What’s the aphantasia link? I’ve got aphantasia. I’m convinced though that the bit of my brain that should be making images is used for letting me ‘see’ how things are connected together very easily in my head. Also I still love games like Pictionary and can somehow draw things onto paper than I don’t really know what they look like in my head. It’s often a surprise when pen meets paper.
I agree, it is my own experience as well. Craig Venter In one of his books also credit this way of representing knowledge as abstractions as his strength in inventing new concepts.
The link may be that we actually see differences between “frames”, rather than the frames directly. That in itself would imply that a from of sub-visual representation is being processed by our brain. For aphantasia, it could be that we work directly on this representation instead of recalling imagery through the visual system.
Many people with aphantasia reports being able to visualize in their dreams, meaning that they don't lack the ability to generate visuals. So it may be that the brain has an affinity to rely on the abstract representation when "thinking", while dreaming still uses the "stable diffusion mode".
I’m no where near qualified to speak of this with certainty, but it seems plausible to me.
