Aphantasia refers to the absence of internal sense perceptions when remembering or imagining. It means knowing that you just ate a delicious chocolate cake, but not being able to re-experience its taste in your mind. People with visual aphantasia don't generate an image in their mind’s eye when hearing words like “apple” or “tree” or “dog.”

The brain’s image-processing and memory systems are involved in a range of conscious and unconscious experiences. Aphantasia is associated with a range of consequences, including impaired autobiographical memory and, potentially, less emotional awareness and empathy. It's an under-recognized aspect of neurodiversity.

Steve explores this experience and reflects on the uncanny fact that other peoples’ consciousnesses can work differently than our own, in more or less subtle ways with far-reaching effects.

Transcript

Selected Research

Beran, Michael J. et al (2023). Assessing aphantasia prevalence and the relation of self-reported imagery abilities and memory task performance. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103548.

Blomkvist, A. (2023) Aphantasia: in search of a theory. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12432

Blomkvist A, Marks DF. Defining and ‘diagnosing’ aphantasia: Condition or individual difference?https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.09.004

Delem et al. Complete Aphantasics Process Emotions Differently, But No Less Efficiently: Evidence of a Non-linear Relationship Between Visual Imagery and Alexithymia. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/es425_v1

McCormick C and Lange S (2025) Missing images: autobiographical memory in Aphantasia and blindness. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcogn.2025.1644533

Monzel M, et al. Aphantasia within the framework of neurodivergence. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2023.103567

Monzel M, et al. Affective processing in aphantasia and potential overlaps with alexithymia. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bionps.2024.100106.

Wicken M, et al. The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267

Zeman, Adam. Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.02.007

The music is “Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).

The cover art features “Concentric squares forming a geometric maze pattern” by Cansu Sarp.