a crop from a charcoal drawing with hands over a woman's eyes, a chalkboard with key words and a nude in fetal position

Extreme Imagination

News and Links

This page contains links to main research output of the Extreme Imagination team, as well as case studies; aphantasia and hyperphantasia covered in mainstream, science and radio news; as well as links to apantasia dn hyperphantasia projects not directly affiliated with the Extreme Imagination team.

Research output

Main publications associated with the Eye's Mind research
photo of torso of Adam Zeman (older white man with receding hairline in a suit gesticulating) under text: 'Reflections on Aphantasia, authors Zeman, Dewar, Della Sala in Cortex, Volume 74, pages 336 to 337, dated January 2016'

Zeman et al, Reflections on aphantasia 2016

bust photo of a middle-aged white man with brown short hair and mid-length beard, dressed in a dark grey dress shirt and looking up, under text 'Differential Imagery Experience and Ut Pictura Poesis in the 18th-century, by MacKisack in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 41, dated December 2016'

MacKisack, Differential Imagery Experience 2016

black and white photo of a metal scrap heap composed of bunched metal wire, car and home appliance pieces, baskets, fences etc

MacKisack, Artists with Aphantasia 2019

photo of a clean shaven young white man in a pink shirt and tweed suit, under text 'The neural correlates of visual imagery by Milton, F; Winlove, C; Ranson, J; et al. in Cortex, Volume 105, pages 4 to 25, dated 2 January 2018'

Milton et al, Neural correlates of visual imagery

drawing of a white young woman with brown hair framing her face laying down with her eyes closed in a green ropey mass that emulates water, with rocks and moss in the foreground. In a corner, text 'edited by fiona macpherson and fabian dorsch'

Macpherson, Perceptual Imagination and Perceptual Memory

photo of torso of Adam Zeman (older white man with receding hairline in a suit gesticulating) under text: 'Phantasia - the psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes by Zeman, MacKisack, Winlove et al. PsyArXiv, 42 pages, dated 9 March 2020'

Psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery

medical scan of a human brain and head in black and white

Onians, Neuro Ways of Seeing 2008

Radio

Extreme imagination covered on radio and podcasts by researchers, artists and social commentators
black, white and colour swatch for television calibration

CBC Radio, When the Mental Image is Missing

photo of a professional man in his 30s, with dark hair and short beard, in a blue suit and checkered shirt

CBC Radio, Can You Picture Things in Your Head

shot of a white woman with a brown fringe and long hair in front of grey stairs

BBC Radio, All in the Mind

close-up photo of a green human eye

ABC Radio, All in the Mind - Mind's Eye

photograph with artwork: half of a white young woman's face with flowing red hair; the most of the image is dominated by a fantasy chalk drawing of flowers and snaking lines

BBC Radio, The Digital Human

black-and-white photo of the back of a bald man's head with big black headphones

BBC Radio, Between the Ears

Black-and-white photo of the top of Adam Zeman's (white older man with receding hair) head with biography reading 'Adam researches disorders of visual imagery, such as that exhibited by one of your hosts. We talked to him about understanding ourselves better, a form of epilepsy that makes you forget, and what his research field actually is (it's not cognitive and neural biology))'

Not Exactly Rocket Science Podcast

Video

Video explanations of extreme imagination research, most of them citing Extreme Imagination team's research
screenshot of a youtube video: torso of a middle-aged white man with fair hair and dark square glasses, caught mid-speech. a blue title-card reads 'Inability to visualise things. Dr Oliver Sacks' while of the other side of the man white floating text reads 'Dr adam zeman, neurologist, university of exeter' Sci Show - New Insights Into 'The Mind's Eye'

Sci Show - New Insights Into 'The Mind's Eye'

white paper notepad with handwriting: 'How clear is this mental image? Imagine the sky. it's really blue. gets brighter. intense, vivivd. a rainbow appears. another rainbow appears. double rainbow'. to the right of the notepad seven coloured pencils lay arranged ascendingly. Brain Craft - Aphantasia Explained

Brain Craft - Aphantasia Explained

messy white pencil drawing of London landmarks (Parliament, Big Ben, London Eye) on black background. White text at the top reads 'Breaking boundaries'. At the bottom, TED logo in red appears twice (left and right) accompanying the white text 'Goodenough College' TedX - Seeing the World Without a Mind's Eye

TedX - Seeing the World Without a Mind's Eye

cartoon of three stylised human figures, all with floating speech bubbles. The left one has a colourful landscape in theirs, the right figure has a red dragon in theirs, while the middle one looks down, frowning with their hands on their hips, with grey noise lines inside their thought bubble to signify absence of visual imagery Amy Right Meow - Aphantastic Visual Artist

Amy Right Meow - Aphantastic Visual Artist

a digitally altered picture of a white female journalist with red curly hair filtered as if it were drawn in ink. An ink spill to the left of the frame reads her name 'Aileen Donnely, national post' while above it a black text floating near her head reads Aphantasia. National Post - Aphantasia Explained

National Post - Aphantasia Explained

fuzzy picture of a field of yellow and red wild flowers and grass. Overlaid text: 'Blind Mind's Eyes: Aphantasia and our diverse inner lives. Brainfacts.org' Brain Facts - Blind Mind's Eye

Brain Facts - Blind Mind's Eye

Extreme imagination in the news

News articles about the extreme imagination research from around the world

simplistic line drawing of a person's face partially obscured by a giant keyboard button, with smaller line drawings of household items (cutlery, record player) and animals (cat, snake)

New York Times: Picture This? Some Just Can't

screenshot from little mermaid (under-sea background with a yellow fish and a red crab) with outline of the mermaid completely missing from the picture

The Guardian: Disney Animator Draws Blank On His Own Creation

a photo of colourful ink dissolving in water, all on a white background. At the top, black text reads 'A blind mind's eye: aphantasia'

Sungkyunkwan News: A Blind Mind’s Eye - Aphantasia

photo of the inside of a gallery with well-lit white walls on which framed artworks hang, as well as two plexiglass cases with two busts exhibiting artwork by Claire Strickland.

