Aphantasia

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Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one's mind.^[1]

The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880^[2] but has since remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter.^[3] Zeman's team coined the term aphantasia,^[4] derived from the Ancient Greek word phantasia (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ), which means "imagination", and the prefix a- (ᾰ̓-), which means "without".^[5]

Research on the condition is still scarce.^[6][7] Hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery, is the opposite of aphantasia.^[8]

History[]

The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 in a statistical study about mental imagery,^[2] where he found it was a common phenomenon among his peers. He wrote that:

To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody supposed them to mean. They had no more notion of its true nature than a colour-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of colour.^[2]

The phenomenon remained largely unstudied until 2005, when Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter was approached by MX, a man who seemed to have lost the ability to visualize after undergoing minor surgery.^[9] Following the publication of MX's case in 2010,^[10] a number of people approached Zeman reporting a lifelong inability to visualize. In 2015, Zeman's team published a paper on what they termed "congenital aphantasia",^[3] sparking renewed interest in the phenomenon.^[4]

Research[]

Zeman's 2015 paper^[3] used the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) to evaluate the quality of the mental image of 21 self-diagnosed and self-selected participants. He identified that aphantasics lack voluntary visualizations only; they are still able to have involuntary visualizations such as dreams.

In 2017, a paper published by Rebecca Keogh and Joel Pearson, researchers at University of New South Wales, measured the sensory capacity of mental imagery using binocular-rivalry (BR) and imagery-based priming and found that when asked to imagine a stimulus, the self-reported aphantasics experienced almost no perceptual priming, compared to those who reported higher imagery scores where perceptual priming had an effect.^[11] In 2020, Keogh and Pearson published another paper illustrating measurable differences correlated with visual imagery, this time by indirectly measuring cortical excitability in the primary visual cortex (V1).^[12]

A 2020 study concluded that those who experience aphantasia also experience reduced imagery in other senses, and have less vivid autobiographical memories.^[13]

In 2021, a study^[14] that measured the perspiration (skin conductance levels) of participants in response to reading a frightening story and then viewing fear-inducing images found that participants with aphantasia, but not the other population, experienced a flat-line physiological response during the reading experiment, but no difference in physiological responses to fear-inducing stimuli was found when participants perceptually viewed fearful images. The study concluded the evidence supported the emotional amplification theory of visual imagery.

In addition to congenital aphantasia, there have been cases reported of acquired aphantasia, due either to brain injury or psychological causes.^[15][16]

Notable people with aphantasia[]

• Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Catmull surveyed 540 colleagues from Pixar about their mental visualization and found that the production managers tended to have stronger visualizations than the artists.^[17]
• James Harkin, British podcaster and television writer^[18]
• Richard Herring, British comedian and podcaster^[19]
• Glen Keane, animator, author, and illustrator^[20]
• Lynne Kelly, an expert and prolific writer on mnemonics and memory techniques has reported that she has aphantasia, but notes that it does not affect her personal use of memory methods, many of which rely on visual memory.^[21]
• Mark Lawrence, fantasy author^[22]
• Yoon Ha Lee, science fiction author^[23]
• Derek Parfit, British philosopher. His aphantasia may have influenced his long interest in photography.^[24][25]
• Blake Ross, co-creator of the web browser Mozilla Firefox.^[26] In April 2016, Ross published an essay describing his own aphantasia and his realization that not everyone experiences it.^[27] The essay gained wide circulation on social media and in a variety of news sources.^[28][29]
• Michelle Sagara, fantasy author^[30]
• Zelda Williams, American actress, director, producer and writer^[31]

See also[]

• Creative visualization
• Engineering and the Mind's Eye
• Number form
• Prefrontal synthesis
• Prosopagnosia

References[]

Further reading[]

External links[]

• Media related to Aphantasia at Wikimedia Commons
• "Aphantasia: When The Mental Image Is Missing". Quirks and Quarks. Episode Part 1. CBC Radio. 2016-06-25.
• Aflalo P (2019-09-14). "Can you picture things in your head? Well, this guy can't". The Doc Project. Episode Part 1. CBC Radio.