A life without mental images
Aphantasia: A life without mental images
Close your eyes and imagine walking along a
sandy beach and then gazing over the horizon as the Sun rises. How clear is the
image that springs to mind?
Most people can readily conjure images
inside their head - known as their mind's eye. But this year scientists have
described a condition, aphantasia, in which some people are unable to visualize
mental images.
Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has
always had a blind mind's eye. He knew he was different even in childhood.
"My stepfather, when I couldn't sleep, told me to count sheep, and he
explained what he meant, I tried to do it and I couldn't," he says.
"I couldn't see any sheep jumping over fences, there was nothing to
count."
Our memories are often tied up in
images, think back to a wedding or first day at school. As a result, Niel
admits, some aspects of his memory are "terrible", but he is very
good at remembering facts. And, like others with aphantasia, he struggles to recognize
faces. Yet he does not see aphantasia as a disability, but simply a different
way of experiencing life.
Mind's eye blind
Ironically, Neil now works in a
bookshop, although he largely sticks to the non-fiction aisles. His condition
begs the question what is going on inside his picture-less mind. I asked him
what happens when he tries to picture his fiancee. "This is the hardest
thing to describe, what happens in my head when I think about things," he
says. "When I think about my fiancee there is no image, but I am
definitely thinking about her, I know today she has her hair up at the back,
she's brunette. But I'm not describing an image I am looking at, I'm
remembering features about her, that's the strangest thing and maybe that is a
source of some regret."
The response from his mates is a very
sympathetic: "You're weird." But while Niel is very relaxed about his
inability to picture things, it is often a cause of distress for others. One
person who took part in a study into aphantasia said he had started to feel
"isolated" and "alone" after discovering that other people
could see images in their heads. Being unable to reminisce about his mother
years after her death led to him being "extremely distraught".
The super-visualize
At the other end of the spectrum is
children's book illustrator, Lauren Beard, whose work on the Fairytale
Hairdresser series will be familiar to many six-year-olds. Her career relies on
the vivid images that leap into her mind's eye when she reads text from her
author. When I met her in her box-room studio in Manchester, she was working on
a dramatic scene in the next book. The text describes a baby perilously
climbing onto a chandelier.
"Straightaway I can visualize this grand
glass chandelier in some sort of French kind of ballroom, and the little baby
just swinging off it and really heavy thick curtains," she says. "I
think I have a strong imagination, so I can create the world and then keep
adding to it so it gets sort of bigger and bigger in my mind and the characters
too they sort of evolve. I couldn't really imagine what it's like to not
imagine, I think it must be a bit of a shame really."
Not many people have mental imagery as
vibrant as Lauren or as blank as Niel. They are the two extremes of visualization.
Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioral neurology, wants to compare
the lives and experiences of people with aphantasia and its polar-opposite
hyperphantasia. His team, based at the University of Exeter, coined the term
aphantasia this year in a study in the journal Cortex.
Prof Zeman tells the BBC: "People
who have contacted us say they are really delighted that this has been recognized
and has been given a name, because they have been trying to explain to people
for years that there is this oddity that they find hard to convey to
others." How we imagine is clearly very subjective - one person's vivid
scene could be another's grainy picture. But Prof Zeman is certain that
aphantasia is real. People often report being able to dream in pictures, and
there have been reported cases of people losing the ability to think in images
after a brain injury.
He is adamant that aphantasia is
"not a disorder" and says it may affect up to one in 50 people. But
he adds: "I think it makes quite an important difference to their
experience of life because many of us spend our lives with imagery hovering
somewhere in the mind's eye which we inspect from time to time, it's a
variability of human experience."
QUESTIONS
1–8
Do
the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text?
In
boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN
if there is no information on this
1. Aphantasia is a condition,
which describes people, for whom it is hard to visualize mental images.
2. Niel Kenmuir was unable to count sheep
in his head.
3. People with aphantasia
struggle to remember personal traits and clothes of different people.
4. Niel regrets that he cannot portray an image
of his fiancee in his mind
5. Inability to picture things
in someone's head is often a cause of distress for a person.
6. All people with aphantasia
start to feel 'isolated' or 'alone' at some point of their lives
7. Lauren Beard's career
depends on her imagination
8. The author met Lauren Beard
when she was working on a comedy scene in her next book
Questions
9–13
Complete
the sentences below.
Write NO
MORE THAN TWO WORDS from
the passage for each answer.
Write
your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
9. Only a small fraction of people have
imagination as …………….as Lauren does.
10. Hyperphantasia is ………..to aphantasia.
11. There is a lot of subjectivity in comparing
people's imagination - somebody's vivid scene could be another person's …………..
12. Prof Zeman is ……….that aphantasia is not an illness.
13. Many people spend their lives with ………..somewhere in the mind's eye.
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