Linda Wright

I discovered my lack of ability to visualize quite late - after I had a Ph.D, a couple of post-docs, and was teaching neuroscience to grad students, and gross anatomy to medical students—all without visualizing. A friend who was a meditator had an experience where he was guided to visualize, and discovered he couldn't - and felt very left out. I hadn't heard of aphantasia, but did some investigating for him, only to find that I was in the same boat. It hadn't seemed to hinder me noticably, but upon hearing that others had an ability that I clearly lacked was quite surprising. I was just getting started in meditation, and hadn't encountered the problem my friend had. It became an interesting exploration of this new territory - how was I experiencing this information? How did I process the information from the visual field without this ability? This article describes part of what I found.