A review of studies into aphantasia has found that people who cannot visualise images in their mind’s eye may be among 1% of the population who have extreme aphantasia. As many as 6% of people may experience varying degrees of aphantasia. Although it’s not a disorder and doesn’t constitute a lack of imagination, it can have subtle effects on everyday life. Professor Adam Zeman says aphantasics are less likely to recognise faces and remember sounds or textures, so are more likely to work in science, maths or computing.
Mary Wathen, a lawyer who lives in Cheltenham, was surprised to discover other people could visualise past events without being in front of them. “To me, unless you can see something with your eyes, it’s not there,” she says. Mary only recalls the memories, and cannot visualise anything. “All the hardware is working – but the monitor is not switched on,” she says. However, Mary is a good verbal communicator. This is because she assumes nothing and uses words to communicate her meaning.
Prof Zeman, honorary professor of neurology at the University of Exeter, came up with the term aphantasia ten years ago. Zeman discovered there is an opposite extreme, hyperphantasia, in which people see images so vividly their awareness of whether they are real or imagined can be distorted. While aphantasia is rare, an estimated 3% of individuals have hyperphantasic qualities.
Differences in connectivity between different regions of the brain may explain why aphantasics cannot visualise. Prof Zeman said: “Thoughts remain thoughts whereas for others, thought translates into sensory terms.” However, it is reassuring to note that “conscious sensory imagery is not a prerequisite for human cognition”, and everyone pictures images differently
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