Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
Sulfaro, Robinson and Carlson · Consciousness and Cognition
Researchers found that auditory imagery has a shorter onset and longer duration than visual imagery, with distinct patterns of automaticity across modalities. This suggests that different sensory imageries rely on unique temporal and neural mechanisms rather than a single unified process.
Sulfaro, Robinson and Carlson · Neuroscience of Consciousness
Researchers found that sensory input competes with mental imagery in a hierarchical neural network, preventing thoughts from dominating low-level sensory regions. This explains why mental imagery feels less vivid than real perception and how aphantasia arises from overweighted bottom-up signals.
Sulfaro, Robinson and Carlson
Researchers found that competition from real-world sensory input prevents mental images from becoming fully visible hallucinations. This suggests that the "quasi-sensory" nature of imagery is a direct result of perceptual interference.
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