Aristotle coined phantasia in On the Soul to describe a capacity between perception and thought, a kind of sixth sense. It's often translated as imagination.
Zhong and colleagues · Neuropsychologia
Researchers analyzed free-text comments from 25 autistic and 25 non-autistic adults with aphantasia, matched for age, who answered one open-ended question at the end of an online survey. Comments fell under imagery, thinking, and emotions and social life; more non-autistic people mentioned imagery in other senses, mostly describing it as intact, while more autistic people described themselves as thinking in words. Many described memories as known facts rather than relived scenes, and some described knowing an emotion without feeling it. The group differences rest on small numbers and a single question.
Stewart and Brick Taft · Journal of the International Society for Teacher Education
In one school, 13.8% of 94 fourth graders scored in the aphantasia range and 27.7% in the hyperphantasia range, both above adult estimates. The authors suggest teachers offer strategies that do not rely on picturing.
Takahashi, Omura and Sugimura · Neuropsychologia
Older adults reported more vivid visual and multisensory imagery, while aphantasia was more prevalent in younger groups. This suggests that age should be considered when identifying aphantasia and setting diagnostic thresholds.
Monzel and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
VVIQ items showed high redundancy for identifying aphantasia, with inter-item correlations ranging from .79 to .90. A single screening question about visualizing a familiar place achieved high specificity (98.8%) and sensitivity (97.5%) against the strictest definition of core aphantasia (VVIQ = 16), suggesting the full 16-item questionnaire is unnecessary for screening purposes.
Sulfaro · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Researchers discovered that aphantasia and vividness judgements are compromised by poorly defined references for typical imagery. This indicates that current measures like the VVIQ may be invalid and misleading.
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.
Delhaye and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
People with aphantasia remembered which color went with which shape as well as typical imagers, even for hard-to-name shapes. The authors conclude that neither imagery nor verbal labels is necessary for this kind of memory.
New and colleagues · Cortex
Aphantasia is linked to higher rates of neurodevelopmental, neurological, and psychiatric disorders compared to typical imagery. This highlights the need for multisensory evaluations and tailored interventions for neurodiverse profiles.
Duckett and Simons · Neuropsychologia
In 60 adults, neither questionnaire imagery scores nor average vividness predicted memory for scenes, but memories rated more vivid than a person's own average were more often correct. Re-analyzed aphantasia data showed the same trial-level link.
McVay and Mooring · Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education
In interviews with ten biochemistry students and two instructors at one US university, students mostly described visualization as drawn structures, pathways and reaction mechanisms, while instructors meant picturing molecules in the mind. Two students said they had aphantasia and described workarounds, such as reasoning in words or writing out memorized structures just before exams; one reported no improvement in picturing but had not tried any exercises. The authors suggest instructors teach several ways to do visual tasks and be clearer about the representations they use and why they matter.
Schwarzkopf and colleagues · Royal Society Open Science
Vividness ratings robustly capture a wide range of subjective experiences, from internal mental depictions to externally projected imagery. This suggests aphantasia should be redefined to distinguish between faint imagery and a total lack of pictorial representation.
Taylor and colleagues · Scientific Reports
Researchers found no meaningful association between mental imagery vividness and sensory sensitivity, despite both correlating with autistic traits. This suggests that imagery and sensory processing may not share a common neural mechanism.
Sabel and colleagues · Psychological Reports
Researchers compared hoarding symptoms in 58 people with aphantasia and 23 with unusually vivid imagery against matched typical imagers, allowing for age and depression. People with aphantasia reported no more hoarding symptoms than their matches, though they leaned more on objects as memory aids. People with very vivid imagery reported fewer hoarding symptoms and were less likely to live in cluttered homes. From this comparison of existing groups, the authors suggest that vivid imagery may protect against hoarding.
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.
Lebron Flores and Moacdieh · International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation
Students shown an AI-generated website before designing their own rated the experience lower, and for them imagery vividness did not predict how they felt about it. The authors say AI inspiration should be used with caution.
Kvamme and colleagues · Neuropsychologia
Among people with aphantasia, those with more (though still weak) imagery reported more alexithymia and anxiety, the reverse of typical imagers. The authors suggest faint imagery may prompt emotional processing that fails.
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.
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.
Hangai · Rhizomata
The paper studies how the ancient Aristotelian philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias treated phantasia, the power behind remembering, dreaming and imagining, as separate from perception. On this reading, a perception leaves a bodily residue that keeps its content after the object is gone, and that residue later triggers the experience. Errors, dreams and images of things that never existed, such as a winged horse, arise when a residue loses detail and phantasia fills the gap from other stored residues. The paper concerns ancient philosophy and does not discuss aphantasia.
Scholz and Scholz · International Mad Studies Journal
Researchers found that biomedical and cognitive studies often frame aphantasia as a disorder or deficit, ignoring the lived experiences of aphantasics. This highlights the need for more inclusive research that avoids pathologizing neurodiversity.