PsychCrunch · The British Psychological Society Research Digest

Episode 16 (bonus episode)

·29 min·2 clips

Adam Zeman received about 12,000 messages after naming aphantasia, revealing a widespread unrecognized experience.

1. PsychCrunch Episode 16 examines aphantasia and the science of mental imagery. 2. Ella Rhodes, a staff journalist for The Psychologist magazine, investigates a condition she recognized in herself after reading BBC Future. 3. The episode asks how lacking voluntary visual imagery may relate to memory, navigation, dreaming, learning, and future planning. 4. Zoe Pounder at the University of Westminster defines visual imagery as forming mental images of objects, scenes, and scenarios that are not physically present. 5. Pounder's exploratory study combined visual imagery, working-memory, spatial, and metacognition tasks because published cognitive neuropsychological research was limited. 6. Rhodes describes struggling with a mental rotation task involving abstract shapes in a darkened Westminster laboratory. 7. Pounder says some aphantasic participants perform well on mental rotation, including a chemist who routinely rotated molecules on a screen. 8. Pounder reports that some aphantasic people use route memories and landmarks instead of visual landmarks when navigating. 9. Professor Adam Zeman traces the research to patient MX, who lost previously vivid visualization after a coronary angioplasty around 2003. 10. Zeman says MX could no longer visualize novels, familiar faces, visited places, or visual dreams, despite no clear neurological explanation on MRI. 11. MX answered questions such as whether grass is darker or lighter than pine trees by knowing the information without visualizing it. 12. Zeman's work was publicized by science journalist Carl Zimmer in Discover magazine and later reached about 12,000 people. 13. Zeman says roughly one third of respondents reported face-recognition difficulties and another third reported autobiographical-memory difficulties. 14. About half of Zeman's aphantasia respondents reported difficulty imagining sounds, while the other half could imagine at least some other sensory modalities. 15. Most respondents said they still dream visually, suggesting a distinction between dream imagery and deliberately summoned daytime imagery. 16. Zeman says familial co-occurrence may indicate a genetic element, although family style could also contribute. 17. Zeman describes aphantasia as a variation in experience rather than a condition that automatically requires a cure. 18. The episode combines Rhodes's personal discovery, recorded interviews, and a follow-up conversation about Pounder's early findings. 19. Best for listeners interested in perception, memory, and individual differences. 20. Less suited to listeners seeking definitive clinical guidance or settled conclusions.

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