Aphantasia Is Not Just One Thing
There are enormous differences in how people without mental imagery function.
Posted November 5, 2025 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
The last ten years were a wild ride for those of us who are interested in mental imagery . It was ten years ago that the condition of not having conscious mental imagery became known to the general public and even got a fancy name: aphantasia. And the response was overwhelming, Many people discovered that when others talk about 'seeing something with the mind's eyes', it's not just a manner of speaking. Most of us, when we close our eyes and visualize an apple, a faint picture of an apple is conjured up. But for some people, the aphantasics, nothing is conjured up.
It is tempting to think that aphantasia is a major disability, but in fact it is far from being a disability at all. First, aphantasics are less susceptible to mental health problems than others, as a result of the importance of mental imagery in a variety of mental health risks. Further, aphantasics are overrepresented among academics and, somewhat surprisingly, even among visual artists. There is no reason to think that aphantasics are less creative than the rest of us.
Recent findings show that aphantasia is not a monolithic phenomenon. Different aphantasics can be very different indeed. Given that aphantasia is identified by means of introspective reports; that is, people saying that they can't visualize an apple when prompted, this should not come as a surprise. What is more surprising is the wide varieties in the conditions of aphantasics. Here are the most salient ones:
Maybe it is helpful to use the analogy of blindness here. Aphantasia could be considered to be. the blindness of the mind's eye. But it would be a mistake to think of blindness as one single phenomenon. Vision is an intricately complex process and many things need to come together for us to have the vivid visual experience we have. If any of these (the retina, the visual nerve, the primary visual cortex, and so on) is malfunctioning, we get blindness. Similarly, visual imagery is an intricately complex process and many things need to come together for it to work.
And just as very different issues make cataract patients and cortically blind people unable to see, the same is true of different forms of aphantasia. Crucially, when it comes to treating blind people, we need to be crystal clear what form of blindness is at stake. And, analogously, when it comes to aphantasia, it is not enough to just categorize someone as an aphantasic. We need to ask what form of aphantasia is at stake here.
To abuse the first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina , “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” we can say that conscious mental imagery is all alike, but the lack of conscious mental imagery, aphantasia, can take many very different forms.
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Bence Nanay, Ph.D., is professor of philosophy at the University of Antwerp and Cambridge University and the holder of a multi-million Euro ERC Grant on integrating philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.