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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Vanbuckhave and colleagues · Psychophysiology
Pupil size changes in response to imagined brightness reflected trial-level vividness but not stable trait imagery scores. This suggests pupillometry tracks temporary imagery intensity rather than serving as a marker for overall ability.
Abdelrahman, Melcher and Ripollés · Psychophysiology
People with aphantasia felt less emotionally engaged by audio and video stories than typical imagers, though they followed them as well. Only typical imagers had higher heart rates for audiobooks than videos, which suggests imagery takes effort.
Monzel and colleagues · Psychophysiology
People with aphantasia achieved successful fear extinction through propositional thought despite lacking mental imagery. This suggests that imaginal exposure therapy may be effective for aphantasic individuals by relying on non-visual cognitive processes.
Monzel and colleagues · Psychophysiology
This is the published plan for a study, accepted before data collection, so it reports no results. It set out to test whether people need to picture a feared object for their fear to fade while they imagine it, comparing 30 people with aphantasia, 30 typical imagers with eyes closed and 30 typical imagers staring at a bright screen to dampen their imagery. Fear was to be measured through skin responses after people learned to link one of two pictures with an electric shock. A separate 2025 paper reported the results: the fear faded in all three groups.