The term is a combination of the word “phantasia” with the prefix “a-.” “Phantasia” means “imagination,” and an “a-” means “without.” So, the definition of “aphantasia” is “without an imagination.” Additional Testing by Other Researchers Published Research and Naming the ConditionĪfter completing their research, Adam Zeman and the other researchers published their findings in a 2015 research paper titled, “Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia.” Zeman coined the term “aphantasia” for this study. He was unable to see the differences in his mind. MX was able to confirm that the grass was the lighter green, but he could only do so from memory. They were asked to visualize the objects and give their answers. This way, they could see how MX’s abilities compared to someone with a more typical “mind’s eye.”įor example, one test asked participants to explain whether a blade of grass or a pine tree had a lighter shade of green. Zenam and his team created various aphantasia tests that measured MX’s mental visual abilities against a control group. For the study, the patient was dubbed MX for anonymity. Zeman had never seen the phenomenon before, so he and two colleagues began to research the condition. The aforementioned man who developed aphantasia went to neuroscientist Adam Zeman for a diagnosis. Substantial studies into the condition did not happen until the 21st century. As Galton stated, “They had no more notion of its true nature than a colour-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of colour.” Zenam’s Study of Patient MX Galton’s research showed that most of his peers, scientists like him, did not have the ability to see mental images and could not truly comprehend the concept. The symptoms of aphantasia were first observed and studied in 1880 by English polymath Francis Galton. One such example happened in 2003 when a man lost his ability to create mental images after undergoing a procedure on his heart. But, someone can also develop aphantasia later in life. Most people with this condition are born with it. This means that they lack the “mind’s eye” that most people use on a daily basis.Īphantasia affects approximately two to five percent of the population. When asked to close their eyes and picture a room, person or object, someone with aphantasia will either only see vague images with no defining details or not be able to form mental images at all. Zeman and a classicist friend came up with 'aphantasia', based on Aristotle's term for the 'mind's eye'.We define aphantasia as the inability to properly visualize images. Before Zeman started studying it, there wasn't even a name for the experience. Since then, researchers have continued to study visual imagery but haven't paid attention to the extreme ends of the visualisation spectrum. In the 1880s, Victorian polymath Francis Galton had published a paper on mental imagery, where he reported that a small number of people couldn't visualise. Zeman searched the literature on visual imagery loss and found there was little out there. Zeman first became aware of the phenomenon when he was referred a patient who had 'lost' his visual imagery after a heart operation. The name was coined in 2015 by Prof Adam Zeman, a cognitive and behavioural neurologist at the University of Exeter. Aphantasia is the name given to the inability to call an image to mind.
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