I’ve recently started tracking my sleep which has provided some insights on aphantasia and my ability to visualize. Namely, when I get my normal 6-8 hours per night, my visualization is non-existent. It’s the evenings where I get less sleep, around 2-4 hours, where I see a noticeable difference in my visualization.
Over this past weekend, I slept 5 hours on Friday evening, and then stayed up very late on Saturday evening (until around 4am). While not a serious case of sleep deprivation, it proved enough to issue a slew of visuals in the early morning hours. I was seeing colors, detailed objects, and at one point, even an entire scene from an imaginary anime film concept that I guess exists in my subconscious somewhere. It was truly remarkable.
While I do still think it is possible that these visuals I’m seeing when sleep deprived are simply hallucinations, they are starting to feel distinctly more like a mind’s eye. While I wouldn’t recommend anyone deprive themselves of sleep just to visualize, the consistency of these results can not be ignored.
Hopefully one day we can research the mechanisms behind the brain that prohibit visualization, and then maybe we can begin to understand the connection between sleep deprivation and that mechanism.