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Here's what the little research we have on it has found so far, plus how to find out whether you have it. While aphantasia has been acknowledged in medicine since the s , the mechanisms behind it have never been fully explained. When someone with aphantasia does try to imagine something, they simply can't and instead see a void of darkness.
For example, she says it can also manifest as the inability to recognize faces, form visual memories , or imagine something new that you haven't seen before.
It differs from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize familiar faces, which often happens as the result of a stroke or traumatic brain injury. Swart adds that the condition has "no bearing on intelligence or any other neurological syndrome. One explanation for why aphantasia might occur has to do with childbirth and brain development, Swart says.
Thanks to neuroplasticity, she explains, a baby's brain is usually able to adapt and build more neurons in this developmental stage. But in the case of aphantasia, "That tiny little pathway that's related to visual imagery or visualization just doesn't work.
Presently, there is no treatment for the condition. But with the proper understanding and tools, people with aphantasia can still thrive. The only way to be "sure" you have aphantasia would be to see a neurologist and potentially get fMRI brain imaging done, to look at what's happening in your brain when you try to visualize, Swart explains. That said, there is a simple and helpful test that can give you a clue into whether you may have it: Close your eyes and try to imagine an apple, seeing it mentally in your mind's eye.
If you can see anything anything at all—even a blurry outline , you do not have aphantasia. If you see a void of complete darkness, you might have aphantasia. If you want to take a deeper dive into testing your ability to visualize, there is something online called The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire , Swart adds, which has been found to accurately measure the vividness of your visual imagination.
Even if you don't have full-blown aphantasia, you might find that you don't visualize in great detail. Interestingly, yes, some people with aphantasia do dream in images , according to Swart, but others don't. As one study explains, "The majority of our [participants with aphantasia], in fact, had some experience of visual imagery from visual dreams or from involuntary 'flashes' of imagery occurring.
Swart adds that many people with aphantasia can still have visual memory recall. However, she's heard of many people with aphantasia report less "rich" dreams, memories, and imagined future scenarios. This indicates that for some people with the condition, aphantasia means you're deficient in creating imagery in the mind's eye, but you don't lack the ability altogether. While many people are born with aphantasia, there are reports that it can be induced, either after surgery or an injury or even as a result of a mental pathology such as depression, anxiety, or PTSD.
It seems that in most cases, aphantasia is something people have dealt with for most of their life and doesn't typically have wider implications or associated conditions. But aphantasia is not technically the absence of imagination but something quite peculiar. People can be born with it or they can acquire it, as reports have emerged of rare cases of sudden aphantasia following a stroke or a medical procedure.
The idea of the object is there but its shapes and colours? Nowhere to be seen. Skeptical scientists have argued that some or all of these cases might have a psychological origin. They bring up historical cases that may or, as it turns out, may not have involved psychiatric conditions.
Others have hypothesized that aphantasics might actually be able to picture things in their mind… but that they are not aware of it. Now try to imagine that! But scientists came up with a way to test for this. You show a series of green vertical lines to the left eye and a series of red horizontal lines to the right eye. The brain can only register one of these and has to choose.
Scientists are starting to map out the differences in the brains of aphantasics using functional magnetic resonance imagery, but these studies to date have been quite small. You may think people with aphantasia are at a disadvantage, that they have a disorder; but the recent publicity around the phenomenon has highlighted some counterintuitive truths. Unless the test is particularly hard, aphantasics can also perform just as well as controls on memory challenges, which makes us think there may be multiple ways to succeed in these tasks.
Indeed, it was quite a shock to read about Ed Catmull, the former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, admitting that he has aphantasia.
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