10 had involuntary imagery while awake (in the form of ‘flashes’).12 had a “complete deficit in voluntary visual imagery”.Questioning 21 participants who had been affected by aphantasia since birth, he found: Zeman’s study mentioned above, Lives without Imagery: Congenital Aphantasia. The symptoms are tied to our earlier definition, but there are often symptoms of aphantasia laid out in Dr. If you struggle to paint the scene, even vaguely, you may have aphantasia. How about a red circle wearing a blue, triangular hat?Ĭan you see a coconut sitting on the beach? To his bewilderment, Galton found that “the great majority of the men of science… protested that mental imagery was unknown to them.” Thus sparked his deep, lifelong interest in the matter, a seemingly crucial component of the human experience. In Galton’s 1880 essay, Statistics of Mental Imagery, he talks about his initial experiment on the “mind’s eye.” Having selected 100 individuals, a large number of them, esteemed scientists, like himself, he posed this to them:īefore addressing yourself to any of the questions on the opposite page, think of some finite object – suppose it is your breakfast table as you sat down to it this morning – and consider carefully the picture that rises before your mind’s eye. ![]() In actuality, Aphantasia is most likely a condition as old as sight itself.Īs Darwin’s cousin, Galton sometimes lives in the shadows, but he was a highly respected individual in his own right, considered the father of eugenics. It was renowned English scholar Francis Galton who began the discussion, yet the phrase Aphantasia was only coined in 2015, after a study by Dr. The idea of people having varying proficiency for mental images was formally theorized in the late 19th Century. It’s estimated that approximately 2% of people have the condition. Aphantasia is the inability to visualize images voluntarily in one’s head. This kind of internal visualization is more to do with the mind than the eye, though it seems not all are equally competent with it. ![]() Many take this skill for granted, assuming that creating mental pictures while reading a brilliant fantasy novel or clearly recalling a special childhood birthday cake’s shape and color is a fundamental human practice. If you close your eyes, can you still see? The question may seem silly, but humans have the remarkable brain power to conjure up images of their past experiences, faces of loved ones, familiar objects, and general imaginings with their lids firmly shut. So how do you know if you have aphantasia? Finding out whether you’re affected by this condition is relatively simple, but finding the cause and implications is an entirely different story. If estimates are true, it could affect as many as 150,000,000 people. Those with aphantasia are often gifted in other areas, and the brain seems to have no trouble compensating for this lack of mental imagery with numerical or verbal replacements. Therefore, aphantasia is an absence of imagination.įor those with the disorder, it’s quite a harsh definition and not strictly true. ![]() The word phantasia is Greek for imagination, or sometimes interpretation, and anyone who dabbles in this old language quickly learns a means not or without. Aphantasia is the inability to visualize images voluntarily in one’s head, whether based on real experiences or not.Īs with most medical conditions, there comes a Greek or Latin title ascribed to it.
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