Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
Kvamme and colleagues · Heliyon
In 591 young adults, more vivid imagery went with an inward-focused style: attention to body signals, mindfulness, and openness. In statistical models, imagery related to mental health only through this style, partly through lower alexithymia.
Kvamme and colleagues · NeuroImage
In about 550 adults scanned in Poland and Denmark, researchers compared brain wiring and resting brain activity with how vividly people rated their imagery. More vivid imagery went with tighter local connections around the left fusiform gyrus, a high-level visual area, in resting activity; with more tightly clustered wiring in visual cortex; and with better-connected wiring of the right insula. Each link was small: together they accounted for about 3% of the differences between people.
Kvamme, Sandberg and Silvanto · Neuropsychologia
In this short opinion piece, with no new data, the authors propose that vivid imagery belongs to a wider habit of paying attention to one's own inner life: body signals, emotions and thoughts. They link this habit to openness, conscientiousness and extraversion, and expect it to run opposite to difficulty recognizing and describing feelings. They leave open whether turning attention inward builds imagery or vivid imagery draws attention inward, and warn that vividness ratings may partly reflect personality and habits of description.
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