Think of a horse. Does some kind of mental image of a horse come to mind? Try comparing the image of a horse in your head with how you know it looks in real life. Is the scenario you imagine equally vivid to its real-world counterpart, a little less vivid, somewhat vivid, not very vivid at all, or completely absent

It’s no secret that our conscious thoughts are private, and evaluating the vividness of our own internally generated experiences – such as in visualization – can be challenging. On the one hand, it can be challenging to determine the precise details of the mental images in our mind’s eye and even sometimes tell whether we have formed a mental picture at all.

But, as it turns out, you may know your thoughts better than you think you do! Research has provided a growing body of behavioural and neuroimaging evidence suggesting we have a pretty good metacognitive understanding of our mental imagery capabilities.

Yes. It’s not just the visual system that’s impacted. Some aphantasics experience multisensory aphantasia. They also cannot hear sounds, imagine smells, tastes, movement or touch using their imagination.

Aphantasia impacts our inner sense of sight, and can impact other senses in our imagination too. If you think of your favorite meal, can you almost smell or taste it? These dimensions of sensory imagination are called olfactory and gustatory imagery. To test where you fall on the spectrum and explore imagery impacts, take the Imagination Spectrum assessment.

Aphantasia is a variation in human experience. It is not a disability, disorder, or defect. Nor is it a barrier to success. Aphantasics can make brilliant creatives, inventors, authors, musicians, scientists, entrepreneurs and more. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Craig Venter, the biologist who first sequenced the Human Genome. Blake Ross, creator of Mozilla Firefox. Glen Keane, Disney Animator and Creator of The Little Mermaid. Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller. All have aphantasia.

The opposite of aphantasia is known as hyperphantasia, or extremely vivid sensory imagination. For someone with hyperphantasia, visualizing can look as vivid as real seeing.

Aphantasia was first given a name in 2015, but knowledge of our invisible differences can be found dating back to 340 BC. Aristotle stands at the beginning of this history when aphantasia was not an established topic of discussion yet. Aristotle coins the term phantasia in De Amina (On the Soul), Part III to describe a distinct capacity between perception and thought — a sort of ‘sixth sense.’ Phantasia is commonly translated to imagination, or as Aristotle describes “that in virtue of which an image occurs in us”— in thoughts, dreams, and memories. His account of phantasia includes mental imagery, dreams, and even hallucinations.

During this period, however, it was generally believed that thoughts required images. That is, “whenever one contemplates, one necessarily at the same time contemplates in images” (De Anima Part III 8). Aphantasia, or blind imagination, proves Aristotle may have been wrong about that.

Fast forward to 2009, Dr. Adam Zeman a neurologist from Exeter University receives a patient who can no longer imagine — known affectionately among the aphantasia community as patient MX. Patient MX goes blind in his mind’s eye after undergoing surgery. News of patient MX’s experience attracted media attention which led to many new discoverers who could relate to a similar experience, only they had been blind in their mind’s eye since birth. Zeman coins the term aphantasia to describe the inability to visualize in 2015. The “a” in a-phantasia denotes its absence.

People have taken objective tests in a lab like measuring pupil response when asked to imagine a beam of light, fear-based responses using skin-conductance levels (SCL) when presented with scary stories, among other notable experiments. Researchers have observed that people who report vivid imagery have very different physiological and behavioural responses to these tests than people with aphantasia. Although this doesn’t let us know defintively that they’re vividly seeing an image, it all points to the fact that something is truly different between people who claim to see vividly and those who don’t. We can also observe in neuro-imaginging studies an activation in the visual cortex, the area in the brain that processes images from the eyes, which further suggests actual visualization.

The majority of people have aphantasia since birth, called “congenital,” or lifelong aphantasia. Rarely can it result from a stroke or head injury. It may also occur as a result of an episode of depression. So if someone who has previously had imagery loses it suddenly, it’s reasonable to ask and attempt to learn why. For more information about a probable cause, check out these shocking insights.

Researchers do have evidence that aphantasia is hereditary. If you have aphantasia, likely, your first-degree relatives may also have aphantasia. Indicating a possible genetic or hereditary link.

Watch this AMA event with Dr. Adam Zeman.

Aphantasia is both a congenital and developmental condition. For those with congenital aphantasia, there is no known “cure”. Some people with acquired aphantasia, however, have described experiences of regaining imagery abilities through interventions like psychedelics. Important to note, aphantasia is not a disability but rather a unique variation in human experience with its own pluses and minuses. Many people with congenital aphantasia don’t want “a cure”.

There’s been great research into aphantasia spanning many disciples from neuroscience to psychology, cognitive science, and more. And interest is growing! The original paper coining the term “aphantasia” scores in the top percentile of new research interest on Almetric.

Check out our research library with all the latest research here.