Image Streaming and similar training

Attempts to develop or "train" a mind's eye through image streaming exercises and related visualization practice, and the disagreement over whether it works.

What people actually say

Tried it, abandoned it

Many people describe a few weeks or longer of effort that produced nothing, with discouragement as the most common outcome.

"Didn't work for me . Tired for awhile and gave up cause I was discouraged about the lack of results" 2021 · t1_h0thyf6 ↗

"I tried image streaming for a few weeks and it didnt really work. I then bought and used a TDCS machine for about 4 days and started being able to visualize. It was pretty sweet, but then started to go away once I stopped zapping my brain daily." 2021 · t1_h0ue6a8 ↗

"I've tried my entire life to train myself to \"see\" things in my mind. I'd lay in bed at night trying to get a tiny glimpse of a past event. For me, it's like trying to train a blind man to see. Not going to happen." 2026 · t1_ofpy04s ↗

Cautious "it worked, sort of"

A smaller group reports partial gains, usually framed with qualifiers about effort, customization, and limits.

"It does work, consistency, customizing it to fit you, patience and mixing other exercises do lead to results." 2020 · t1_frkl6d6 ↗

"It's quite a weird process. What I will say is that \"images\" that I get are not at all what I imagined they would be like. I think I'm a long way off it being any use, but it is interesting." 2021 · t3_npmt1l ↗

"I’ve gone from absolutely nothing for all my life to something. I’ve always believed I would never have the ability to visualize, but here I am." 2023 · t3_18egh6b ↗

"It only works on people who weren't really aphantasic"

A recurring frame: the apparent successes are partial visualizers misclassifying themselves, not true aphants.

"IMO image streaming helps the hypophants that thought they were aphants. However, that's just my opinion formed on loose factual information. There are posts of people curing their aphantasia with image streaming, but there are also a lot out there that found no results." 2021 · t1_h09wdyj ↗

"Image streaming only works for a very small subset of partial aphantasics. There's no afterimage to make persist for many of us, so the entire premise of image streaming doesn't even work - not to mention us aphantasics who are blind or going blind." 2019 · t1_elkbdrv ↗

"I guess that image streaming is a lie or a scam, because the comments below the video and the blog never mentioned that it helped them and I can only imagine that it works for people that can visualize a little and it's definitely not for developing visualization." 2018 · t1_e8v7woj ↗

"You can't train what isn't there"

Some reject the premise outright, often citing the absence of scientific support.

"No. Either you have the ability or you don’t." 2026 · t1_oevpw9b ↗

"There has never been any reliable evidence that image streaming works for anyone. There are only a tiny handful of claims that it does and it's not been studied in a scientific light because there isn't science behind the 'methods' of image streaming." 2022 · t1_hrx37xu ↗

"The consensus is that pretty much only acquired aphantasia could maybe be improved but not congenital." 2026 · t3_1sf8fy1 ↗

Across the years

The pattern is remarkably stable across 2018–2026. Early posts (2018–2019) already frame image streaming as a "lie or a scam" and as something that only helps partial aphants; the same arguments resurface verbatim in 2026 around the New Scientist piece. The bulk of discussion clusters in 2020–2021 (10 and 6 chunks), when image-streaming threads were most active. By 2023 and 2026 the genre has shifted slightly toward published triggers (a New Scientist article, a "made progress" post) but the four positions — failed attempts, hedged success, "you weren't really aphantasic," and flat refusal — persist.

Volume

Cross-references

• Related sub-theme: themes/interventions_general.md (only if relevant)