Aphantasia

Life without a "mind's eye"

Jan 18, 2025

Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. This week’s post is a little dive into a condition I have called ‘aphantasia’, or the inability to produce mental images. Enjoy.

Definition

The term ‘aphantasia’ was coined by neurologist Dr. Adam Zeman in 2015, based on the Greek term ‘φαντασíα’ (phantasia), meaning imagination, and ‘a’ meaning ‘without’. But the condition itself was first described by Francis Galton in 1880, when he decided to explore the ‘different degrees of vividness with which different persons have the faculty of recalling familiar scenes under the form of mental pictures’. He was surprised to learn that many of his friends ‘had a mental deficiency of which they were unaware, and naturally enough supposed that those who were normally endowed, were romancing’ [ref].

Just like Galton’s friends, many aphantasics live their lives with no sense that they are perceiving the world in a different way to those around them. I was 21 when I found out, and I’m sure some people die without knowing. Before it was explicitly spelled out to me, I was under the impression that mental exercises like ‘counting sheep’ and ‘picturing a beach’ were purely metaphorical. Even when the concept of a “mind’s eye” was explained to me, I thought it was a joke. Blake Ross, the co-creator of Firefox, does a better job of explaining this revelation in his Facebook essay on the topic.

Just a note: while I was doing research for this article, I found out that a ‘mind map’ works by stimulating your visual memory… it’s not just a pointless exercise in reformatting information you already have. I finally understand.

Test

According to The British Psychological Society, an estimated 2-5% of the world’s population have aphantasia. Around 3% have the opposite, hyperphantasia: extremely vivid visual imagery. Little research has been done into either of these conditions, but luckily it is relatively simple to test for aphantasia. Just close your eyes and imagine an apple. What do you see?

I’m pretty firmly on the 5 end of the scale. There’s nothing. No impression or sense of the thing. Just the back of my own eyelids. Or the real world in front of me.

I actually have the most extreme form of aphantasia: multisensory aphantasia. Not only can I not visualise things, but I also can’t conjure up sounds, smells, textures, motions, or anything related to the senses. The only thing I have is an internal monologue, in my own voice. I purely experience the world through a running commentary.

Impact

Andrea Blomkvist, in her article ‘Aphantasia: In search of a theory’, Mind & Language (2022) [ref], suggests that there may be a link between aphantasia and an impaired memory. She finds that aphantasics ‘produce fewer episodic details than controls when retrieving episodic memories, and report having problems recalling autobiographical memories’. As someone who has real issues recalling memories from childhood, at least in detail, this rings true to me.

What I don’t agree with, though, is Blomkvist’s conclusion that there is no measurable difference in spatial memory between aphantasics and controls. Both me and other aphantasics have reported a poor sense of direction, and trouble with spatial reasoning. At school, I was good at maths, but I never got on with shapes. I just couldn’t figure out things like volume or transposition without drawing the objects on a separate sheet of paper.

Obviously, this may have nothing to do with my aphantasia. Maybe I’m just bad at shapes. Who knows. The limited, often sporadic research into this condition means that it’s almost impossible to tell whether these memory problems are a result of aphantasia, or just a personal quirk.

Answering common questions

How do you remember things?

I never know how to explain this to people. I just do. I don’t need to see something to know it. It almost worries me that you do.

How do you read?

With my eyes…

But seriously, how can you enjoy reading with images constantly running through your head? How can you fully appreciate the writing? We can all sit there dreaming up worlds and characters, but it’s the words that make books worth reading. (Here I start to understand why my friends would read objectively crap books for the “plot”… I guess a good story without good language just isn’t something I can get behind).

And a follow up: does that mean you’ve never been annoyed when an actor is cast in a film who doesn’t look like the character?

Yes and no. If a character is described as tall, large with black hair, and they cast a small blond, I’ll be a bit annoyed. Especially if that archetype is relevant to their person. But so long as the actor fits the general description, I’m easy.

Do you dream?

Weirdly, yes. Although not very often (around 1-3 times per year), and they’re usually really boring. My most recent dream was me stood in front of a swimming pool. That was it. They’re also always in black and white.

Does it have any negative impact on your life?

There seems to be an assumption that aphantasia limits creative ability. It is true that most aphantasics pursue more scientific or mathematical careers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t be creative. In Wikipedia’s list of notable people with aphantasia, there are multiple authors (John Green, Mark Lawrence, Yoon Ha Lee, Michelle Sagara), as well as Ed Catmull (co-founder of Pixar), Blake Ross (co-creator of Mozilla Firefox), and Emad Mostaque (founder of Stability AI). I would argue that all these people are in creative jobs. Or at least jobs that require a high level of creative skill.

Otherwise, the only negative impact I can really think of is the inability to picture my friends and family. I don’t have facial blindness, so I can still recognise people when I see them, but I can’t actually remember what they look like. I have lots of pictures on my phone, so that makes up for it a little, but it does sadden me that I have to rely on those while other people can just imagine their loved ones whenever they want.

Does it have any positive impact on your life?

An early sketch of Ariel by Disney artist Glen Keane (source)

This is difficult to say as I’m not sure what my life would look like if I could visualise images or sounds. Perhaps it would make me a better writer. But what I do know is that I’m great with words. I find it relatively easy to memorise texts, to learn languages, and I’m a good written / verbal communicator. I don’t have to deal with any unwanted visual images, either. Perhaps counterintuitively, I think it might help with my art too. At least, when it comes to things like portraits and still life. I just copy exactly what I see, and my perception of a shape is not inhibited by any half-formed idea of it. There is also some evidence that the average IQ of someone with aphantasia is slightly higher than someone with normal cognitive function. I’m not sure how true that is, though.

Would you change it, if you could?

No. Visualisation sounds awfully tiring, honestly.

Does anyone else have experience with this? Or any questions you’d like to ask?