Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
Lorenzatti · Neuropsychologia
This review tests four explanations of aphantasia against five brain imaging studies that compared aphantasic people with typical imagers. Because every study found brain differences, it rules out, as general explanations, the ideas that aphantasic people only describe their experience differently or fail to notice images they have. Of the two left, that image-like representations form but are hard to access, or that they never properly form, the second fits somewhat better, though much of its support depends on which model of how the brain makes images proves right.
Lorenzatti · Philosophical Psychology
This philosophy paper weighs four explanations for why some people report no visual imagery: they describe the same experience differently, they fail to notice images they have, their brains form image-like representations they cannot consciously reach, or no such representations form and other strategies do the work. Drawing on studies of fear responses, binocular rivalry and pupil size, it rejects the first two and argues that the last fits the evidence best, though the third cannot be ruled out. It proposes eye-tracking, pupil and word-memory studies to tell these two apart.
Want to take part? See the studies you can join.
Running a study? We can help you recruit participants.