“I remember things, but I can’t picture them.” What can a case of aphantasia tell us about imagery and memory?

Abstract

Aphantasia is a relatively new term referring to the experience of lack of visual imagery. Here, we present a literature review on aphantasia in the context of memory as well as a case report of congenital aphantasia in a 24-year old female, A.B., who became aware of her particular condition only recently. The aim of this article is to draw attention to the concept of aphantasia and describe the patient's experiences as well as her performance in mental imagery, memory, and intelligence tests. We believe that our paper may be useful for both research in psychology and clinical practice. Analysis of aphantasia may allow to assess the importance of mental imagery in other cognitive processes, like working memory or autobiographical memory. Moreover, the phenomenon of aphantasia emphasises the need to consider individual differences in mental imagery and inspires new research. Last but not least, we present a series of psychotherapeutic implications of aphantasia, such as deficits in autobiographical memory or difficulties with imagery-based techniques.

Insights into embodied cognition and mental imagery from aphantasia

“…Strongly embodied theories require evidence that simula tion is necessary for concept knowledge, whereas weakly embodied theories require evidence that simulation plays a functional role in concept knowledge, although simulation is not the sole constituent of simulation and, therefore, concepts might be preserved in the absence of simulation. More difficult to discern is whether simulation is partially Grounding by interaction 6 Dual coding theory 148 ; computational model of grounded acquisition 149 ; symbol interdependency hypothesis 35 ; action perception theory 56 ; conceptual topography theory 118 Situated conceptualization 5 ; words as social tools 150 ; linguistic shortcut hypothesis 20 ; hub and spoke model 18 ; cross-modal conjunctive representations 151 ; convergence-divergence zones 152 Action-based language 25 This table is adapted from ref. 14.…”

“…People with aphantasia report using different strategies for visual memory from participants with typical imagery 124,134 . People with aphantasia also report deficits in episodic and autobiographical memory 3,118,119,123 , produce fewer internal event details when describing past and future events, retrieve less sensory or emotional content from episodic memory 151 and use less perceptual language when describing such events (for example, less use of terms such as 'seeing') 8 .…”