Most people are able to picture images in their heads – the look of an apple, the appearance of their kitchen or their child’s smile – but not everyone can, and they are probably among 1% of people with extreme aphantasia, according to a review of studies on the phenomenon.
They are also less likely to recognise faces, remember the sound of a piece of music or the feel of sandpaper, and more likely to work in science, maths or computing.
Up to 6% of people may experience some degree of aphantasia, reports the BBC.
It is not a disorder and does not imply a lack of imagination but can have subtle effects on everyday life, says Professor Adam Zeman, honorary professor of neurology at the University of Exeter, who came up with the term nearly 10 years ago.
For instance, Mary Wathen (43) from England, finds it “totally mind-blowing” that other people can create images in their head.
“To me, unless you can see something with your eyes, it’s not there.”
Wathen cannot picture major events in her life – like her wedding day. And unless they are with her, she cannot even picture her two young boys.
“I don’t bring up an image – I have all the memories, I just recall it very differently,” she said. “As someone once described it, all the hardware is working, but the monitor is not switched on.”
‘Gut instinct’
Wathen discovered she was unlike most other people only when chatting with friends, and was astonished to find her husband could easily visualise past events as if watching a film.
On the plus side, she said, she is a very good verbal communicator, because she assumes nothing. It is all about the words.
Mind maps have never been a useful tool for exams, for example, and fantasy fiction is a no-no because she simply cannot escape to that world in her mind.
Opposite extreme
Zeman discovered this way of experiencing the world when he saw a patient who had lost the ability to visualise.
When he wrote up the patient’s case, others contacted him to say they had always been that way.
The professor has since discovered there is an opposite extreme, hyperphantasia, where people see images so vividly in their heads they cannot tell if they are real or imagined.
An estimated 3% of us see the world this way.
“One term gave birth to the other,” he said, after borrowing Aristotle’s word for the mind’s eye: “phantasia”.
Zeman said 17 000 people have contacted him in the past decade, with experiences of aphantasia and hyperphantasia.
Many said they knew they processed information differently to others but had been unable to describe how.
Differences in connectivity between regions of the brain may explain why, he said.
Asked to picture an apple, for example, most people go through a succession of steps, including nudging the brain to remember what an apple looks like and activating the brain to create an image of it.
But in those with aphantasia, that process can break down at any point.
“Thoughts remain thoughts,” he said, “whereas for others, thought translates into sensory terms.”
While aphantasics think about memories, other people are able to recollect and live those memories.
But intriguingly, many aphantasics can visualise images while dreaming – probably because it is a more spontaneous task beginning deep down in the brain, he said.
And aphantasia can have benefits. It can have a protective effect on someone’s mental health, because they are more likely to live in the moment and less likely to imagine frightening or stressful events, for example.
A big surprise, he added, was aphantasic artists, who told him their struggle to visualise imagery gave them an extra incentive to create art, by using the canvas as their mind’s eye.
Lots of question remain about aphantasia and hyperphantasia, such as what are the different sub-types and why it might be a genetic thing.
Data from large biobanks may provide the answer.
The professor’s review, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, found aphantasia ran in families, with the aphantasics’ siblings 10 times more likely to be affected themselves.
It has also been suggested aphantasics are more likely to have autism.
Zeman said research suggests “conscious sensory imagery is not a prerequisite for human cognition” – or creative imagination.
And everyone pictures images in their mind differently.
“Our experience is not the norm and other people may have different inner lives,” he added.
Study details
Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes
Adam Zeman
Published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences on 27 February 2024
Abstract
The vividness of imagery varies between individuals. However, the existence of people in whom conscious, wakeful imagery is markedly reduced, or absent entirely, was neglected by psychology until the recent coinage of ‘aphantasia’ to describe this phenomenon. ‘Hyperphantasia’ denotes the converse – imagery whose vividness rivals perceptual experience. Around 1% and 3% of the population experience extreme aphantasia and hyperphantasia, respectively. Aphantasia runs in families, often affects imagery across several sense modalities, and is variably associated with reduced autobiographical memory, face recognition difficulty, and autism. Visual dreaming is often preserved. Subtypes of extreme imagery appear to be likely but are not yet well defined. Initial results suggest that alterations in connectivity between the frontoparietal and visual networks may provide the neural substrate for visual imagery extremes.
BBC article – Aphantasia: Why I cannot picture my children in my mind (Open access)