Aphantasia: the absence of imagination
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There are people who are unable to visualize objects or events. They lack the ability to make mental pictures. This absence of imagination is called aphantasia, sometimes called a blind mind's eye. Aphantasia can develop after a brain injury, due to a mood disorder, but it can also be congenital. Little is known about this anomaly, which was first described in 1889.
History
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This phenomenon was first described in 1889 by Francis Galton (1822-1911). This gentleman also devised a method for classifying fingerprints and created the first weather map.
What is known about aphantasia?
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The inability to make mental pictures, according to Prof. Adam Zeman, occurs in approximately 2.5 percent of humanity. It is not equally present in everyone. One person cannot visualize at all and the other just has a lot of trouble with it. This is often accompanied by other abnormalities. For example, it is known that people with complaints in the autistic spectrum more often have difficulty visualizing. It is striking that most people with aphantasia do see images during their dreams. So they can form visual images, but have no conscious access to these images. In 2017 there is still a lot of research to be done on aphantasia.
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Total aphantasia
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Total aphantasia means total absence of mental senses. In this case you cannot imagine seeing, feeling, hearing or smelling anything. Memories are a collection of facts for people with total aphantasia. They have no picture of this. They also have a lot of trouble recognizing faces. Many people who suffer from prosopagnosia (face blindness) have aphantasia, according to Zeman.
Aphantasia in the brain
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When we visualize we make use of our memory. Using our memory and the organizational areas in the frontal and parietal lobes, we visualize the information from the occipital lobes. If this fails, it is the result of a function change at one or more points in this network.
Mostly discovered during teenage years
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It is only in their teens or early twenties that most people with aphantasia realize that they cannot do something that their environment can do. It is only then that you discover that you lack the ability to visualize. When you lose this ability due to brain damage or a mood disorder, you will of course notice this immediately.
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It is not until their teens or early twenties that most people with aphantasia find out that they cannot do something that their environment can do. It is only then that you discover that you lack the ability to visualize. When you lose this ability due to brain damage or a mood disorder, you will of course notice this immediately.
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