Aphantasia

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Aphantasia is the proposed term for the phenomenon of a lack of functioning visual imagination , i.e. for the state in which no mental images can be visualized.

The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 , but has hardly been researched since then. The term aphantasia (from the Greek α- a- [ negative particle ] and φαντασία phantasía , appearance ',' imagination ',' dream face ',' ghost ') was coined by a study by Adam Zeman’s team at the University of Exeter . Research on this is still sparse, but more studies are planned. It is estimated that aphantasia affects around 2% of the population.

Aphantasia is similar to other invisible disabilities, such as facial blindness , alexia, and amusia . Other than these Aphantasie has not previously been with suffering brought or functional deficits associated. It is therefore unclear whether the phenomenon should be classified as a disease or a normal variant .

history

The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 in a survey on visual imagination . Galton intended to "define the various degrees of vibrancy with which different persons have the ability to recall familiar scenes in the form of mental images". To this end, he asked his colleagues to think of their breakfast table and describe the vividness of their impressions. He found that the abilities to do this were very different; some individuals were able to imagine a mental image with absolute realism and detail, while others saw only a very faint image or no image at all. Galton described aphantasia as a common phenomenon among his colleagues.

However, no further research was done on it until 2005. That year Adam Zeman of Exeter University was approached by a man who appeared to have lost his ability to visualize after having had minor surgery. Following his publications on the case in 2010, Zeman was approached by a number of people who claimed they had never had this ability in their entire lives.

In 2015, Zeman's team published a paper on so-called congenital aphantasia, which aroused renewed interest in the phenomenon known today only as aphantasia . Among other things, they found that people with aphantasia, although they have no visual imagination, can still visualize images in dreams. This suggests that aphantasia only affects conscious, voluntary visualizations.

There is currently little research on this topic, but further studies are being planned.

In pop culture

In April 2016 Blake Ross published an essay on Facebook in which he describes his own experiences with aphantasia and his realization that not everyone shares these experiences. His portrayal was widely used on social media.

The protagonist in Lauren Miller's novel All Things New , published in 2017, is a young woman who developed aphantasia after a traumatic brain injury after a car accident.

The online community of people with aphantasia declared August 18 to be Aphantasia Awareness Day , in memory of Galton, who first described aphantasia in 1880.

In 2020, Bonnie Strange also announced that she had aphantasia.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Andrew J. Larner: A Dictionary of Neurological Signs . Fourth ed.Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-3-319-29821-4 (English).
  2. ^ A b c Francis Galton: Statistics of Mental Imagery . In: Oxford Journals . os-V, no. 19 , July 19, 1880, p. 301–318 , doi : 10.1093 / mind / os-V.19.301 ( online [accessed April 28, 2017]).
  3. a b James Gallagher: Aphantasia: A life without mental images. In: BBC News Online . August 26, 2015. Retrieved April 28, 2017 .
  4. a b Adam Zeman, Michaela Dewar, Sertio Della Sala: Lives without imagery - Congenital aphantasia . In: Cortex . No. 73 , June 3, 2015, ISSN  0010-9452 , p. 378-380 , doi : 10.1016 / j.cortex.2015.05.019 , PMID 26115582 ( online [accessed April 28, 2017]).
  5. a b Carl Zimmer: Picture This? Some just can't. In: The New York Times . Retrieved April 28, 2017 .
  6. a b Dustin Grinnell: My mind's eye is blind - so what's going on in my brain? In: New Scientist . No. 2070 , April 20, 2016 ( online [accessed April 28, 2017]).
  7. a b Mo Costandi: If you can't imagine things, how can you learn? In: The Guardian . June 4, 2016 ( online [accessed April 28, 2017]).
  8. Louis Wolcher: The Ethics of Justice Without Illusions . 2016, ISBN 978-1-317-51834-1 (English).
  9. "To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science to whom I first applied, protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words 'mental imagery' really expressed what I believed everybody supposed to mean. They had no more notion of its true nature than a color-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of color. "(Galton, 1880)
  10. ^ Andrew Griffin: You might not be able to imagine things, and not know it. In: The Independent . April 25, 2016. Retrieved April 28, 2017 .
  11. ^ Adam Zeman, Sergio Della Sala, Lorna A. Torrens, Viktoria-Eleni Gountouna, David McGonigle, Robert H. Logie: Loss of imagery phenomenology with intact visuo-spatial task performance: A case of 'blind imagination' . In: Neuropsychologia . tape 48 , no. 1 , January 1, 2010, p. 145–155 , doi : 10.1016 / j.neuropsychologia.2009.08.024 ( online [accessed April 28, 2017]).
  12. Lara Faith Cronin: Aphantasia: Losing the mind's eye. In: The Exeter Blog. August 26, 2015. Retrieved April 28, 2017 .
  13. Blake Ross: Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind. In: Facebook Essay. April 22, 2016. Retrieved April 28, 2017 .
  14. Eliz Aquino: Review: All Things New, Lauren Miller. March 19, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2017 .