Probing the unimaginable: The impact of aphantasia on distinct domains of visual mental imagery and visual perception

2023/07/05 by Jianghao Liu, Paolo Bartolomeo · 1 voice · 68 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Audiology #Auditory imagery #Child and Animal Learning Development #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Face Recognition and Perception #Mental image #Perception #Psychology #Visual perception #Visual perception and processing mechanisms

paper · open access · doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2023.06.003

published in Cortex 166, 338-347 (Elsevier BV)

openalex publication_date 2023/07/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Citations

• The Relationship Between Visual Perception and Visual Mental Imagery: A Reappraisal of the Neuropsychological Evidence
• Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia
• The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia
• Phantasia–The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes
• Quantifying aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory

Cited by

• Vividness of mental imagery reflects a broad range of internally generated visual experiences
• Vividness of mental imagery reflects a broad range of internally generated visual experiences
• Defining and ‘diagnosing’ aphantasia: Condition or individual difference?
• Pupil changes to voluntary and involuntary visual imagery: A unified paradigm with implications for aphantasia research
• Aphantasia and involuntary imagery
• Face-, color-, and word-specific patches in the human orbitofrontal cortex
• Visual mental imagery in typical imagers and in aphantasia: A millimeter-scale 7-T fMRI study
• Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: exploring imagery vividness extremes
• Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors or inhibitory feedback? [europepmc]
• A Systematic Review of Aphantasia: Concept, Measurement, Neural Basis, and Theory Development. [europepmc]
• "The Giant Black Elephant with white Tusks stood in a field of Green Grass": Cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying aphantasia. [europepmc]
• Precuneus activation correlates with the vividness of dynamic and static imagery: an fMRI study. [europepmc]
• Dissociating voluntary mental imagery and mental simulation: Evidence from aphantasia. [europepmc]
• Task evoked EEG reveals neural processing differences in aphantasia. [europepmc]
• Vivid imagery is reported faster than weak imagery. [europepmc]
• No clear evidence of a difference between individuals who self-report an absence of auditory imagery and typical imagers on auditory imagery tasks. [europepmc]

Discussions

• Is vivid imagery reported faster than weak imagery? YES. There is an inverse correlation between subjective vividness and RTs in imagery tasks (N=117). doi.org/10.1016/j.co... [bsky, 29 points, 2 comments]