifting through the sky.

Now imagine being a person with aphantasia sitting there listening to those instructions and thinking, "I don't see any of this."

A person could easily conclude that they're bad at meditation, bad at visualization or simply doing it wrong. They aren't. The instructions may simply not match the way their mind processes information.

Instead of requiring someone to see the beach, we can work with other experiences. Feel the warmth. Notice your breathing. Imagine the sensation of your feet against the ground. Think about what being peaceful means to you. Become aware of the sounds you might associate with that place. Or forget the beach altogether. The goal isn't to pass some imaginary mental picture test. The goal is the experience.

The same principle can apply to hypnosis. Words such as imagine, notice, experience, sense, remember and become aware of can leave room for a person's mind to respond naturally instead of demanding that they produce a picture. If someone doesn't see the imaginary palm tree, that doesn't mean their mind isn't responding.

And here's another fascinating twist. At roughly the opposite end of the mental imagery spectrum is something called hyperphantasia. People with hyperphantasia can experience extraordinarily vivid mental imagery. Ask them to imagine an apple and they may be able to picture remarkable details, including its color, texture, light and shadow.

So think about the spectrum for a moment. One person closes their eyes and sees nothing. Another sees something vague. Another gets a reasonably clear apple. Another can practically inspect the thing. They're all sitting in the same room. They're all hearing the exact same instruction. Externally, nothing appears different. Internally, they may be having completely different experiences.

And until somebody asks the right question, none of them may realize it.

That's why I think the bigger story here goes far beyond aphantasia.

We spend our entire lives looking out through one brain. Our brain. Our memories feel normal. Our thoughts feel normal. Our emotions feel normal. Our imagination feels normal. Naturally, we begin assuming that what happens inside our head must be roughly what happens inside everybody else's.

Then something like aphantasia comes along and reminds us that we really have no idea what it feels like to be inside another person's mind.

Maybe that's worth remembering beyond mental imagery. Someone may think differently from you without thinking incorrectly. Someone may remember differently. Learn differently. Process emotions differently. Create differently. Respond differently. The fact that their internal world doesn't resemble yours doesn't automatically mean something is missing.

Sometimes it simply means the human mind has more than one way of doing the same job.

So I'll leave you with the same little experiment we started with.

Close your eyes and picture an apple.

Maybe you see a bright red apple sitting perfectly in front of you. Maybe you see a faint outline. Maybe it appears for half a second and disappears. Or maybe there's nothing there at all.

If there's nothing there, perhaps you've spent years assuming that's what everybody means when they say, "Picture this."

And if you can see that apple perfectly, remember something.

Someone sitting right beside you may be experiencing an entirely different world.

You just can't see it.

And neither can they.

Maybe the mind doesn't need a picture to have an imagination.