r/science • u/unsw UNSW Sydney • Jan 11 '25

Health People with aphantasia still activate their visual cortex when trying to conjure an image in their mind’s eye, but the images produced are too weak or distorted to become conscious to the individual

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/01/mind-blindness-decoded-people-who-cant-see-with-their-minds-eye-still-activate-their-visual-cortex-study-finds?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social
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u/Pigeonofthesea8 Jan 11 '25

Same for me… do you also have a hard time remembering things in general? Movie plots?

My boyfriend has incredibly strong visualization ability, and an amazing memory.

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u/Double-Crust Jan 11 '25

Yep, I’ve basically given up on watching movies because their plots fly out of my mind within 10 minutes of the credits rolling. Have you looked into SDAM? It sometimes occurs alongside aphantasia.

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u/Pigeonofthesea8 Jan 11 '25

“Severely deficient autobiographical memory”? I wouldn’t know if it’s severe… but yeah my autobiographical memories aren’t the best, that’s for sure.

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u/captainersatz Jan 11 '25

I have terrible aphantasia but I find that I have a better memory than most for fiction, character names, plots. I've taken fun lil memory tests online and usually have absolutely terrible visual memory compared to people but have very high verbal memory. I have little "tricks" that I use to memorize visual things that I always thought were what everyone did until leaning aphantasia was a thing.

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u/Jumpy-Ad-2790 Jan 11 '25

I do too. It's like bad object permanence. Unless I'm looking at something I forget it exists. Which is unhelpful when doing grocery shopping but I do get a lot of nice surprises when finding things I've forgotten about.