Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
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Gaber and Eltemamy · Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry
A 59-year-old woman found she could no longer picture her house or family in her mind after a mild case of COVID-19. The authors suggest that uncommon problems like this acquired aphantasia can follow even mild COVID-19.
Whiteley · Philosophical Studies
This philosophy paper uses reports that most people with aphantasia still have visual dreams to test the view that dreams are a kind of imagining. The author argues this undercuts the version in which all imagery is something we actively do, but not a version in which dreams involve passive, involuntary imagination. The paper proposes testing whether people with aphantasia can learn lucid dreaming, in which dreamers know they are dreaming and can sometimes control the dream.
Bumgardner, Yuan and Chiu · Oxford Medical Case Reports
A 62-year-old man lost his mental imagery during a complicated hospital stay for a stem cell transplant, and six months later had improved only slightly. The cause is unknown; the authors suspect low oxygen reaching the brain.
Keogh, Pearson and Zeman · Handbook of Clinical Neurology
This review chapter covers how imagery is measured and where it arises in the brain, imagery lost after brain injury or psychiatric illness, and lifelong aphantasia and hyperphantasia. It reports that people with aphantasia score low on an objective imagery test and on questionnaires, report fewer intrusive memories, often describe weaker recall of their own past, and do well on visual working memory tasks using other strategies such as labeling. It ends by asking whether aphantasia could be reversed: brain stimulation has strengthened imagery in people with average imagery, but whether that works for people with none remains open.
Fox-Muraton · History of European Ideas
Aphantasia challenges existential models that view mental imagery as essential for selfhood and personal transformation. This suggests that a rich sense of self can exist through non-visual modes of relating to one's past and future.
Milton and colleagues · Cerebral Cortex Communications
People with aphantasia matched others on standard memory tests but recalled fewer details of past events and imagined scenes. The authors suggest weaker links between frontal control areas and visual areas may explain the missing imagery.
Wicken, Keogh and Pearson · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
People with aphantasia showed no rise in skin conductance while reading frightening stories, yet reacted like others to frightening photos. This suggests visual imagery amplifies the emotional impact of thoughts.
Dance and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
Across two large samples, grapheme-color synesthesia was as common in people with aphantasia as in others. In a separate study, 118 people with aphantasia reported more autistic traits than controls, mainly in imagination and social skills.
Spagna and colleagues · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
This meta-analysis pooled 46 brain-scan experiments from 41 studies of healthy adults, 27 of them on visual imagery. Imagining consistently raised activity in a small area of the left fusiform gyrus and in frontal and parietal areas used for attention and working memory, while a statistical test found evidence that early visual cortex, where seeing begins, was not consistently engaged. The authors propose that frontal and parietal networks start and hold images using stored knowledge in the left temporal lobe, and suggest aphantasia may reflect a disconnection of memory areas from this network. The analysis included no aphantasia group.
Keogh and Pearson · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
In binocular rivalry tests, people with aphantasia were primed by attending to a visible striped pattern but showed no sign of attentional templates when it was absent. The authors conclude templates and imagery are closely linked.
Bainbridge and colleagues · Cortex
People with aphantasia drew fewer objects and less color from memory than typical imagers, but placed objects just as accurately and added fewer false ones. This suggests memory for objects and memory for locations rely on separate systems.
Blackwell · International Journal of Cognitive Therapy
This review looks at mental imagery in cognitive behavioral therapy research and practice: as a research tool, in everyday memory and planning, in the distressing images found across mental health problems, and in treatments such as imaginal exposure and imagery rescripting. It argues that clinicians and researchers should keep imagery in mind and ask about it, while noting that many patients and therapists experience little imagery and do not find it a useful tool in therapy. It mentions aphantasia only briefly, as one way to learn what imagery does by studying people who lack it.
Nanay · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
A philosophy paper arguing that mental imagery need not be conscious, drawing on stroke patients with neglect and on imagery that primes perception even when people try not to imagine. For aphantasia, it points to one person who reported no imagery yet did about as well as others on a task thought to need it, and proposes that some people with aphantasia have imagery they are not aware of. It notes that 15 people with aphantasia showed no priming from deliberate imagery, argues that this leaves involuntary, unconscious imagery untested, and suggests brain scans to settle the question.
Zabelina and Condon · Psychological Research
The Four-Factor Imagination Scale (FFIS) identifies frequency, complexity, emotional valence, and directedness as distinct dimensions of imagination. This suggests imagination is a multi-faceted construct rather than just a measure of mental imagery.
Suggate and Martzog · Developmental Science
In 266 German children aged 3 to 9, tested twice about 10 months apart, more daily screen time at the first test predicted slightly lower later accuracy on questions comparing two named objects (which is shinier, a trumpet or a violin?), after allowing for age, vocabulary, working memory and family background. Earlier task scores did not predict later screen time, and screen time did not predict answer speed. Television and interactive screens showed similar links. The authors suggest ready-made screen images give children less practice at making their own, though other factors could explain the link.
Zeman and colleagues · Cortex
Questionnaires from 2,000 people with aphantasia and 200 with hyperphantasia linked aphantasia to science jobs and self-reported poor memory of past events, hyperphantasia to creative jobs. Imagery extremes appear tied to wider traits.
Dijkstra and colleagues · eLife
In 25 adults whose brain activity was recorded with MEG while they saw and then imagined faces and houses, the order of visual brain signals during seeing ran backwards during imagining, from higher visual areas down to early ones, at about the same speed. During seeing itself, signals swept up and down the visual system in cycles about 11 times a second. The authors read this as direct evidence that imagery runs on the brain's feedback connections, and note that their analysis method is new and needs further checks.
Dawes and colleagues · Scientific Reports
People with aphantasia reported weaker imagery in all senses, less vivid memories and imagined futures, and fewer dreams, but similar spatial skills. This suggests imagery is a common tool that many mental processes draw on.
Keogh, Bergmann and Pearson · eLife
In brain scans and magnetic stimulation tests, people with lower visual cortex activity and excitability had stronger imagery on an objective test. Lowering excitability with electrical stimulation strengthened imagery but not rated vividness.
Thorudottir and colleagues · Brain Sciences
An architect who said his imagery had been vivid lost almost all of it after a stroke on both sides of the back of the brain, scoring close to the lowest possible score on an imagery questionnaire. He also had trouble recognizing faces and seeing colors, yet four other stroke patients, including another architect, kept their imagery although their test results largely overlapped with his. Brain scans showed only small areas in the right lingual gyrus and left fusiform gyrus damaged in him alone, so the authors propose these, especially the left fusiform area, as candidate regions for visual imagery.