That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Aphantasia

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

In today's Neuroscience bite, we discuss Aphantasia - the inability to visually imagine things. 

My name is Olof Kergolsen and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Bite. So this one's kind of interesting. I had heard of it, but I didn't really know that much about it. And this might come as a shock, but I don't know everything there is to know about neuroscience. I don't even know close to probably 10% of what there is to know about neuroscience, even given my day job. But I was chatting with a friend of mine who was visiting last week, and he told me that he had aphantasia. And I'd heard of aphantasia,

and I think I sort of vaguely knew, but I clearly didn't know as much as I thought I did. I had to do some reading, and it's pretty interesting. Aphantasia is basically an inability to form mental visual images of things. For instance, imagining what your mom's house looks like, or a car looks like or a friend's face. And people with aphantasia are unable to do this to certain levels. And what's interesting about aphantasia is it's quite common. It's estimated that between two to 4% of the population has aphantasia. Now, first of all, all of these kind of deficits are on a scoring scale like it's a continuum so for if you have very very bad aphantasia you can't see anything like when you

try to imagine something you you can't see anything at all so you know what the concept is so you know what your mom's house is and you could could probably describe it, but you can't see it. And then that goes all the way up to people on the opposite end of the spectrum, that when they close their eyes and imagine things, it's very lifelike. It's almost like their eyes are open and looking at things. Now, if you do have some level of aphantasia, it's actually not diagnosed as a medical condition. It's just a thing. It's a characteristic that some people have. I'm sure you could ask your doctor about it if you were concerned. But the reality is, it's actually relatively common as these things go.

So aphantasia, an inability to imagine or visualize things. What causes it? Well, there's still a little bit of debate. We know that it can be something that's genetic that you're born with. So you've had it basically from the time you were born and you've inherited it and it's probably tied, like I said, to genetics, but it may not be. Or it can be acquired. Some people get aphantasia by bumping their head, a concussion,

or possibly through some form of illness. So you can get aphantasia a couple of different ways. And what it actually is, is there's basically just some disruption of processing in your visual cortex. So the parts of the visual cortex that allow you to visualize things and do mental imagery or imagine what things look like. They're just not functioning the same way as they do for other people. Anyway, that's a little bit on aphantasia. I would strongly encourage you to read some more because I found it really fascinating. And that's another neuroscience bite.

Don't forget to check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. Of course, email us some ideas, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. Or of course, you can always follow me on threads or Twitter at thatneuroscienceGuy.com. Of course, email us some ideas, at NeuroscienceGuy at gmail.com. Or of course, you can always follow me on threads or Twitter, at That Neuroscience Guy. That's all I've got. So I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast. My name is Olof Kregolsen,

and I'm that Neuroscience Guy.