Rethinking Mental Imagery: Why Scientists Had It Wrong (And Why That's Good News)

When Dr. Alfredo Spagna walks into his Columbia University office each morning, surrounded by books and a plastic model brain, he's confronted with a humbling truth: after 20 years studying attention and mental imagery, he has more questions than answers.

But here's what makes his story fascinating—that's exactly what makes him a better scientist.

"We as scientists are so lucky that aphantasia exists," Dr. Spagna says with genuine enthusiasm, "because we would have gone completely wrong for 20, 30, 40 years, right? Because we would have continued baking our assumption into our experiments, knowing that we were only partially correct."

In a recent interview with Aphantasia Network, the cognitive neuroscientist revealed how the study of aphantasia is forcing his field to fundamentally rethink what mental imagery actually is—and why it exists at all.

The Cafeteria Conversation That Changed Everything

Dr. Spagna's journey into aphantasia research began, appropriately enough, over coffee. He was at the Paris Brain Institute cafeteria, discussing research with Dr. Paolo Bartolomeo, a leading neurologist in the field.

"The conversation was about, 'Hey, we're doing all these studies, asking people to pay attention to things that are on the screen,'" Dr. Spagna recalls. "What if we remove the stimulus from the screen? What if we ask people to imagine that stimulus rather than presenting it on the screen?"

The question seemed simple enough: compare brain activity when people look at images versus when they imagine them. But then came the game-changer.

"It was a few years after Adam Zeman's very important 2015 article," Dr. Spagna explains. They realized they could add a third group to their experiment: people with aphantasia—individuals with no perceptual deficits who simply couldn't visualize mental images.

"It was a perfect natural biological control group," he says. "And I guess serendipitous to many other researchers that, as you mentioned in the past 10 plus years now, have kind of started investigating the many repercussions that having a life with aphantasia can have."

What they discovered would challenge everything the field thought it knew.

The Assumption Baked Into Every Experiment

Here's the problem: for decades, researchers designed mental imagery experiments from the perspective of typical visualizers. They assumed—without really questioning it—that visualization was necessary to complete imagery tasks.

"It was fascinating for me two, three, four years ago to realize that, hey, maybe we're doing this wrong," Dr. Spagna admits. "I think that we just hit two or three years ago in the literature, we hit this wall or we realized that, hey, our experiments are great, but they have some assumptions about to complete the experiment, you will need mental imagery."

The assumption seemed logical: if you don't have mental imagery, you should fail at imagery tasks.

"And this assumption was destroyed or was proven to be false by individuals with aphantasia that perform very often perfectly well or with comparable performance than typical imagers," Dr. Spagna says.

Take the classic aphantasia test: count the windows in your house. Researchers assumed the only way to answer was by visualizing your house and mentally walking through it. But people with aphantasia can answer just as accurately—sometimes taking slightly longer, sometimes with less confidence, but getting the same result.

Or consider this: what's a darker shade of green, a blade of grass or an evergreen tree? Again, the assumption was that you'd visualize both and compare them side by side. Yet people with aphantasia answer easily without any visualization.

"The content is there," Dr. Spagna explains. "I can just access that information and do it."

Memory, Meaning, and Maybe Vision

So if visualization isn't necessary, what's actually happening when people complete imagery tasks?

Here's the crucial insight:

"There is a chance that what individuals with aphantasia are still able to do is to activate both the memory trace and the meaning of what you are asking them to do. And those two components are enough to respond to our experiments."

The visual component might not be necessary at all—it's just one possible way to access the underlying content.

"We may have made a mistake in thinking that to imagine something you need the ability to visualize the object," Dr. Spagna explains. "The mistake was not in this part, but it was in not acknowledging that to imagine something you need a memory trace of whatever you're trying to imagine."

Think of it this way: if someone asks you to imagine an Italian actress from the 1970s and you have no memory of any such actress, you can't visualize her—even if you're a typical visualizer. The memory trace comes first. Visualization is just one optional layer on top.

The Fusiform Imagery Node: A Breakthrough Discovery

The theoretical shift was accompanied by a neurological discovery that's reshaping the field.

Through meta-analysis—essentially overlaying findings from dozens of fMRI studies involving hundreds of participants—Dr. Spagna's team identified a brain region crucial to visual mental imagery: the fusiform imagery node, or FIN.

"When I showed this pattern to Paolo, again, a neurologist and me, cognitive neuroscientist doing lab work on a computer, Paolo looked at me like, 'But that's the region that we see in people that have acquired aphantasia,'" Dr. Spagna recalls.

People who develop aphantasia after brain injury often have lesions that overlap with this exact area. The convergence between lesion studies and neuroimaging data was striking—exactly the kind of evidence scientists dream of.

"Converging evidence is everything for science, right? When different worlds agree on one finding that was great," he says.

