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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Dijkstra · Vision
The early visual cortex represents fine-grained visual details during mental imagery in a similar way to perception. This suggests that the recruitment of these areas depends on the level of visual detail required by the mental image.
Schwarzkopf · Cortex
This opinion piece suggests that imagery may differ not only in vividness but in where it is experienced: some people may see images placed in the world in front of them, while others have clear images that feel "inside" or "off-screen" rather than in view. It calls the evidence for these types anecdotal so far, and allows that a single vividness scale might still explain them. It argues that vividness questionnaires are too vague and may wrongly class some people as aphantasic, and calls for tasks that measure the detail of imagery more directly.
Cabbai and colleagues · Cortex
A dot matching the color of a searched-for object pulled attention as strongly in 91 people with aphantasia as in 231 without, and imagery vividness made no difference. None of the aphantasic group reported using imagery to search.
Dance, Hole and Simner · Cortex
Aphantasics performed worse on face recognition tasks but were just as accurate as controls at constructing face composites from memory. This suggests that while visual imagery facilitates face recognition, it is not required for accurate face recall.
Liu and Bartolomeo · Cortex
People with aphantasia were as accurate as typical and vivid imagers on imagery and perception tasks, but slower. The authors suggest visual knowledge is still reached without a conscious image, or through other strategies.
Bergmann and Ortiz-Tudela · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
Researchers propose that aphantasia stems from specific deficits in high-level feedback signals along the visual "what" stream during memory retrieval. This suggests that memory impairments in aphantasia are tied to the inability to reinstate precise object features rather than a general episodic memory failure.
Gulyás and colleagues · Cortex
Visual imagery vividness declines significantly from adolescence to middle age, with aphantasia prevalence increasing over time. This suggests that mental imagery strength is not a fixed trait but is influenced by age-related developmental factors.
Simner and Dance · Cortex
This reply to a call to use "aphantasia" for missing imagery in any sense defends the umbrella term "dysikonesia," with separate names for each sense, such as aphantasia for vision and anauralia for hearing. It points out that "aphantasia" was first used for visual imagery, warns from the history of synesthesia research that one name for different conditions can mislead studies, and notes that many people read "aphantasia" as an inability to fantasize. It accepts that "aphantasia" could be widened if the change in meaning is acknowledged, and that usage will settle over time.
Lambert and Sibley · Cortex
Replying to a call for one term covering absent imagery in every sense, the authors argue that "aphantasia" has come to mean absent visual imagery, so absent auditory imagery needs its own word, anauralia. In early data from about 15,000 New Zealand survey respondents, about 1% reported no visual imagery and 0.8% no auditory imagery. A few people lacked one kind of imagery while having vivid imagery of the other: 11 of 148 people who reported no visual imagery said they could hear imagined sounds as clearly as real ones.
Monzel and colleagues · Cortex
In a short reply within a debate over names, the authors argue for keeping one term, aphantasia, for absent or markedly reduced voluntary imagery in any sense, with a word added for the sense involved, such as visual or auditory aphantasia, or multisensory aphantasia when all senses are affected. They describe hyperphantasia as the opposite: imagery said to rival real perception. They note that many people with aphantasia report rare spontaneous flashes of imagery or imagery in dreams, and that lacking imagery does not mean lacking imagination.
Monzel and colleagues · Cortex
Five researchers argue that 'aphantasia' already covers missing imagery in any sense and should stay the single term. They suggest 'auditory' or 'multisensory aphantasia' rather than new words such as 'anauralia' and 'dysikonesia'.
Pounder and colleagues · Cortex
Twenty people with aphantasia were as accurate as 20 typical imagers on tests of memory, spatial span, planning and mental rotation. Differences appeared only in speed: they slowed more than controls as a planning puzzle got harder.
Keogh, Wicken and Pearson · Cortex
People with aphantasia remembered visual patterns as well as people with imagery, but reported non-visual strategies such as labeling. This suggests imagery is only one of several tools people can use to hold visual information in mind.
Königsmark, Bergmann and Reeder · Cortex
People with aphantasia are significantly less likely to experience vivid or complex pseudo-hallucinations during rhythmic flicker stimulation. This suggests that the ability to generate voluntary mental imagery increases susceptibility to anomalous perceptual experiences.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fulford and colleagues · Cortex
Low-vividness imagers activate a more widespread set of brain regions during visualization than high-vividness imagers. This suggests that individuals with weak mental imagery may use compensatory neural effort to perform imagery tasks.
Keogh and Pearson · Cortex
People with aphantasia showed almost no sign of imagery on an objective vision test, yet rated their spatial imagery as high as a comparison group did. This suggests aphantasia reflects a lack of sensory imagery rather than poor self-insight.