A unifying theory of aphantasia: Aphantasia as the inability to disengage from the external environment

Abstract

Aphantasia, the inability to voluntarily generate mental imagery, is typically explained as a failure to reactivate perceptual representations. Here, we propose an alternative framework: aphantasia as an impairment in disengaging from external perceptual processing. Drawing on recent computational, neurophysiological, and behavioral evidence, we argue that mental imagery depends not only on top-down sensory reinstatement, but critically, on the suppression of competing bottom-up sensory activity. Within this framework, imagery emerges when externally driven perceptual processing is attenuated, allowing internally generated representations to dominate conscious experience. We propose a unifying account in which the core deficit in aphantasia lies not simply in generating internal representations, but in disengaging from the external environment.

Authors

• Merlin Monzel31
• Reshanne R. Reeder7

A unifying theory of aphantasia: Aphantasia as the inability to disengage from the external environment

Abstract

Aphantasia, the inability to voluntarily generate mental imagery, is typically explained as a failure to reactivate perceptual representations. Here, we propose an alternative framework: aphantasia as an impairment in disengaging from external perceptual processing. Drawing on recent computational, neurophysiological, and behavioral evidence, we argue that mental imagery depends not only on top-down sensory reinstatement, but critically, on the suppression of competing bottom-up sensory activity. Within this framework, imagery emerges when externally driven perceptual processing is attenuated, allowing internally generated representations to dominate conscious experience. We propose a unifying account in which the core deficit in aphantasia lies not simply in generating internal representations, but in disengaging from the external environment.

Authors

• Merlin Monzel31
• Reshanne R. Reeder7