{When you’re reading, & your eyes are following the words, what do you see in your mind’s eye? Many readers claim they visualize characters, setting, & action–some even claim they can imagine sounds, smells, tastes & textures.} 1 of 25 https://bookriot.com/2017/01/02/see-read-2/

{Recently, I discovered that most people can recall visual memories. That was shocking, because I can’t. Nor do I see anything when I read. I learned I had a condition called aphantasia, which is sometimes called mind blindness.}

{I had no idea until recently that people all around me could see things when they closed their eyes, or see things when they read books. Like a person blind from birth, I struggle to imagine what this inner sighted world must be like. It turns out everyone sees something>}

{>different. I’ve always assumed, & I think most people do too, that we’re all looking at the same reality, & it pretty much looks the same to all of us.

We might all be looking at the same reality, but we're all seeing something different.}

{& we all have different mental abilities for perceiving it. What we see when we read is just one of many indicators of how we’re different. Some readers claim they see full-blown movies when they read.}

{I find this hardest to believe. But, I also know there are people that can look at a scene & paint it realistically from memory.

Since learning about aphantasia, I've been paying attention to what people say about visualisation.}

{I've noticed that some writers talk about seeing what they write before putting it down in words. J.K. Rowling made detailed drawings when fictional world building. My inability to visualise might explain why I create mostly dialogue when writing fiction.}

{It might also explain why some novels are dialogue driven.

Not knowing what I'm missing pushed me to research the subject of visualization & reading. The first book I found was What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund.}

{This book is a 2D multimedia presentation on the subject that uses typography, photos, & drawings to create a graphically design layout to explore the topic. Mendelsund spends most of his time on textual analysis, & querying people about their experiences.}

{He'd asked readers of Anna Karenina how well they saw her. Many swore they saw her vividly, but when he'd ask, "What did her nose look like," it would flummox them.}

{Some would reply, they saw a vivid dress, or others beautiful hair. This suggests visual memory & reading imagery might be fragmentary – at least for some. Others claimed movie like visions.}

{I’ve paid close attention to my dreams when I can, especially in lucid dreaming experiences, & they aren’t true movies. They're a series of images, & my mind makes up stories about them.}

{I wonder if the reverse is true with reading, & the mind generates images to fit the stories. But them I'm not sure, my mind isn't generating images.

The next book I turned to was The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks.}

{This book is flat out mind-blowing, & even that’s an understatement. Sack collects case histories of people with brain damage, usually from strokes, that affects their ability to read, including one women who lost her ability to read music.>}

{He then explores what happens when people lose their sight. I’ve always thought people who went blind saw darkness. So did Sacks. For some blind people that’s true. For other blind people, they still see, evidently using the same visual field generator used by dreams, reading>}

{>& visual memory. One woman he wrote about continued to see the apartment she lived in, and even the clothes she put on each day. She was very careful to keep her physical world the same as her visual memories.

I found this astounding! Our minds have great powers. Not silly>}

{>super-hero powers, but virtual reality generating powers.

We don’t see the world by looking out through our eyes like portholes. Our eyes are like camera sensors, taking in data, which is processed in our minds, with a slight delay.}

{Evidently, that processing power can be used in various ways, including imagining what we read, remembering what we’ve seen, & even creating virtual worlds in dreams or while blind.

It disturbs me that I don’t have the ability to see when I read, or even remember visually.}

{Not only do I feel handicapped, but I feel confused as to what happens when I do read. When I was young, I read very fast to find out what happens in the story. I’m idea oriented. Evidently, reading is more of an abstraction to me than other people.}