Aphantasia

Not to be confused with aphasia, the inability to formulate language.
A representation of how people with differing visualization abilities might picture an apple in their mind. The first image is bright and photographic, levels 2 through 4 show increasingly simpler and more faded images, and the last—representing complete aphantasia—shows no image at all.

Aphantasia (/ˌeɪfænˈteɪʒə/ AY-fan-TAY-zhə, /ˌæfænˈteɪʒə/ AF-an-TAY-zhə) is the inability to visualize.[1]

The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880,[2] but has remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter.[3] Zeman's team coined the term aphantasia,[4] derived from the ancient Greek word phantasia (φαντασία), which means "appearance/image", and the prefix a- (ἀ-), which means "without".[5] People with aphantasia are called aphantasics,[6] or less commonly aphants[7] or aphantasiacs.[8]

Aphantasia can be considered the opposite of hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery.[9][10]

  1. ^ Larner AJ (2016). A dictionary of neurological signs. New York: Springer. pp. 29–30. ISBN 978-3-319-29821-4.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Galton 1880 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zeman et al 2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Gallagher, BBC 2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Clemens A (1 August 2018). "When the Mind's Eye is Blind". Scientific American.
  6. ^ "aphantasics". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2023-12-27.
  7. ^ "aphants". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2023-12-27.
  8. ^ "aphantasiacs". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2023-12-27.
  9. ^ "An update on 'extreme imagination' – aphantasia / hyperphantasia". The Eye's Mind. University of Exeter Medical School. 4 May 2020. Retrieved 2021-03-10.
  10. ^ Keogh R, Pearson J, Zeman A (January 2021). "Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery extremes". Neurology of Vision and Visual Disorders. Handbook of Clinical Neurology. Vol. 178. pp. 277–296. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-821377-3.00012-x. ISBN 978-0-12-821377-3. PMID 33832681. S2CID 233193117.