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Missing images: autobiographical memory in Aphantasia and blindness

DOI: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1644533
McCormick, C., & Lange, S. (2025). Missing images: autobiographical memory in aphantasia and blindness. Frontiers in Cognition, 4. doi:10.3389/fcogn.2025.1644533

Abstract

Mental visual imagery, especially the ability to construct naturalistic scenes seems central to vivid episodic autobiographical memory (AM). This mini review will first highlight the neural anatomy of different aspects of mental imagery, focusing on the roles of the hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior neocortex and the consequences of damage to these regions to AM. We will then contrast the consequences of missing images for AM in two special populations with no apparent brain damage: Congenital Aphantasia (i.e., lack of visual imagery) and congenital blindness (i.e., lack of visual perception). We propose that Aphantasia leads to impaired scene construction and reduced AM reliving. Despite limited evidence on AM in congenitally blind individuals, they seem to rely on auditory and tactile information to construct (scene) imagery, which in turn may support vivid AM reliving. The main findings here suggest that mental scene imagery, rather than visual encoding, is crucial for AM. This conclusion has far-reaching implications for understanding memory disorders, mental health, and a call to protect our imagination.

Authors

  • Cornelia McCormick2
  • Sven Lange1

What This Study Is About

Researchers wanted to know if you actually need a "mind’s eye" to remember your own life vividly. They compared people with aphantasia—the inability to create mental imagery (picturing things in your head)—to people who have been blind since birth to see how missing visual images changes the way we recall the past.

How They Studied It

This paper is a "review," which means the researchers didn't just run one experiment. Instead, they acted like detectives, gathering and analyzing data from dozens of previous studies. They looked at how hundreds of participants—including those with aphantasia, blind individuals, and "typical" visualizers—performed on memory tests and what their brain scans showed.

What They Found

The researchers discovered a surprising "memory gap":
  • Aphantasia: People with aphantasia often feel their memories are "thin" or less emotional. They struggle to "relive" the moment and provide fewer details about the time and place of an event.
  • Blindness: Surprisingly, people blind from birth often have very vivid, "bright" memories. Even without sight, they are great at scene construction—the ability to build a 3D mental model of a place.
While people with aphantasia have trouble building these mental "stages," blind people simply build them using sounds, smells, and touch instead of colors and shapes.

What This Might Mean

This suggests that the "secret sauce" for a great memory isn't actually the *image* itself, but the spatial map the brain builds. Think of it like a stage: if you can build the stage (the scene), you can remember the play. People with aphantasia seem to have a harder time building that stage.
However, because this was a review of older studies, the authors note we need more "head-to-head" tests comparing these groups directly. It suggests that aphantasia isn't just about "missing pictures," but about how the brain connects different areas to reconstruct the past.

One Interesting Detail

Even though they cannot see, people who are blind from birth actually use the "visual" parts of their brain to process touch and sound when they are remembering their lives! Their brains "repurpose" the unused visual space to help build their mental scenes.
This summary was generated by AI and may contain errors. Always refer to the original paper for accuracy.