Comment by anentropic

My experience is similar.

I have dreamed visually, sometimes vividly, but not so common these days that I awake remembering a dream. Lucid dreams rarely - and almost exclusively as a flying dream, like at some point I just realise I can fly and then I'm in control for a while until I wake up. Fun when it happens but I have no idea or technique for making it happen.

When falling asleep I can have random visuals but I can't control them, and trying to do so tends to kill them off.

Yeah it does feel somewhat like the rational and external sensory processing parts of my brain are maybe suppressing the inner-generated imagery.

I feel like when asked to 'imagine an apple', some part of my brain is sort of visualising an apple, I just can't "see" it. In other threads about aphantasia, normies have wondered how we enjoy reading. But I have always loved reading fiction and, like with the apple, I get absorbed in the book and am imagining it in some sense, just not 'seeing' it.