Aphantasia

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Aphantasia

I have just read something that explains a long-time mystery for me. It appears that I have a relatively rare condition called aphantasia. See the article

Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains?

An excerpt from the above article:

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Think about your breakfast this morning. Can you imagine the pattern on your coffee mug? The sheen of the jam on your half-eaten toast?

Most of us can call up such pictures in our minds. We can visualize the past and summon images of the future. But for an estimated 4% of people, this mental imagery is weak or absent. When researchers ask them to imagine something familiar, they might have a concept of what it is, and words and associations might come to mind, but they describe their mind’s eye as dark or even blank.

Systems neuroscientist Mac Shine at the University of Sydney, Australia, first realized that his mental experience differed in this way in 2013. He and his colleagues were trying to understand how certain types of hallucination come about, and were discussing the vividness of mental imagery.

“When I close my eyes, there’s absolutely nothing there,” Shine recalls telling his colleagues. They immediately asked him what he was talking about. “Whoa. What’s going on?” Shine thought. Neither he nor his colleagues had realized how much variation there is in the experiences people have when they close their eyes.

This moment of revelation is common to many people who don’t form mental images. They report that they might never have thought about this aspect of their inner life if not for a chance conversation, a high-school psychology class or an article they stumbled across (see ‘How do you imagine?’).

Although scientists have known for more than a century that mental imagery varies between people, the topic received a surge of attention when, a decade ago, an influential paper coined the term aphantasia to describe the experience of people with no mental imagery.

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The 2015 paper and subsequent research has revealed how much aphantasia can vary. For instance, people with aphantasia often, but not always, lack the ability to imagine in sensory modalities besides vision — having no ‘mind’s ear’, for example. Some people with aphantasia report dreaming in pictures, but others don’t.

Researchers have also found that aphantasia seems to have a genetic component, with the likelihood of having aphantasia increasing tenfold if you have a sibling who has a weak or absent mind’s eye. And aphantasia might be more common in people in scientific and technical professions than in people with careers in the arts.

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I have no power at all to visualize anything and never have had any. If I close my eyes I see only black. If I try to visualize something, I can’t. I still see only black. When I have read instructions that one should visualize this or that I have always thought, “How does one do that?! What is the trick for doing that?” If I close my eyes and try to imagine something there is nothing there. I see nothing. I also lack any ability to “imagine in sensory modalities besides vision.” I have no ‘mind’s ear’, for example.

I can’t “visualize the past or summon images of the future.”

These are all powers that most people apparently have that I have no familiarity with.

I have always suspected that my memory was much poorer than that of most people — at least in some ways. I think my memory for the details of experiences of my past is much poorer than that of at least many people.

I do think that most people have both abilities and inabilities, strengths and weaknesses. We are all different.

God has been very good to me — I think exceptionally good to me. I certainly don’t complain. When I think of how so many people have so many problems I feel very grateful to God for all he has done for me. I believe God gave me my wife. I feel very grateful to him for that.

When one thinks of all of the children born in slums in the third world one ought to be thankful for everything he has been given. But for fate that child in the slum could be you.

Mind’s eye. (AI Overview) The "mind's eye" refers to the mental faculty of visualizing or imagining scenes, events, or objects as if you are seeing them, even with your physical eyes closed; it's the internal mental picture we form from memory or imagination, creating a vivid, albeit internal, visual experience. It's the place where we conjure up clear images for stories, recall past moments, or envision future possibilities.

Key aspects of the mind's eye:

● Imagination: Creating new visual scenarios, like planning a trip or a fictitious world.

● Memory: Recalling past experiences with visual detail, like seeing an old playground.

● Internal Visualization: A mental "screen" where these images appear, distinct from external sight.

● Not Always Literal: Some people (with aphantasia) can't form these vivid images, while others experience them intensely, like dreaming while awake.

Example: "In my mind's eye, I can still see my grandmother's kitchen as clearly as if I were there".

Well, I have no ‘Mind’s eye”. I never realized this power existed.

5 Feb 2026