What do you see when you recall your happiest moments? Do you see images of your smiling family and friends, and picture the scene with almost photographic clarity in your mind’s eye?
What about when someone tells you a scary story? Does your mind conjure a vivid image of a zombie shuffling towards you through the cobwebbed corridors of an abandoned house?
Between 1 and 5 per cent of people have a condition where they cannot create images or visualise things in their mind’s eye. A study has found that this has the disadvantage of making it harder to remember key moments from their lives, but that it comes with the advantage of making people less likely to be frightened by scary stories.
Researchers at the University of Exeter have conducted the largest review of a condition known as aphantasia. Published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, it looks at 50 recent studies to summarise the findings and provide the most comprehensive overview of the symptoms.
Those with aphantasia “cannot bring to mind visual imagery”. They know what an apple is, could recognise and describe one, but cannot bring to mind a mental image.
Many of those with aphantasia have said “they knew they processed information differently to others but were unable to describe how”, while some have “expressed shock on discovering that other people can conjure up an image in their mind’s eye”, perhaps having spent many years without realising that they lacked this common ability.
The condition is linked to differences in neural connectivity, or the wiring in the brain. One symptom of aphantasia experienced by some with the condition is a “poor autobiographical memory”, making it hard to visualise key moments from their lives. In some cases, those with the condition have difficulty recognising faces.
For most people, listening to an extremely scary story will cause their sweat levels to increase, but studies found that people with aphantasia do not experience this because they are unable to create mental images of the frightening things being described. When reading, those with aphantasia are less affected by “visual and bodily imagery” described in the book and experience less “absorption in the story world”, due to their inability to create mental pictures of the scenes being described. Research has found, however, that those with aphantasia can often still dream visually.
Professor Adam Zeman, who coined the term in 2015, said it had only a “subtle” effect on people’s lives, saying: “Lack of imagery does not imply lack of imagination.” He added that aphantasia should not be considered a “disorder” and said it was an example of the “variations in human experience”, noting that some people have an opposite experience called hyperphantasia, where they have a vivid visual imagination.
Mary Wathen, 43, a solicitor from Newent, Gloucestershire, has aphantasia. She struggled to engage in role-playing games with her children. “One of my friends said he uses the images in his head to enhance role play,” she said. “When I asked him to explain in more detail it became clear that he and everyone else in the room could easily create an image in their head and use that as the backdrop for the role play. This was mind-blowing to me. I can’t understand what they mean; where is this image and what does it look like? To me, unless you can see something with your eyes, it’s not there.”
Wathen added that it was important for primary school teachers to know that “some children just won’t be able to visualise and that could be why they are not engaging in those kinds of activities”.