Exeter Observer: Extreme Imagination

digital drawing of 2 students at their respective desks, with an open book or notebook, back to back. The student to the left, a white young woman with short black hair, is surrounded by a colourful halo of abstract and animal forms, and tilts her chair back in a relaxed manner. The student to the right, a young black man hunched over his notebook, is surrounded by a stark black and white halo

The Guardian: If you can't imagine things, how can you learn?

close-up photo of a green/brown eye framed by parts of a white face with brown lashes and brows

UK scientists term inability to visualize memories ‘aphantasia'

black and white newspaper headline reading 'Le monde' and news item title 'le cas etrange des aveugles de l'imagination'

Le Monde, Aveugles de l'Imagination

Extreme imagination in science news

Articles about the extreme imagination research from science news magazines around the world

an illustration of a person in a formal coat and bowler hat, with a fluffy cloud over their face; background is dark clouds

Scientific American, When the Mind's Eye is Blind

illustration in colour-blocks: small black person stumbling upon a yellow screen with two big black female bodies in stripy and spotty beach one-piece suits, with other taller figures just outside the screen

Science Focus, Life with no Mind's Eye

artistic textured illustration of a white man with tall hair and beard wearing pink sunshades, surrounded by dream sad clouds, lush canopied trees, dripping pink ice-cream and similar pink foliage and mushrooms growing out of his glasses

New Scientist, Inside the Mind's Eye

a colourful image of a human brain, created from tiles make out of different pictures

Discover Magazine, Look Deep into the Mind's Eye

close-up of a negative image photo of a human eye with softly-lit background

Science Explorer: Some People are Born Without a "Mind's Eye"

computer simulation of a mesh human head with a grey scan/simulation of a brain with well defined wrinkles. At the back end of the brain the shape of an eye with blue pupil can be discerned

World-first brain imaging study to understand mind blindness

drawing of a screen with a tropical sunset over an expansive body of water, framed by a palm tree; the screen is projected on by a small projector located in the brain of a cartoon white male head faacing the screen

Science ABC: What Is Aphantasia?

collage of paintings and astronomical illustrations on several layers: a round sky chart under four white hands oriented clockwise, under four quarters of a globe of different mismatched sizes, under a rectangular cutting of a closeup of a green human eye framed by white skin and brown brows

An Overview of Aphantasia: When You Can't See Images in Your Mind

photo of a lush landscape with voluminous trees in the background, a herd of white sheep grazing with a dog watching them closely, and a shepherd turned with their back to the camera

Can't count sheep? You could have aphantasia

Case studies

Articles taking a deep dive into aphantastic and hyperphantastic individual case studies
drawing of a human brain in a head seen from above, with small leaves as well as repeated drawings of dancers circling around it

Aldworth, What is Visual Imagination? Survey of artists

promo picture of Ed Catmul (an older white man with grey beard in a short white shirt) in front of a projection screen of Toy Story

Ex-Pixar Chief Ed Catmul 'My Mind's Eye is Blind'

close-up photo of an older white woman with dark red hair, smiling broadly

Aphantasia: ‘I Can’t Visualise My Own Children’

close-up photo of a white man in his 30s with red hair and mid-length beard and black glasses, in a library

Aphantasia: A life without mental images

black and white close-up photo of a white woman with black hair with a pair of white hands over her eyes, belonging to a person behind her in a dark t-shirt

Artist Anna Ochoa: Blind in the Mind

close-up of artwork by Michael Chance: beige and brown cityscape with people dancing (dressed or naked), laying around naked, having sex, attending to their higiene (massage, barbering, sitting on a toilet), or exposing their bodies in different positions, blending with the lines that make up the environment

Notes on an Aphantastic Artist

manipulated close-up photograph of the back of a small child's torso, against the background of dreamy blue and yellow sunspots

Blake Ross, Founder of Firefox: How It Feels To Be Blind in the Mind

a photograph of a white woman dressed in black top and jeans skirt, a black scarf tied around her eyes, stumbing with her hands extended towards the viewer in a well-lit forest

Christina Farr Explains What it Feels Like To Be Blind in One's Mind

three stylised silhouettes with thought bubbles above their heads. At the top middle of the image stands the text 'apple', and the thought bubbles respond to the prompt - the first one blank, the second one a green apple and the last one a red apple

Neurocritic: The Shock of the Unknown in Aphantasia

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous ways to reach extreme imagination research, networks and posts
artwork by Susan Aldworth: long black background with a central ambiguous image resembling both a human eye and a blue and yellow galaxy, around which long stringls of white float like electricity or the tendrils of a nervous system cells

Exeter Sister Website - Eye's Mind

computer simulation of a landscape made out of light spots, with shards of light falling from different heights, reminiscent of rainfall.

Aphantasia Network (Not Affiliated)

photograph of a conference q&A panel headed by a white woman, standing up in front of a projector and desk, with participants at the panel as well as audience (white people of mixed genders, all over 30) visible in foreground. Overlaid in a white box is text hashtag aphantasiaconf

Aphantasia Conference Hashtag on Twitter

crop of Reddit website with logo (white stylized alien head on red background) and information about the Reddit r/Aphatasia board: 12.8k non-visualisers, 38 able to see the subreddit, established on 26 august 2016, description of the board: 'r/aphantasia is a place to discuss your discovery stories, issues or questions and any news coverage or research about Aphantasia'

Aphantasia Reddit Group (Not Affiliated)