Aphantasia and the Mechanisms of Visual Mental Imagery

Abstract

Visual mental imagery—the ability to generate percept-like experiences in the absence of external stimuli—varies widely across individuals, from vivid visualization to aphantasia, the reported absence of imagery. Evidence from neurological patients and functional neuroimaging converges to challenge the classical view that imagery depends on the reactivation of the early visual cortex. Instead, imagery emerges from interactions among high-level visual regions in the ventral temporal cortex, frontoparietal control networks, and a left-lateralized fusiform imagery node, which likely serves as a bridge between visual and semantic information. A taxonomy distinguishing neurological, psychogenic, and congenital aphantasia helps clarify the heterogeneity of this phenomenon. Congenital aphantasia appears to reflect impaired access to, rather than the absence of, visual representations. Altogether, recent findings support a revised neural model in which conscious visualization arises from dynamic network coordination rather than local reactivation, with implications for theories of consciousness and clinical interventions targeting imagery.