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.
Dawes, Keogh and Pearson · Neuroscience Research
Aphantasia is not a uniform condition but consists of distinct sub-groups, including those with purely visual deficits and others with multi-sensory impairments. This highlights the need for multi-sensory screening to better understand individual cognitive profiles.
Speed, Eekhof and Mak · Consciousness and Cognition
Readers with aphantasia felt less absorbed in a short story and less sympathy for its characters, yet liked it as much as other readers. This suggests mental imagery shapes how a story is experienced but is not the only route to enjoying one.
Marks · Vision
Researchers synthesized historical and contemporary data to create a 16-descriptor template for visual mental imagery. This provides a normative standard to better understand individual differences in imagery vividness and clinical conditions.
Monzel and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
People with aphantasia performed no differently from others on a memory task but felt less confident, and imagery was not linked to school grades. The authors argue aphantasia is neutral neurodivergence and a disorder label may do harm.
Takahashi and colleagues · Frontiers in Psychology
In an online survey of 2,871 Japanese adults, 3.7% had low scores on a standard imagery questionnaire, but 12.1% said they could not, or could barely, picture things such as furniture or a friend's face, and the two groups overlapped poorly. A second survey of 774 adults suggested part of the gap comes from people with poor face recognition answering the face part of the question. Among those with low questionnaire scores, some reported weak imagery in every sense and others mainly in vision, so the authors recommend using several measures, including other senses.
Monzel, Vetterlein and Reuter · Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
Aphantasia met only the rarity criterion for a mental disorder: memory differences and distress were too mild on average. But about a third reported clinically relevant distress, so the authors advise assessing individual cases.
Gulyás and colleagues · Cortex
Visual imagery vividness declines significantly from adolescence to middle age, with aphantasia prevalence increasing over time. This suggests that mental imagery strength is not a fixed trait but is influenced by age-related developmental factors.
Simner and Dance · Cortex
This reply to a call to use "aphantasia" for missing imagery in any sense defends the umbrella term "dysikonesia," with separate names for each sense, such as aphantasia for vision and anauralia for hearing. It points out that "aphantasia" was first used for visual imagery, warns from the history of synesthesia research that one name for different conditions can mislead studies, and notes that many people read "aphantasia" as an inability to fantasize. It accepts that "aphantasia" could be widened if the change in meaning is acknowledged, and that usage will settle over time.
Lambert and Sibley · Cortex
Replying to a call for one term covering absent imagery in every sense, the authors argue that "aphantasia" has come to mean absent visual imagery, so absent auditory imagery needs its own word, anauralia. In early data from about 15,000 New Zealand survey respondents, about 1% reported no visual imagery and 0.8% no auditory imagery. A few people lacked one kind of imagery while having vivid imagery of the other: 11 of 148 people who reported no visual imagery said they could hear imagined sounds as clearly as real ones.
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.
Takahashi and colleagues
Researchers found that aphantasia often involves a lack of imagery across multiple senses, not just vision. This highlights the importance of using multi-sensory assessments to fully capture the diverse experiences of those with aphantasia.
Monzel and colleagues · Cortex
Five researchers argue that 'aphantasia' already covers missing imagery in any sense and should stay the single term. They suggest 'auditory' or 'multisensory aphantasia' rather than new words such as 'anauralia' and 'dysikonesia'.
Dance, Ipser and Simner · Consciousness and Cognition
Screening 1,004 people who did not know the study was about imagery, researchers found that 3.9% had aphantasia and 0.8% had no imagery at all. This suggests a useful benchmark for how common aphantasia is.
Hinwar and Lambert · Frontiers in Psychology
In 128 adults, many recruited through aphantasia groups, self-rated visual and auditory imagery were strongly linked, and 82% of 34 aphantasic people had absent or nearly absent auditory imagery. Rare exceptions showed the two can come apart.
Dance, Ward and Simner · Perception
Aphantasics reported significantly lower sensory sensitivity and multi-sensory imagery deficits compared to controls. This suggests aphantasia is a widespread multi-sensory condition rather than one limited to visual imagery.
Milton and colleagues · Cerebral Cortex Communications
People with aphantasia matched others on standard memory tests but recalled fewer details of past events and imagined scenes. The authors suggest weaker links between frontal control areas and visual areas may explain the missing imagery.
Dance and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition
Across two large samples, grapheme-color synesthesia was as common in people with aphantasia as in others. In a separate study, 118 people with aphantasia reported more autistic traits than controls, mainly in imagination and social skills.
Zeman and colleagues · Cortex
Questionnaires from 2,000 people with aphantasia and 200 with hyperphantasia linked aphantasia to science jobs and self-reported poor memory of past events, hyperphantasia to creative jobs. Imagery extremes appear tied to wider traits.
Zeman, Dewar and Della Sala · Cortex
In a short reply to colleagues who suggested some aphantasia may be psychological in origin, the authors agree that mood and other psychological factors can change imagery and should be assessed, but call the old split between psychological and physical causes dubious, since both act through the brain. The 21 people with lifelong aphantasia from their earlier questionnaire study, most of whom still had imagery in dreams or brief flashes, described a stable difference with few emotional effects, so the authors doubt that psychological problems play a major role in lifelong aphantasia.
Pearson, Rademaker and Tong · Psychological Science
Subjective vividness ratings reliably predict an image's impact on subsequent perception. This suggests that individuals have accurate metacognitive insight into the sensory strength of their mental imagery.