But here's where it gets really interesting: in a high-resolution 7T MRI study (what Dr. Spagna calls "a Ferrari of what we have right now in neuroscience"), they found that the FIN is actually active in people with aphantasia too.

"Much to our surprise, we observe the fusiform imagery node to be activated or active also in individuals with aphantasia. So we don't see any difference in activation if you look at that region between typical imagers and individual with aphantasia."

So what's different? The connection.

"We saw that the FIN seems to be disconnected from the frontal parietal network," Dr. Spagna explains—the brain regions involved in actually doing tasks and paying attention. "It seemed that the connectivity, meaning the synchronization between the signals coming from these two hubs, two regions, two networks is lower in individuals with aphantasia than in typical imagers."

The representation might be there. It's just not being sent where it needs to go.

Why Do We Even Have Mental Imagery?

This raises a profound question: if people with aphantasia can function perfectly well without visualization, why do typical imagers have it at all?

Dr. Spagna's hypothesis involves what he calls "repurposing" brain circuits.

"As we developed our cognitive functions over thousands and thousands of years, then we were able, some of us were able to hijack some circuits that are present and that we use for perception," he explains. "We were able to hijack and reuse those mechanisms to visualize things when they are not in front of us."

It's the same principle behind language development—we started with sounds, then built phonology, morphology, and complex grammar by repurposing existing neural machinery.

"Our brain constantly, because of the real estate point... our brain likely is trying to connect and reuse resources that are already present for other functions."

In other words, visualization might be an evolutionary bonus feature—helpful for some purposes, but not fundamental to cognition itself. You can play the "language game of visualization" without actually visualizing, just as someone might understand metaphors literally and still communicate effectively.

The Painter Who Never Visualizes

One of the most powerful examples of this principle came from Dr. Spagna's own office.

He invited Eric, a participant with aphantasia who happened to be a painter, to discuss his creative process. Dr. Spagna assumed painting would require pre-visualizing the final product.

"I asked him, 'Eric, what do you do when you paint? What does it mean to paint for you?'" Dr. Spagna recalls. "And he answered in the most striking way, which was like, 'Alfredo, what kind of question is that?'"

Eric's response was beautifully simple: "Alfredo, I just grab the paint. I put the paint on the canvas. And if I don't like it, I take it away."

"I was like, yeah, it's simple," Dr. Spagna laughs. "Just look at it. Just look if you like it. And it was again, another of those moments when I realized, I'm thinking about this all wrong. I'm thinking that you need to imagine what the outcome of the paint will be to actually paint it. Who said that? Nobody said that."

This realization—captured in a freely available ebook Dr. Spagna's lab published featuring first-person perspectives from 50 Columbia students—exemplifies why studying aphantasia is so valuable. It forces researchers to question their deepest assumptions about how minds work.

Dreams, Flashbacks, and the Voluntary/Involuntary Divide

Perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of aphantasia is that roughly 50% of people who can't create voluntary mental images still experience vivid visual dreams. How is that possible?

Dr. Spagna believes the answer lies in understanding the difference between voluntary and involuntary mental imagery—and it's an area his team is actively investigating.

"The case of dreaming is why dreaming?" he asks rhetorically. "Because many folks with aphantasia seem to report no mental imagery when they have to, but very vivid dreaming activity while they sleep."

The systems involved appear to be fundamentally different. Voluntary imagery—the kind you consciously create—requires different neural pathways than involuntary imagery like dreams or, in clinical cases, PTSD flashbacks.

"There is a gigantic aspect just to do with neuroscience of consciousness," Dr. Spagna notes. "The disconnect between subjective feelings of something and objective performance—there is a lot that needs to be done and understood."

This research has important clinical implications, particularly for understanding post-traumatic stress disorder, where involuntary mental images (flashbacks) are often overwhelming and uncontrollable. Some researchers, including Merlin Monzel, are exploring whether people with aphantasia might have different experiences with trauma-related imagery.

The 80-Year-Old Question

During the interview, an audience member posed an interesting question: "How was it that I was able to reach the age of 80 and coped with my life fully without ever needing to visualize?"

Dr. Spagna's answer cuts to the heart of his research: "We may not need this additional step of visualizing the objects. It may not be needed to actually deal with the concept, with the representation of the red apple."

Many people discover aphantasia late in life precisely because they never needed what they didn't have. They can deal with concepts, solve problems, and live rich lives without that final visualization step.

"You can deal with the concept for 80 years, 80 plus years. We can deal with the concept of a red apple or of a forest without having access to the last stage, which is, okay, let me help. Let me make sure that what I'm thinking about is correct by also coming up with a visual representation of that object," Dr. Spagna explains.

This realization has implications for how we understand brain activity.

"This tells us a lot about the sequence of brain activity we should observe in the brain, because then this means that memory and semantic system, meaning should precede the activation of visual system."

The Consciousness Question

For Dr. Spagna, the deepest question aphantasia raises isn't about imagery at all—it's about the nature of consciousness itself.

