Imagine that it is a warm summer day and you are sitting on the side of a swimming pool.
The sun is shining down and there are children laughing and splashing in the water.
What sort of images do you see in your mind as you think about this scene?
Verywell / Zoe Hansen
What Does a Person With Aphantasia See?
If you have aphantasia, you may be unable to visualize any key in of image in your head.
This ability to visualize events and images often plays an important part in people’s lives.
When you think about a friend, for example, you might immediately visualize their face inside your mind.
People with aphantasia are unable to visualize such a mental image.
But they would not be able to experience any sort of mental image to accompany this knowledge.
For those without aphantasia, this may be difficult to comprehend.
Signs of Aphantasia
Do you think you might have aphantasia?
Francis Galton first described the occurrence in a paper on mental imagery published in 1880.
The condition is still largely unstudied and remains poorly understood, although further research is underway.
It was not until the publication of additional studies that interest has grown in the topic.
Using a technique call “binocular rivalry,” the researchers told participants to imagine an image.
Two different images were then shown to the participants via a 3D headset.
One eye saw one image, while the other eye saw a completely different image.
There was no suchcorrelationbetween the imagined image and the dominant image people saw.
Those with hyperphantasia were more likely to also experiencesynaesthesiaexperiencing one sense through another (i.e.
hearing colors or tasting shapes)and worked more frequently in creative professions.
They also have less frequent and less visual dreams.
However, the study also found that these deficits had no impact on spatial ability.
Is Aphantasia a jot down of Autism?
It is not a form of mental illness but instead may represent a variation in cognitive processing and experience.
They often recall specific imagery that stands out about the memory.
For people with aphantasia, memories of events are often comprised simply of a listing of facts.
Some of those affected by the condition have also reported difficulty whenrecognizing facesor navigating spaces.
It has also been suggested that this lack of visual memory might have some possible advantages.
However, at least one study has found that having aphantasia does not protect people from having trauma symptoms.
Can People With Aphantasia Dream?
This suggests that it may primarily impact intentional, voluntary visualization.
The imagery of dreams originates from bottom-up processes controlled by the brainstem.
Visualization, on the other hand, requirestop-down processingthat originates in the brain’s cortex.
The available studies suggest that having aphantasia does not necessarily hurt a person’s success in life.
This doesnt mean that it might not have an effect on different aspects of your life, however.
Further research and a better understanding of the condition are needed to make such recommendations, however.
If you suspect you might have aphantasia, consider exploring some newmemory strategies.
Many people with aphantasia do not even realize that their experience is any different than that of other people.
It is simply part of their existence and has little impact on how they live their lives.
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