Aphantasia: Why Some People Can't 'See' Mental Images

Video Description

An estimated 1 to 4% of people have aphantasia, a condition where they don’t experience mental imagery or a ‘mind’s eye.’ Neuroscience research into people with aphantasia is now revealing how imagination works and demonstrating the sweeping variety in our subjective experiences. Correction: February 10, 2025 Joel Pearson is a neuroscientist, not a neurologist. Read the Quanta article: "What Happens in a Mind That Can’t ‘See’ Mental Images" https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-happens-in-a-mind-that-cant-see-mental-images-20240801/ PAPERS - "Loss of imagery phenomenology with intact visuo-spatial task performance: A case of ‘blind imagination’" | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028393209003418?via%3Dihub - "The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from fear-based imagery and aphantasia" | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33715433/ - "Hippocampal-occipital connectivity reflects autobiographical memory deficits in aphantasia" | https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/94916v2 --------- Chapters: 00:00 What is it like to have aphantasia? 01:29 How aphantasia was identified and named - Adam Zeman 02:32 How the brain forms mental imagery - visual cortex 03:25 VVIQ Questionnaire 04:03 Joel Pearson's new research techniques 04:55 Emotional response and aphantasia 05:52 Cornelia McCormick and memory research 06:26 Memory-aphantasia connection 07:09 Aphantasia spectrum and hyperphantasia --------- - VISIT our website: https://www.quantamagazine.org - LIKE us on Facebook: / quantanews - FOLLOW us Twitter: / quantamagazine Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation: https://www.simonsfoundation.org