Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery extremes

Keogh, Rebecca; Pearson, Joel; Zeman, Adam

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-821377-3.00012-x

Cited by 39 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 98 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Some people report imagery as so vivid it feels almost like perception, while a small percentage of otherwise healthy people seemingly do not have the capacity for visual imagery at all – they report that when they think about how an object looks, there is no sensory-like experience of it whatsoever ( Galton, 1880 ). This condition has been recently termed ‘aphantasia’ ( Zeman et al, 2015 ); it can be congenital, persisting throughout one’s lifetime ( Zeman et al, 2015 ) or acquired ( Zeman et al, 2010 ), is associated with a range of differences in general cognition ( Dawes et al, 2020 ; Keogh et al, 2021a , Keogh and Pearson, 2021 ), including dampened fear responses to imagined scary scenarios ( Wicken et al, 2021 ). The existence of aphantasia has also been established using objective techniques that measure the low-level sensory elements of imagery ( Keogh and Pearson, 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Kay

Keogh

Andrillon

et al. 2022

eLife

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The pupillary light response is an important automatic physiological response which optimises light reaching the retina. Recent work has shown that the pupil also adjusts in response to illusory brightness and a range of cognitive functions, however, it remains unclear what exactly drives these endogenous changes. Here we show that the imagery pupillary light response correlates with objective measures of sensory imagery strength. Further, the trial-by-trial phenomenological vividness of visual imagery is tracked by the imagery pupillary light response. We also demonstrated that a group of individuals without visual imagery (aphantasia) do not show any significant evidence of an imagery pupillary light response, however they do show perceptual pupil light responses and pupil dilation with larger cognitive load. Our results provide evidence that the pupillary light response indexes the sensory strength of visual imagery and this work also provides the first physiological validation of aphantasia.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Kay

Keogh

Andrillon

et al. 2022

eLife

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our observation on the remarkable distribution of the two extremes -namely hyper-and aphantasia -is unique in the literature. About the phenomenon of aphantasia, most of the studies envisage aspects of its role in different kind of cognitive functions, and potential impairments or compensative internal processes, mainly only in adult samples (for recent examples, see Pounder et al, 2018;Keogh et al, 2021;Milton et al, 2021;Wicken et al, 2021). However, to understand the phenomenon more comprehensively, it would be essential to examine the nature of lifelong prevalence as well.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The dilemma of representativity also refers to the lack of research in the developmental stages. Most of the papers in the topic are engaged in undergraduate or adult participants (for recent examples, see: (Keogh & Pearson, 2014); Keogh et al, 2021;Milton et al, 2021;(Wicken et al, 2021), which sampling, however, ignores the potential effects in other age groups, including children and the elderly community. In aphantasia research, therefore, it is not easy to find even partial answers to our original question about imagery vividness across the lifespan.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual imagery vividness declines across the lifespan

Gulyás

Sutori

Lovas

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The capacity to elicit vivid visual mental images varies within an extensive range across individuals between hyper- and aphantasia. It is not clear, however, whether imagery vividness is constant across the lifespan or changes during development and later in life. Without enforcing the constraints of strict experimental procedures and representativity across the entire population, our purpose was to take a first look at the self-reported level of imagery vividness and determine the relative proportion of aphantasic/hyperphantasic participants in different age-groups. Relying on the frequently used Vividness of Visual Mental Imagery questionnaire, we collected data on a random sample of 2252 participants between the ages of 12 to 60 years. We found a novel developmental pattern describing a declining ability to elicit vivid visual mental images in the group averages of different age-groups from adolescence to middle age. This effect involves both a decreasing proportion of individuals with very vivid imagery and an increasing proportion of individuals with weak imagery as maturation (assessed by boneage estimations in adolescents) and aging progresses. This finding may help to shed light on yet unknown developmental mechanisms of our internal, stimulus-independent processes, and might also help to determine genetic, maturational, and age-dependent factors in the extreme cases of hyper- and aphantasia.

show abstract

“…However, there are initial findings that people without mental imagery (= people with aphantasia; Keogh & Pearson, 2018;Zeman et al, 2015) report poorer face recognition than people with mental imagery (Milton et al, 2020;Zeman et al, 2020) and, conversely, people with particularly poor face recognition (= people with prosopagnosia; Behrmann & Avidan, 2005) report poorer mental imagery than controls (Grüter et al, 2009). There is even some literature (e.g., Keogh et al, 2021;Tween, 2019) already associating aphantasia and prosopagnosia due to this preliminary evidence and some individual cases (e.g., Charcot, 1889). Interestingly, however, the selfreported recognition deficits in people with aphantasia do not hold up in face recognition tests like the Warrington Recognition Memory Test for faces (RMT-F; Warrington, 1984) or the Famous Face Recognition Test (Milton et al, 2020), whereas a study on the relationship between visual imagery and eyewitness accuracy by Riske et al (2000;as cited in Grüter et al, 2009) might at least be interpreted as evidence for an association between visual imagery and face recognition.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bruce & Young, 1986). Either way, considering that other cognitive impairments found in people with aphantasia (e.g., in memory, Milton et al, 2020; Monzel, Vetterlein et al, 2021; Zeman et al, 2015) are not limited to faces, there is no obvious rationale as to why recognition deficits in people with aphantasia should be limited to faces, although such deficits are focused on in previous literature (e.g., Keogh et al, 2021; Milton et al, 2020; Zeman et al, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

No increased prevalence of prosopagnosia in aphantasia: Visual recognition deficits are small and not restricted to faces

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aphantasia and prosopagnosia are both rare conditions with impairments in visual cognition. While prosopagnosia refers to a face recognition deficit, aphantasics exhibit a lack of mental imagery. Current object recognition theories propose an interplay of perception and mental representations, making an association between recognition performance and visual imagery plausible. While the literature assumes a link between aphantasia and prosopagnosia, other impairments in aphantasia have been shown to be rather global. Therefore, we assumed that aphantasics do not solely exhibit impairments in face recognition but rather in general visual recognition performance, probably moderated by stimulus complexity. To test this hypothesis, 65 aphantasics were compared to 55 controls in a face recognition task, the Cambridge Face Memory Test, and a corresponding object recognition task, the Cambridge Car Memory Test. In both tasks, aphantasics performed worse than controls, indicating mild recognition deficits without face-specificity. Additional correlations between imagery vividness and performance in both tasks were found, suggesting that visual imagery influences visual recognition not only in imagery extremes. Stimulus complexity produced the expected moderation effect but only for the whole imagery-spectrum and only with face stimuli. Overall, the results imply that aphantasia is linked to a general but mild deficit in visual recognition.

show abstract

Aphantasia: The science of visual imagery extremes

Cited by 39 publications

References 98 publications

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength

Visual imagery vividness declines across the lifespan

No increased prevalence of prosopagnosia in aphantasia: Visual recognition deficits are small and not restricted to faces

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About