How aphantasia (lack of a 'mind's eye') has affected my life
I realised only in 2019 - late in life - that I've got aphantasia.
My insight started when I was thinking about my forthcoming examination as part of the 'Stress and Health Study' – this is a long-term study of about 10,000 people who were civil servants in 1985, conducted by University College London. Every five years subjects were invited to go to Bloomsbury (a district of London rich in academia) for a series of tests. My next visit was due.
One of the tests is of short-term memory. I don headphones, and a disembodied voice reads out a list of unconnected words; when it stops I'm asked to write down as many as I can recall. I can usually remember only about 4 from a list of perhaps 30. As the date approached, fed up with performing so badly each time, I decided to research how to tackle such tasks. Widespread advice suggests using your mind's eye to visualise walking round a familiar room, e.g. your kitchen, and associating each word with something you see – e.g. if the word is 'growing' you imagine the toaster growing. But when I tried to do this, I couldn't. I eventually realised that I don't have a mind's eye. Until then, I'd thought I was the same as everyone else.
I told my wife, Viv. She initially disbelieved me (she has, or at least used to have, an amazing photographic memory). She was upset when I told her that if I shut my eyes I couldn't even picture her face. And then, one morning, I heard an article on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, featuring Prof Adam Zeman from Exeter University. He was studying this phenomenon and had named it aphantasia (in 2015). He wanted people who thought they might have it to complete an online questionnaire. So I did. The results confirmed that I have aphantasia. About 3% of people have it.
I've met only one other aphantastic (my made-up word) person – a young chemical physics PhD, which is interesting because I also have a PhD in chemical physics. I wonder whether having aphantasia encourages the development of alternative strategies for coping with life, strategies which may be advantageous in some walks of life – e.g. searching for, or devising, abstract patterns in information, and memorising those patterns (non-visually), to replace relying on visually memorising the information. I've read that there is a correlation between having the condition and working in science, technology, engineering and maths. Recent research supports the idea that people with aphantasia do favour abstract methods of thinking – there is much information at this link: https://extremeimagination.com/
Here is a link to an article about the condition: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/aphantasia-life-with-no-minds-eye/
I've found knowing that I've got aphantasia a great relief. It explains why, for example, I found some sorts of university exam revision so excruciatingly awful – I could easily cope with material which required working things out, or using abstract ideas, but where it involved picturing things I was at a great disadvantage. Even in spectroscopy, my special subject, I couldn't recall the details of what any specific spectrum looked like.
Having aphantasia also explains why, though I can draw well when looking at the subject, I can't draw decent pictures from imagination. I used to want to draw cartoons, and spent ages trying and failing. Now I know why. There are, however, professional artists with aphantasia who draw cartoon figures for films!
I enjoyed playing low-level bridge, but couldn't up my game because I couldn't remember what cards had been played. Now I know why (though I'm told alternative explanations are available!). Something similar applies to chess – I was quite good, without having been taught, but found myself unable to learn the openings which a very good chess player must know.
Thinking back to school days, I used to have great difficulty in learning vocabulary in French, facts in history, map-related information in geography, and other things where visualising information is helpful. By contrast, Viv says she was able to visualise whole pages of information, allowing her to do well in such subjects.
My having aphantasia also explains a past source of tension in our household. Viv would call out asking me how to do something on the computer, and I would reply saying I didn't know without looking. She would express irritation and disbelief, knowing I'm competent at that sort of thing. As soon as I see the screen I can usually figure out how to proceed, but I can't do that without the screen in front of me. I can't visualise what buttons or messages there are on the screen.
The condition doesn't affect my dreaming, which is fully visual. Nor does it affect my sense of direction, memory for faces, or – adversely, at least – memory for places (in fact aphantastic people may have a better than average spatial memory – see https://extremeimagination.com/. Viv thinks I do have an unusually good spatial memory.). I can hear music in my mind's ear, as it were (interestingly, Viv can't).
I've read an article by Blake Ross, another person with aphantasia: https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/, in which he talks about reading fiction. He skips over passages which are designed to create visual scenes in the reader's brain, because they do nothing for him, and for this reason doesn't like some authors whom other readers admire and love. Me too – I hadn't realised this till I read Blake Ross's article. When writing my novels, if I need to describe a scene, such as a building – even one I know very well – I have to call up a picture on the internet and describe what I see there. I can however describe from memory what the place feels like, and perhaps that's more important. I have of course been pleased when readers have praised my plots, pleased and mightily relieved when they've praised my characterisation (I've put a lot of work into that), but surprised and delighted when they've praised the sense of place I've engendered. It goes to show – not being able to visualise something doesn't mean you can't have feelings about it, as all with aphantasia know.
Having said that, however, I've read that we aphantastics tend to live more in the present than some other people, worrying less about the past and the future. The suggestion is that this is a result of not being able to visualise unpleasant experiences. I do have a fairly even temperament, and don't tend to worry about the longer term, or dwell on bad things that have now passed. And I'm an optimist, though I'm not sure if this is connected. No doubt there are others with aphantasia who have different personality traits – if there is an effect, presumably it will be on average rather than affecting all equally.
In January 2023 I discovered something new and, to me, shocking about a difference between me and my like on the one hand, and most of you (i.e. non-aphantastics) on the other. Apparently you non-aphantastics speak to yourselves in your heads. You have an inner monologue. I and other people with aphantasia don't, and I can't really imagine what it must be like to hear such a voice. I'm told it can be constant. We aphantastic people have a 'peaceful inner life', to quote Professor Julia Simner, a researcher in the field who is herself aphantastic, in a fascinating radio programme broadcast by the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001gwys
Prof Zeman doesn't think aphantasia needs diagnosis and treatment. "It's an intriguing variation in human experience, not a disorder," he says. Indeed, the scientist Craig Venter, the first person to decode the human genome, has described his aphantasia as useful in helping him to concentrate on scientific problems.
For those readers interested in the cause of aphantasia, I think it's a connectivity issue – how well the prefrontal cortex can maintain an instruction to the visual cortex. I recently discussed the condition with a neurologist, who said 'So what happens if I ask you to visualise a carrot?' What happened was that I immediately visualised a carrot (a cartoon picture of a carrot, for some unknown reason), but only for a flash – the picture disappeared in milliseconds. It felt like some mechanism had started up ok but then got saturated and stopped. My guess is that aphantasia is caused by a defect in the production or removal of neurotransmitters in the synapses taking messages from the prefrontal cortex to the visual cortex. I mentioned the experience to my wife Viv, who told me she could not only visualise a carrot but in her mind's eye could examine the wrinkles and blemishes in its skin. Amazing.
EGF, June 2022, revised August 2023