Aphantasia

Aphantasia is a condition where one does not possess a functioning mind's eye and cannot voluntarily visualize imagery.  The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but has since remained largely unstudied.  Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter, which also coined the term aphantasia.  Research on the condition is still scarce. 

History 
The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 in a statistical study about mental imagery, describing it as a common phenomenon among his peers.  However, it remained largely unstudied until 2015, when Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter was approached by MX, a man who seemed to have lost the ability to visualize after undergoing minor surgery.  Following the publication of MX's case in 2010, Zeman was approached by a number of people reporting a lifelong inability to visualise.  In 2015, Zeman's team published a paper on what they termed "congenital aphantasia", sparking a renewed interest in the phenomenon now known simply as aphantasia. 

In April 2016 Blake Ross, co-creator of Firefox, published an essay describing his own aphantasia and his realization that not everyone experiences it.  The essay gained wide circulation on social media and in a variety of news sources. 

In May 2018, in collaboration with Zeman, The Aphantasia Network was launched to create a community of people exploring life with Aphantasia, and share stories and strategies to learn more about its impacts.  

In April 2019 BBC News published a piece about former Pixar chief Ed Catmull and his personal experience with aphantasia, and its surprising prevalence at the company. 

Assessment 
In the original paper by Professor Adam Zeman, the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) is used to evaluate the quality of the mental image of 21 self-diagnosed and self-selected participants.  This questionnaire invites the person to visualize a series of images (a relative, a rising sun, a shop they know, etc.)  and rank how vivid the image is, from "perfectly clear and lively as real seeing" (5 points) to "no image at all, you only know that you are thinking of the object" (1 point).  It is categorized as aphantasia if they score a total of 20 or less across 16 questions. 

Research 

Zeman's paper identified that aphantasia characterizes only voluntary visualizations; the aphantasiacs were still able to have involuntary visualizations (i.e. dreams). 

Another study posited that frontal engagement driving feedback connections activates sensory representations in the visual cortex; people with aphantasia could have a deficit with these feedback connections such that the visual cortex cannot be activated to produce an image. 

In addition to congenital aphantasia there have been cases reported of acquired aphantasia, due either to brain injury or psychological causes. 

References

Further reading 
 (foreword by Adam Zeman)

External links 
 
 
 "Aphantasia: Seeing the world without a mind's eye",  Tamara Alireza, TEDxGoodenoughCollege

Category:Neurological disorders
Category:Visual perception