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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Monzel and colleagues · eLife
People with aphantasia recalled fewer event, emotion and sensory details from their own lives than controls. During recall their hippocampus was less active, their visual cortex more active, and the two lacked the coupling seen in controls.
Kay and colleagues · eLife
Individuals with aphantasia do not show the pupillary light response when attempting to imagine bright or dark objects. This provides an objective physiological marker confirming that aphantasia involves a genuine lack of visual sensory imagery.
Dijkstra and colleagues · eLife
In 25 adults whose brain activity was recorded with MEG while they saw and then imagined faces and houses, the order of visual brain signals during seeing ran backwards during imagining, from higher visual areas down to early ones, at about the same speed. During seeing itself, signals swept up and down the visual system in cycles about 11 times a second. The authors read this as direct evidence that imagery runs on the brain's feedback connections, and note that their analysis method is new and needs further checks.
Keogh, Bergmann and Pearson · eLife
In brain scans and magnetic stimulation tests, people with lower visual cortex activity and excitability had stronger imagery on an objective test. Lowering excitability with electrical stimulation strengthened imagery but not rated vividness.