Or decades. The memoried images are still accurate, but they are different than the real item. Don't know what that says. Events long ago are more like Impressionism, even when not emotionally charged.

and I've discovered I really can't put anything on paper without a concrete reference.

Just looked at my coffee cup... closed my eyes and nope. No damn cup in my brain.

I was a terrible student, not for lack of trying, but now I'm thinking this visual stuff really hindered me. When I hit my thirties, I took some hands-on classes pertaining to the HVAC industry and holy cow!! So many things clicked.

The things ya learn...

Wonder if studies have been done on that re: studying effects .

There's the learning styles - which is different, I think; some learn better by seeing (reading?), hearing the lesson, or by hands on when possible.

I just don't see myself doing all that. Maybe if I was younger and had a stronger drive. But I appreciate the thought.

I can also taste anything being mentioned.

Is that a form of synesthesia? (Something I've been fascinated with every since I first read about it.)

He could see words as colors & says that was how he knew if they were being truthful & how he determined whether people were trustworthy.

Fascinating stuff!

(I find it fascinating!)

If I have it correct when one sense is triggered a another is simultaneously.

Such as.... (I don't know how complex it can be!)

▪︎You hear a note and also see a color (idk if only in your mind's eye, or in front of you in some form).
▪︎You smell an ordor, and hear a musical note.

There's a bunch of variations. Some may be rarer than others.
Oh, and I believe the connections are supposed to be consistent.
A person will always "see" the same color with that particular note etc

I think I'm going look this stuff up again👍

I don't really see it as an image w my eyes, but I see it in my mind. Also the image evolves, I started with the apple and a worm came out of it, then it changed from red to green, then I cut it in half etc. Am I doing this right? lol

I can't do any of that.

Minus the leaf

I've known, since long before there was a name for it (back in the 60s).

I've been self-accommodating all my life - mostly work-arounds for memory.

Now that I'm in a BFA program, the work-arounds are more challenging. I'm having fun exploring this new area of study in which a functioning minds eye is explicitly expected.

(I do have an inner ear, a partial inner touch and taste, but smell no inner smell.)

I'm pursuing a BFA for the fun of it. (I retired from a University position, so that entitles me to take 2 courses for credit each semester). Since I'm now in a field that relies pretty heavily on visualization - and because aphantasia seems to be the current fad diagnosis - the connections are a lot more well known and direct. The last decade of my life was spent in academic success at the law school, so I worked with a lot of people with an entire range of neurodiversity - and a lot of formal accommodations that might not have been necessary if those of us who are teachers paid more attention to the wide variety of ways people learn.

I also have the self-accommodation I've been doing for years to address the memory challenges that (until now) were the biggest impact of being aphantasic.

So - I guess I'm continuing my career as an educator. I'm spending a lot of time noticing how visualization shows up in the art context and speaking to my professors about my creative process, which doesn't really fit the standard protocol for creating art. Since I'm older than most (maybe all) of them, and have spent more time in the classroom as an instructor than most of them it is an interesting dynamic. Many of them talk to me more on a peer to peer level, so I have a bit of leeway to push my own agenda regarding aphantasia

Probably helps me alot in doing visual art, especially when making up landscapes whether real or with science fiction elements. Not needing to always rely on references.

▪︎Definitely a 1 inner ear; symphonic, rock etc
▪︎1 - inner touch. (To test just imagined sand through my fingers, velvet, raw silk, a sort of 😄 scratchy wool yarn. Tried to get a variety to test!)
▪︎1 - 2 inner nose
▪︎ 1- 2 inner taste