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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MacKisack and colleagues · Art Journal
Artists with aphantasia create work through external interaction with materials rather than internal mental preconfiguration. This demonstrates that artistic creativity does not require visual imagery and can emerge from diverse neurocognitive processes.
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.
MacKisack and colleagues · Frontiers in Psychology
The paper traces the long philosophical history of mental imagery, from Aristotelian "phantasma" to behaviorist skepticism. This historical context reveals that modern neuroscientific debates over imagery's role in cognition are rooted in centuries of conflicting intellectual traditions.