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/SkiingAway Jan 11 '25

I don't have either. Plenty of thoughts, but there's no sounds or pictures attached to them.

I'd describe it sort of like reading, or having recently read something, but apparently a lot of people narrate their reading mentally....which I don't do.

So I guess the closest description might be that thoughts are like a long string of silent words and/or abstract concepts.

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u/Buzumab Jan 11 '25

Hey, you're not alone! The irony (or perhaps what drew me to the fields in the first place) is that I'm a graphic designer and screenwriter professionally. I spend all day making graphics and reading/writing, but only with conscious effort can I very briefly create vague, dim, partial mental images, and I only sparsely narrate my thoughts.

Some people say it's just a difference in how we describe our mental imagery, not how we actually perceive them. I doubt that based on others' descriptions of reading books—whenever someone says, 'that's not how I pictured (character) in my head,' I realize immediately that I never, or maybe one single time when they were first described, pictured what that character looks like while reading the book. Although I do think there's a gradient—for example, I can create and rotate floor plans of places I've lived that are much 'stronger' visualizations.