Aphantasia: the condition that prevents you from imagining and dreaming
The scent of a freshly baked cake. The vision of the old piece of furniture in the grandmother's house. The feeling of the spring breeze of a morning by the sea. Our mind is capable of taking us far even when we remain stationary in the same place. How many times do we get lost in our thoughts and memories of the past? When it happens we cut ourselves off from the reality that surrounds us, we forget everything that is in front of our eyes and we are catapulted into moments already lived or into an ideal future that we like to dream of.
However, not everyone has this capacity for imagination and it is not about simple pragmatism or lack of creativity. It is a real psychic condition, called "aphantasia".
What do you mean by "aphantasia"
In the fourth century BC, Aristotle defined "fantasy" as the power of the "imagination. Being imaginative means being able to imagine before your eyes situations, people and things that, in reality, are based only in our mind. At the same time, thank you. not only visual images can be recalled to the imagination, but also smells, tastes, sounds and the different perceptions relating to touch.
The opposite of this mental capacity, however, takes a very specific name, that of aphantasia. With this term s "indicates that neurological condition for which an individual is unable to visualize any mental image, as if the mind's eye were blind. Scientists have noted that this disorder affects 3% of the population, manifesting itself mainly as an inability to retain visual images in the memory and for this reason it is also referred to as "psychic blindness".
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Discovering this condition
Although the cases of aphantasia are not very rare, for many years this brain disorder remained in oblivion. In fact, the first who tried to bring it to everyone's attention was Francis Galton with a study in which empiricism and serendipity merged. The Victorian-era intellectual opened a poll in which he asked several English noblemen to imagine their own breakfast and describe to the best of their abilities the scene in their minds. Among numerous refractory and several acquiescent, Galton noted that some of his acquaintances had provided a "faded and poorly detailed picture, despite the effort to recall their habitual early morning meal."
Unfortunately, Galton's study was forgotten for many years, including his conclusions, which already indicated that the visual imagination was not unique, but that it presented a much wider and wider range, yet to be explored. His article has come back to light. and to the attention of the scientific community only recently. In particular, in 2016, Dr. Adam Zeman, cognitive psychologist at the University of Exeter, definitively coined the term "patterned". Since then, many researches have begun with constancy on the causes of this condition and on the effects it presents in the daily life of those who suffer from it.
What are the causes of aphantasia
Studies by the University of Exeter and Adam Zeman have focused a lot on the causes that lead to this lack of imagination. It has emerged that some people suffer from aphantasia for congenital reasons, others due to a previous illness or pathology, and others. l "developed following surgery. It seems that there are links with other neurological conditions, such as synaesthesia, or the confusion of the sensory perception of stimuli, and prosopagnosia, a deficit of the nervous system that makes it difficult to recognize the overall features of people's faces.
So, precisely because it is not possible to trace a single cause that could explain this disorder, the researchers investigated what happens in the brains of those with aphantasia. It seems that this psychic blindness should be linked to the inability of the cerebral system to build associative patterns related to what is seen. Generally, every visual stimulus, but also every stimulus derived from the other four senses of perception, has an impact on the brain and it leaves an "imprint" on it. When we want to remember something, we go to rediscover that mark left in our mind and bring it back to light. In the brains of people with aphantasia all this does not happen and, therefore, not only the capacity of the imagination is compromised, but also the creativity, the memory or the act of dreaming.
Living with this psychic blindness
Before the rediscovery of Galton's psychology study and the new research carried out by Adam Zeman, aphantasia, in addition to not having even a real name, was not taken into consideration by experts. All this makes it clear how people who they suffer from it can lead an almost normal life if not in those moments in which they are asked to use very specific mental faculties linked, in fact, to imagination, creativity and fantasy. They usually experience a situation of malaise when they are asked to remember faces of individuals they know but who are not present next to them or on similar occasions.
Furthermore, a repercussion of aphantasia can be seen on memorization and the ability to dream. While a person with imagination can escape from the reality that surrounds him by simply taking refuge in his own mind and experiences that fascinating phenomenon that are dreams at night, the aphantasis do not they succeed and cannot build that mental experience.
Are there any remedies for aphantasia?
At the moment the research is still in progress and there is no treatment for aphantasia. The testimonies of those who suffer from it show that this deficit does not seriously or seriously compromise the life of those who suffer from it, but, nevertheless, these people feel that they are missing something. We hope that science and psychology can make progress in this direction.
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