Finding out you have aphantasia often brings a mix of emotions: confusion, relief, grief for how you thought everyone else's mind worked.
We’re not — aphants don’t see the world the way most people do. Our brains work differently.
Mark Farrar · February 2024
How I used a metaphorical aphantasia stamp to explain all of my perceived shortcomings.
Michael Swanson · November 2023
Zeman and colleagues · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Replying to a proposal that aphantasia reflects broken mental "rendering," this letter argues that conscious object imagery is unlikely to be a useless by-product. Links with memory, empathy and emotion suggest it may support social life.
Balaban and Ullman · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
This short letter replies to a proposal that visual imagery, which it treats as the mind's "graphical rendering", plays a central role in social life. It agrees imagery may matter socially but doubts a direct link. Instead it suggests an indirect one: pictures, seen or imagined, may stir old emotional systems that words cannot trigger, which could explain why people with aphantasia react less to written descriptions of distressing events. It still argues that rendering is probably not crucial and that much of imagination's work is done by simulating how things physically behave rather than by making pictures.
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.
Chen and colleagues · Empirical Studies of the Arts
In a preregistered study, 45 Chinese university students viewed paintings in a virtual reality museum, sometimes told to imagine being inside each painting with as many senses as possible and sometimes told simply to appreciate them without imagining. Imagining with several senses made paintings feel more vivid, more arousing and more appealing, and students with stronger imagery across the senses rated paintings as more vivid and appealing overall. Vividness statistically accounted for both links with appeal, and arousal also did for the instruction. The authors suggest multisensory imagery practice could become part of art education.
Does a lack of episodic memories impact our experience of shame, or can other factors influence this emotional response? Share your thoughts!
Josh · · 4 replies
Experience a fragmented internal narrative where identity feels like disjointed facts rather than a continuous story. How does this shape you?
Josh · · 2 replies
