Musical Reasoning Without a Mind's Ear: Live Science Talk with David Tolman on Auditory Aphantasia

How Musicians Build Musical Knowledge Without Inner Hearing

Join us for a conversation with David Tolman, researcher at Los Angeles City College, as we explore findings from his recent paper published in Auditory Perception & Cognition. David interviewed three classically trained musicians who report no inner hearing — and what they described challenges long-held assumptions about what it takes to reason about, rehearse, and perform music at a high level.

What We'll Explore

During this conversation, we'll discuss:

The audiation assumption — How music education has treated internal hearing as the foundation of musicianship, and what happens when that assumption meets musicians who've never had it

The four workarounds — How musicians with anauralia, or auditory aphantasia, use muscle memory, visual maps of notation, verbal labeling, and logical reasoning to construct and navigate musical structure without sound in their heads

Strategies that develop organically — Why all three musicians began training without knowing they lacked auditory imagery, and what that tells us about how the brain adapts when a "default" pathway isn't available

Where the limits show up — How one vocalist described persistent microtonal errors she attributed to the absence of an internal error-checking system, and what that suggests about the boundaries of imagery-independent strategies

Rethinking "hear it in your head" — Why instructions that assume auditory imagery may be failing students who could thrive with alternative approaches grounded in kinesthetic, visual, or analytical methods

What embodied cognition tells us — How these findings connect to broader theories suggesting that musical understanding is built through action, movement, and bodily awareness — not just internal playback

What to Expect

Conversation: This will be an informal, in-depth discussion rather than a formal presentation. David will share insights from his research and reflect on what it means to do music — successfully — without a mind's ear.

Live Q&A: Ask David directly about his findings, the musicians' experiences, and what he thinks music education and the research field should do differently going forward.

Duration: Approximately 1 hour (including Q&A)

How to Attend

🎥 Live Session (Members Only): Join the live conversation and participate in the Q&A in real-time. This interactive experience is exclusive to Aphantasia Network members. Not a member? Join today to participate!

📺 Recording (Free for Everyone): Can't make it live or not a member? No problem! A full recording will be posted under Resources > Videos & Interviews and available free to everyone after the event.

Perfect For:

Musicians with aphantasia or anauralia who've been told they need to "hear it in their head" and wondered if there's another way

Music educators who want to understand how students with absent auditory imagery actually learn and what instructional adjustments might help

Researchers in music cognition, auditory imagery, or aphantasia who want to engage with new qualitative evidence on imagery-independent musical reasoning

Anyone curious about how the brain builds expertise through alternative sensory and cognitive pathways when a "default" route isn't available

People interested in embodied cognition, enactive approaches, or the broader question of how flexible human cognition really is

About the Researcher

David Tolman is an independent researcher whose work examines how musicians with anauralia (or auditory aphantasia) construct and navigate musical structure without inner hearing, with a focus on the alternative representational strategies that support musical cognition when auditory imagery is absent. Portions of this research were presented at the Mind's Ear and Inner Voice 2025 conference. David brings his own lived experience of auditory aphantasia to this work.