That's really interesting. The first thing that occurs to me is that the process of constructing a representative image in the brain might be distinct from the process of consciously experiencing it. Clearly, if a person can draw something from memory, there is some guiding representation in their brain. If they can't picture it consciously, that seems to mean that they cannot subjectively experience that representation, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That sounds a little far fetched, but I've had an experience that suggests to me that it might be true, nonetheless.
I am a lifelong migraine sufferer, though migraines have become much less common and much less unpleasant in recent years. One common feature of migraines is a visual effect called scotoma, in which a glowing or scintillating aura occupies a large area of the visual field. The scotoma commonly precedes the more painful and unpleasant symptoms.
Once, few years ago, I was reading an interesting book when my scotoma started to fade in. It was a bright, geometric thing, vivid and spectacular, and it was fading in right in the middle of my visual field, covering the pages of the book.
I was very interested in what I was reading, and resolved to keep going until unable to continue. I never reached that point.
Instead, I got distracted by the fact that, although the scotoma prevented me from seeing the book, it didn't prevent me from reading it. Fascinated, I began to read aloud from this book that I could not see. I was able to continue without difficulty. After a little while, the scotoma faded away, as it always does, the worse symptoms did not ensue--which happens sometimes--and I was able to confirm that I really had been reading what was on the page, even though I couldn't see it.
The best explanation I could invent was that the process of seeing and reading the book was separate from the process of being conscious of seeing it. Obviously, if I could read it, I could see it, even though my conscious experience was that I couldn't.
Perhaps when an aphantastic person draws accurately from memory, that's a manifestation of the same sort of thing. Again if you can draw from memory, there must be some sort of representation in your nervous system of what you're drawing, even if you don't consciously experience it as images.
> If they can't picture it consciously, that seems to mean that they cannot subjectively experience that representation, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I think realising that other people actually visualises things gave me a lot greater understanding of what blind people experience, in a way. Before I found it hard to imagine, because I had nothing to compare it to. It's hard to imagine, but at the same time we navigate spatially without sight all the time, e.g. when our hands move outside of our field of vision and we still know where to move it.
> I never reached that point.
This is really fascinating.
> Again if you can draw from memory, there must be some sort of representation in your nervous system of what you're drawing, even if you don't consciously experience it as images.
Sure, I absolutely "know" what something looks like even when I can't see it. I can verbally describe it, I can relate to it spatially, so yeah, there's certainly a lot of detail that's still available. I can even "visualise" in a sense the process of drawing an object I remember, in that I can "spatially" "look" at a point that I can't see and move it around (when I do I get a strong urge to move my eyes to track the point, but I can suppress that). I sometimes think I might get an "afterimage" of a line when I do that, but I'm not sure. Maybe that's a path to try to train up an ability to actually visualise things. I keep meaning to try.
"I sometimes think I might get an "afterimage" of a line when I do that, but I'm not sure. Maybe that's a path to try to train up an ability to actually visualise things. I keep meaning to try."
Another commenter here gave a nice description of some exercises in visualiztion. You might try the simplest of those for a while and see if you get results. If you do, you can try moving to more complicated ones.
One exercise was one in which you start with a line and incrementally add more and more 2D figures. I learned a somewhat similar exercise, but using arrangements of 3D figures. The exercise was to start with something simple, like a blue cube, and begin to add more and more additional 3D objects, assign different colors and movements to each, and keep them going stably for as long as possible. I did that exercise for maybe a year or two, and definitely got better at it.
That was many years ago; I have since regressed. I had no trouble with the 2D exercises the other commenter gave, but the most complex of them felt like they were getting near my current limit.
There are a couple of other things I've done that involved exercising the ability to visualize. I don't know if they'll be helpful to you, but in case they are:
One is lucid dreaming. I got this to work by keeping a dream journal next to my bed and writing down my dreams any time I woke up from them. The first effect was that I began to remember a much greater number of my dreams. (According to sleep researchers, everyone dreams every night; we just don't remember most of our dreams at all.) Some time later I began to dream lucidly--that is, I began to have dreams in which I realized I was dreaming.
That was pretty exciting at first; I naively thought that I would be able to control my dreams and have wonderful adventures by directing them. That turned out not to really be true. I had some control, but it was not unlimited. To give a representative example, I realized one night that I was dreaming, and resolved to fly to Washington, D.C. to visit some places I knew well. I discovered that I could fly really high and fast, but I couldn't navigate when I did it. I could navigate where I wanted to go, but as soon as I started thinking about that, I would always descend to the ground and switch to walking.
But I digress. The relevant point is that during the period when I was practicing lucid dreaming, the world of dreams seemed extra accessible, even when I was awake, and it was easier to conjure vivid imaginary environments in my mind's eye. Perhaps that would be of some help.
A second, somewhat similar, thing is that for a few years in the 1980s I was interested in shamanism and in shamanic trance techniques. I had a little training in them and experimented with them for a while. You could look at shamanic trance techniques as ways of initiating lucid dreaming while you're awake. Again, when I was doing that, I had an easier time of conjuring up vivid imagined landscapes, people, and objects.
Keeping a journal seemed helpful in both activities. It helped me remember what I experienced, and also seemed to help make those experiences easier to induce.
That sounds a little far fetched, but I've had an experience that suggests to me that it might be true, nonetheless.
I am a lifelong migraine sufferer, though migraines have become much less common and much less unpleasant in recent years. One common feature of migraines is a visual effect called scotoma, in which a glowing or scintillating aura occupies a large area of the visual field. The scotoma commonly precedes the more painful and unpleasant symptoms.
Once, few years ago, I was reading an interesting book when my scotoma started to fade in. It was a bright, geometric thing, vivid and spectacular, and it was fading in right in the middle of my visual field, covering the pages of the book.
I was very interested in what I was reading, and resolved to keep going until unable to continue. I never reached that point.
Instead, I got distracted by the fact that, although the scotoma prevented me from seeing the book, it didn't prevent me from reading it. Fascinated, I began to read aloud from this book that I could not see. I was able to continue without difficulty. After a little while, the scotoma faded away, as it always does, the worse symptoms did not ensue--which happens sometimes--and I was able to confirm that I really had been reading what was on the page, even though I couldn't see it.
The best explanation I could invent was that the process of seeing and reading the book was separate from the process of being conscious of seeing it. Obviously, if I could read it, I could see it, even though my conscious experience was that I couldn't.
Perhaps when an aphantastic person draws accurately from memory, that's a manifestation of the same sort of thing. Again if you can draw from memory, there must be some sort of representation in your nervous system of what you're drawing, even if you don't consciously experience it as images.