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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Zhong and colleagues · Neuropsychologia
Autistic aphantasics are more likely to be verbal thinkers, while non-autistic aphantasics report more intact multisensory imagery. This highlights how neurodivergence shapes the diverse cognitive and emotional lived experiences of aphantasia.
Taylor and colleagues · Scientific Reports
Researchers found no meaningful association between mental imagery vividness and sensory sensitivity, despite both correlating with autistic traits. This suggests that imagery and sensory processing may not share a common neural mechanism.
Knowles, Jones and Zeman · Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry
In 88 people who lost their visual imagery, the commonest triggers were head injury, mood disorders and stroke. This suggests acquired aphantasia can follow both neurological and psychological disorders.
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.
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.
Mehling and colleagues · PLOS ONE
Researchers developed the MAIA-2, a 37-item scale with improved reliability for measuring dimensions of interoceptive awareness. This provides a more robust tool for studying mind-body interventions and internal bodily signal processing.
Alderson-Day and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
Researchers developed a revised inner speech questionnaire identifying five distinct dimensions, including a new positive-regulatory factor. This provides a more nuanced tool for linking specific internal verbal experiences to various psychopathological traits.