Would it make sense to guess that humans have something analogous to the latent representations or embeddings found in LLMs or VLMS, with different neural circuitry to experience them?
Some of us may lack the physical systems to experience memories visually. Perhaps for some it's trainable, suggesting the varying levels of vividness, but perhaps some just simply don't have the capacity at all.
I don't buy that over 10%+ of HN has proper aphantasia, though. I wouldn't trust my own mind at self-reporting anything.
Almost certainly there is also a "latent" representation that isn't just based on sensory imagery (i.e. some kinds of logical relations).
But it is also not likely that an absence of sensory imagery is without impact, i.e. that only the latent representations matter. You can see this in studies where aphantasics can't be subconsciously primed by images as easily [1], have skin conductance responses to visual stimuli less to imagery compared to normal people [2], and miss more visual details when attempting to redraw complex images from memory [3]. I.e. the visualizations are likely important in some cases, with the latent (non-visual) representations alone being deficient in some very particular cases, at least.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29175093/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33715433/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33383478/