Visualization is something most people do on a daily basis. You’re using visualization when you picture the face of a friend, read a novel, or try to remember where you put your keys. But is it possible to be completely without a mind’s eye? For many, visualizing is a crucial part of memory, learning, and imagination. But 2 to 3% of people may be affected by “aphantasia” — an inability to see images in one’s head, according to neuroscientists.
The condition is not new. Francis Galton recognized it more than a century ago in his 1880 study, “Statistics of Mental Imagery,” in which he asked 100 men to describe the images that “rise to the mind’s eye” when recalling their breakfast table — the lighting, color, and contours they saw. He was astonished that some apparently had no recollection at all and he suggested that this was worthy of further investigation. But at that time the wider scientific community showed little more than a passing interest.
Then in the early 2000s a patient called MX came with an unusual problem to Dr. Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioral neurology at the University of Exeter Medical School in the U.K. The man, who was in his mid-60s, had suddenly lost the ability to form images in his mind after a heart procedure.
“From then on he could not visualize,” says Zeman. Before the operation he could easily replay visual memories of people, places, and objects. At night, his dreams had been filled with vibrant images, but now his mind’s eye was a total blank. “He lost dream imagery and deliberate visualization,” says Zeman. He couldn’t even see the faces of loved ones.
Zeman and his team found the situation perplexing. They decided to explore further, hoping to uncover a neurological basis. They also gave this condition a name: “aphantasia,” from the Greek for “without” and “capacity to produce mental images.”
Theater Of The Brain
Functional MRI revealed some clues about MX’s inability to visualize. It provided evidence supporting his experience, but it also contained some surprises.
Visualization normally involves the activation of a complex network of multiple regions across the brain. The frontal and parietal lobes organize the process of recalling sights, sounds, and smells, while parts of the temporal and occipital lobes replay visual memories, like projecting images onto a canvas.
But in MX the visual circuits were less active — for example, when he was asked to picture famous faces in his head — compared to people reporting normal visualization. Oddly, he could nevertheless remember details about a person’s appearance, such as eye color. He could work it out using facts. This suggested that his brain was taking a different route to accomplish tasks that would normally require creating a visual representation.
After publishing their initial study on MX in the journal Neuropsychologia, Zeman was contacted by 21 people with similar experiences. Their answers to surveys confirmed they also had aphantasia.
One person who got in touch was Dame Gill Morgan. Unlike MX, she had lifelong aphantasia, and found it mind-boggling to discover that other people could picture things in their heads. That is not to say she had never sensed that something was different. When she was learning to play chess, for instance, she remembers listening to others talk about “seeing” the board in their minds. This was not the case for her.
“I could remember each move, and how to construct movements, but I couldn’t picture the chessboard,” she says. When others said they saw the game unfolding in their head, she simply assumed it wasn’t meant literally.
