scooby_future, I realized that you were saying that you experience the next day exactly what you saw the prior day in vivid pre-sleep imagery. To my knowledge (to the best I can recall it) I have not experienced any event which I previously saw in "unbidden" mental images, but I wonder if the events of those images are yet to happen, or if they happened without me noticing them. I do indeed (to my knowledge) have aphantasia to a large extent (but not totally since I can see a very slight image, not counting when I get the occasional vivid images). Since that is the case I can not recall most of the details of some of the brief vivid mental images in order know for certain if I later saw such the regular way (such on TV).
Sometimes when I try to form images in my mind I can make them more clear, and if I were to practice extensively maybe I could get very good at forming mental images at will. When I described to a co-worker my difficulty in forming clear mental images, she said "In your mind you are blind". That description struck me as very accurate. I read a web page (at https://www.verywellmind.com/aphantasia-overview-4178710 ) more than two years ago and the day I found it was the day I first learned the word "aphantasia". I had forgotten about that word until you used it in your reply to my post. The web page has an article which says the following.
"People with aphantasia do experience visual imagery while dreaming. This suggests that it is only intentional, voluntary visualization that is affected by this phenomenon. Zeman explained to the BBC's Science Focus magazine that this is possible because what the brain does during wakefulness is different than what it does while dreaming. The imagery of dreams originates from bottom-up processes controlled by the brainstem. Visualization, on the other hand, requires top-down processing that originates in the brain's cortex. ... The available studies suggest that having aphantasia does not necessarily hurt a person's success in life. People from all walks of life experience this phenomenon, including successful doctorate students, engineers, and other professionals. ... Mental imagery also plays a role in learning, so not being able to visualize scenes in your mind may make certain aspects of learning more difficult."
More than two years I also found and read an article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-minds-eye-is-blind1/ . It says that after a study had been published in 2010 about aphantasia a number of people came forward, "... all saying they had never been able to create mental images, unlike MX, in whom the problem was new. Zeman and two colleagues then had 21 respondents answer questionnaires about their visual experiences, including one known as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ)." The article continues by saying the following.'They published the findings in 2015, using the name “aphantasia” for the first time. Most of the 21 said they realized only in adolescence and early adulthood (through conversations or reading) that other people could call up images in their mind. And although many of the respondents had dreams or flashes of visual imagery while awake, all were substantially or completely unable to purposely call up images in their mind, such as of past vacations or even their own wedding. ... Based on the first 700 or so surveys, Zeman estimates that aphantasia affects about 2 percent of the population ....
One of those who approached Zeman—Jonas Schlatter of Berlin—describes his own moment of discovery. ...
When Schlatter first began to discuss his discovery with friends, he also learned that “people’s ability to synthesize images differs.” Zeman concurs. His 2015 study included 121 control subjects. Most of them showed a moderately good ability to visualize. But there were outliers at both ends of the scale, with more subjects falling at the high end than the low end. Zeman calls the above-average ability to create vivid images hyperphantasia.'