Auditory

Auditory aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily hear sounds, music, or voices in your mind, sometimes called a silent mind. Closely tied to inner speech.

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Auditory

Auditory aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily hear sounds, music, or voices in your mind, sometimes called a silent mind. Closely tied to inner speech.

See every topic

Auditory - Aphantasia Topics | Aphantasia Network

Overview Articles 5 Research 8

Read

What the research says

Expanding Aphantasia Definition: Researchers Propose New Boundaries

Researchers expand aphantasia definition beyond "inability to visualize." This broader framework impacts how we understand and identify with the condition.

Tom Ebeyer · January 2025

A member’s story

3 Things I Learned From Having Multisensory Aphantasia That Changed My Understanding Of The World

My journey understanding the cognitive profiles of aphantasia and hyperphantasia started when I learned at age 30 that most of you have a superpower I don’t.

Steven Levithan · June 2021

What the research says

Switching The Focus From Visual Imagery

A case for studying mental imagery as a whole

February 2021

A member’s story

Can You Hear Music in Your Mind's Ear?

I can't. Exploring auditory aphantasia and the mysterious mind's ear.

July 2019

All 5 articles

Research

2026

Anauralia and aphantasia: Prevalence and distinct associations with personality, well-being and self-regulation in a large, representative sample.

Lambert and colleagues · Neuropsychologia

Researchers found that anauralia and aphantasia share a 0.8% prevalence but have distinct psychological profiles. This suggests that the absence of sensory imagery is modality-specific rather than a single, unified condition.

2026

Multimodal mental comparisons in those with and without aphantasia

Suggate, Milton and Tree · Neuropsychologia

People with aphantasia were more accurate but slower than controls on multimodal mental comparison tasks. This suggests that sensory cognition can be successfully achieved through propositional rather than imagistic strategies.

2026

Disturbing the sound of silence: Bilateral temporal cortex stimulation and auditory mental imagery

Rollo and colleagues · Brain and Cognition

In 49 healthy young adults, 20 minutes of weak, randomly fluctuating electrical current over both temples lowered ratings of how easily they could change one imagined sound into another, compared with a sham session on another day. Ratings of how vivid the imagined sounds were fell by a slightly smaller amount, a trend that did not reach significance. The ratings were self-reported during stimulation, and because no other brain area was stimulated for comparison, the authors cannot rule out a general effect, for example on attention.

2025

Varieties of aphantasia

Nanay · Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Aphantasia is a heterogeneous condition with distinct subtypes, including variations in voluntary control and sensory modalities. Recognizing these differences is essential for developing accurate experimental methodologies and explanations.

All 8 papers