This is the bit I was responding to (should have quoted it in my reply!). Is it part of aphantasia? I suppose I could go read the Wiki page…
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I think that it is different from Aphantasia, and lots of people have different monologues. I know there are people who have no inner dialogue.
I think a lot of mine is narrating the scene or converting pictures into the way my mind will memorize
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I doubt this is related to aphantasia. It’s just another invisible thing that some people (maybe many people, who knows) have going on that influences how they interact with the world
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This relates to the song Hi Ren, that Justin also mentioned yesterday, which he recorded in a one take video. Definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.
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Mine is less useful. It’s like a having a really cynical person in my ear, giving their opinion on everything. It was really apparent when I started doing a lot of yoga because the teachers would often talk about concepts that weren’t really in line with how I previously viewed the world and the chatter would be telling me that I didn’t believe what they were saying, it was all made up nonsense etc. The chatter hasn’t gone away but I’ve learned to ignore it. I’m more receptive to alternative views these days, to at least hear them out, without judgement which is a big improvement
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This is a tremendously interesting topic!! I’m very visual (science/medicine career now, but wanted to be an artist when I was a little tot), and have a much easier time picking up a new chord by watching Justin’s fingers than I do hearing (or even reading) X finger X fret - the hearing-to-action pathway is so much slower than visual-to-action, and also way less durable in my memory.
Defintely don’t read the books I do 
I love a book with good/pretty visuals!
This is also super interesting to me! I’ve dabbled in a little bit of meditation, and also worked with a therapist, and whenever it came to what my inner narrative was saying, I got kind of stumped - like I’m sure I’m making judgements and having thoughts throughout my day, but there’s not really a voice or narrative…which made talk therapy very challenging and not as helpful as I’d hoped 
Things are happening in my mind, of course, but it’s visual or intuitive, not so much a narrative unless I’m planning something out stepwise of things I need to do. Even naming sensations isn’t straightforward for subtleties.
The brain and nervous system are so fascinating! I just wish we knew more WHY and HOW these thing happen - that’s the reason I swung toward physiology rather than a psychology major in college, it was deeply unsatisfying to read about studies of college kids and the trends they found without getting the why/how since we just don’t know yet!
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I don’t have much time this morning, so let’s quickly…
Nicole @JokuMuu , if there aren’t a few conversations/thoughts going through my head most at the same time or at least exchange conversations on and on , there’s always some music going through my head…and I also make my own in my head… it’s never quiet anyway (That’s the main reason I started learning guitar with theory…then I can think about it and fall asleep hours earlier)…
And Phil @philsmith , how funny that you say that… I was still looking not so long ago I looked at a few photos of 2 specific places in Italy from a long time ago and I could smell what I often smelled there (also has to do with the brain parts of smell and memory that lie together (the way they lie) )…
@mattswain My eye fell on your post and I am happy to read that you were able to turn the negative around. 
… I also succeeded and only learned to play music about 4 years ago.
I don’t have time to read everything, but I wish everyone a nice guitar day … practice it in your hand or in your head with the guitar of your dreams … or else just google Thomann …just because 
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@philsmith You definitly raised an eye opening topic yesterday! When I was writing my first comment, I was still thinking, that my “way” of “imagination” is the way most people think. Ok, maybe some would have better or less abilty to imagine or to create inner pictures of objects/persons/situations. I wasn’t aware of this till yesterday, that they literally “see” pictures 
.
That provided some impuls to reflect this awareness. I then had a conversation with my husband in the evening and asked him how things are for him and I was shocked about the fact he’s definitly on the other side…Inter alia, he has a degree in sport science and asked me how I think all the mental work with athlets and visualization would be done? BANG!!
I don’t see myself primarly as disadvantaged, just different, I CAN imagine objects/people/situations in detail, just without pictures. On the other hand, other senses are much more present (hearing melodies in my head, hearing voices of persons I know or knew 1:1, smelling odours in my mind, combining music, feelings, odours to situations, picking up every little sentiment between the lines, being empathic, feeling other’s sorrows,…)
I read a few articles yesterday evening and one reason for aphantasia might be a communication “problem” with different areas of the brain (frontal lobe → occipital lobe). Another potential reason might be a over active occipital lobe.
I wanted to pick up a few statements as they seem to be very familiar to me:
I very often have the impression, that my brain never stops “thinking”, the fact of thinking “nothing” is completely strange for me, a phenomenon of “loud thoughts”, even when I rest or go to bed. Do you have similar experiences? Would be interesting to know, if others process thoughts in a different way → imagination, visualisation and therefore have a channel to “outsource” parts of their thinking?
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It’s never quiet… on the beach everyone was reading around me…people say "why do you not read "… but I need all this time (and more) to go through in my head everything that has happened and will happen and more… I stare into the distance and people think I’m resting… but I never rest… since I started learning at Justinguitar I think about playing the guitar and music theory and because it is so complicated sometimes (I have been looking for the difficult thing since the beginning, which makes me learn less quickly than if I did it differently) I can find some peace…It was often a heavy load that is now usually muted ( the annoying thoughts) … but when I visit many people and engage in discussions I can spend days with it in many forms …
but now we are talking about something completely different from the actual subject… 
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Hahaha. Actually, this makes me curious about aphantasiacs and memory. For those with this condition, do you have visual memories? Can you see yourself on that camping trip with your dad when you were 12 years old? Or perhaps you have a non-visual memory of it? Fascinating subject.
