I am in my 80's and only a few years ago discovered aphantasia. After getting over the idea that "the Mind's Eye" is more than a poetic metaphor and realizing that my near total lack of visual images was unusual, I became fascinated by the relationship to memory, my biographical memory is very poor.
One thing that occurred to me recently is the following: Is there any relationship between aphantasia and difficulty with making eye contact. Eye contact has always been a big problem for me, which is curious for someone who spent his career as a corporate strategy consultant working closely with high powered clients and making presentations to large audiences, too often about topics I really did not know much about. As I understand it, difficulty with eye contact is associated with people on the spectrum or with social interaction problems or extreme shyness, which have never been my problem. So, I began to wonder if there might be a link with aphantasia. While direct research linking the aphantasia and eye contact is lacking, there are some intriguing theoretical intersections based on what is known about the brain's processing of visual and memory information.
So I thought it would be interesting simply to ask the people in this community if anyone else with aphantasia has problems in eye contact.
