Finding out more about neurodiveristy will keep demystifying the vast universe of the mind. “Phantasia” literally translates from the Greek to “fantasy,” a word often used for mental images - not just fantasizing - in that language. The trauma may not register in visual memory, but it can still register in emotions, so there is also a chance that aphantasics experience flashes of intense emotion without an accompanying mental image. It is possible that the inability to reimagine past trauma may make it easier to cope with PTSD flashbacks. It may even help psychologists and neuroscientists better understand how conditions like anxiety disorders and PTSD are experienced by aphantasics. What is especially fascinating about the potential of this study is that this rare, neurodiverse condition can tell us more about how mental imagery can link thoughts and emotions. Aphantasic people may not be able to to draw that well from memory, but they can use visuals and other alternative ways to get inspired. That still doesn't mean aphantasia is the death of creativity. They just aren’t able to create vivid images in their heads, as opposed to the average person, and are the complete opposite of people with hyperphantasia, who can imagine things so vividly that the mental images can have a profound effect on them.
Aphantasia also still allows someone to feel emotion. Aphantasics can still remember who and what they have already seen they just cannot mentally see the person or place. They also have the same recognition capacity as as people without aphantasia. However, aphantasics have been found to be capable of spatial memory, which lets you remember where you are in time and space along with your surroundings. This is consistent with existing evidence for imagery's theorized role as an emotional amplifier,” Pearson said. “The arousal response to reading the fictitious scenarios may be largely contingent on having intact imagery to simulate the scenario content. If you had aphantasia, you probably wouldn't be able to imagine a ghost in a spooky novel-or the one creeping up behind you. Some people with aphantasia don’t even understand the concept of counting sheep when they are trying to go to sleep at night, because visualization is something they cannot experience.
When those same subjects were shown these stories with images such as catastrophe or cadavers, they reacted like anyone would.įorget scary stories.
Nothing happened in people with aphantasia - but this shouldn't be mistaken for a general lack of emotion.
INABILITY TO VISUALIZE SKIN
It was when unsettling things started to happen that the differences between those with and without aphantasia became obvious, because skin conductivity levels skyrocketed in whoever was able to visualize turbulence and lightning 40,000 feet in the air. They started off by putting readers on the scene, such as the window seat of a plane. The stories weren’t meant to jumpscare subjects right away.
No matter how ghastly or gruesome, those with aphantasia did not react the same way as their peers who can imagine horrible things in their mind’s eye. Skin becomes better at conducting electricity when strong emotions surge through us. The subjects sat in a dark room, where they read disturbing stories on a screen while electrodes attached to their fingertips measured fear response. When Pearson and his team tested aphantasic individuals next to a control group (who probably ended up sleeping with the lights on), the stories they gave them to read involved everything from hauntings to shark attacks. “Aphantasic individuals show significantly less of a physiological fear reaction (SCL) when reading scary stories, as compared to control participants with the ability to visualize,” said Joel Pearson, who led a study recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. When aphantasic people were tested for the reactions to reading scary stories, it proved that you can’t be afraid of what you can’t visualize. This is because they are unable to conjure up the mental images that are nightmare fuel for most of us. For the first time, a new study has found evidence that people with aphantasia, which is the inability to visualize mental images, have much less of a psychological response to reading something frightening. Ghosts are not the only things that some people cannot fear if they are unable to visualize them. Just about everyone has freaked themselves out by reading spooky stories, but what about those who ain’t afraid of no ghost?
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