Drawing pictures in your mind. This is something I have always struggled with.

Is there a set of exercises a person can do to develop imagery in your mind?

I have had times when I closed my eyes that I experienced what I would call imagery that rivaled or was more detailed than what my eyes fed me. But I only experienced this and did not create what was in the imagery. It has only been once or twice. I know that when I start to dream I can start seeing things with imagery, but I still cannot control this directly. I had one lucid dream where I woke in my dream and was able to construct things for a short period.

What I would like to be able to do is construct shapes and diagrams in my head. Perhaps visualize how an algorithm might function.

Is there a way to learn this?

3% of people cannot visualize things in their mind. It's called aphantasia. Not sure if that applies here but I can't really relate to what you wrote there.

It's something you learn as a child. Very very difficult as an adult.

Your brain has built paths around that part of your brain. Imagine if you have been blind since you were 6. Now, 30 years later, you can see. Your occipital lobe would be in shock, and not function as well as if you have had vision for the last 30 years. You'll take time to build those neural paths, but it will never be perfect.

Source: I'm married to someone with Aphantasia. I'm the complete opposite, I can literally hallucinate things into "reality" like I'm in AR. It takes ALOT of my mental capacity to do so though.

If you want to risk it, try microdosing psilocybin. Mushrooms have a tendency to press the reset button on brain chemistry. I have heard of some users curing their aphantasia this way.

Sometimes though, it's not a good reset... Your risk though.

@deadlyRants Interesting. I can recreate sounds in my brain. Images are just more difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://quora.com/Neuroscience-Is-i...

Found a link on quora that someone mentioned

NLP method of "Image Streaming". Some dude in the UK attended a class and started using this method to be able to visualize.

So I found this:

https://nlpcourses.com/wp-content/...

So I will see where this leads.

@deadlyRants the term aphantasia helped me find more info about this. Thanks!

I have good spatial awareness and a visual imagination, mainly because my vision is broken in a way glasses can't fix but I'm not blind so I need a mental model to navigate spaces quickly and safely.

I find no use for diagrams. It's sometimes useful to imagine shapes when the problem is inherently geometrical or isomorphic to a geometrical problem, but for the most part if I need a visualization to understand something it's because the entire concept with all its symmetries doesn't fit in my head, so a shitty sketch on the backside of a receipt is more useful than any image in my head.