Aphantasia: A Life Without Mental Images, Living With No 'Mind's Eye'

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- Aphantasia: ‘I can’t visualise my own children.’ BBC News, Health, Nov. 6, 2016.

Imagine a horse. You can probably picture one in your head. But if you're one of the 2% of people who live with "aphantasia" then you'll see nothing. You know what a horse is, you know it has got four legs, but you just can't visualise one. Aphantasia is a phenomenon which has only recently been defined by scientists. [Aphantasia: A life without mental images] Many people with it don't have a clue that they are different to anyone else. When we discussed it on the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 a number of listeners came forward to tell us that we were describing their experience of life; that they had aphantasia. Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology, coined the term aphantasia with his team at the University of Exeter.

He said: "It's a lack of the mind's eye. An inability to visualise. It's an intriguing variation in experience, rather than a problematic condition; it's not a disease." Aphantasia can have an impact on memory, because people are unable to visually recall moments in their life. Prof Zeman says that as many as one in 50 people have aphantasia. He says people either tend to have it or not - rather than experiencing it to different degrees of severity: "There is quite a big spread in the range of how well people visualise things.

"But anyone with aphantasia is way off the scale. So, in broad terms, most people without aphantasia can visualise quite vividly. But anyone who does have it cannot." Some Radio 2 listeners were astonished to find their experience of life being described on national radio: Rosie Edge, 63, Broadstairs: "Listening to the programme, I found myself hearing someone describe exactly what I experience. "My husband's always told me it was weird. Until you actually verbalise it, you don't realise it's different. I have two grown-up sons. If I think of them I don't get a picture in my mind.

"The first time I ever thought about it was when I had a conversation with my husband when I was in my 50s. "We were talking about relaxation techniques and he said, 'Picture being by the sea in Cornwall.'" I said, 'Well, I can describe it in words.' And he said, 'No - actually visualise it. You must have an image of it.'" "But I didn't. It was a confusing conversation; we couldn't even really work out if we were discussing the same thing. He described the image he had in his mind and that was completely alien to me. "I have really poor recall of really important events in my life. I can't picture my wedding day but I can remember the emotional feeling."...

More, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-37862070
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- Aphantasia: what it’s like to live with no mind’s eye. Some people can't visualise their best friend's face, or even their own house. This lack of mind's eye is called 'aphantasia', and researchers are only just starting to unravel the science behind it. Science Focus, Nov. 14, 2019.

Picture an apple. What colour is it? What about calling to mind your mother’s face? What is her expression? How about your last holiday? Can you picture where you stayed? For people with aphantasia, this is impossible. They cannot recall images of familiar objects or people to their ‘mind’s eye’. In effect they don’t have one. This crucial difference in the way people see the world has only started to be researched in the last few years. How have we gone for so long ignoring this variation in how we experience our internal worlds?

What is aphantasia? Aphantasia is the name given to the inability to call an image to mind. The name was coined in 2015 by Prof Adam Zeman, a cognitive and behavioural neurologist at the University of Exeter. Zeman first became aware of the phenomenon when he was referred a patient who had ‘lost’ his visual imagery after a heart operation. “He had vivid imagery previously,” recalls Zeman. “He used to get himself to sleep by imagining friends and family. Following the cardiac procedure, he couldn’t visualise anything, his dreams became avisual, he said that reading was different because previously he used to enter a visual world and that no longer happened. We were intrigued.”...

More, https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/aphantasia-life-with-no-minds-eye/