"I think that the most important thing that we have, the most high level question that I have is what does aphantasia tell us about consciousness, right? Human consciousness, right? That's the real piece," he says.

Aphantasia proves that people with seemingly identical brain structures can have radically different conscious experiences. And crucially, these differences don't constitute a disorder.

"I believe it is not a clinical condition. It should not be a clinical condition, I think," Dr. Spagna emphasizes. "If it's not a diagnosis, then it's an individual difference. And therefore, how do we deal with striking statistically significant individual differences in our conscious experience that don't become a diagnosis?"

This is uncharted territory. "It really prompts us to do a much heavier lift than just labeling stuff," he notes.

The diversity extends beyond just visual imagery to all sensory modalities—auditory, olfactory, tactile. Some people lack visual imagery but have rich auditory experiences. Others have the reverse pattern.

"It really gets to that point that there are lots of individual differences within the mental imagery space," Dr. Spagna acknowledges. "And how those individual differences impact your conscious day-to-day life is a fascinating area because it just makes sense that if you don't have imagery but you have very vivid auditory experience, then of course you're going to rely on that in your daily life."

The Path Forward

Despite—or perhaps because of—all the questions aphantasia research has raised, Dr. Spagna remains energized by the work ahead.

When asked about future directions, he points to several crucial areas:

The relationship between imagery and memory, particularly autobiographical memory and conditions like SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory)

The semantic system, exploring what happens when meaning itself changes or is lost

Clinical populations, including whether people with Alzheimer's or other neurodegenerative conditions experience imagery deficits alongside memory loss

Distinguishing auditory, tactile, and other forms of imagery, to understand whether we have one domain-general imagination system or multiple modality-specific systems

But he's also careful about what the research can and can't tell us—at least not yet.

"There is a disclaimer or something that we need to say," he notes. "It is not possible right now to do diagnosis using neuroimaging. Many neuroimaging methods are not good for diagnosing one condition over another."

Current findings show statistical differences between groups, not diagnostic markers for individuals. The FIN activation differences, the connectivity patterns—these are important scientific discoveries, but they don't yet translate to clinical applications.

Why Getting It Wrong Is Good News

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Dr. Spagna's approach is his embrace of being proven wrong.

"I don't think that this point has to do with aphantasia only," he reflects. "What we've been doing in trying to understand aphantasia or visual mental imagery is create experiments from the point of view of typical imagers and create experiments that have that assumption baked in."

When their assumptions were challenged, it wasn't a failure—it was progress.

"That was another confidence boost in my research or in my role as a researcher, because it told me, well, there's the need for even more work. I mean, tell me that there's more science to do," he says with a laugh.

He even frames it as something people with aphantasia have been trying to tell scientists for years:

"Friends that have aphantasia, some of them are scientists, some of them are creative people, have been screaming this at us for years, right? Like, no, you are wrong. I can do your task. I just know what you're asking me to do."

"And that's beautiful," Dr. Spagna concludes.

"And that's why we do science, knowing that it takes a lot of effort and often it proves us wrong, but it's a progressive endeavor in which little by little we try to get closer to what we think is going on."

What This Means for You

If you're part of the estimated 2-5% of the population with aphantasia, Dr. Spagna's research offers several important takeaways:

Your experience is valid. The neurological differences are real and measurable, even if they don't constitute a disorder or require treatment.

You're not missing a critical cognitive function. The ability to complete tasks traditionally associated with mental imagery through alternative strategies isn't a workaround—it's evidence that imagery was never necessary for those tasks in the first place.

Your conscious experience is fundamentally different. And that difference is reshaping how neuroscientists understand consciousness itself.

You might experience imagery in other modalities. The visual system isn't the only sensory system that can generate internal representations.

Science is still learning. As Dr. Spagna frequently emphasizes, there are more questions than answers—and that's exactly how it should be.

For researchers and clinicians, aphantasia serves as a crucial reminder: our assumptions about how minds work are often just that—assumptions, shaped by our own subjective experiences. True progress requires listening to people whose experiences differ from our own.

As Dr. Spagna so eloquently puts it:

"We should move beyond" trying to fit aphantasia into existing models and instead "think about it more globally" as revealing fundamental truths about cognitive diversity and human consciousness.

The field of aphantasia research is young, dynamic, and full of promise. Thanks to scientists like Dr. Spagna who are willing to question their assumptions and be proven wrong, we're getting closer to understanding not just what makes people with aphantasia different—but what makes all of us human.

Learn more: Dr. Alfredo Spagna is a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University whose lab investigates attention, perception, and mental imagery using behavioral experiments, fMRI, MEG, and mobile EEG. To explore his team's freely available ebook featuring first-person perspectives on imagination and aphantasia, visit his lab website. For a full list of Dr. Spagna's recent publications, [click here].