Summary: Researchers have identified how people with aphantasia—those who cannot form voluntary mental images—process visual information differently in the brain. While the same visual and memory-related regions become active during imagery tasks, these regions show weaker connectivity in aphantasic individuals compared with people who have typical mental visualization.
The findings support the idea that the vividness of mental imagery depends less on whether specific brain regions activate and more on how well these regions communicate. Despite lacking internal visual experiences, people with aphantasia retain sound visual knowledge and can reason, remember, and create without imagery.
Key Facts:
- What is aphantasia: Around 4% of people report they cannot voluntarily produce mental images.
- Brain connectivity: Aphantasic participants activate similar visual and memory regions during imagery tasks, but those networks show reduced functional integration.
- Functional implication: The subjective quality of imagery appears to rely on coordinated activity across attention, memory and visual areas rather than on regional activation alone.
Source: Paris Brain Institute
Using ultra-high-field 7 Tesla fMRI, teams from the Paris Brain Institute and NeuroSpin (CEA’s neuroimaging center) probed the neural basis of visual imagery with unprecedented spatial detail.
Their results, published in Cortex, advance our understanding of a striking cognitive variation: some people seem unable to conjure images in their “mind’s eye.”
Visual imagery—the ability to summon a mental picture of a place, person, or object that is not presently visible—varies widely across people. Some can mentally navigate a city in rich detail; others can only form faint outlines or a vague sense of color.
Approximately 4% of the population appears unable to voluntarily form mental images at all, a condition known as congenital aphantasia. Although described over a century ago, scientific investigation of the phenomenon has intensified only recently.
Available evidence suggests aphantasia is often present from birth and may run in families. It is not classified as a disorder, but some studies link it to weaker autobiographical memories or face recognition difficulties. Those associations remain tentative and are not yet well understood.
To investigate aphantasia at the neural level, researchers used 7-Tesla functional MRI to observe the brain during imagery and perception with very high spatial resolution. “We needed to map the precise circuits that support mental imagery and see how visual information is processed when no external stimulus is present,” said Paolo Bartolomeo, co-leader of the PICNIC team at the Paris Brain Institute.
Earlier studies often relied on self-report questionnaires, which can conflate actual imagery ability with metacognitive awareness—the capacity to describe one’s inner experience. To obtain more objective measures, the team collaborated with Stanislas Dehaene’s group at NeuroSpin and tested volunteers inside the scanner.
The study recruited 10 individuals with self-reported congenital aphantasia and 10 individuals with typical imagery. While undergoing ultra-high-field fMRI, participants answered memory-based questions about the visual properties of familiar objects, words, faces and places—tasks that typically engage visual imagery.
Results showed that attempting to visualize activated fronto-parietal networks involved in attention, awareness and working memory, along with regions in the ventral visual stream: the left fusiform gyrus and areas sensitive to letters, faces, and color. Crucially, these regions were recruited in both groups.
However, in aphantasic participants the communication between these regions—measured as functional connectivity—was consistently weaker. In short, the same nodes are engaged during imagery attempts, but their network integration is reduced in people who do not experience mental images.
These findings align with the hypothesis that vivid perception and imagery depend on efficient information exchange between fronto-parietal control networks and visual perception systems. The left prefrontal cortex may play an important role in making visual experiences consciously available.
Weaker connectivity could also explain why people with aphantasia retain accurate visual knowledge despite lacking subjective imagery. For example, they can reliably know that spinach is a darker green than lettuce, even if they cannot picture the difference.
Future research will determine whether aphantasia has a single neural signature or whether multiple subtypes exist with different neural causes. Ongoing work may also clarify links between imagery, perception, memory and neurodevelopment.
Importantly, research into aphantasia highlights human variability in conscious experience and shows that mental imagery is not required for reasoning, imagination, conceptual thinking or creativity.
Funding: This study was supported by Dassault Systèmes.
About this aphantasia research news
Author: Paolo Bartolomeo
Source: Paris Brain Institute
Contact: Paolo Bartolomeo – Paris Brain Institute
Image: Image credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia” by Jianghao Liu et al. Cortex
Open access.
“Frontoparietal asymmetries leading to conscious perception” by Jianghao Liu et al. Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Abstract
Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia
Visual imagery plays a prominent role in memory, daydreaming and creative thought for many people, yet its vividness varies greatly. Early quantitative work documented wide individual differences in imagery vividness, including reports of people with no visual imagination. Subsequent surveys have estimated that a small percentage of the population describe an absence of voluntary visual imagery.
Voluntary imagery engages fronto-parietal “executive” systems together with posterior visual regions to construct images from stored knowledge. Clinical evidence points to at least two distinct types of imagery impairment: disorders that affect visual memory and recognition, and more selective deficits that impair the ability to generate images without broader visual loss.
In 2010 a notable case was reported of an individual who lost the ability to form mental images following a medical procedure, prompting wider interest and reports from other individuals who described lifelong absence of imagery. This condition has been given the name aphantasia to describe congenital absence of voluntary visual imagery.
Abstract
Frontoparietal asymmetries leading to conscious perception
Recent intracerebral recordings indicate that frontoparietal circuits connected by the superior longitudinal fasciculus make hemisphere-specific contributions to conscious perception. Right-hemisphere networks are important for attention-driven prioritization of information, while left-hemisphere systems contribute to perceptual decision-making and internal model building. These asymmetries build on clinical observations from patients with spatial neglect and help specify how higher-order networks shape conscious visual experience.