A previous post asserted the need for caution in drawing inferences about individuals with low VVIQ scores. To prevent continuing problems of the kind to be discussed, this author post advocates that investigators desist from using the VVIQ and VVIQ-2 to ‘diagnose’ aphantasia and the term “aphantasia” should be retired.
Individual differences in visual mental imagery (VMI) vividness indicate a perfectly normal trait that varies along a distribution. Nothing more and nothing less. This view is strongly rooted in a research tradition that commenced in 1860 with the pioneering research of Fechner, then Taine (1870) and Galton (1880) culminating in the 1970s with the publication of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ).
1. The VVIQ was Designed to Measure Individual Differences in VMI Vividness as a Trait
Early findings published by the author in 1972, 1973 and in 1994 with Anne R Isaac (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1994.tb02536.x) began to quantify the large, naturally occurring individual differences in subjective vividness of visual imagery at different ages across the population. In one of the studies, Isaac and Marks (1994) reported that: “children aged 7-15 years with poor movement control were found to be extremely poor imagers with 42 per cent reporting no imagery at all.”
They were “aphantasics” twenty-one years before the term was coined.
- The VVIQ was a necessary step in demonstrating that individual differences in reported mental imagery vividness functioned to moderate recall and other cognitive tasks that are hypothesised to include VMI for their optimal performance.
- Comparison of selected groups of high and low vividness groups demonstrated that vividness group differences are associated with objectively measured differences in picture recall (Marks, 1972, 1973).
- Vividness is a combination of clarity, liveliness and colouration which in varying degrees resembles normal perceptual experience. The purpose of the VVIQ is to capture the entire distribution of VMI ability. It was never intended to be used to ‘diagnose’ a single group of people for special attention at one end of the normal distribution, which has been detrimental.
2. People with low subjective VMI vividness have been reported since Fechner first noted this 165 years ago
The VVIQ requires participants to rate their visual mental images on a 5-point scale. The scale is designed to include the possibility of zero vividness with the lowest rating point on this 5-point scale explicitly incorporating the experience of imagery absence:
- The lowest rating (1) corresponds to: “No image at all, you only ‘know’ that you are thinking of the object.”
- Since the author developed the VVIQ in the late 1960s people giving all 16 VVIQ items the minimum rating of “1” have been regularly encountered.
- Non-imaging subjects tend to be curious about the VVIQ, what purpose it serves, and its implications.
- The majority of ‘non-imagers’ is generally familiar with mental imagery, which they encounter in dreams during sleep.
- By including this “No image at all” anchor point, research with has confirmed that the complete absence of voluntary visual mental imagery is one available data point on a normal distribution that extends from “zero” to “Perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision”.
3. Scores Correlated with Objective Cognitive Functions Across the Whole Distribution
In thousands of studies researchers have used objective performance measures such as memory scores, fMRI, MRI, MEG, EEG, and other indicators to validate self-reported vividness differences indexed by the VVIQ or VVIQ-2.
- Memory: High vividness visualizers are found to have stronger visual memory than low vividness visualizers, é.g., in tests of picture recall, concrete word recall and short-term memory.
- Brain Activity: individual differences in VVIQ scores are correlated with objective measures such as EEG alpha power attenuation in the visual cortex, supporting the idea that the entire spectrum of vividness has a neurological foundation. See:
Topographical distribution of EEG activity accompanying visual and motor imagery in vivid and non-vivid imagers
David F. Marks, Anne R. Isaac, May 1995:
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1995.tb02561.x
From the perspective of the foundational work on individual differences in VMI vividness , “aphantasia” is not a separate “condition” but the statistical end-point of a continuously varying trait.
Adam Zeman and colleagues have used the VVIQ psychometric instrument to diagnose and label people at the ends of this pre-existing, normal distribution, which has had several unfortunate connotations. Zeman and colleagues have brought a well-established, normal statistical variation into wider clinical and academic sphere with an explicit or implicit definition of a newly labelled ‘disorder’ or ‘condition’ that can have consequences for millions of people leading a perfectly normal lives.
As a consequence of an unnecessary medicalisation of a psychological trait measure of subjective experience, millions of people (approximately 1% of the human population) are currently being led to believe that they may have “something wrong”.. A newly created category of ‘illness’ – albeit a faux illness – has been defined. The labelling-effect itself may be a significant trigger for reduced well-being. It has been discovered by Monzel et al. (2023) that 34.7% of a sample of 156 AP individuals reported distress associated with lower well-being and high levels of anxiety and depression, significantly more so than a control group. Feelings of inferiority, social obstacles and detachment were commonly reported by this AP group. On the scale of the global population, 34.7% of potentially 90M ‘diagnosed’ with AP creates a wave of preventable stress.
