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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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.
Zeman, Dewar and Della Sala · Cortex
In a short reply to colleagues who suggested some aphantasia may be psychological in origin, the authors agree that mood and other psychological factors can change imagery and should be assessed, but call the old split between psychological and physical causes dubious, since both act through the brain. The 21 people with lifelong aphantasia from their earlier questionnaire study, most of whom still had imagery in dreams or brief flashes, described a stable difference with few emotional effects, so the authors doubt that psychological problems play a major role in lifelong aphantasia.
Zeman, Dewar and Della Sala · Cortex
Of 21 people with lifelong weak or absent voluntary imagery, most still had involuntary images, as brief flashes or in dreams. The authors named this aphantasia and suspect it is a variation in brain function, akin to synesthesia.
Zeman and colleagues · Neuropsychologia
A man who suddenly lost his visual imagery still passed imagery and visual memory tests, but his brain worked differently when he tried to picture faces. This suggests imagery tasks can be done without the experience of seeing.