Aphantasia and the evolution of language

Abstract

Based on findings about congenital aphantasia and a functional characterization of language as an evolved ‘technology’ for the instruction of imagination, we propose a novel approach to the evolution of language. We argue that language imposed metabolic costs and created emotional vulnerabilities. Selection for the partial suppression of ancestral, hypervivid, imagery-based, and emotionally charged recall partially mitigated these costs. Congenital aphantasia is hypothesized to represent an extreme manifestation of this linguistic suppression, hyperoptimizing the manipulation of semantic and syntactic protocols by actively bypassing metabolically and emotionally expensive visual-recall processing. This extreme specialization, which itself has costs, may, however, have conferred advantages for abstract symbol manipulation needed for the cultural evolutionary transition from literal pictographs to abstract, symbol-based writing.