Aphantasia Researchers Sorted by Point of View: ‘Condition’ vs Mixed Focus vs Individual Difference
The labelling of low-VVIQ-scoring people as ‘aphantasic’ has been interpreted in two different ways: (1) AP consists of one or more special neurological conditions, (2) AP is an individual difference in a normal distribution.
Here, I indicate the positions adopted by several leading investigators.
1. AP AS A CONDITION or CONDITIONS
Adam Zeman et al. (2015): named ‘Aphantasia’ which they described as a condition that is either congenital or acquired. His research has focused on clinical and neurological aspects, especially acquired cases. AP individuals have a “reduced or absent construction of voluntary visual imagery,” and they established the phenomenon by studying cases of acquired AP, with loss of function. Zeman et al. (2015) stated: “In 2010 we reported a particularly ‘pure’ case of imagery generation disorder, in a 65 year old man who became unable to summon images to the mind’s eye after coronary angioplasty (Zeman et al., 2010). Following a popular description of our paper (Zimmer, 2010), we were contacted by over twenty individuals who recognised themselves in the article’s account of ‘blind imagination’, with the important difference that their imagery impairment had been lifelong. Here we describe the features of their condition, elicited by a questionnaire, and suggest a name – aphantasia – for this poorly recognised phenomenon.”
Adam Zeman (2025) proposed 3 ‘subtypes’ of aphantasia: 1) a ‘global aphantasia’ subtype with extreme sensory features in most to all sensory modalities; 2) an ‘Aphantasia +’ subtype with both sensory and cognitive features; and 3) a ‘non global aphantasia’ subtype with milder uni – or multisensory features. “Our findings confirm the heterogeneous nature of aphantasia, …Together, these findings call for a shift in the theoretical and methodological approaches to aphantasia and imagery research.”
Joel Pearson: A cognitive neuroscientist specialising in objective measures (e.g., binocular rivalry) to validate VVIQ scores in AP. The association between the binocular rivalry score and self-reported mental imagery is modest but significant, r= 0.29, p< 0.001. Pearson describes AP as a “condition involving a lack of sensory and phenomenal imagery” and investigates associated deficits like reduced episodic memory . He has suggested that lifelong aphantasia is associated with prosopagnosia and reduction in autobiographical memory, as deficits in normal functional ability. He has a video discussing a ‘cure’ for AP (https://youtu.be/4UKL0mWOu_w?si=MW4Ow5n72Yon1akO).
Paolo Bartolomeo: a neurologist, focuses on the relationship between visual mental imagery, perception, and neural damage (e.g., clinical cases of imagery loss). Bartolomeo frequently examines clinical cases (e.g., neglect, brain damage) that have mental imagery absence so supporting the view that mental imagery can be lost or impaired but he acknowledges multiple kinds of AP: “ aphantasia is a heterogeneous phenomenon, and suggest the existence of at least three distinct forms: neurological, psychogenic, and congenital aphantasia” (2025).
2. AP AS AN INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE
Bence Nanay: Philosophical psychologist focusing on the heterogeneity and varieties of aphantasia. Argues that AP is not a single phenomenon but a group of different underlying mental phenomena, emphasizing a broad spectrum of abilities. In 2025, Nanay stated: “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.” He continues:” It is mistaken to think of aphantasics and hyperphantasics as radically different from ‘normal’ people.”
Merlin Monzel: Focuses on the relationship between AP, personality, and brain function, using methods like EEG and fMRI. Views AP as an “individual difference in imagery capacity” while investigating measurable deficits in function. Carla Dance, Elena Azañón and Julia Simner together with Merlin Monzel have stated that “aphantasia should be understood as neutral neurodivergence and that labelling it a disorder is not only wrong, but potentially harmful.”
Wilma A. Bainbridge: Focuses on objective measures of AP, particularly visual memory and drawing abilities. Investigates objective deficits (e.g., object memory), but characterizes the phenomenon as a cognitive difference rather than a pathology. A 2025 twin study suggested that aphantasia “might be a spectrum rather than a discrete condition, as some visual information was still retrieved by the aphantasic twin.”
CONCLUSION
Aphantasia is neither a condition, nor a disorder, nor a pathology. It stands for nothing other than an individual difference, a VVIQ score on a near-normal distribution. The term “aphantasia“ is a neurologising neologism, stigmatising, distressing and victimising, offering nothing of value to science. There could be no better time to scrap it than the present (a few days from its tenth birthday).