Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
Want to take part? See the studies you can join.
Running a study? We can help you recruit participants.
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
Neural activation during mental imagery occurs in the reverse order of perception, with high-level areas activating before low-level ones. This confirms that imagery is a top-down process driven by feedback from the brain's hierarchy.
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.