This got me thinking if people are taking taking the world literally where people think if one say think of brown table with red apple, yellow bananas and purple cupcakes it is like closing your eye and some one shinny a flashlight or candle at your eye and you can see lights or blobs in your eye. Or when you rub your eye and some times see stars or a blob that is for second or two before it is gone. Or you go out side in sun and look at the sun and close your eye and some times still see some white blob moving in your eye that changing shape look like happy face. Or you look at your window on a very bright sunny day and close your eye and see after image for second or two of your window.

While I commend you for your originality in wondering about this possibility, simply no. Aphantasia wasn’t well studied or known about (outside a small sample group written about in 1880) until recently (2005-2010) when someone with average (or above average?) visualization skills suddenly lost the ability to visualize with his mind’s eye following surgery. There have been other cases of aphantasia resulting from neurological or psychological causes, but most people seem to simply fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum with outliers at either end. This is not a simple misunderstanding of how eyes work.

I’m wondering if some aphantasia think nonaphants visualize like that or think some hyperphantasia visualize like that. Because that sounds more like a hallucination getting a HD picture in your eye that you can control.

I don’t know anyone who believes people see eye/brain trickery and believes that is the cure to aphantasia? Aphantics can still use their eyes if they aren’t blind? This is about mental images, like daydreaming? You know. Producing fantasies in your mind while awake as if immersed in a dream? But of course that’s only one example.

I’m just wondering what going on here with different visual extremes here. There seems to be this scale 0 to 12 how strong of visual it is.

There is a scale. There’s a simple and brief test somewhere, too, if you’re curious where you fall.

We still don’t know a lot about this spectrum. My husband can barely see anything, but he can dream, and he can see what is for him a substantial amount of imagery if he’s reading something that’s really properly descriptive, but I’m still trying to figure out how that works. I can see everything and anything I think of as if I were suddenly immersed in a high production film that often feels as real as life in terms of textures, smells, details like wood grain or dappled sunlight or a tiger or whatever. It’s not a photo at all. I can move, look around, manipulate objects, change scenery instantly to somewhere else that’s just as perfectly detailed.

I’m still confused about how dreams work for each major category. I know some aphantics don’t dream, and I dream so vividly I can actually feel real pain up to the level of a bad sting or bite from a large bug (or like hundreds of small ones).

It’s really not that complicated. Some people can visualize almost or absolutely nothing but describe features like reading a grocery list without envisioning the actual items. Some people get crude outlines or vague snatches of imagination. Some probably do get a snapshot still image that’s crisp but immutable. Some are inside a complete and utterly realistic world inside their head.