Scientists Learn More About Aphantasia

Researchers imaged the brains of people who don’t use images to think.

This is actually a pretty accurate representation of what my inner vision is like. — Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

You’ve likely heard my story about asking my Dad when I was a kid whether he saw the same shade of green as I did when looking at the grass. He told me he didn’t know, that we could never know because we can’t know what it’s like in someone else’s head. This conversation radically altered my worldview and ignited a fierce curiosity in me about the human experience, particularly our thoughts and perceptions.

Decades later, his answer remains true — we can’t really know what it’s like in someone else’s head — but that’s also changing now thanks to technological advancements. Over the last few decades, scientists finally have the ability to study our imagination, and the findings are astounding.

The Mind’s Eye

I always thought of sight and imagination as two separate things, but it turns out, the brain creates mental images by basically reversing the process it uses for perception.

As electromagnetic waves enter our eyes, they’re turned into neural signals that flow to the back of our brain, where the visual cortex processes them. From there, the information is sent to the semantic and memory regions at the front of the brain. This process tells us if…