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.
Monzel and colleagues · Cortex
In a short reply within a debate over names, the authors argue for keeping one term, aphantasia, for absent or markedly reduced voluntary imagery in any sense, with a word added for the sense involved, such as visual or auditory aphantasia, or multisensory aphantasia when all senses are affected. They describe hyperphantasia as the opposite: imagery said to rival real perception. They note that many people with aphantasia report rare spontaneous flashes of imagery or imagery in dreams, and that lacking imagery does not mean lacking imagination.
Monzel and colleagues · Cortex
Five researchers argue that 'aphantasia' already covers missing imagery in any sense and should stay the single term. They suggest 'auditory' or 'multisensory aphantasia' rather than new words such as 'anauralia' and 'dysikonesia'.
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.