The aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum

Abstract

Research into imagery vividness in recent year has been predominantly about the difference between aphantasics and the rest of us (or, more rarely, between hyperphantasics and the rest of us). But differences in imagery vividness have great impact on a number of important psychological phenomena in non-aphantasics as well. Hence, instead of the binary focus on aphantasics vs. the rest of us, more attention should be devoted to how differences along the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum correspond to other gradual differences, in decision-making, emotion-regulation, cravings, mental health issues and so on.

Introduction

Variations in the vividness of mental imagery have been known for more than a century (Galton, 1880, see also Marks, 2023). But systematic research into this variation received a significant boost with the coining of the term ‘aphantasia’, the condition of not having (or at least not reporting) any conscious mental imagery (Zeman et al., 2015; see also Zeman, 2024). Given the unprecedented media attention to the subject and the surge in interest from the public, the concept of aphantasia has made it from the scientific literature to popular science and from there to everyday parlance.

This has been a great development in many ways – multitudes of people have discovered and came to terms with their atypical mental imagery as a result of the media attention to aphantasia. And incomparably more research has been conducted on the vividness of mental imagery in the last decade than ever before. But focusing on aphantasia is not without its dangers.

It is tempting to think of aphantasia as a freak disorder in need of explanation. There are the normal people and then there are the aphantasics. So explaining aphantasia would amount to explaining a deficiency. This stance is only slightly altered by the more recent focus on and attention to hyperphantasia – the condition where one's mental imagery is so vivid that one often finds it difficult to keep perceiving and imagining apart. Again, it is tempting to think of three cases here, the vast majority of us are ‘normal’, and some tiny minority of people are hyperphantasics and aphantasics, respectively.

My point is that it matters and awful lot where we all are on the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum. Most of us are somewhere in between aphantasia end of the spectrum and the hyperphantasia end of the spectrum, but there are much more significant variations within the category of allegedly ‘normal’ people in terms of imagery vividness than between aphantasics and some allegedly ‘normal’ people. It is mistaken to think of aphantasics and hyperphantasics as radically different from ‘normal’ people.

In any given marriage or family or friendship, there will be big differences in terms of how much people rely on imagery and while this is something the new spotlight on aphantasia has made more salient, it is easy to forget that it applies to all of us, not just to those at the two ends of the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum. Some people always think in images, others find it difficult to even understand what this means. They solve problems differently, they process trauma differently, and they remember the same event differently. Not just aphantasics and hyperphantasics – we all do, depending on where we are on the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum.

We have a deluge of results showing the importance of the vividness of mental imagery in various aspect of our life (see Nanay, 2023 for a summary). Given that much of our mental life depends on how vivid our imagery is, it is absolutely crucial to know where we are on the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum, so that we can make use of mental strategies (for learning, for decision-making, for emotion regulation, and so on) that fit our particular way of using mental imagery.

Here is one example. When reading a paragraph from a novel describing a pine forest, some people have vivid mental imagery of forests popping up (without deliberately conjuring any image up), but also of the pine smell and maybe the sound of the wind. Some others have absolutely no such imagery. And most of us are somewhere in between. So our experience of reading the very same passage will be wildly different, depending on the vividness of our mental imagery. And very different books will appeal to different people depending on the way they use mental imagery.

And what is true of reading is true of most things we do and care about, for example about deciding between two apartments or two job offers (as we may use very different decision-making mechanisms depending on how much they rely on imagery), the strength of desires (where imagery vividness strongly correlates with the strength of desires and cravings), various mental health issues (vivid mental imagery is indicative of increased vulnerability to a variety of mental health problems – but see also some very promising results on the causal link that goes the other direction (Goo et al. 2025)), maybe even interoception (Silvanto and Nagai, 2025) and so on. Further, part of the reason why imagery vividness is such a central concept in understanding the human mind is its connection with other aspects of neurodiversity (for example, the connection with autism spectrum disorder is well documented as is the link to anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, emotion regulation, and so on, see, e.g., Dance et al., 2021).

But if this is so, then research into imagery vividness should not be about the difference between aphantasics and the rest of us (or, more rarely, between hyperphantasics and the rest of us), but about how differences along the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum correspond to other gradual differences, in decision-making, emotion-regulation, cravings, mental health issues and so on.

This piece was supposed to make a very simple point: let's take the entirety of the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum seriously, not just its two endpoints. In order to keep things simple, I have been talking about the aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum. However, we have good reasons to think that need to talk about not one, but many such aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrums. Some aphantasics only have problems with voluntary mental imagery, whereas others struggle with both voluntary and involuntary imagery (Nanay, 2021; Cabbai et al., 2024; Chang et al., 2025, see also Liu et al., 2025; Scholz et al., 2025). Further, some aphantasics only have problems with visual imagery, whereas others have problems with imagery in all sense modalities (Dawes et al., 2024). Some aphantasics have vivid dream imagery. Others don't (Dawes et al., 2020). Some aphantasics have no problem with modal and amodal completion. Others do (Bouyer and Arnold, 2024).

Aphantasia is not a monolithic phenomenon (see Nanay, 2025). Very different underlying conditions can be responsible for different ways in which a subject has difficulties with conscious mental imagery. And if this is true of the complete lack of conscious imagery (which is supposed to characterize aphantasia), it is also true of the entire spectrum. And finding out more about the heterogeneity of aphantasia can also help us understand the underlying causes of the interpersonal differences in imagery vividness in the rest of us.