Yes I’d say my brain always needs to be busy. It’s definitely chatter rather than pictures that occupy it. It’s either churning over events that have happened or thinking about what is next. It can be a challenge when I lie down at night. It’s where I’ve found guitar and yoga helpful (not at the same time 
) because they both require my undivided attention. Similarly, in summer, riding my motorbike is the same. On a night I’ll either get into bed and read until I’m sleepy (usually doesn’t take long) or I’ll listen to a meditation aimed towards sleep to slow down the thoughts
I don’t think so, or maybe I wasn’t precise enough. To come back to guitar related issues, I was interested in the aspect of maybe a different kind of " brain-processing". When I learn something on guitar, e.g. like a riff or a scale or a certain sequence of tones, I realized problems to visualize this on the fretboard and to save that picture in my brain for further use, will say, I think it over and over and over again, because I can’t put it aside as a “saved picture” and reactivate it when needed, just to free up space for other items. When there is a part I struggle with, I can’t visualize this without my guitar as a mental picture very well, but with “telling” me, what should be played or where exactely to put fingers, I get along. I asked myself, if others, who are able to “save” knowledge as a picture (broadly speaking), at least partially, are learning faster or more effective, because they are able to shift this into another brain area. As I have the same happening in other parts of life too, maybe that keeps the brain always busy. I find that interesting, because the learning technique maybe could be better adjusted. Would be also interesting to know, if those who speed really successfully through the courses, like @jkahn (sorry JK ) are more capable in terms of visualisation or imagination.
I should add, that I didn’t miss that capability so far, as I wasn’t aware of it, would just be interesting…
I’ve always thought that you should feel the music and the body reacts on its own , i teach my body not my brain … the moment the brain starts to think it all becomes harder
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I meant the black hole that I see and my always busy head…but if I understand correctly you think that this may be related to you (and others) and after another read I get it…yes it will be part of the rush…I don’t really feel I can going into this in depth to continue because I have already entered into that process and it takes a lot of energy… asking specific questions is always possible/must/must be done…but my busy head has another cause… a bit brutal as what you say and sounds quite logical, causing extra heavy traffic
In short, learning the keyboardt -riffs -licks-solos without a guitar in hand took a lot of effort and for example I start at fret 5 and call it also 5 and then I go to the next one where I know for example that at the 12th fret on the 3rd string the G note is waiting… but actually I think most about the distances between the notes… it doesn’t matter to me at all which clef I play something in…
I’m posting this now and I’ll probably think about it some more…I don’t have a choice in that either
so you think I’m bad 
If you don’t see images when you close your eyes, you will not learn more slowly with most things… especially once you know this at a young age and it is taken into account… otherwise a number of things will be a bit difficult and you will completely understand not what the teacher (or parents) mean with some things.
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I’ve been using visualisation as an aide to learning for a few months and I’m sure it speeds up my learning. I seem to be able to memorise a piece of music quicker now. That said, I still need plenty of practice to polish up the playing of it.
That’s pretty useless information for those of you who can’t visualise. In which case, I think you have to forget about it and find other ways which work for you.
This thread shows that we are all different and so need different ways of learning.
There’s nothing wrong with exploring different ways. Some you will have to discard and others you can develop.
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Yes and no, I’d say. It’s true that the conversation has moved on from aphantasia somewhat but the whole thing of how we each experience the world, whether that’s in words, pictures, sounds, smells etc is very much related so I think it’s all valid it comes under the same thread
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Hi,
Yes, I will actually say that later… but I did talk (think) about 2 different things, one of which (the busy head) may have an overlap for me…
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Absolutely not, I have no visual memories of anything. My wife often asks if I remember going on holidays, and when we did certain things. With a prompt I can usually start rebuilding memories, but they would usually be very basic. Certainly nothing like I was wearing a green shirt and you with a pink dress.
I have reconnected with friends from school and university, but until I give it a lot of thought, I have no memories. In fact even recent things get pushed out of my memory quickly. I would be useless as a witness, because I don’t focus on details unless I do it consciously.
I used to work for kodak, and know how much information is stored in a photograph. The best way I can describe it is, my world is built on describing the scene. So only the things that really matter are captured, and recall takes time.
However if I have been somewhere before I remember it, and and how to get there. My wife watches documentaries and I usually have headphones on watching something else. I can here a few lines of it and say, you’ve seen this before, and she takes ages to come to that realization. US tv is very repetitive though 
At work I could remember all the conversations I had, and would replay them in my mind. Particularly when someone tries to rewrite history. If I think I misspoke or said something wrong, I would find myself replaying those things over and over.
Also when I first realized this lack of mental images was in 1996, I had just moved to America and went for hypnosis to try to improve my eating habits (a whole can of worms I’m not going to open here 
) It washing flashing lights in glasses, random sounds and a man with a very soothing voice, talking me through a visualization. Of course the visualization didn’t work, but the hypnosis did to some extent.
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I have obviously thought about this a lot, knowing how my mind works I recognize which techniques won’t work for me.
I am fairly sure that there will be somebody on this board, who when they think about the guitar fretboard have lights that they “see” on the fretboard about what notes to play. In RockSmith there is a session mode where the notes to play in an improvisation are highlighted and change with the music. I expect there are people for whom the fretboard does that in their mind. I am very jealous of that.
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Hi Phil,
Sorry if I missed it, I just scanned it all very quickly and I’m wondering… are you completely happy with it or are you also looking for solutions?
You seem happy 
Greetings
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