Involuntary imagery shows up unbidden: in dreams, flashbacks, or a sudden memory. Some with aphantasia experience this despite lacking voluntary imagery.
Vanbuckhave and colleagues · Neuropsychologia
Pupillometry showed that imagined brightness modulates pupil size, but these changes did not correlate with individual self-reported imagery vividness. This suggests a dissociation between subjective reports and objective physiological measures of imagery.
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.
Pepin and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
Involuntary mental imagery is more frequent and vivid than hallucinations, though both share similar phenomenological traits. This suggests these inner experiences exist on a continuum rather than being entirely distinct phenomena.
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.
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.
Nanay · Mind & Language
This short reply to three commentaries on a 2023 book about mental imagery restates the book's view that aphantasia is not a single condition: many people with it still dream in images or have flashbacks but cannot call up images at will, which differs from having no conscious imagery at all. Most of the reply concerns other questions, chiefly how the book's idea that imagery forms part of everyday seeing differs from predictive processing theories, and how philosophy can work with the sciences of the mind. It reports no new data.
Arnold and colleagues · Cortex
Among university students, those who rated their imagery as less vivid were less likely to picture something, like a pink elephant, when told not to. This suggests weaker imagery may bring more resistance to unwanted images.
Krempel and Monzel · Consciousness and Cognition
In a new experiment, people with aphantasia rated afterimages as fainter than typical imagers did. Together with a review of other studies, this suggests aphantasia affects images that arise on their own, not only ones made on purpose.
Whiteley · Philosophical Studies
This philosophy paper uses reports that most people with aphantasia still have visual dreams to test the view that dreams are a kind of imagining. The author argues this undercuts the version in which all imagery is something we actively do, but not a version in which dreams involve passive, involuntary imagination. The paper proposes testing whether people with aphantasia can learn lucid dreaming, in which dreamers know they are dreaming and can sometimes control the dream.
Pearson and Westbrook · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Researchers propose a dichotomous framework for phantom perception, distinguishing between voluntary mental imagery and involuntary experiences like illusions or synesthesia. This classification helps unify diverse sensory phenomena and provides a roadmap for studying the neural mechanisms of constructive perception.