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
Is Aphantasia Hereditary? - A Personal Exploration
I have aphantasia. Do my siblings have it? What about my parents? Is aphantasia hereditary?
Liana Scott · June 2023
Watch
Research
2025
A decade of aphantasia research – and still going!
Zeman · Neuropsychologia
Ten years after aphantasia was named, Adam Zeman argues it likely has several subtypes and that most abilities are spared, with memory for one's own past differing most. He urges an open mind in this young field.
2024
Definition: Aphantasia
Zeman and colleagues · Cortex
This short definition, published in a special issue of the journal Cortex, describes aphantasia as the absence or near-absence of imagery, most often the inability to picture things while fully awake, as opposed to simply thinking about them. Aphantasia affects deliberate imagery, may affect spontaneous imagery, and often leaves imagery in dreams intact. It can be lifelong or acquired, and the note proposes labels such as visual, auditory, multisensory and global aphantasia, while recording that some researchers keep the word for vision alone.
2022
Proposal for a consistent definition of aphantasia and hyperphantasia: A response to Lambert and Sibley (2022) and Simner and Dance (2022)
Monzel and colleagues · Cortex
In a short reply within a debate over names, the authors argue for keeping one term, aphantasia, for absent or markedly reduced voluntary imagery in any sense, with a word added for the sense involved, such as visual or auditory aphantasia, or multisensory aphantasia when all senses are affected. They describe hyperphantasia as the opposite: imagery said to rival real perception. They note that many people with aphantasia report rare spontaneous flashes of imagery or imagery in dreams, and that lacking imagery does not mean lacking imagination.