Aphantasia explained: When your mind works differently

Toronto resident John Chew, who lives with aphantasia, speaks about the experience of not being able to form images in his mind.

A new scientific paper is adding further nuance to how aphantasia, the inability to form mental images, is understood.

Titled “Varieties of Aphantasia,” it argues that the phenomenon may actually encompass several distinct variations, depending on which parts of the brain are involved and which senses are affected.

Some people, for instance, can experience vivid dreams or involuntary mental images, while others lack all forms of imagery altogether.

The paper’s author, Bence Nanay, says taking these differences could seriously reshape how scientists study the mind’s eye, or its absence.

The science may still be catching up, but for people living with aphantasia, the absence of mental imagery shapes not just how they remember the past, but how they interact with the present.

Toronto resident John Chew has lived with aphantasia for as long as he can remember, but didn’t know there was a name for it until a few years ago.

“It took me about a year to get over the shock, not that I had aphantasia, but that 98 per cent of the people I knew didn’t,” he said in an interview with CTVNews.ca. “I felt as though I were living among extraterrestrial aliens.”

This unique inner world has shaped how John navigates life.

“I’ve taken a sort of hyper rational, data-driven approach to things,” he said. “If I need to remember something about someone, I’ll remember numeric quantitative attributes of them.”

Aphantasia has even affected John’s studies and career choices. The way he thinks and processes information has shaped his interests, guiding him towards areas that suit his strengths.

“It steered me into a type of mental and career development that was more rational or logical, and my adaptation or my coping mechanisms for it meant that I’d studied mathematics and computer science in college rather than the arts,” he said.

For John, photography and meticulous documentation have been powerful coping mechanisms.

“It saves me (from) having to remember things and it helps me recall things that I don’t have any way of processing directly or recalling directly,” he said. “So I am one of those people that obsessively takes pictures of everything that they eat at the restaurant.”

The science of seeing without pictures

Aphantasia sits at the crossroads of research on memory, imagery and emotion.

Dr. Brian Levine, a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, has spent years studying autobiographical memory — how people recall personal experiences.

In one study, Levine and his colleagues found that people with vivid visual imagery may be more vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after trauma.

“Good imagery has many advantages … You could use that to just remember where things are or where to do things, so it’s generally a strength,” he said in an interview with CTVNews.ca.

“But if you’re exposed to something that is traumatic or that you don’t want to retain, then that ability could have a dark side in the sense of making it harder to move on or get stuck in those memories.”

Aphantasia has been helpful to John in that sense. His memories don’t play back like a movie reel, so moments that might haunt others fade more gently for him.

“I was happy to be the one to identify my stepfather-in-law’s body before it was cremated, because my mother-in-law would have carried that memory with her a long time, and for me, even though I was very fond of my stepfather-in-law, imagery wouldn’t stick with me,” he said.

Levine’s research also looks at a related condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). People with SDAM can’t vividly re-experience personal memories from a first-person perspective.

Some describe their life stories as detached — a collection of facts rather than moments.

“If you think of a person’s autobiography, that’s basically it,” Levine explained. “It means the story of your life, which could include specific episodes, events that happened at a specific time and place. That’s episodic autobiographical memory … Event memory is so visual for most of us; that’s the part that’s missing in aphantasia.”

Levine emphasizes that memory is more than just imagery — it’s also facts, context and meaning, all of which shape who we are.

Finding peace in a different kind of mind

Levine says it’s important to understand that aphantasia is not a deficiency, but a different way of thinking.

“These are healthy, normal people who have a particular difference that affects their inner life,” he said. “I think it’s important, if somebody finds themselves matching one of these symptoms, to be kind to yourself and not view it as necessarily an impairment, but more as just a difference in the way our minds work.”

For John, life without pictures isn’t empty. It’s simply experienced differently. His world may not unfold in images, but it’s rich in thought, feeling, and understanding.

“It sounds really disturbing to me to see things that aren’t there, and I like having control over what I can see,” he said. “If I don’t want to see something, I can close my eyes. I mean, if I could imagine it, what point would there be to closing my eyes? I’m happy with who I am.”

John Chew has been a consultant with CTV News, developing online election map software. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Canadian English Dictionary and the chief executive officer of the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA).