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visual imagination

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·December 15, 2024·6 min read

Visual Silence: Exploring Aphantasia

A new study reveals that aphantasics, people unable to visualize, are more resistant to involuntary visual thoughts, such as imagining a pink elephant. While vivid visual imaginations often lead to intrusive imagery, aphantasics seem to redirect their thoughts to other mental processes, like abstract ideas or auditory daydreaming.

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·March 27, 2024·6 min read

Exploring Aphantasia: The Mind Without a Mental Picture

Researchers reviewed 50 studies to deepen our understanding aphantasia, a phenomenon where individuals can't visualize mentally. The research reveals aphantasia's diverse impact, from reduced autobiographical memory and face recognition to broader implications in music imagination and occupation choices, suggesting a spectrum rather than a binary condition.

Featured Neuroscience

·March 3, 2023·5 min read

Imagination Is a Spectrum, and 1% Of People Can’t Mentally Visualize Things at All

1% of the population experience aphantasia, or mind-blindness, which is an inability to visualize concepts or thoughts in their imagination. Researchers investigate this phenomenon and offer explanations as to how this may occur.

This shows a brain made up of cog wheels and a lightbulb

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·June 29, 2022·5 min read

Visual Mental Imagery: A Patient Case Suggests a New Key Brain Network

Researchers identified a novel brain network that includes the fronto-parietal networks and fusiform gyrus which helps with the encoding of visual mental imagery.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·April 20, 2022·6 min read

Windows to the Soul: Pupils Reveal ‘Aphantasia’ – The Absence of Visual Imagination

People who experience visual imagination have pupillary responses that optimize the amount of light hitting the retina and change in response to imagined items. This pupillary response does not occur in those with aphantasia.

This shows a girl standing on a dock at night looking at an oversized moon

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·June 26, 2021·4 min read

Pseudo-Hallucinations: Why Some People See More Vivid Mental Images Than Others – Test Yourself Here

Study reveals people who experience intense visual imagery during a Ganzflicker test have naturally lower frequency rhythms in the visual cortex, making them more susceptible to pseudo-hallucinations.

This shows a woman with swirling colors on her head

Featured Neuroscience Visual Neuroscience

·June 13, 2021·4 min read

Aphantasia Explained: Some People Can’t Form Mental Pictures

Aphantasia is marked by the inability to generate visual images in the mind's eye. Researchers explore the neurobiological basis for the disorder.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Visual Neuroscience

·June 9, 2021·3 min read

Brain Connections Mean Some People Lack Visual Imagery

People with hyperphantasia, the ability to visualize vividly, have stronger connections between their visual brain network and decision-making networks. By contrast, those with aphantasia, an inability to visualize, have weaker connections between the brain regions.