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Gustatory

Gustatory aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily conjure taste. Because flavour is mostly smell, this one rarely shows up alone, usually alongside olfactory aphantasia.

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Gustatory - Aphantasia Topics | Aphantasia Network

Overview Articles 4 Research 4

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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

Something to try

Think of a Horse: Describing Aphantasia

How do you describe aphantasia? Founder of Aphantasia Network often gets asked this question. His answer? Think of a horse.

Tom Ebeyer · January 2019

Research

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.

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.