Thanks for sharing your article.  It raises the interesting prospect that perhaps the brain of someone with aphantasia could be "fixed" with enough stimulation.  As I consciously visualize nothing, it is an intriguing possibility, though messing with the brain can have unanticipated side effects making experimentation risky.  Moreover, while I can not flash a picture of anything in my mind, it is clear that I do usually remember what things and sometimes people look like.  Assuming this is true for many people, it makes distinguishing between conscious and unconscious visual memory important.  Still a lot of things to consider, I guess, as you go forward. Another problem maybe: As each of us processes information differently, I would think that a controlled experiment might be nearly impossible to pull off.  I will be interested in reading about how you manage the next steps.  Thanks again.

Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful posts.  I am no expert in aphantasia.  I did chair more than 300 IEP meetings for children who were either receiving special ed services or were being assessed because they were struggling in school.  What impressed me in those meetings were the variety of struggles kids had, and how limited were our tools for assessing and/or helping them.  It was humbling.  You can understand how challenging it is for a primary grade teacher to try to understand the learning paths of thirty students every year - how they manage to help so many of their kids learn to read, and why, even with all of their care and skill, they do not succeed with every child.  I am  left with amazement at how different our minds are - even within the subpopulation with aphantasia. I am glad neither of you struggled with spelling.  It is pretty humiliating to have to look up so many words everyone seems to think are simple. I had and have far less difficulty spelling words that follow "regular" rules of phonics.  I have substantial difficulty with what we called "sight words," those that are very common in the language - and partly because they are so common - do not follow the normal path for "sounding them out."   Thanks again for your thoughts.

Thanks for sharing your article.  It raises the interesting prospect that perhaps the brain of someone with aphantasia could be "fixed" with enough stimulation.  As I consciously visualize nothing, it is an intriguing possibility, though messing with the brain can have unanticipated side effects making experimentation risky.  Moreover, while I can not flash a picture of anything in my mind, it is clear that I do usually remember what things and sometimes people look like.  Assuming this is true for many people, it makes distinguishing between conscious and unconscious visual memory important.  Still a lot of things to consider, I guess, as you go forward. Another problem maybe: As each of us processes information differently, I would think that a controlled experiment might be nearly impossible to pull off.  I will be interested in reading about how you manage the next steps.  Thanks again.

Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful posts.  I am no expert in aphantasia.  I did chair more than 300 IEP meetings for children who were either receiving special ed services or were being assessed because they were struggling in school.  What impressed me in those meetings were the variety of struggles kids had, and how limited were our tools for assessing and/or helping them.  It was humbling.  You can understand how challenging it is for a primary grade teacher to try to understand the learning paths of thirty students every year - how they manage to help so many of their kids learn to read, and why, even with all of their care and skill, they do not succeed with every child.  I am  left with amazement at how different our minds are - even within the subpopulation with aphantasia. I am glad neither of you struggled with spelling.  It is pretty humiliating to have to look up so many words everyone seems to think are simple. I had and have far less difficulty spelling words that follow "regular" rules of phonics.  I have substantial difficulty with what we called "sight words," those that are very common in the language - and partly because they are so common - do not follow the normal path for "sounding them out."   Thanks again for your thoughts.